Pets on Planes: Emotional Support or Sham?

NEADS Director of Development, Cathy Zemaitis, is interviewed for this article on the important issue of Service Dog fraud.

“More and more people are flying with pets they call necessary for emotional support.

Sharon Giovinazzo goes so far as to call them something else: four-legged terrorists.

That may seem harsh. But Giovinazzo, who is visually impaired and travels at least once a week in her job as president and CEO of World Services for the Blind, says she was recently walking through an airport with her service dog Watson when a small dog came running out of a gate waiting area and lunged at them, biting Watson under the chin.

Luckily, the bite wasn’t serious.

But Giovinazzo says she was horrified and rattled…