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College students interact with therapy dogs as a way to relieve stress.
Christine Kivlen, CC BY-ND
In 2017, a survey of over 150 institutions found that 62% of schools had an animal-assisted intervention program.
Dog therapy programs tend to look different at each institution. Some programs may involve a few therapy dogs and their handlers casually visiting the library a few times throughout the semester.
In this setting, students may approach the therapy dogs one on one or in small groups. The time students spend with the therapy dog can vary from a few minutes to 45 minutes.
Other programs are more structured and involve scheduled times with a certain number of students being paired with an assigned therapy dog and handler.
Inexpensive for dog owners
The cost of having a dog registered as a therapy dog is relatively low for the owner.
The programs are typically coordinated by college personnel or faculty members in various departments, such as occupational therapy, psychology or counseling, or by an activities coordinator in student services. The dogs are typically pets with a good temperament and training. The handler pays any fees required for the dog-and-handler team to be registered through a company that provides therapy dog registration. The handlers pay the fees because they enjoy providing animal-assisted intervention.
Through the company Pet Partners, a widely used animal-assisted intervention company, it costs the handler $15 to $30 for a dog/handler team to be evaluated, $95 to register the therapy dog team and $70 to renew each subsequent year.
Calming effects
In my dissertation on animal-assisted interventions, I asked a series of open-ended questions of graduate students who were participating in therapy dog programs.
Several students related how pleasant it was to have a scheduled break from schoolwork. “The experience forced me to take time out of my day and dedicate it to not studying,” one student wrote.
“The therapy dog is so calm,” another student wrote. “Her energy/mellowness helped me to calm down each session.”
Not only did the students enjoy their time with the therapy dogs, the therapy dogs seemed to enjoy spending time with the students as well. Many handlers told me about their dogs being much more excited on the morning of their designated day to go to the college. They also reported that their dogs were even more excited when they arrived on campus.
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Christine Kivlen, Assistant Professor (Clinical) of Occupational Therapy, Wayne State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
