“Creature Comforts”

The topic of the article “Creature Comforts” by Rebecca Skloot is one with much controversy and for good reason. Skloot does a good job showing both sides of the argument. The two sides mainly being the service animal owners and the business owners. The service animal owners are worried that they will not be able to bring their service animal around when they need them, or they will be labeled and harassed as with the example with Debby Rose and Richard from the article. The business owners are worried about all of the people that fake having service animals because of lenient yet difficult service animal laws as well as well as dangers that are posed from wild or exotic animals that are claimed to be there as service animals.

The whole situation just seems to be one big mess. The only one who seems to have a good grasp of the situation as well as what to do is a professor of health-information science named Lex Frieden. His proposals were shown multiple times throughout the article. I personally find his ideas to be the most viable. Frieden seems to have really thought the situation through as more of a man in the middle as opposed to the people on either side of the argument. Whenever I encountered him in the article, I always found myself agreeing with what he said as being a good course of action.

I come from a town with just over a thousand people, and I live two miles out of town. This has made it so my encounters with service animals has been minimal at best. I don’t believe I have ever seen anything more than a dog as a service animal, so I am not sure how legitimate my opinion on the subject could be. However, I don’t think there is a huge problem with non-canine service animals. Eggers and his bird Sadie are an example of a non-canine service animal that should be allowed. This is especially after considering how he would fair without her, and that a bird like Sadie is not a bad thing. I do, however, think that there could be some line. I see the argument against animals like monkeys and wonder if maybe there could be a better animal replacement. Either way, I agree with what Lex Frieden says, and I think he is the one people should be listening to.