Blog
Save
Email
Print
ShareTherapy Dog refers to a dog trained to provide affection and comfort to people in hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, mental institutions, schools, and stressful situations such as disaster areas.
See also:
The concept of a therapy dog is often attributed to Elaine Smith, an American who worked as a registered nurse for a time in England.
Smith noticed how well patients responded to visits by a certain chaplain and his canine companion, a golden retriever.
Upon returning to the United States in 1976, Smith started a program for training dogs to visit institutions.
Over the years health care professionals have noticed the therapeutic effect of animal companionship, such as relieving stress, lowering blood pressure, and raising spirits, and the demand for therapy dogs continues to grow.
In recent years, therapy dogs have been enlisted to help children overcome speech and emotional disorders.
The concept has widened to include other species, specifically therapy cats, therapy rabbits, and therapy birds.
For more information about the topic Therapy dog, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Companion dog — Companion dog usually describes a dog that does not work, providing only companionship as a pet, rather than usefulness by doing specific tasks. Many ... > read more
Dog breed — A dog breed is a group of dogs that have very similar or nearly identical characteristics of appearance or behavior or, usually, both, primarily ... > read more
Gun dog — Gundogs, also called bird dogs, are a category of dog breeds developed to assist hunters to find and retrieve game, usually birds. Gundogs are ... > read more
Dog intelligence — Dog intelligence is the ability of a dog to learn, think, and solve problems. Dog trainers, owners, and researchers have as much difficulty agreeing ... > read more
Dog breeding — Dog breeding is the vocation of mating carefully selected specimens of the same breed to reproduce specific, consistently replicable qualities and ... > read more
Guide dog — Guide dogs are assistance dogs trained to lead blind or visually impaired people around obstacles. They are commonly but incorrectly called "Seeing ... > read more
Hypoallergenic — Hypoallergenic is the characteristic of provoking fewer allergic reactions in allergy sufferers. Hypoallergenic means to have a decreased tendency to ... > read moreEditor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Recommend this page on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:
Other bookmarking and sharing tools:
more 