How Can my Dog Become a Therapy Dog? What About Emotional Support Dogs?
To become a therapy dog, your dog must take a 6 week course by a certified AKC evaluator and then pass two tests. The first test is the CGC (Canine Good Citizen) and the second is the ATT (AKC Temperament Test). The CGC is the obedience skills your dog will need to learn to know how to behave in public. There are ten items on the test. The first item is to accept a friendly stranger. They need to be okay with someone coming over to you without getting upset. What that will look like in testing is someone coming up and shaking your hand. Your dog will have to sit there and let that person do it without asking for attention or getting defensive. The second item is to sit nicely for petting. Your dog will be meeting a lot of new people and need to be comfortable with anyone coming up to pet them and touching them. The third test item is appearance and grooming. Your dog will need to look nice and clean to go into locations where people might be susceptible to infections or overly crowded areas. They will also need to be allowed to be groomed. What this will look like during testing is an evaluator coming over with a brush and grooming your dog. If your dog arrives to the test looking unkempt, you might be failed on the spot. The fourth item is loose leash walking. Your dog should not pull you and you should not pull your dog. You will walk around and an evaluator will have you change directions, and the entire time your dog should be walking next to you. This moves you to the fifth item, walking through a crowd. Other testing dogs will be walking around on loose leash as well and your dog should not be distracted by them. The sixth item is where things start to get tricky. Your dog will need to either hold a sit or a down stay at a distance for 5 minutes. The seventh item is also difficult, where you must recall your dog to you through distractions, like a filled food bowl and toys. The eighth item is reacting to a dog. You and another testing dog will walk past each other, owners will shake hands, and then both pairs will be on their way. Dogs can sniff towards each other but past that they should not react to each other at all. Some therapy dogs work in groups and others just go to crowded areas and can’t stop working to make a new friend. The ninth item is reacting to distractions and loud noises. Your dog might be making a visit and it might start thundering outside. Someone might drop something and it makes a loud and scary noise. Your dog has to be able to handle that. And finally, supervised separation. You will leave your dog alone with the evaluator while you go out of sight. For the next five minutes, your dog has to be able to relax.
Those are the test items for the CGC. The ATT is a variety of scenarios, like meeting a person that might touch your dog in an unusual way, or being around them when using medical equipment and other loud or large items.
Once your dog has passed these tests, they will be able to join a therapy dog company. They will be allowed to go to place they are invited to, like schools, hospitals, and nursing homes, and places you request to bring your dog. They will also be allowed to go on planes, so long as you buy them a ticket. The only places they are still not allowed are grocery stores and restaurants. Store owners are allowed to deny entry to therapy dogs if they show wish because they are not service dogs. Service dogs are working for their handler and are considered medical equipment. Therapy dogs are working for the public and are not always in spaces where they are working.
Emotional support animals are not trained. They do not require anything but a therapist and a diagnosis that states that your dog provides you with enough support that you can get through stressful situations. Because they are not trained, it is unwise to bring them to places that might be difficult for an untrained dog to behave themselves. Putting in the extra work to get your dog trained to be a therapy dog is worth it to avoid making those situations that your dog might supposedly make you feel better in actually make you less stressed.
For example, bringing your emotional support animal to an airport might be allowed, but if anything happens to you or your dog, you are still liable and an airport still has a right to deny you services if they so choose. Therapy dogs and Service dogs are workers, and are more protected as well as more trained to handle a stressful and overwhelming environment. Saying you have an emotional support animal is the same as saying you want to bring your dog with you without putting the work in to making them able to help you where you bring them. Train your dog to become a therapy dog if you want them to come with you to places where an untrained dog will become an issue to yourself and those around you.
