Therapy Dogs and Visiting Pets Pages on DogPlay. This is a wonderful web site that helps define the work of the therapy/service dog and how to get started in the activity.

The Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.) program improves children’s reading and communication skills by employing a powerful method: reading to a dog. But not just any dog. R.E.A.D. dogs are registered therapy animals who volunteer with their owner/handlers as a team, going to schools, libraries and many other settings as reading companions for children.

This is the story of Elvis, the Therapy Dog. His registered name is Penn Oak Love Me Tender. Elvis is a wonderful therapy dog. He has accompanied Marty and me on all of our seminars that we have given for our foundation, Rv4thecause. (Check out our website in your spare time, www.rv4thecause.org) To date, he has been throughout the midwest (PA, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan) as well as down the east coast all the way to South Florida. Although Marty does the speaking, it is usually Elvis who gets all the attention. As far as our local work in the Therapy Dogs, Inc. program, we visit nursing homes on a regular basis and are involved in our library's Read to Dogs program. On a recent visit to a local nursing home, we met an elderly woman who had recently been admitted to the nursing home. Her family told me that she was depressed about being there and wasn't communicating well because of that. When they saw us, the daughter asked me if I could bring Elvis into her mom's room for a visit. That did the trick! Elvis was the best medicine anyone could have given to her mom. I held him to her and she smiled as she pet him, over and over again. She sang songs to him. She told him how sweet he was. He licked her hand. Like the good boy that he is, he was very well behaved for the 10-15 minutes that this went on for. Afterwards, the woman asked me to bring him back to see her again. The daughter was overwhelmed with joy to see her mother smile again, and told me that Elvis' time with her mother was the greatest gift, and couldn't stop thanking me. That's what a Therapy Dog does---shares smiles and brings joy. In our Read to Dogs program, the librarian told me that Elvis is the first dog that she's ever had in the program where the children have asked when he'll be there, so that they can schedule themselves to read on his assigned day! My neighbors kids asked if Elvis can come to their house so they can read him a story there because they couldn't get an appointment with him at the library. They all want to read to Elvis! Story contributed by Frank Rogers

Sources of Information: A Complete Guide To Therapy Dogs All About Animal Assisted Therapy Delta Society: A National Registry that tests and registers therapy dogs.

Therapy Dogs One of the most rewarding things I can imagine is to take your dog on a visit to some lonely and depressed folks in a retirment home or hospital. Here's the who, what, where and why of the subject. The "when" is up to you.

Norfolk Terriers make terrific Therapy/Service Dogs due to the extreme focus on the job at hand and their unbreakable bond with "their" people. This section will offer resources and information for those interested in therapy and service work.