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Don’t Touch My Dog: The Case Against Emotional Support Animals

Julia E Hubbel
12 min readOct 19, 2018

The woman was walking her two whippets through the Natural Grocers. They were lively and sweet. As she approached where I stood perusing the peanut butter, I asked permission to pet them.

“No, they’re working. But thanks for asking.”

Neither of the dogs had a working vest on.

Okay.

That’s a little confusing but no big deal.

These days it’s almost impossible to tell a real “working dog” or a working Wunderpus photogenicus or a working pink fairy armadillo from a companion animal from I’ll just sneak Fluffy on this airplane by claiming him as an emotional animal.

Fluffy doesn’t like the big guy in the middle seat, bites him, and then craps on the carpet.

How to be a popular traveler, 101.

Here’s what airline attendants have to say about this https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/emotional-support-animals-negatively-affecting-air-travel-300712535.html

And let’s not even get into how the passengers feel when bitten, growled at, pissed on, shat on, or threatened.

Or, how the airline feels when said (fake) emotional needs customers scream bloody murder and pitch a (fake) hissy fit to cover up the fact that they…

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Julia E Hubbel
Julia E Hubbel

Written by Julia E Hubbel

Stay tuned for some crossposting. Right now you can peruse my writing on Substack at https://toooldforthis.substack.com/ More to come soon.

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