The Differences Between a Service Animal and a Therapy Pet

Over 60% of tenants and/or buyers that are looking for properties have pets. As a property owner, it is very important to understand the distinctions between pets, service animals, and emotional support animals.

“Pet” is an umbrella term referring to any animal that belongs to a human, and therefore it is the largest category.

Service animals and emotional support animals are specific categories of pets. They are protected by two primary laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Fair Housing Laws, which prohibit housing discrimination based on a person’s need for a service or emotional support animal.

This means you are not allowed to deny housing to a tenant because they own a service or support animal.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a service animal is a working animal (often a dog) trained to assist disabled people.

Emotional support animals are not trained for particular tasks like service animals. Instead, they are meant to provide emotional stability, comfort, and companionship for people with certain mental, psychiatric, and emotional conditions.

1. Therapy Pets are trained for assisting people in the field. There are formal programs where animals are trained to work with strangers and in unfamiliar settings.  The training helps ensure that that the animals behave appropriately when out in public at schools, nursing homes, hospitals, etc.  (Some religious organizations and other groups arrange for members to bring their own household pets to institutions for similar therapeutic results.) Using the correct legal terminology can be very important. People have lost court cases trying to keep their assistance animals in their homes when they have labelled them therapy animals, rather than emotional support animals or service animals.

1. Emotional support animals (legally NOT pets) are for assisting people who have mental health/emotional disabilities or who have emotional components to serious physical conditions. For instance, a study by the World Health Organization found that people who had arthritis, diabetes, angina, or asthma were more likely to suffer from depression than people without these conditions.

ESAs are meant for use in the home setting. The right to have ESAs is covered under federal fair housing law, administered by HUD (the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Read more in our legal information section. The US Department of Transportation also allows ESAs on flights. See http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/rules/382short.pdf for more info. You need a service animal if you require other kinds of assistance outside the home. Click here for information on the right to have emotional support animals for home use.

ESAs do not need specialized training to help with specific emotional conditions or to do specific tasks to assist their humans.  Dogs should have general obedience training, though.  Animals do NOT need to learn how to do the things they instinctively do to help calm people down, and reduce stress, anxiety and depression.  Little things like petting a companion animal, watching animals at play, having an animal nuzzle up to you are all therapeutic.

It appears that the only difference between ESAs and Therapy dogs is that Therapy animals require specialized training that an emotional support animal does not.