The Very Best: Tater

The most long overdue post on MAL+, and I say that with everything in my heart and soul.

My Taters/Tater (use it in tandem, only one is canon though, figure out which) came into my life sometime in late June or early July 2025. I was already well into what I'd call a "personality reset" of sorts, and then she happened.

I actually met her for the first time in 2023 or 2024 without knowing I'd eventually be her owner. Her name was "Teeter" (wtf Yellowstone Reference) back then.

She was a farm dog at the time. A border collie, white and black with an asymmetrical white snout marking, beautiful hazel eyes, and the most inquisitive stare. She smells a little like tortilla chips for some reason. She had given birth to one litter of puppies before I knew her. I've met her son, Colby. He's a cool guy and he's absolutely massive compared to her, at least double her size easily.

Due to a series of unfortunate events, her original owners were forced to give her up. Through a "I know a person" chain, my mother-in-law contacted my wife, and by extension, me. I got a call at work around 1:00pm from my wife, crying. I probably cry more than she does, so that was immediately alarming. Once she explained the situation, I agreed we would take Tater until we could find her a more suitable home.

Thanks to my sister and my mother, I already had the mental toolkit to handle anything animal-related that would probably be thrown at me, including the ability to let go of a foster without the attachment destroying me.

It took a very short time to realize Tater was different.

I've had dogs before. Shadoe was my first dog I was able to put focus into, and she lived to 17. I've had several cats too, including Lychee, who is still out there thriving in Arizona at 16 thanks to the efforts and care of my mother and sister.

I know what it means to love an animal and lose one (or many) and I know the difference between a pet and a presence.

Tater is the culmination of all of it. Every dog I've ever had, every lesson, every regret about how I could have done something better with another, all of it went into how I show up for her. She is the amalgamation of a lifetime of loving animals, and she is just, plainly, love. I may not have had her for the first part of her life, but I'm going to have her for the rest.

When Tater came to us, I was fresh out of therapy. Only a year prior I had been diagnosed with CPTSD and I had just ended therapy unwillingly after my insurance changed and I had to drop my regular therapist, which is a whole separate conversation about how this country treats mental healthcare. Our apartment also didn't allow dogs, so my wife and I looked into getting Tater certified as my ESA. After about ten minutes on a Zoom call with my new therapist, with Tater clinging to my face like spiderwebs every time I felt the urge to shut down or got too deep into whatever thought I was trying to explain, it was pretty clear this was going to work. It's hard not to love someone that has more empathy and listens better than most humans you'll ever meet.

A quick note on ESA vs. Service Animals, because there's a staggering amount of misinformation out there

An ESA (Emotional Support Animal) and a Service Animal are not the same thing, and the internet has done a fantastic job of making sure almost nobody knows this.

Service animals are the "DO NOT PET, I AM WORKING" animals, and they deserve every bit of that respect. Under the ADA, a service animal is specifically trained to perform tasks directly tied to a person's disability. We're talking detecting an oncoming panic attack, retrieving objects for someone in a wheelchair, reminding someone with depression to take their medication. The load they carry is on a completely different level, and their legal access rights reflect that. They go where you go, full stop.

What Tater does is different. She soothes, sustains, and grounds me. She keeps me present. That's what an ESA does, and the legal framework around them is its own thing entirely. I can't take her into the same situations, and although I absolutely hate being away from her, it doesn't stop me from living my life entirely.

I've actually had people tell me "Oh, you don't have anything wrong" because of this. They, I guess, think that because I don't have to have her 'everywhere' that I don't need her at all. That's not true.

The fact I can go to work for eight hours of the day without a dog doesn't mean I don't have something upstairs going on, it just means I'm 'mostly' comfortable where I spent that eight hours and I could self-manage what it was I was doing there without dissociating. If I had her at my work, I would be more well managed, but that's not realistic and it's accomodated mostly.

This is also why it is important for me to have realistic work schedules, regardless of what it is I'm doing. The work I do through MAL+ for others in the community is my 'self managed' work on my own time, and this is how I operate.

A few things worth knowing if you're navigating this:

• Housing: Under the Fair Housing Act, landlords are generally required to make reasonable accommodations for an ESA even in no-pets buildings. They cannot charge pet fees or deposits for an ESA. What they can ask for is a letter from a licensed mental health professional confirming your need. That's it. They cannot demand your diagnosis, your records, or anything beyond that. HUD enforces this and will investigate complaints if a landlord refuses without valid legal justification. Landlords can be scummy and try to get around this. Have this problem in Bellingham? Contact me. [email protected].
• Public access: This is where ESAs and service animals differ most visibly. Service animals have protected access to public spaces under the ADA. ESAs do not have the same blanket protections. A restaurant or movie theater can legally say no to your ESA. Know the difference so you're not put in an awkward spot.
• Certification scams: There is no official ESA registry. None. Websites selling ESA certificates, vests, ID cards, or "registrations" are not conferring any legal rights on you or your animal. The only document that actually matters is a letter from a licensed mental health professional. If a site is promising fast, easy certification for $49.99, it's a scam. Don't do it. It's bullllllllshit with as many "L's" as you want to stick onto it.

I might do a deeper post on all of this at some point because it genuinely affects a lot of people and most of the information floating around is either wrong or weaponized by people trying to sell you something.

I've done the research, if you need more information ASAP, please!
[email protected] - Discord: Ikadar

This might be a lot for people who know me and stumble onto the blog side of MAL+. That's fine. I don't really subscribe to hiding things when being transparent lets real connections find me organically. If you read this and decide I'm too unstable to work with, go have a nice day, sir and/or Karen.

With Tater in my life, I'm more stable now than I've ever been.

Once more, as a footer for that Certification Scams thing: The only document that actually matters is a letter from a licensed mental health professional. Weird to put this here twice, but I don't want to be like "Oh it wasn't visible."

Final Note:

I do plan to finally put up Darkstreet soon. This was a section on the site that required verified access to. It has quite a bit of services that I otherwise wouldn't offer, as well as access to pages that get a bit more in-depth and more user-interactive with me on certain subjects.

Tater was born November 2021, by the way. Figured that deserved its own line, because that's the month the world got way f**kin' better.