Canine Companions

People from all over the world suffer from illnesses that can’t be fully cured by medicine. These illnesses can range from mental to physical or even emotional. When someone is dealing with something like this they can’t turn to modern medicine like a prescription to solve their problems. Although medicines will help to attenuate the effects of these illnesses, they can only do so much. This is where personal help animals can come into play. Service pets, therapy pets, and emotional support pets are three examples of animals that will help a specific person with a problem that they are experiencing.

A service dog is defined as a dog that provides assistance to an individual with a disability. This includes mental and physical disabilities such as depression, PTSD, or even severe cases of anxiety. Service animals are probably the most heard of although there aren’t as many as you would think. According to thesprucepets.com, “There are anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 registered service animals in the United States”. Considering that the population of the U.S. is over 300 million, only .07 percent of people in the U.S. have a service animal. Any physically capable dog can become a service dog with enough training. Dog trainers can charge anywhere from $150 to $250 an hour to train your dog, and this could take up to two years before the dog is fully trained. Very few people need a service dog, but for those who do, service animals can be a crucial part of their everyday life.

Although service animals are extremely helpful to a small portion of the population, therapy animals are often overlooked and put in the same category. Although therapy animals are easier to train and less specific to certain problems, there are actually less of them in the U.S. compared to service animals. Just because there are less doesn’t entirely mean that they are more or less effective depending on your needs. In an interview with Jennifer Pennebacker, a school counselor that owns a therapy dog, she was asked how her dog benefited the students in her school. She responded with “Students enjoy seeing him. It’s interesting how much more students talk when he is around. They feel more comfortable. He brings joy to staff and students.” This is a great example of how a therapy dog can help with simple social interactions. This also demonstrates how therapy dogs don’t need to be specified towards certain people to help.

With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting everyone around the world mentally, physically, and emotionally, these animals can be a huge help in many people’s lives. To further back up the information of therapy dogs, an interview was conducted with former Pennridge student Meghan Howard. When asked why she got a therapy dog, she mentioned how she was going through a tough time in her life because she was used to living with a big family and now she had nobody around her. Her mom suggested that she got a therapy dog to keep her company, and that’s when she stumbled upon Bee, her therapy dog.

Therapy dogs and service animals of all sorts are no doubt a great way to help people through illnesses and even times in their life that can’t be helped with modern medicine. If you think you would benefit from one of these options, taking further action would be an idea worth looking into.