The Importance of Therapy Dogs in Schools

Therapy dogs are an excellent form of comfort for children and adults alike, but they are especially equipped to provide support for students stressed out in school. The dogs can reduce stress and enhance social interactions for students, and they are relatively inexpensive preventative measures to take for treatment purposes.

What are Therapy Dogs?

When you hear the term “therapy dog,” your mind may first go to a service dog, but the difference between the two is important. Service dogs serve specific, specialized roles to help individuals with disabilities. This can include visual or hearing disabilities, seizure disorders, or mobility challenges. Therapy dogs, on the other hand, are there to react and respond to the environment and the people that they are serving. Their owners still provide guidance and direction and the dogs serve as social, cognitive, and emotional support for their owners.

Benefits of Therapy Dogs

Using dogs for therapeutic purposes has shown to improve empathy and appropriate interpersonal skills. Teaching tenderness and relationship-building with a dog is easily transferred to human relationships as well. Therapy dogs can also be soothing and can help us understand how our behavior affects others. These soft skills may seem inconsequential, but they make a huge difference in having strong and supportive relationships outside of a relationship with the therapy dog.

Benefits of Therapy Dogs in Schools

Research on the benefits of therapy dogs in schools has shown that therapy dogs has resulted in increased motivation to learn, increases in school attendance, boosts in confidence, lower learning anxiety that can lead to increases in reading and writing tests, and improved relationships with peers and teachers. Therefore, all elements of the student learning experience are enhanced by the presence of therapy dogs in the classroom. Clearly, canine companions serve a larger purpose than just playmates!

Although therapy dogs are an unfamiliar concept to many, placing therapy dogs in the classroom has many benefits for students. Improved attendance and academic scores are one thing, but students’ mental health and wellbeing is of the utmost importance. We should be doing everything we can to make sure that students are in good health, and therapy dogs are a great place to start.