Does Your Dog Have What It Takes To Be A Therapy Dog?

As most of you already know, I've been involved in pet assisted therapy work since the late 1990's, though I did some research on the subject and piloted a program on the UC Davis campus back in the late 1980's as well. I've seen the obvious benefits of pet therapy for patients many times (reduced heart rate, slowed breathing, increased sociability, etc.) as well as some of the less obvious ones which include the benefits to the volunteers and their pets participating themselves in pet assisted therapy programs.

As I have in previous years, I will be teaching a three session series on pet assisted therapy for Molly's AdobeDogs Dog Training in Los Altos. The course begins on Saturday, August 17, at 11 a.m. The first class will cover what is involved in pet therapy work, the logistics of preparing yourself and your pet to participate, and an overview of the types of visits that you can do. The second class will cover other, more advanced forms of pet therapy including reading visits with children, off leash visits with at-risk or incarcerated youth, and animal assisted services, a specialized form of pet therapy where animals serve a direct role in the rehabilitation process, or within a clinical setting, for the patients they serve. The final class will cover the different pet therapy organizations you can join, including national groups, as well as local groups here in the San Francisco Bay Area. During the final class I will also do mock evaluations of the pets attending this class to give their owners a better idea of their pets' readiness to participate as pet assisted therapy animals.

In the past, this course has been limited, obviously, to pet owners local enough to Los Altos to be able to attend class three Saturday mornings in a row. This time around, I am hoping to open this class up to anyone interested in it by creating a virtual classroom on Zoom so that others across the country, and maybe even around the world, can attend. For those of you who are local and want to attend, here is the link to sign up: https://adobedogs.dogbizpro.com/public/registration/index.aspx?schedule=1266

For those of you out of the area who would like more information on attending the classes via Zoom, please email me or send me a message through Facebook, Instagram, Threads, etc. and I will get that information to you. You would still need to be able to view the class when it is “live,” so 11 a.m. PST on August 17. I will have someone monitor the Zoom classroom space for questions from those participants who are not present in the actual classroom, so everyone's questions can be heard and addressed in real time.

I'm very much looking forward to teaching this class as I've not taught it in over a year and I've not had the opportunity to offer any classes via Zoom as yet, so this trial run will allow me to determine the feasibility of other Zoom classes with me in the future.

As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.

My daughter and I on a pet therapy visit with Desi many years ago.