Celebrate National Therapy Animal Day

If you have a pet, you are probably aware of many ways that spending time with an animal can help improve your quality of life. Therapy animals are pets that have a role to play in the treatment of physical and mental conditions. April 30th is National Therapy Animal Day, and it is a great time to honor the pets and handlers that volunteer their time to help with the healing process. Learning more about therapy animals can help you raise awareness about the important services they provide. You may even be inspired to become a therapy animal team with your pet.

What Is a Therapy Animal?

Many people may confuse a therapy animal with a service animal, which is a dog that is trained to perform certain tasks for its owner. A therapy animal goes into places such as hospitals, nursing homes, behavioral health centers, or pediatric hospitals to help patients there. Obviously, the animal doesn't do this alone. It goes along with a handler, who is usually an owner but not always, who maintains control of the animal during the sessions with patients. Both the animal and the handler are volunteers who donate their time to help others. If the owner is not also the handler, he or she also volunteers the pet's services.

Most therapy animals are cats and dogs, but just about any pet could be a therapy animal. Horses, fish, guinea pigs, and even llamas are all examples of pets and domestic animals that have served in this capacity.

What Do Therapy Animals Do?

Therapy animals may participate in two separate activities. Animal-assisted activities are more casual meetings that take place in health care facilities, or possibly in patients' homes or other areas, in which patients get to interact with pets for purposes of recreation. The interactions may help to provide comfort to the patient, but there are no specific treatment goals involved in animal-assisted activities.

Animal-assisted therapy is a more formal arrangement. The health care provider sets specific goals that he or she hopes interaction with the animal will help the patient achieve. In the interest of achieving those goals, the interaction between the patient and the animal takes place in a series of structured settings.

What Are the Benefits of Therapy Animals for Patients?

Spending time with animals helps people to feel better. Petting an animal's soft fur can help people feel calm and comforted, while playing with an animal can make a patient laugh. Interacting with a pet can help to provide a distraction from the hospital setting and the daily routine of treatment. These are all ways that therapy pets can help through animal-assisted activities.

However, interacting with animals can also have real and measurable health benefits. For example, it has been shown to decrease blood pressure and relieve anxiety. Interacting with a pet helps to stimulate the production of endorphins, which are chemicals in the brain that not only make you feel calmer, they actually help to relieve pain.

Who Can Potentially Benefit From Therapy Animals?

Medical treatment can be difficult for children, especially those who are too young to really understand what is happening to them. Because children have an affinity for animals and respond well to them, animal-assisted activities and animal-assisted therapy are common in children's hospitals. Therapy animals may also attend dental appointments with children who have anxiety or phobias about the dentist's office and the treatments they receive there.

However, it is not only children who can benefit from interacting with therapy animals. They are often used as part of treatment for adult patients with the following medical conditions:

• Elderly patients with dementia
• People in treatment for substance use
• People receiving cancer treatment
• People with mental health disorders, such as anxiety or depression
• People with cardiovascular disease

However, animal-assisted therapy or animal-assisted activities may not be for everyone. Some patients may not be able to participate because of allergies to pet dander. However, if that is the only obstacle, it may be possible to carry out virtual sessions with a therapy animal via videoconferencing and telemedicine.

How Does a Pet Become a Therapy Animal?

Unlike service dogs, therapy animals do not need to be trained to perform any specific tasks for the people they help. Therefore, there is no legal requirement for therapy animals to undergo any specific training or certification. However, many owners or handlers choose to undergo certification and training anyway. Therapy animals have to be clean, healthy, and well-behaved so that they can interact safely with patients that may have anxiety or a compromised immune system. Certification with a therapy animal organization demonstrates that the pet-handler team has met or exceeded the requirements that the organization imposes. Being registered with and certified by an organization also opens up volunteer opportunities as such organizations often work closely with hospitals and other facilities to arrange for animal-assisted therapy or animal-assisted activities.

One of the most prominent therapy animal organizations in the country is Pet Partners, which also created National Therapy Animal Day and designated it on April 30th.

What Can You Do To Celebrate National Therapy Animal Day?

If you have a pet that you think would be a good therapy animal, you can look into getting registered or certified by an organization such as Pet Partners. However, even if you do not own a therapy animal, or a pet that would be a good candidate to become one, there are other ways you can celebrate.

For example, you can help raise awareness by suggesting that your local news do a story about National Therapy Animal Day or encourage your local government to make it an official observance.