If you’re like me, you may have to fight the daily urge to play with any of the adorable dogs you see either in class or on campus. But, service and therapy dogs serve a much larger purpose than being a pleasant surprise to have a few seats down. The emotional impacts and extraordinary abilities of these animals is far beyond what meets the eye.

A service dog receives training to develop the ability to aid and perform tasks to alleviate their owner’s disabilities. The right to serve and protect their handlers is covered by the law.

“The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) protects disabled individuals by allowing them to bring their service dog with them to most places that the public is permitted, including restaurants, hotels, housing complexes and even in air travel,” according to the United States Service Dog Registry.

The range of services these animals can assist with ranges from limited ability to hear, speak or think, all the way to sleep disorders.

A branch off of these physical duties would be a psychiatric dog. Their training is geared toward the mental illness aspects of disability. They have the ability to sense the onset of an emotional or potentially dangerous episode and interject to ease the situation.

Student Aalyshah Zaragoza said her service dog received one year of training in order to be able to notice the warning signs of self-harm and other impulsive emotional behaviors.

“He is trained to notice my anxiety levels rising through rhythmic routines or movements, and is able to calm me down before they progress,” Zaragoza said.

So how does this differ from the duties of an emotional support dog? Animals providing emotional support assist their handlers in the fields of companionship, stability and unconditional love.

All dogs have a unique and loving connection to their owners, but for individuals with anxiety or depressive-prone emotional states, these animals have the larger effect of easing tension or aiding in establishing a life routine.

Service animals can only be dogs, but emotional support animals can be any common domestic animal including dogs, cats, birds, rodents and more. To clarify, the animal must be reasonably well behaved by typical pet standards, such as being toilet trained, and can’t be a nuisance or danger to others. Emotional support dogs also don’t require any training specific to their owner’s disabilities.

Service dogs and their abilities to change the lives of the people they assist are widely accepted in society, but I believe emotional support and psychiatric animals are opening eyes and reducing the stigmas surrounding mental health in the best of ways. Although both groups aren’t protected the same legally, the acceptance of both on campus points to a growing community of valuing well-being among students.

Treating physical disabilities with great importance is an instinctual mindset for most, but we aren’t so quick to treat mental illness with the same compassion. In my opinion, treating emotional support animals with the same respect as service dogs is an important step toward valuing our mental health with the respect and compassion it deserves.