Prescription Pets and Therapy Dogs

Prescription Pets Therapy Dogs Program – Redding, CA

The healing power of pets

It’s a well-known fact that animals can be therapeutic. Animals not only connect with people in a way that other humans can’t, but they have the ability to help people cope with a variety of physical and mental health issues.

Research has shown that pet therapy can significantly reduce pain, anxiety, depression, and fatigue. It’s used for various situations, from children having dental procedures to people receiving cancer treatment. For the last 20 years, the Prescription Pets Therapy Dogs program has brought the healing power of pets to several facilities in the North State.

Therapy dogs in disaster centers and memory care facilities

The therapy dogs have often visited people in disaster assistance centers. Prescription Pets president Diana Stockwell and Board member Janice Galloway visited one of these centers after the 2018 Carr Fire. There, they saw the calming effect the therapy dogs had on individuals, and say it was common for people to open up and talk about their recent experiences while interacting with the dogs.

There have been incidents at local memory care centers where the animals have profoundly affected the residents. Janice says that residents who rarely talked to other people would open up to the dogs. “The staff is just amazed, and they tell me, ‘You know what? That person hasn’t talked in a month.’”

Therapy teams

Prescription Pets now has approximately 30 therapy teams made up of a dog and the dog’s owner. Becoming a therapy team with the program is a “big commitment,” Diana stresses, and there are processes in place to help ensure that the program is a good fit for both the dog and the dog’s owner.

Dog owners interested in becoming a therapy team should take the recommended workshop for potential volunteers, and the dog and dog owner must become certified as a Therapy Dog Team with the Alliance of Therapy Dogs, which has its own criteria for visiting facilities. The dogs must be socialized, be comfortable around people, not reactive to other dogs, and free from parasites.

The R.E.A.D program

The Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.) program is designed to improve children’s reading and communication skills by reading to animals. R.E.A.D. companions are registered therapy animals who, accompanied by their owner/handler, work with children one-on-one to overcome reading difficulties. As Janice explains, the work is always safe and non-nonjudgmental: “The dog doesn’t care if they mispronounce a word.”

Diana and Janice say that even though the pandemic has curbed many of their regular activities, they are “trying to still stay relevant.” When the therapy dogs can’t be in the community in person, the program has held a socially distanced Halloween parade and distributed life-sized cardboard cutouts of the animals to local facilities.

Currently, the R.E.A.D program is on hold due to COVID-19 restrictions, but in the meantime, there are videos of therapy team members reading to dogs available on the Prescription Pets website.