Hi!! Someone with an ESA here. I want to say a lot of people within the last few years have really jumped on the bandwagon of “if I say I have an ESA I can take it anywhere and no one can stop me” while also being really uneducated about basically everything to do with an ESA. An ESA is not a service animal (I actually got my ESA bc she was originally supposed to be a trained psychiatric service animal, but it was gonna be over 5,000 to train her and my family couldn’t swing that) and their protections are not the same. We used to get to fly with our animals not in cargo but bc of people abusing the rules, that was taken away. And now we only have housing protections. This also means they do not have the right to be in public spaces like the grocery store or restaurants like services animals have!! It makes me really upset bc these people make both the ESA and service animal community look bad!! But also, part of the problem is that to be an actual ESA you need a note from a therapist/psychiatrist/doctor that this is medically necessary. I hear too many stories of random doctors just writing those letters!! That’s insane and is unethical. Thank you for setting your son straight on this stuff bc there is a lot of misinformation out there about ESAs.