Next to emotional support dogs and service dogs, therapy dogs are growing in popularity. Although therapy dogs aren’t as popular as these two distinct support and assistance animals, many are considering having their dogs as therapy dogs.
Therapy dogs, however, aren’t just for one person. These dogs are specifically trained to provide comfort, emotional support, and affection to individuals, typically in settings where people would benefit from their presence. They are most commonly utilized in schools, nursing homes, disaster areas, and any other setting or place where emotional relief is much needed.
While this provides a short description for therapy dogs, there’s much more to discuss about these remarkable animals. Continue reading to learn everything there is to know about therapy dogs.
Therapy Dog: Who These Animals Are For?
As mentioned, therapy dogs aren’t for a specific person. They don’t execute a disability-related task to benefit someone or provide emotional support to one particular person. Therapy dogs are working dogs that provide emotional comfort and affection to individuals who are in need of it.
Here’s where and who therapy dogs are for to help you better understand their responsibilities.
- Schools: Therapy dogs often visit schools to reduce student stress and anxiety, especially during exams or transitions. These dogs are also commonly utilized for encouraging reading and social skills in children through programs like Read to Dog.
- Hospitals: Therapy dogs visit hospitals to provide emotional comfort and distract patients undergoing treatments or recovery. They also offer emotional relief to families and hospital staff dealing with high stress on top of helping reduce blood pressure, cortisol levels, and heart rate.
- Nursing Homes: Therapy dogs visit nursing homes often to reduce loneliness and depression among residents, as well as spark memories and conversation, especially for individuals with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
- Hospice Care Centers: Therapy dogs create a sense of normalcy and love in an otherwise clinical environment, like hospice care centers. They offer comfort and companionship to patients, family members, and caregivers.
- Disaster Areas: Therapy dogs have immense benefits to individuals who are victims of natural disasters because of all the positivity they spread. They offer a calming presence during recovery efforts and comfort first responders and volunteers coping with stress.
While the above places are where therapy dogs are commonly utilized, they can also be employed in any place where the companionship of an animal would change things for the better.
Therapy Dog vs. ESA and Service Dog
Therapy dogs offer comfort and companionship, just like emotional support animals and service dogs do to a degree. However, therapy dogs are much different from both emotional support animals and service dogs. Below is an overview of their differences to help those interested understand therapy dogs better.
Emotional Support Animals
The primary purpose of an emotional support animal is to provide therapeutic benefits to an individual with a psychiatric disability, such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
A licensed mental health professional recommends these animals to an individual struggling with a psychiatric disability as part of their treatment. In a way, they are therapy animals, but unlike therapy dogs that provide companionship to everyone they meet in different settings, emotional support animals are there for a specific person.
Another main difference is that, because emotional support animals must be recommended by a licensed mental health professional, they require an ESA letter. This is a formal document that works like a prescription, recommending an emotional support animal as part of the patient’s treatment plan.
This medical need gives emotional support animals certain rights in housing, granted to them by the Fair Housing Act. This law enables emotional support animals to live with their owners even if their landlord has a no-pet policy. Therapy dogs, on the other hand, don’t have the same housing rights.
Service Dogs
Service dogs are assistance animals that are trained to perform disability-related tasks to help a person with a disability. While the nature of disabilities emotional support animals help with are psychiatric, service dogs can also assist individuals with physical, sensory, and intellectual disabilities.
For example, a service dog can retrieve objects from the ground for someone using a wheelchair, guide a person with visual impairment, or prevent someone with autism from wandering away. Therapy dogs also receive training, but mainly for obedience, not for disability-related tasks. This is what separates service dogs and therapy dogs.
Similar to ESAs having housing rights, which service dogs also do, these assistance animals also have public access rights, granted to them by the Americans with Disabilities Act. This enables service dogs to accompany their handlers in places that serve the general public. Therapy dogs don’t have this right; they are typically allowed in public places by invitation as part of a program.
Is a Therapy Dog for You?
Many who are interested in therapy dogs initially think that they are the same as either emotional support dogs or service dogs. Now that you know that isn’t the case, a therapy dog isn’t going to be for you if you require a dog for a disability.
Therapy dogs are working dogs that typically have a handler who volunteers in places that would benefit from the presence of a therapy dog, such as nursing homes and disaster areas, as we’ve covered above. If you have a dog with an affectionate and social temperament and you want to give back to your community, you should consider having them as a therapy dog. Being a therapy dog will give your dog a job to do; and you will build a stronger bond with your dog as you will need to go through rigorous training together.
For those who are interested in training their dogs for therapy work to assist others, here’s more on training a therapy dog.
Training a Therapy Dog
While it is an extensive process to fully train a therapy dog, we cover what owners need to know before starting therapy dog training below.
Determine Your Dog’s Suitability First
Therapy dogs need to be calm and obedient in a variety of environments, especially when exposed to different types of stimuli, like children running around, medical smells, beeper sounds, and so on. They must also tolerate petting, hugging, and sudden movements without aggression or fear. Generally, a good therapy dog has emotional resilience, meaning that they recover quickly from anything sudden and don’t overreact.
If your dog has these, they likely are suitable for therapy dog training. When it comes to specific breeds, some tend to be better candidates than others; golden retrievers, Labrador retrievers, Newfoundlands, poodles, and goldendoodles are among the most popular therapy dog breeds.
Obedience Training
Obedience is at the core of therapy dog training. A therapy dog in training should master basic commands like sit, stay, come, and heel, and respond to all the commands reliably both on and off leash. Being able to execute commands in different settings, regardless of what’s happening around them and the stimuli, is also such an important skill therapy dogs must have.
Given the importance of obedience training, it is a big part of therapy dog evaluation tests, which we will cover in detail below, as therapy dogs typically need certification to carry out their duties.
Socialization
Considering the nature of their jobs, therapy dogs must be comfortable in all kinds of settings, from children loudly running around in a school to patients with limited mobility using different tools to move independently. That’s why exposure to different environments plays a crucial role in a therapy dog’s training.
Socialization is also key to building confidence, which, once again, considering the nature of their jobs, therapy dogs need a lot of, as they will regularly enter and navigate through completely unfamiliar environments.
Obtaining a Therapy Dog Certification
Once all the training is done, therapy dog handlers can obtain a certification for their dogs, which isn’t a requirement on its own for a dog to be a therapy dog, but it is often asked, as it proves the dog’s training.
After all, therapy dogs enter a variety of places, where a dog that’s not well-behaved can have a negative impact. For example, a dog that’s constantly barking around children with autism can startle them, making them think negatively about dogs. That’s why there are organizations that handlers can go through an evaluation test and obtain a certification, such as Therapy Dog International.
Therapy Dogs Explained
Therapy dogs play a vital role in bringing comfort and emotional healing to people in need. While they don’t have the same legal rights or duties as emotional support dogs or service dogs, they positively change the lives of many in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, disaster areas, and any other place where there are people in need of their benefits.
If you have a highly affectionate and social dog that’s equally trainable, training them for therapy dog work is going to be a rewarding experience like no other. You can train them and prepare them for an evaluation test to receive certification. Once obtained, you can then volunteer at different organizations to give back to your community.
If you were considering getting a therapy dog for yourself, look into emotional support dogs and service dogs instead. Our website has countless resources and valuable insights into these animals to help you determine which one is for you.