FloppyToby

do any of yall have a therapy dog? my ultimate goal for toby is to be able to take him around to children's hospitals and visit with patients. he's still to young right now and i want him to complete advanced training classes and earn his CGC. as all bassets do, he has a delightful temprament and maybe it's just me but i think a basset can brighten anyone's day. but after completing all of the training where do i go from there? i did some googling and found an organization called TDI. anyone have any useful information? i would greatly appreciate it!

murraysmom

Murray and I have been a therapy dog/handler team for 5 years. We love it. Besides visiting nursing homes/hospitals, we do educationall programs for children(our local library sponsors these yearly during 'Dog Week' at the library), have developed guidelines for a home visit brogram for Autisc children (we visit 3 Autistic brothers in our community), have participating in a school reading program, and recently visited our regional medical center (at their request) and gave a presentation on the roll of pet therapy in patient care to a group of future physicians. This is a short list, we've actually done a lot of other interesting things!

How to get started:
First, I would contact a couple of local hospitals and see if there are any members of pet therapy organizations doing visits there. This way, you can see if there is one particular organization which is active in your area, and can contact a local representative of that organization. If no one seems to be active in your area, contact a national group (like TDI) and they can put you in touch with someone locally.

Each organization is a little different in their requirements, but usually you'll have to attend an orientation meeting, have you're dog evaluted for temperment (I trained last summer to do dog evaluations for our local organization), and then complete some supervised visits. After that you'll be insured by the organization. (Note: some facilities allow non-certified dogs in to do visits, but in this age of litigation, I would not recommend doing this)

I'm lucky in that my local organization is extremely active in our community, and facilities overwhelm us with requests- there's never a problem finding something fun and interesting to do.

If you seem to be alone in your community after you get certified, just use your imagination- you can contact faciliites on your own to see if they want visits, you can contact local Cub Scout/Brownie troops to see if they want to learn about therapy dogs, etc.-

Hope that helps!

Mikey T

Unfortunately this is not always the case through poor breeding and improper socialization there are some dangerious bassets out there.

"Murrysmom" is a weath of information on the subject of therapy and basset hounds including TDI and other certifying agencies.

Murray Retiring From Hospital Work

Got Certified Last Night!

Pictures of Pet Therapy Event

The Little Yellow Vest

FloppyToby

thank you both! i live in houston, so with a city this size and with so many hospitals i'd be surprised if there wasn't an active group. toby has been around other dogs since we have had him as well as many people. we take him to the dog park very often and he has no problem making new human friends. he's still exciteable right now being only 4 1/2 months old, but i think with good training along with maturing with age he will be great. i think an educational program would be really fun but i'm nervous about trying to teach children because of my age i still feel like a child myself sometimes. my dream would be to bring him to texas childrens hospital to visit children with cancer. when my brother had cancer and stayed there, i think he would have loved something like that. as toby gets closer to acheiving his CGC, i'll probably have more questions for you murraysmom. thank y'all very much!