LEND A PAW Therapy Dogs
ABOUT | FAQ | CERTIFICATION
What is LEND A PAW?
Since 2005 LEND A PAW has served to enhance the lives of individuals experiencing physical, mental, emotional or life challenges by providing social and therapy dogs to offer assistance, warmth, compassion, unconditional love and a healing environment.
Lend a Paw volunteers and their therapy dogs as teams visit hospitals, nursing homes, schools for special needs and veterans groups to provide healing for the patients and students. New Leash On Life utilizes the training experience from it's LAP program by providing specialized training services for individuals who need a Therapy Dog for personal service or train their own dog for personal service. Contact lendapaw@nlol.org
What is a Therapy Dog?
A Therapy dog is a balanced and obedient dog with a specific temperement and disposition highly trained in life skills to operate in any environment to provide emotional support to an individual. Additionally they are wonderful companions and part of the family. Each dog is temperament tested, put through a rigorous training regiment and is certified. These special dogs are trained to maintain focus and respond to direction despite distractions. These dogs can promote improvement in human physical, social, emotional, and/or cognitive functioning.
What is the difference between a Therapy Dog and just a trained dog?
Our Therapy dogs have completed an extensive training standard including obedience, advanced and life skills training and have passed testing and obtained certification. .
What is the difference between a Therapy Dog and an Emotional Support Dog? A Therapy dog has a handler and together, as a team, they provide canine assisted therapy to others in need. An Emotional Support Dog is trained specifically to provide personal service to one individual.
Can I use my own dog for therapy work?
LEND A PAW provides specialized training services for individuals who wish to use their own dog for personal service or as Therapy Dogs to serve others. FIRST, we need to evaluate your dogs temperament, disposition and current level of obedience and life skills to determine the training needed, if any. Contact lendapaw@nlol.org
