comfort animals

Bringing your comfort pet on board is a rich person’s problem

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By Lynn Hamilton

In the wake of Delta Airlines’ announcement that it will clamp down on the ever expanding universe of quasi-trained comfort and emotional support animals, I think it’s time for some perspective.

Whether you get the comfort of an animal on your flight is mostly a rich person’s problem. Yeah, I said it.

Statistics show that over seventy percent of people who REALLY NEED a service animal don’t get one. That’s because service animals start at around $15,000 and that’s if you train the animal yourself.

So, not to put too fine a point on it, people who can afford a trained emotional therapy duck have been taking their animal on the plane while blind people living in low-income neighborhoods can’t even get a dog to help them get to Walgreens.

Meanwhile, airlines like Delta don’t want to spend money redesigning their cabins to accommodate therapy animals. Therapy animals, in other words, are cutting into Delta’s profits.

Maybe that’s okay, if Delta would throw a little of its profits at helping people who really need them get service animals. Please sign today’s petition asking for that.

Where do service animals pee on a Delta flight?

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Delta Airlines have said they will cut back on the rights of passengers to bring comfort animals aboard. The new, proposed rules say that, in effect, only dogs and cats may be brought on board, and passengers will have to give notice 48 hours in advance, if they wish to bring a comfort animal on a flight.

Delta representatives are saying that comfort animals wander the cabin and urinate or defecate in inappropriate spaces in the cabin. Once, a comfort animal bit a fellow passenger.

Animal Rights Channel supports the rights of dogs to serve as therapy and service animals because dogs often seek out and enjoy work, just as humans do. We believe that helping others less fortunate gives meaning to life for both humans and animals. Similarly, we believe that most cats have a strong drive to snuggle with humans, a situation that provides mutual comfort and emotional support to both human and cat. Therefore, many cats are predisposed to be excellent comfort animals as well, and they are unlikely to regard this as work.

It is, however, questionable whether ducks, snakes, and other smaller brained animals should be subjected to air travel. The stress of such travel could be damaging to the animal, and small comfort to the human.

In complaining about service animals, Delta representatives have said nothing about whether they supply a place for service animals to urinate and defecate. Flights are often delayed, as we all know, and even well-trained animals can only hold on to their body waste for so long. AnimalRightsChannel.com has put in a request for information from Delta’s communications department to answer this question.