Arizona man registers swarm of bees as emotional support animals

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An Arizona man’s emotional support animal is creating quite a buzz.

Prescott Valley, Ariz., resident David Keller thinks the application process to register an emotional support animal is too easy — so he tried registering a swarm of bees as his service pet.

It worked.

“A lot of people thought it was hilarious and a lot of people were getting upset,” Keller tells CBS affiliate WTRF-TV. He recently went on a website called USAServiceDogRegistration.com and successfully uploaded a random photo of a beehive as a service animal “to bring awareness to the issue that anyone could do this,” he explains.

Keller was inspired to go through with the registration after seeing a service dog that was visibly untrained. “I could very easily tell that it was not a service animal because it was pulling the owner to the parking lot,” says Keller. “I was thinking that it’s just too easy to get these animals to be service animals.”

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The website he used to register his swarm is one of many that make the application process for emotional pets too easy, experts say.

“They’re very silly. They don’t mean anything. You can go pay for a registry on one of those websites and basically you’re just paying for a piece of paper and to put a name on a list,” service dog trainer Jaymie Cardin tells WTRF. With registration so easy, how an animal acts is a better way to tell if it’s worthy of the title.

“Training is how you tell whether it’s a service animal or not,” says Cardin.

And not all animals can be trained: Only dogs and miniature horses may be used as service animals, according to federal law.

Many other species are currently given the title, however, including a squirrel, peacock, monkey and alligator. Miniature horses remain cleared to fly as service animals, although emotional support dogs in tutus were recently booted off a flight after showing “signs of distress.”

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