Therapy or comfort animals to provide emotional support have become a scam used to avoid paying the regular cost of shipping a pet. Legitimate service dogs assisting passengers with recognized physical disabilities are one thing. But that's not what I see on Southwest. What I see most frequently are apparently healthy well adjusted young adults who open about how they are scamming the system. Now you can go online, answer a few questions, pay $100 and presto a "health professional" (usually a quack psychologist) who has never seen the applicant will send out a certificate and a therapy dog vest. The Southwest flight attendants are very open in discussing the therapy dog scam but they say there is nothing they can do. Southwest should require an affidavit from a medical doctor who actually seen the patient...not just reviewed the applicant's answers to some online questions. This scam will just keep growing until Southwest acts.
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