Polly Want a Legal Status

The miniature horse pictured above is notable not only for being fairly adorable, but for serving as a service animal, just like a seeing-eye dog. An article in today's New York Times Magazine reports on the expanding definition of 'service animal.' The new uses of animals are clever, none more so than the assistance parrot named Sadie which talks Jim Eggers's down from his bipolar rages:

Eggers’s [bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies] has landed him in court several times: a disturbing-the-peace charge for pouring scalding coffee onto a man under his apartment window who annoyed him; one-year probation for threatening to kill the archbishop of St. Louis. Sadie is one of the few things keeping Eggers from snapping.

Sadie rides around town on Eggers’s back in a bright purple backpack specially designed to hold her cage. When he gets upset, she talks him down, saying: “It’s O.K., Jim. Calm down, Jim. You’re all right, Jim. I’m here, Jim.” She somehow senses when he is getting agitated before he even knows it’s happening. “I still go off on people sometimes, but she makes sure it never escalates into a big problem,” he told me, grinning bashfully at Sadie. “Now when people make me mad I just give them the bird,” he said, pulling up his sleeve and flexing his biceps, which is covered with a large tattoo of Sadie.

Unfortunately for Eggers and Sadie, the line between 'service animal' (allowed to accompany its owner into public places) and 'therapy animal' is largely unclear. The Department of Justice has proposed limiting the definition of 'service animal' to “dog or other common domestic animal,” specifically excluding “wild animals (including nonhuman primates born in captivity), reptiles, rabbits, farm animals (including any breed of horse, miniature horse, pony, pig or goat), ferrets, amphibians and rodents.”

Rather than attempt to create a bright line definition that could put Eggers and other innovative patients at risk, the DoJ should sign off on a broader definition of service animal, contingent primarily on a doctor's affadavit and simply hold users accountable for the reasonable behavior of their animals in public. The law is not meant to be twisted to preempt every extreme, improbable case.