Pet Partners

Getting Started with Pet Partners

Resources
Introduction to Therapy Animals
Pet Partners Video
Prerequisites for Becoming a Team
How to Prepare for an Evaluation
Registration Process
Community Partner Groups
Acceptable Equipment
Finding Courses and Evaluations
Are You Ready?
Self-Assessment
Attributes of a Great Therapy Animal
Attributes of a Great Therapy Animal Handler
So, Are You Ready?

About this Page

Muka and me visiting with a patient

I created this page to assist people interested in becoming involved in therapy animal work. My dog and I volunteer as a registered Pet Partners team at Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital in Vancouver, WA.

I also volunteer as a licensed Pet Partners Instructor, and teach the Pet Partners Handler Course to students in the greater Vancouver, WA & Portland, OR area. And I serve as President of Columbia River Pet Partners, a local organization of Pet Partners teams.

The Handler Course is designed for anyone interested in volunteering with their pet. It fulfills the handler training required to continue on to Pet Partners team evaluation and registration. The course provides the handler with the knowledge to successfully conduct therapy animal work, as well as the knowledge necessary to prepare for the Pet Partners evaluation.

Pet Partners teams consist of the handler and their animal (dog, cat, rabbit, bird…), and volunteer in a wide variety of facilities including schools, libraries, retirement homes, assisted living homes, nursing homes, hospitals and hospices.

I hope you will join us and begin sharing your animal’s love with those in need. I will be glad to help you in any way I can, no matter where you live.

Peter Christensen
Contact Form

Resources

Introduction to Therapy Animals

This page will give you a good overview of therapy animal work. It covers how therapy animals heal, the various types of facilities in which they serve, and many other interesting topics:

Introduction to Therapy Animals

As you will read, the majority of therapy animal work is classified as Animal Assisted Activities (AAA). Typical examples include visits to patients in hospitals and residents in retirement homes.

However, registered Pet Partners are also qualified to work with physical and mental health professionals. This work is classified as Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT), and sessions are designed to help the client achieve specific goals such as increased mobility or improved memory.

Can you take your therapy dog to work with you? You will find answers to this and other questions here:

Frequently Asked Questions

Pet Partners Video

This video presents an overview of the Pet Partners Therapy Animal Program:

Prerequisites for Becoming a Team

Carefully review the list of prerequisites for becoming a Pet Partners team on the Pet Partners’ website:

Prerequisites for Becoming a Team

How to Prepare for an Evaluation

This video provides an example of a Pet Partners evaluation and will give you an idea of how an evaluation is conducted:

This page shares what I have learned observing evaluations, watching people pass and, perhaps more importantly, watching people fail. It will help you prepare for your evaluation, and help you avoid the common mistakes people make:

How to Prepare for a Pet Partners Evaluation

 Skip the above page until after you have taken the Handler Course and are preparing for your evaluation.

Registration Process

You will find a complete description of the steps required to become a Pet Partners team on the Pet Partners’ website:

How to Become a Registered Therapy Animal Team

The description spans four pages, with a link at the bottom of each page taking you to the next page. Registration is valid for two years, and fees are listed on the fourth page.

In addition to the course and registration fees, there is a fee of around $20 for your evaluation, which you may not pass the first time. You may also have to pay for a health examination for your animal, or if your animal has had one in the past year, a fee to have your vet complete a Pet Partners’ form.

Community Partner Groups

Columbia River Pet Partners is a Vancouver, WA-based member group of the Pet Partners Community Partner program, serving the communities of the Columbia River Basin from Hood River to the Pacific Ocean.

Our purpose is to serve our communities by working to increase the number of therapy animal teams sharing their animals’ love with those in need.

Serving the Columbia River Basin Communities west to Astoria and east to Camas, north to Ridgefield and south to Oregon City

If you live in this area, we would like to help you!

Please visit our membership page for an explanation of the relationship between Columbia River Pet Partners and the national Pet Partners organization. This will help you understand why you would want to join Columbia River Pet Partners, Pet Partners, or both:

Membership in Columbia River Pet Partners

If you live outside this area, you can see if there is a local Pet Partners organization in your area here:

Local Pet Partners Organizations

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Acceptable Equipment

This video discusses acceptable and unacceptable equipment (leashes, collars, harnesses and brushes) for use on visits and during your evaluation:

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Finding Courses and Evaluations

Columbia River Pet Partners Classroom

The Handler Course may be taken either on-line or in-person, but those who can get to a class find it a much more enjoyable and fulfilling learning process.

