As some of you may or may not know, my dog Diesel is a certified therapy dog. This means he is able to go to children’s events at local libraries or schools and his job is to give all the kiddos lots of love! He is also able to visit senior centers, nursing homes and colleges to help bring a smile to the older generations as well. Becoming a therapy dog is a process and requires a decent amount of training to become fully certified. In this post I’m going to explain to you how exactly we went through that process!

Deciding To Get Therapy Dog Certified

My mom works at a school designed for special needs children. Since it is a private school, employees are allowed to bring their dog to work with them if they’d like. (whether certified or not). We adopted Diesel when he was 4 months old. My mom started bringing him to work with her shortly after that. When we saw how much he loved being with the kids, we decided to go through the process of being certified as a therapy dog so he could help even more kids. 

Diesel is a belgian malinois/german shepherd mix. This particular mix of breeds are usually working dogs. Now while Diesel is very intelligent he is also very calm for his breed. That’s why we decided to have him certified as a therapy dog. This way he received all the training he needed and is now able to share his joy with other people. 

Training

To start off we needed to go through the training classes. We trained through Petco puppy classes. Diesel had to complete puppy level 1 and 2 as well as the AKC Canine Good Citizen certification. It took a little under a year to complete all of these courses. For his Canine Good Citizen certification, he needed to pass a test on everything he had learned, with distractions, in order to receive his certificate. Once he received his certificate we were then able to apply to work with a therapy group.

His AKC test consisted of a series of tasks which were all done while under distractions at Petco. One of the tasks was he needed to sit and stay until called while there were other people around. Another task was to walk around the store and make sure he ignored the people and dogs around him. There was also a sound distraction test. This was pretty straight forward, Diesel was required to ignore loud noises like, a chair tipping over, a cart being moved loudly across the room, etc. 

Choosing A Therapy Group

There are a lot of therapy groups out there that you and your dog can apply to work with. We chose Creature Comfort because we had previous experience with them. We first applied to work with them through their website. When you apply there is a one time fee, if your dog does not pass their evaluations you will get the fee back. 

Before we were accepted to work with their team, Diesel was required to go through their evaluation. We brought him to the evaluation day, where there were a lot of other dogs (and a rabbit!) who were being evaluated to join the team. Diesel had to go through the same tasks as he did during the original AKC certification process. There was even a test where a woman brought over a plate of bacon that he was required to ignore. This was to ensure that if while on a job, if anyone was eating, he wouldn’t go after the food.

Once the evaluation was over and he passed their tests, we then sat through orientation, which is when they explained the different jobs he would be able to volunteer for. At this time he was also given his official “pet me” vest, which I think he looks absolutely adorable in!

Time To Work

Now that Diesel is officially certified and ready to work, it’s up to us to pick the jobs. There are usually several to choose from. Again they all vary from nursing homes, to schools. Diesel’s job is to just spread love and happiness. There are even programs where they have children read to the dogs to help the kids get more comfortable reading out loud. If your dog knows any tricks, you can show them off for the group you’re with, which everyone just loves!

Due to Covid the jobs are now virtual, there are virtual groups for college kids and things of that nature. Diesel is anxiously awaiting his return to all his friends! I hope this helps to give you an idea of what he does as a therapy dog and also helps if you and your pup would like to pursue this as well. Be sure to check out our last post where I went over some basic commands to teach your dog! If you choose to have your dog become certified for therapy, or they already are, please tag us on instagram using the hashtag #dogsdontwearpantsblog!