You Can’t Go Wrong Doing Right
We recently learned that if you register your pet as an ESA, Emotional Support Animal, and live in an apartment, it waives the apartment’s deposit or pet rent that is normally required. Since our daughter is considering getting a dog, my husband was telling her about it. She adamantly said that she disagreed with that, saying that it was abusing the system, just to avoid paying a deposit or pet rent, and later asked me how I felt about it. I took the opportunity to talk to her about integrity.
My daughter, who also has a disability, follows a blind girl on YouTube, Molly Burke, who has a service dog named Bennix. She describes her discrimination and how the explosion of people getting bogus ESAs has negatively impacted her. To be a service animal, typically a dog, the animal has to be highly trained not only to be well-behaved, but to perform specific tasks and they must pass numerous tests. The person requesting the service dog has to have a documented physical or emotion handicap. For an ESA, ANY person can go online, fill out a form, get an over-the-phone assessment, and afterward receive a document that qualifies their pig, snake, or llama as an emotional support animal. As silly as that sounds, it’s true and it makes having a real need and a real service animal harder, because these “supposed” ESA animals ARE NOT trained and can attack and/or harm a service animal, that as Molly puts it is her life support, her only means of being a part of society, outside the comfort of her home.
I told my daughter that I was proud of her integrity and she said she didn’t know what that was. Sadly, most people her age don’t either and it’s because integrity is a dying trait. I explained that integrity was doing the right thing, even when no one is looking. It’s standing up for what is right no matter the cost. Titus 2:7 says, “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity.” In our society, people are only out for #1, and they don’t concern themselves with rules or who they hurt along the way. It’s hard to do the right thing sometimes, but doing what’s right is never wrong. Psalm 25:21 says, “May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for You.” This tells us that doing what is honorable “preserves” us, keeps us in right-standing with God until the day Jesus returns. That’s a good place to be.
This post is not to say that there aren’t real needs for ESAs; it was simply a topic I used to demonstrate the importance of integrity, or the danger when it is lacking. Proverbs 11:3 “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.” The choice is yours.