03/13/2025
To the other therapy dog teams out there, what prompted you to get into this line of volunteering, and why do you continue to do it?
For me, I started volunteer work as a teen, and continued it until my mid to late 20s, when unfortunately life took over, and I had to stop, but I always wanted to get back into it. Approximately 11½ years ago, my dog died, and I decided that it was not only time to get another one, but I wanted to get a dog whose personality could possibly be that of a therapy dog, even though at that point I hadn't ever had one. I looked at a few dogs, but finally found Hank, a 2-3 year old Flat Coat Retriever mix from SC, who was a medical trainwreck, but was calm, friendly, and loved people. 6 months after adopting him, and after a lot of vet visits, love, care, and training, we took the therapy dog test, and passed. After finishing our evaluations a few weeks later, we were a team!
I had wanted to volunteer at the hospital, in pediatrics, but Hank didn't. We tried having kids at the local library read to him, but that too he didn't enjoy (he actually kept trying to leave!). We tried a couple of different things, but despite him being pleasant, I could tell that he wasn't thrilled, so we didn't continue. Around that time, I found out that there was a local transitional housing center for homeless veterans that was looking for a therapy dog team. As far as I'm concerned, the words "homeless" and "veteran" should never be used together, so we gave it a shot, and not only was Hank was a hit, he loved it there!
After a few months, my son was enrolled in Kindergarten, which got us on the school's email list. 2 weeks before school started, news was announced that a middle-aged, 3rd grade teacher suddenly died. I immediately contacted the school to see if they might want a therapy dog to come to help console their former students, as well as the staff, and the answer was a "Yes!". After meeting with many kids and staff, brightening their day, Hank was energized, and everyone agreed that we should make our visits as regular thing.
We volunteered for 5 years with the veterans, until the program was shut down, and Hank and I were volunteer of the year in 2019. While volunteering there, we continued visiting the school. With the exception of a year or so, due to Covid, Hank and I volunteered there for years, before his partial retirement in 2023, and then his full retirement on Halloween 2024. During his 10+ year career, we volunteered at multiple schools, working with special needs children, kids who have experienced severe trauma, kids with behavioral problems, as well as students (and faculty) who just needed to take a short break, and spend time with a dog.
If you've never done this type of volunteer work, you might ask me why I continued to do it? We have helped brighten up the day for hundreds of people, we went to a high school after a full lock down, to help people de-stress, have helped people overcome their severe fear of dog, and we have explained to countless children and adults the differences between a working dog, a service dog, an emotional support animal (ESA). We have also had several kids tell us about abuse (which was obviously reported by us), that may or may not have come out for years, had they not been playing with Hank.
What's my best memory of all of the countless visits that we've made? Other than seeing people leave us happier than when they came, my favorite part about this work is having people come up to me, out of the blue, and say, "Hey! You're the guy who used to go to X location a bunch of years ago with Hank, right? Hank really helped me through a really hard time". Knowing that this old, chronically ill dog, touched people's lives, makes it all completely worth it. The picture below was taken at the end of our last visit as a therapy dog team.
I know that this was a very long post, but the short version is, if you have a dog that is well trained, and loves people, and you're able to commit some amount of time to visit people in your community, do it, become a certified therapy dog team, you will not regret it!
TDV, founded in 1990 is a volunteer, non-profit organization. Our volunteer handler/canine teams wor
