What is a Therapy Dog?
A therapy dog is a dog trained to provide affection and comfort to people in hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, schools, with people with learning difficulties and stressful situations such as disaster areas.
Therapy dogs come in all sizes and breeds. The most important characteristic of a therapy dog is its temperament. A good therapy dog must be friendly, patient, confident, at ease in all situations, and gentle. Therapy dogs must enjoy human contact and be content to be petted and handled, sometimes clumsily.
A therapy dog’s primary job is to allow unfamiliar people to make physical contact with it and to enjoy that contact. Children in particular enjoy hugging animals; adults usually enjoy simply petting the dog. The dog might need to be lifted onto, or climb onto, an individual’s lap or bed and sit or lie comfortably there. Many dogs contribute to the visiting experience by performing small tricks for their audiences or by playing carefully structured games.
What are “AAT” and “AAA”?
We offer both Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) and Animal Assisted Activities (AAA).
Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) is a type of therapy that involves an animal with specific characteristics becoming a fundamental part of a person’s treatment. Animal-assisted therapy is designed to improve the physical, social, emotional, and/or cognitive functioning of the patient, as well as provide educational and motivational effectiveness for participants. AAT can be provided on an individual or group basis. During AAT, therapists document records and evaluate the participant’s progress.
Many kinds of animals are used in therapy, including dogs, cats, elephants, birds, dolphins, rabbits, lizards, and other small animals. Such animals are often referred to as comfort animals.
Some of the benefits include the following:
- Physical-Improve fine motor skills, improve wheelchair skills, improve standing equilibrioception (balance), and has been known to lower blood pressure, risk for stroke or heart attack, and decrease depression.
- Mental-A 2007 meta-analysis found that animal-assisted therapy is associated with moderate effect sizes in improving outcomes in autism spectrum symptoms, medical difficulties, behavioral problems, and emotional well-being.
- Increase verbal interactions among group members; increase attention skills (i.e., paying attention, staying on task); develop leisure/recreation skills; increase self-esteem; reduce anxiety; reduce loneliness.
- Educational-Increase vocabulary; aid in long- or short-term memory; improve knowledge of concepts, such as size, color, etc.
- Motivational-improve willingness to be involved in a group activity; improve interactions with others; improve interactions with staff
Animal-Assisted Activity (AAA) provides opportunities for motivational, educational, recreational, and/or therapeutic benefits to enhance quality of life. AAAs are delivered in a variety of environments by specially trained professionals, paraprofessionals, and/or volunteers, in association with animals that meet specific criteria. Key features include: absence of specific treatment goals; volunteers and treatment providers are not required to take detailed notes; visit content is spontaneous.
What is the age requirement of a dog to be certified?
Dogs must be at least one year of age to be evaluated for certification. And the handler must be at least 16 years of age.
