Dog Blog - Dog Product Reviews

I am not making this up.

Last week, the New York Times published a story about a rise in the incidence of airline passengers, hotel guests and restaurant patrons who insist that their animals - usually dogs - be allowed in with them. Why? Because these are "emotional assistance" animals.

The idea is that, like assistance or service dogs for those with physical disabilities, assistance dogs for those with emotional disabilities should be granted the same access to public places. The problem is that the ruling by the Department of Transportation does not define "disability" and does not define any special skills an animal must have to qualify as a service animal.

So really, all you need is a doctor's note saying that you must have your Pomeranian with you on a flight, and they have to let you take the dog into the cabin with you. I wonder if I can get a doctor's note that says I "need" free champagne.

Airlines have been forced to admit dogs, cats, a goat, a duck and even a miniature horse wearing a diaper on board to provide in-flight support to their owners. One woman interviewed for the article said the Pit Bull that she insists on taking onto planes and into hotel rooms "helps fend off dark moods."

My question is, when did we all become so helpless? Can't we survive a flight without being able to pet our dogs? The more we demand rights, the more we elevate the individual over society at large, and the less able to cope we seem to become.

Or maybe it's not helplessness and inability to cope. Maybe it's self-aggrandizement and narcissism. Animals on planes are supposed to be there because their services are needed to enable someone to fly, someone who actualy could not fly without the animal. They're not there to assure that their owners remain in the utmost emotionally rewarding frame of mind at all times. Has our celebrity-worship extended to the point where we all think we deserve to act like a pampered billionaire movie-star?

The article stated that some in the service dog training industry "are concerned that pet owners who might simply prefer to brunch with their Labradoodle are abusing the guidelines." Ya think? What about the rights of other passengers and restaurant guests who are allergic to dogs, or afraid of them? Would you like your four-year-old child sitting next to a large dog with no formal training, unknown socialization skills, and who belongs to someone who's so emotionally unstable that she can't fly without the dog? Me neither.

What's going to happen when two of these emotional service animals get into a dog fight across someone's lap? Or when an emotional support German Shepherd Dog eats an emotional support rabbit? Or when a parent presents a note that he/she cannot bear to be apart from a child, so that child must be accommodated - without charge - on the airplane for the emotional well-being of the parent.

I'm a dog owner and a dog lover. So much so that I started a business in which I obsess about dogs all day, every day. I sell to and even befriend doting dog parents, and I totally relate to them. But if you're so unstable that you need your pet to sit on your lap to enable you to fly, then you're not functional and should be institutionalized (or deported to Hollywood). Planes, hotels and restaurants are public places where the rest of us need to function, too. After such an emotionally-unglued person and her dogs sleep in a hotel bed, does she ever think about the person with dog allergies who has to sleep in that same bed the next night? Maybe that person has a huge presentation to give in the morning. How's he going to look and feel the next day when his face is red and swollen with allergies from the bedspread, which is not washed after each guest?

When did our country become a nation where what's best for the group as a whole takes a back seat to what a loud individual might demand? Oh, wait … there's an emotional service duck in that seat.  

-  Lisa Woody

I was talking to someone today who had me in stitches talking about her dogs, who work in tandem to get food off the kitchen counters. They cooperate. One drags a chair to the counter and jumps onto it, throwing down food for the other one. It was really funny, but it also made me think, how do you stop a dog from surfing the couinters when you're not there?

I haven't had this problem, although I had one Dachshund who I swear would have gotten into the bread if he'd had a chance to get up there. In fact, one day, my cousin and I left the house to go to a movie. Shortly after we got there, I remembered a frosted cake I had left on the counter. I was fretting about that cake the whole time we were at the movie, thinking my two big dogs would get into it. But when we returned, it was intact. What a relief. Still, I don't tempt them any more.

I hear from lots of customers whose dogs climb up onto the counter to get food. There's the Standard Poodle who goes from there onto the refrigerator top to get the Krispy Kreme doughnuts. There's the Australian Shepherd who set the house on fire because she turned on the stove during a potato chip chomp on the counter.

 There are devices out there that you can put on furniture or counter tops that will give your cat or dog a mild shock if they jump on it.  (I've tried it; it feels like the shock you'd get after walking across the carpet and then touching the doorknob.) Also, we could put all the food away (a very good idea). Other than that, what else can be done?

Has anyone come up with a good deterrent to counter surfing? Let us know, because this seems to be a problem that's especially difficult to solve, since we're never home when it happens.