BYU's University Accessibility Center shared how students can adopt and keep service and emotional support animals, including guidelines on how they can navigate campus and on-campus housing.
Service animals are trained to provide specific services for their owners. According to BYU policy, these animals can perform services such as carrying medications, pulling wheelchairs, and assisting owners during seizures.
Ed Martinelli is the director of BYU’s University Accessibility Center. He explained the differences that separate service animals from emotional support animals.
It takes a year to train a service dog to properly assist owners with disabilities, Martinelli said. After completing their training, animals can provide service for five to seven years.
“Unless there's a danger to the animal or a danger to other folks, service animals can go almost anywhere on campus," Martinelli said.
Not just dogs can be service animals; miniature horses can also provide much-needed assistance to individuals with disabilities, Martinelli said.
Martinelli said the use of miniature horses is rare, but they are recommended for their extended life spans and service years to provide services for disabilities such as vertigo or balance issues.
Martinelli said that emotional support animals, unlike service animals, only provide housing enjoyment for residents with emotional disabilities.
According to BYU policy, for an animal to be considered an emotional support animal, they must help alleviate one or more identified symptoms or effects of an individual’s disability and play an integral part in an individual’s treatment process.
“An emotional support animal is for the enjoyment of the residents,” Martinelli said. “All these other buildings on campus are not residences. So emotional support animals are to stay in the housing unit.”
Emotional support animals aren’t limited to just a few animal species. Martinelli said that while most emotional support animals are cats and dogs, some are less typical, ranging from rabbits to snakes.
According to the University Accessibility Center’s website, students must submit a letter from their physical or mental healthcare provider stating that they have a disability that “substantially limits” one or more aspects of their life.
The letter must also provide ample reasoning for how the emotional support animal would help alleviate the effects of the student’s disability, according to the University Accessibility Center’s website.
Izzie Turgeon has had her emotional support cockatiel named Elsa for 12 years. She has taken Elsa with her almost everywhere she’s lived, she said.
“I have to be very careful about where I live. I have to find a place that, first of all, accepts emotional support animals,” Turgeon said. “Even for places where the landlord or the company will accept an emotional support animal, if any of the roommates are allergic to that kind of animal, that can be an issue.”
While Turgeon has found that most people aren’t allergic to her bird, she said other problems can slow down the process of getting her bird approved to live in on-campus housing with her.
“There's a lot of places now that won't even do documentation because there's so many other people that will abuse it,” Turgeon said. “They'll just claim their animal is an emotional support animal so they can have their animal, even if it wasn't an actual emotional support animal.”
While some websites offer letters recommending emotional support animals to users, the University Accessibility Center's website states it does not accept these online sources of documentation. Instead, the office requires documentation from healthcare providers who have personal knowledge of the student.
While caring for an emotional support animal can offer its own problems, it also brings its own rewards, BYU advertising major Mallory Bennhoff said.
“It's so fun, but it's a lot of work because he's still just a puppy,” Bennhoff said regarding her emotional support dog Finn. “It's kind of like having a toddler.”
Finn is two years old and has been Bennhoff's emotional support animal for a year. Bennhoff said she has found that her emotional support animal has given her a renewed feeling of importance in life.
“Him just being himself and having needs just makes me feel important,” Mallory said. “It makes me feel like I have an important reason to continue to take care of myself.”