The healing and consoling benefits of friendship come in many forms. Sometimes the form has fur and four paws. Man’s best friend is increasingly taking on the role of therapy dog, comforting the sick, the dying, the traumatized.
Unlike service dogs, which are permanently assigned to specific clients, therapy dogs work as part-time healers. The family mutt can remain in its household and still make the transformation to therapy dog, if it has a dedicated owner and a little outside help. One source of help is TheraPets of the Roanoke Valley, which offers Canine Good Citizenship classes, the precondition for certification as a therapy dog. TheraPets’ President Pam Lucas normally holds CGC classes 2-3 times a year. Health problems complicated recent class scheduling, but Lucas anticipates restarting the 6-week course some time after the spring.
The American Kennel Club launched the CGC program, which promotes 10 positive behavior patterns. Successful CGC graduates will accept a friendly stranger, sit politely for petting, cooperate with grooming and vetting, walk on a loose lead, walk sedately through a crowd, comply with the “sit,” “down” and “stay” commands, come when called by their handlers, behave politely around other dogs, handle equably such distractions as a passing gurney and tolerate short separations from their humans.
To prove they have mastered those 10 feats and to qualify for therapy assignments, CGC graduates must have professional evaluation. In the Roanoke area, specialists affiliated with Pet Partners (formerly known as the Delta Society) conduct evaluations for canine therapy work several times a year.
Graduates of TheraPets’ CGC classes regularly visit patients at Carilion Memorial Hospital, as well as Roanoke area nursing homes, hospices and autism centers. As Lucas puts it, “our members” go “anywhere we are needed.”
Some hospitals welcome therapy dogs directly in patient rooms, but also in outpatient departments, where dialysis and chemotherapy treatments take place. The canines provide a welcome distraction from time-consuming and tiring procedures.
Therapy dogs have even found a niche in the court system, especially since Seattle prosecutor Ellen O’Neill Stephens founded Courthouse Dogs, providing (canine) emotional support for crime victims. In Virginia, prosecutors in Prince William County and the Tidewater region occasionally use therapy dogs when debriefing crime victims. Children, in particular, find it reassuring to pet a well-trained dog as they recount the traumatic details of sexual assault and other forms of abuse.
Therapy dogs typically go on the job once or twice a week. The rest of the time they apply their healing touch on the home front -- just by playing dog of the manor.
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