Upcoming Pet Partners courses and evaluations are listed on the Pet Partners’ website:

Pet Partners Courses & Evaluations

Select your state, then select Next 4 Months in the Date Range dropdown menu and click on Go.

In addition, courses and evaluations conducted by Columbia River Pet Partners in Vancouver, WA are listed here:

Columbia River Pet Partners Courses & Evaluations

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Are You Ready?

Working the waiting room of a hospital, a man asked me about signing up to join us with his dog. He seemed very interested, and so I spent 20 minutes talking to him about therapy dog work. I was excited to possibly be recruiting him.

Bowing Our Heads in a Waiting Room, a Popular Request

Then he told me that he’d inquired at another hospital, and said they were “ridiculous.” They wanted him to go through an orientation class, and he’d have none of that!

What was he thinking? Should just anyone, even a registered therapy animal team, be able to wander through a hospital visiting patients without first learning about the hospital layout, volunteer procedures, disease prevention and patient privacy regulations?

While it might be a much simpler process to start making visits to your mom’s retirement home, in order to help people through therapy animal work you and your animal have to be trained, evaluated, registered, and then become a volunteer for the facility you will be visiting as well as a volunteer for Pet Partners.

The purpose of the Are You Ready? topics is to help you realize all that is involved, and to be sure that you are ready to begin. I’m not trying to discourage you; I want to do everything I can to encourage you! But I also want to do my best to spend my time helping those who are likely to follow through after class and continue on with evaluation, registration, and volunteering in their community.

Self-Assessment

When I first heard someone speak on therapy dog work, I immediately became excited about getting involved. But the speaker cautioned me that my dog might not be ready until he was three or four years old. We started before he was two, but my second dog might not be ready until he’s forty!

He’s a wonderful pet and companion, and would do just great cuddling with a patient on a hospital bed. But first he’d likely reopen the patient’s surgery and knock out their IV tubing.

Here are some points to consider before beginning the process of becoming a registered therapy animal team:

  • Dogs must have an essential set of basic obedience skills including a reliable sit, down, stay, come and leave it, and the ability to walk on a loose leash and take a treat nicely.
  • You must be able to maintain good control of your animal at all times, as is required on a visit.

If you and your animal aren’t at this skill level at this time, please don’t be discouraged. Perhaps you can enroll in a basic obedience course, or work with a professional trainer. Though you don’t need a professional if you can teach these basic skills yourself.

Attributes of a Great Therapy Animal

  • Controllable, predictable and reliable, even with distractions
  • Friendly and confident
  • People-oriented and sociable such that they enjoy visiting
  • Comfortable being crowded by a group of people and touched, sometimes awkwardly
  • Non-aggressive and well-mannered with both people and other animals
  • Will initiate contact, and yet respects personal boundaries, e.g., doesn’t jump up on people
  • Able to be redirected on cue, including being directed away from objects such as food and toys
  • Able to cope with stressful situations
  • Comfortable around health care equipment

Attributes of a Great Therapy Animal Handler

  • Willing to make commitments and keep them
  • Interested in people
  • Friendly, making eye contact and smiling
  • Good communicators with their animal, facility staff, and the people they meet during visits
  • Confident and natural in their interactions
  • A good listener
  • Demonstrates a loving relationship with their animal partner
  • A proactive advocate for their animal, watching for signs of stress and taking actions to control the situation
  • Prepares themselves and their animal appropriately for each visit
  • Knows how to help their animal be at its best in serving others
  • Assesses each visit before, during and after

So, Are You Ready?

If you’re still not sure, I have a couple of great suggestions to help you decide. In fact, I recommend them both even if you are sure! They both really helped me.

  1. Are you and your animal ready to pass an evaluation?

You’ve watched the video of an evaluation (see Resources, above), but the best way to get the feel of an evaluation is to attend one in person. Contact the evaluator and arrange to attend either as an observer or a volunteer.

Volunteering for a half day is best, and you don’t have to know what to do ahead of time. You will simply be playing the role of a person in a facility during the evaluations.

It’s a great way to learn what is expected of you and your animal as you see some teams pass their evaluations so easily, while you learn even more from seeing other teams fail.

  1. In what type of facility would you like to work, and would you and your animal partner be comfortable working there?

A wonderful way to learn about the different possibilities is to shadow teams as they work. I shadowed teams in hospitals, retirement homes, and read-to-dog programs in libraries before becoming involved myself.

Don’t feel bad if you aren’t comfortable dealing with children and what they are going through in a hospital; others will relish the opportunity. And the same goes for having the patience to deal with the elderly, or children reading to dogs.

It is extremely important that we find volunteer work that we enjoy, as that is where we will have the most to give to others.