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There is the Canine Good Citizen test (http://www.akc.org/dog-owners/training/canine-good-citizen/), and the more stringent Community Canine Good Citizen Test (http://www.akc.org/dog-owners/training/akc-community-canine/).

I've used this informally as justification before when renting housing and bringing my dog to work (she's a plain CGC).

I think there's value in having these be more recognized. I especially wish they were by airlines.

Note that this isn't the same thing as the issue with service animals, where credentials are at a totally different standard, and more important than where I can bring my pet.

That's useful. It's a low standard of dog training, merely decent on-leash behavior. If you can't get your dog up to that level, it shouldn't be out in public.

> Owning a pet is a privilege

What entity bestows the privilege of pet ownership? It seems like people who claim that something is a privilege usually want to deny it from others.

Something doesn't have to be a fundamental right in order to expect a lack of discrimination or the bare minimum of accommodation. If you accommodate the lives and desires of others only because you're legally required I can't say I would want to visit your business.

Something doesn't have to be a fundamental right in order to expect a lack of discrimination or the bare minimum of accommodation.

What about accommodating those people who have allergies to dog or cat dander? I think their need (i.e their need to breathe without discomfort) takes priority over the want of pet owners to bring their pets to all public venues with them.

Are you not making the argument for banning peanuts as an ingredient in restaurants?

> What entity bestows the privilege of pet ownership?

At least in Switzerland, we had to take a theoretical course, get certified and ensure we were properly taking care of our pets [1].

[1] https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/pd/de/index/stadtpolizei_zueric...

> Right now, there's pretty much nothing that anyone can do to prove that their "service animal" is actually well-trained enough to be in a public place without causing trouble.

That's what the author suggests following that paragraph with the American Kennel Club certification: "If you want to bring your dog into a café, why aren’t you being asked to produce evidence of [it being well-behaved], rather than falsely stating that the business owner has to permit your emotional support animal?"

My issue with ESAs is a tragedy of the commons. Are current ESA dog owners are really okay with being in the middle seat of an airplane with two other ESAs on either side of them? With the exception of one girl who has noticeable anxiety issues, most ESA owners I've met have been yuppies who just wanted to take advantage of a loophole.

> I think the real answer is to actually have certifications and licenses which effectively differentiate service animals from ordinary pets.

If you're blind and you need a seeing eye dog, an untrained dog is useless to you. You actually care if the dog is properly trained.

But for people who don't care about real training and just want the certification, University of Phoenix for Dogs will appear and let anyone get their family pet certified for a nominal fee.

Imposing some kind of $5000/year certification fee or equivalent arduous bureaucracy would weed out people who don't really need the animal, but it also means you would be imposing a costly burden on everyone with a legitimate disability.

Service dogs are already not cheap -- the linked article mentions $20k as typical. Presumably (hopefully!) this cost is covered by insurance, and a certification fee could likely also be covered... for people who actually need it. And insurance companies are pretty careful not to pay for things a patient doesn't actually need, so that should weed out the fakers.

> Service dogs are already not cheap -- the linked article mentions $20k as typical.

That's the cost of proper training. If you don't care about proper training and just want a rubber stamp to put on a certificate then you can probably find someone to do it for $200.

> Presumably (hopefully!) this cost is covered by insurance, and a certification fee could likely also be covered... for people who actually need it.

"Don't worry about the cost of that because the insurance is paying for it" is the primary reason people can't afford health insurance.

> And insurance companies are pretty careful not to pay for things a patient doesn't actually need, so that should weed out the fakers.

In which case the burden you impose on people with a legitimate disability is the burden of proving it to the insurance company.

Moreover, if we want to err on the side of not denying coverage for legitimate claims, we make it easy for people to file illegitimate ones. Before the certification requirement there was little incentive to do that, but now we've expanded the problem from people claiming their pets are service animals to the problem of people claiming their pets are service animals and having their health insurance pay $20,000+ each to get the pets trained and certified.

The issue is this. We can either (a) let people get away with something, or (b) institute an expensive bureaucratic process to prevent them from getting away with it. Sometimes the burden of (b) is more than the burden of (a).

"But for people who don't care about real training and just want the certification..."

The certification should cover both the fact that the animal is properly trained and the fact that the owner needs the animal because of being disabled. Just like the disabled parking permit.

>Owning a pet is a privilege.

nope. It is a service to humankind. We evolved in close communication and collaboration with dogs, cats, horses. Keeping pets is keeping open that window into communication and collaboration with other species. Without dogs and cats around (and we pretty much already lost horses) humankind have all the chances to lose such capability completely. To illustrate just one, most obvious and straightforward, part of the picture - one can just google about pets effect on children development (and one can see that making owning a pet hard/impossible is basically equivalent to depriving children of such a benefit).

At the personal level - pets enhance our lives, our perception and understanding of the world, our emotional well being, our sense of empathy to others. Does it sound like a privilege or a fundamental right?