I recently moved into an appartment in order to be closer to my school. My Junior year of engineering school has become extremely stressful. I never realized how much time i spent with my dog at my parents house and how much it helped with the stress until i moved out. Unfortunately my landlord has a no pet policy. My roomate and i have managed to find ourselves a hairless cat, but still it will not be allowed. There are other tennants in the same complex with pets. These are however registered therapy animals. I was wondering how i would go about getting our cat registered as an official therapy animal or getting proscribed animal assistance by a physician.
A therapy animal is one that is trained, tested, registered and insured to go with their owner to visit people in hospitals and nursing homes. There's only one such program I know of that will register cats, and it will require a fee something like $ 60 and passing a training test for the pair of you and a written test for you.
http://deltasociety.org It may take months to find a test close enough to travel to, and of course, the cat will have to be trained before he can be tested and registered. So that means finding it a place to live until you can get the training and test done.
pets question and answers,www.5d2d.com What you are actually talking about is an emotional support animal. To qualify, you must be disabled and must have a doctor write a letter stating you are disabled by mental illness, that he is treating you for this disability, and that the presence of the cat is a necessary part of his treatment plan for you. If you're willing to get labeled as severely mentally ill, all you have to do is go to a psychiatrist and seek treatment.
ESA (Emotional Support Animals) do not have the same rights as service animals. To even have an animal considered to be an ESA you would have to have the written documentation from a psychologist or psychiatrist stating your need for one. Even then owners of private properly (ie your landlord) are still not required to allow you to have the animal as they would be a service dog.
Edit: a therapy animal is different than and ESA or service animal. A registered Therapy animal is the would be an animal you would take to visit a hospital or nursing home They have no rights what so ever under the law.
pets question and answers,www.5d2d.com
Short summary:
In the US handlers of service dogs (both physical and psychiatric) have legal rights to equal access. A service dog is a dog that is specifically trained to perform a task the handler is either unable to perform or has difficulty performing, otherwise helps the handler function, or services as a medical alert dog. Side note: some other countries do not offer access rights to psychiatric service dog handlers
ESA animals are not trained to perform a those type of task but rather offer comfort, stress relief etc. Some are trained for specific responses others are not. They do not have the access rights that a service dog does. ESA's are specifically excluded from the ADA. I have seen some sites prompt suing under the reasonable accommodations clause of the fair housing act but in reality they are unlikely to win as a land lord could easily justify it not being a reasonable accommodation in no pet housing. To my knowledge most government housing will allow ESA with a "prescription", but private land lords are not required to accept them.
pets question and answers,www.5d2d.com Therapy animals are well trained and people loving pets that visit nursing homes, hospitals etc at their invitation. They have no access rights at all.
3 registered cats sounds like she has therapy animals not ESA or service animals. In which case she has no right at all.
That's a good question. Bring up one of my own. I really want a dog, they help my stress , but I don't want to have to pay for almost 500 to the stupid apartment place. But I was thinking would they wave the fee if it were medical
