Therapy dogs—not to be confused with service dogs—typically accompany their owners in environments like schools, hospitals, and nursing homes to provide comfort and support to individuals on a volunteer basis. These pups can assist with various psychological conditions—but do they enjoy their job?
According to the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA), “A therapy dog promotes improvement in human physical, social, emotional, or cognitive function, and functions in either group or individual settings.
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By providing comfort and affection, therapy dogs play a role in animal-assisted intervention (AAI) that helps people with or without diagnosed or physical conditions.”
Do Therapy Dogs Enjoy Doing Their Jobs?
Psychology Today recently reported that there is currently a dearth of therapy dogs, with many owners shying away from using their pets in such a way. Some even fear that volunteering their pup would emotionally harm the animal in some way. What’s more, Psychology Today spoke with a deputy director of a Canadian animal shelter who said her shelter would does allow anyone to adopt a dog if they intended to use it for therapeutic purposes.
“Compelling a dog to engage in therapy sessions is a form of animal abuse,” she told the publication. “The dog is required to associate with people who may be in an unstable emotional state and who may be giving off all sorts of negative vibes. You know that dogs can read human emotions and they are affected by them. Nonetheless, they are being forced to interact with individuals who are broadcasting their negative emotional state, and even worse, the dogs are expected to allow such people to touch them.”
“Especially in group settings, the dogs may find themselves in unfamiliar environments, with strange apparatus around them such as wheelchairs, crutches, and walkers,” the woman continued. “Also, they are surrounded by lots of strangers, all talking and demanding attention from the dog. What dog would like to be in such a situation? As far as we’re concerned this is a case of animal abuse.”
There’s conflicting research about the actual stress levels of therapy dogs and the impacts of their volunteering. For example, one study from 2022 found that “therapy dogs participating in a university Student Stress Buster Event showed subtle behavioral signs of stress during human-dog interactions. Initial exposure to the event appeared to cause a higher level of stress in the dogs. Although habituation can lead to a decreasing trend in stress-related behaviors such as lip licking, learned helplessness should not be overlooked.”
However, recent research—reported by Psychology Today—found that there was no difference in the stress levels of therapy and non-therapy dogs.
“The lead researcher was Kohoutková Kateřina at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague in the Czech Republic. It was not a particularly large study, involving 15 dogs with long-term working experience involving animal-assisted interventions but it did have a large number of careful measures involving hormonal tests and observations of behavior,” Stanley Coren PhD., DSc, FRSC, of Psychology Today reported.
“The results are quite straightforward,” she wrote. “Analysis of the stress hormones indicated that there was no difference in the stress levels that the dogs experienced on therapy days versus non-therapy days. There was no rise in the corticosteroid level as a consequence of engaging in the therapy session or later on.”
Though there might not be much of a negative impact on therapy dogs’ stress levels, many owners simply don’t want to invest the time into training their pups for such an important job or put any sort of pressure on their pups to perform. That’s likely why therapy dogs are so scarce today. However, they certainly offer many benefits for humans’ emotional and physical well-being.
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