Tiger White immediately noticed her dog's potential to work in therapy. Although a large English Mastiff, she said her dog, Duke, was a gentle giant with an instinct for when people needed the most help.
So, when her brother-in-law was sick and moved in with them for his final days, White said Duke, who was still an untrained puppy, came up to him and placed his head on his bed. Duke then stayed for hours, bringing him comfort before his death.
"I never knew what I was supposed to do in my life. I'm disabled and I never could follow my dreams that I wanted to do," White said. "He helped me find what my dream is and that is to do therapy dog work."
After becoming a registered therapy animal and handler team through Pet Partners -- one of the leaders in pet therapy teams in the country -- White and Duke visited hospitals, rehab centers, and nursing schools. White, of New London, said they made more than 1,300 visits from 2018 to before Duke crossed the Rainbow Bridge himself earlier this year.
Those in the field say the demand for this work is increasing, while the number of teams needed to meet that is actually lower than before the pandemic, which itself played a role in the decrease.
In 2019, Pet Partners had around 513 Connecticut-based teams, but it dropped to 265 by 2023. Annie Peters, president and CEO of Pet Partners, said they lost many therapy teams because handlers retired their dogs or the animals died. In addition, since the evaluation to become a therapy animal is in-person, they had to wait to register new teams for two years.
Despite the dip in teams, there's a growing demand for visits across the state, said Laurel Rabschutz, a Willington-based therapy dog handler.
Kathy Klotz, executive director of Intermountain Therapy Animals which has teams in Connecticut, said they are seeing an increase in becoming therapy animal teams globally and constantly increasing interest from facilities to coordinate visits. She said one big factor driving the increase is the explosion of research about the benefits of human-animal interactions, like how visits can help reduce pain, anxiety, depression, and well-being in emergency room patients.
She said there was also a "dramatic realization" among medical staffs about the value of visits after going without them during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We were completely deluged with requests as soon as the doors opened up again," Klotz said. "We find therapy animals to be incomparable catalysts and motivators to get patients to come onboard for the work they need to do. They provide comfort, hope, fun, normalcy ... all manner of healthy distractions from one's illness and suffering."
Rabschutz's work started with her oldest, Iggy, a Portuguese water dog who visited nursing homes and worked as a reading education-assisted dog with younger children.
She got involved in volunteering at colleges 15 years ago through a program at the University of Connecticut, where she worked as an academic counselor for returning adult students. It was one of the first library programs developed during final exams but quickly became a staple event.
After a few years, Rabschutz said the program grew to include almost weekly visits and became more involved in special events, like mental health days. In addition, other schools, like Manchester Community College and Eastern Connecticut State University, started reaching out to host regular visits.
"The students are just happy to have the distraction and to be able to talk to a dog and pet a dog," she said. "I think it really does have a meaningful impact on their situation in college because we know it's a stressful time."
To keep up with visitation requests and connect with others, Rabschutz founded Tails of Joy, a growing social network of Connecticut-based therapy animal handlers. She created it with some friends over 25 years ago as a way to connect with others in the field, share ideas and coordinate visitations with growing demand.
Teams work all over Connecticut with their animals, including elementary schools, emergency rooms, airports and crisis centers. They currently have around 90 active members, with 18 registered with Pet Partners and 42 with ITA, according to data provided by Tails of Joy. Around 23 of the members are not register because they have a retired pet, are a team-in-training, are a non-registered family member or their pet died.
As interest in the field grows, Peters said hundreds of therapy animal training and certification organizations have cropped up nationwide. However, steady growth may come with downsides.
Each organization has its education, certification and insurance requirements, which she said creates differences and confusion in training and processes. There are also differences in visit standards, which may cause issues for handlers, animals and the people they are meant to comfort.
At Pet Partners, most of the education is for the handlers, not the animals. Peters said animals must have basic, calm manners before signing up for the program. On the other hand, handlers get extensive training in animal body language, handling a visit responsibly and learning to identify where their animal works best.
Peters said therapy teams must be evaluated and tested before starting their volunteer work. Although evaluators test the training, Peters said they mainly look at the relationship between the animal and its handler and how in tune they are.
"That's the challenge with the increase in popularity. Because people read about it, they get excited. They say, 'I've got a beautiful dog. What's my quickest path to get started? I just want to volunteer this way,'" she said. "The quickest path is often not the responsible path."
Despite the rewarding nature of the work, White said many people may not realize volunteer-based therapy animals can be costly for handlers. Transportation, grooming, and veterinary bills are paid for out of the handler's pocket. Some organizations, including Pet Partners, offer volunteers free pet insurance to cut costs, but things ultimately add up.
Last year, Duke was diagnosed with stage four kidney failure. She said Duke continued his work as a therapy dog because of how much joy it brought him to do it. The staff, residents and his regular visitors were devastated by his loss and put up shrines in his honor.
"He's playing up there with all the people that he comforted," White said.
In Wallingford, the nonprofit Soul Friends Inc. runs several animal-assisted programs with all kinds of animals, including guinea pigs, dogs and horses, said Kate Nicoll, executive director. Mental health professionals and their animals help their clients address their needs and meet personal goals, like building up social skills and working through trauma.
The equine-assisted program is held at barns across the state, including Meriden and Cheshire. Nicoll said they help their client through activities like grooming, cleaning and feeding, while also providing some form of psychotherapy.
Unlike other animals, Nicoll said horses can help with emotional regulation and can respond to a person's heartbeat within six feet of them. However, there are more precautions taken when handling horses because of their sizes and sometimes flighty nature.
Nicoll said she's watched clients come out of the shell and improve just by interacting with animals. She added that they also experience decreased depression and anxiety symptoms while increasing their confidence and self-awareness. She said that clients even notice the differences.
"We had one teenage girl say 'that the six sessions broke the chain of three or four generations of trauma,' which blows me away," she said. "This is why this work,"
Although therapy animal volunteer work is more commonly known, more professionals are finding ways to incorporate therapy animals into their work, said Taylor Chastain-Griffin, executive director of the Association of Animal-Assisted Intervention Professionals, better known as AAAIP.
She said the number and types of professionals looking to incorporate calming pets are growing, from mental health providers to occupational therapists to educators. However, not many know where to begin or prove the program's effectiveness to employers, which is where AAIP steps in. She said it currently has 450 members and is growing constantly, expanding into different professions and animal partners.
Chastain-Griffin said she's seen the impact of having an animal in the room professionally through her work as a mental health counselor and dog trainer. Having trained at least eight rescue therapy dogs, she said her patients often felt more comfortable talking about their traumas when one of her dogs was present.
She said her therapy dogs often gave her clues into what her patients were really feeling through their presence and reactions. Her patients would tell her therapy dogs things they wouldn't have shared with her, which allowed Chastain-Griffin to ask about it too. Then, if her dog suddenly distanced himself from the patient while they were sharing a story, she said it may indicate underlying anger that she may not have picked up on.
"I love that about the human-animal bond," she said. "I don't know of anything else that would give me such access to understanding people and to meeting people where they are."