Emotional Support Doodles

Thank you for your interest, and if you have any questions about this program, please feel free to contact us.

The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) provides this distinction between emotional support animals and service animals:

Are emotional support, therapy, comfort, or companion animals considered service animals under the ADA? 

No. These terms are used to describe animals that provide comfort just by being with a person.  Because they have not been trained to perform a specific job or task*, they do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.  However, some State or local governments have laws that allow people to take emotional support animals into public places.  You may check with your State and local government agencies to find out about these laws. 

*This does not mean that emotional support, therapy, comfort, or companion animals lack household or obedience training.

The ADA definition of specific job or task refers to trained actions that directly assist a disabled owner with their specific disability (physical alerts from hearing dogs, assistance with getting into and out of a wheelchair, identifying and alerting when a person is about to have a seizure, etc.)

Our emotional support dogs are placed at no charge. Our Doodles are naturals for this important companionship role - they are intelligent, love to learn, and have exceptionally people-focused personalities. Doodles are often called "velcro dogs" due to their strong preference to be with their people, and ours are no exception to this.

Our emotional support dogs are available to accepted applicants living in the state of North Carolina who...

...have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression and have been advised by their medical professional or therapist that having a pet dog may help or

...are low income senior citizens* who would benefit from having a pet dog

*low income is 80% or less of AMI in your city/county of residence, seniors 55 or older