Verified by 
Key points
- Therapy dogs' job is to provide support to many people. They can go where other dogs are not invited.
- The job of support dogs is to perform specific tasks for just one person.
- People greet dogs in workplaces differently than on the street—this seems particularly true when stressed.
I have spent the last few months traveling with dogs.
Both my pups are working dogs—one a therapy dog and the other a service dog in training.
Loki, the pandemic puppy we adopted on the first day of lockdown, is three years old, well-trained, and much loved. This year, he completed a 12-week training course and was certified as a therapy dog.
A therapy dog's job is to be loved. Not just by me and my doting family, but by many people. On a recent afternoon, he was pet by perhaps 175 strangers. Most were folks bestowing friendly passing pats. Some were parents introducing cautious young children to a calm animal. Other moments seemed curiously profound—a shared understanding between stranger and dog—30 seconds where time seemed to stand still.
It takes a particular kind of dog to work as a therapy dog. They have to love people, be well trained, and comfortable in strange environments. They have to be confident enough to deal with wheelchairs and school alarms and crowded hallways with rowdy kids. Therapy dogs are only allowed into areas where they are invited, but often visit places where people are stressed: hospitals, courts, police stations, and airports.
Yang is my newest dog, one I am co-raising to be a service dog. If we do our job well, we will only have him for 14 months or so. Then he will be returned to the guide dog school for continued training and eventually become a seeing-eye dog. To help him learn to be comfortable and well behaved in all the places where he will help someone who is visually impaired navigate, he needs to be well mannered and well socialized. For dogs, "well socialized" means he needs to see as many different kinds of people and places and things as he can while remaining confident and happy. Then, as a service dog, he will be trained in specific tasks for just one person, his new handler.
In most states, service dogs in training, like Yang, can go many places where other dogs cannot. By law, a well-behaved service dog can go anyplace where it can safely help its handler with daily living tasks. I recently saw pictures of one of the locally trained guide dogs in our area riding on a gurney with her handler as he was moved from the ER to his room. So I take Yang everywhere I can.
Today, this young 14-week-old puppy, just three weeks into training, spent several hours in a major hospital while I went through a series of routine doctor's visits (he did great). Loki, my therapy dog, also spends a lot of time in hospitals, visiting patients and moving through lobbies and visitor areas.
What really strikes me is just how thrilled people are to see them. Yes, I know they're cute and adorable. But I've walked dogs for years. People nod at me on the street. They don't coo and drop their clipboards. But when my pups walk into a waiting area, or, especially, when they walk behind the scenes and into the staff areas, suddenly the dogs are stars.
The same thing happens when we walk into schools. In a university, this makes some sense. College students see few dogs, and many have left their own dogs at home. They miss them.
But in elementary school, it seems strange. Many dog-loving kids have their own dogs at home. Most have them in their neighborhood. But Loki and I are greeted as strange exotics, with kids begging to pet them and eagerly telling tales of dogs they have known.
I recently went to a crisis and trauma intervention training class with a few dozen police, firefighters, and EMTs. The reaction was the same as in the elementary school. The first responders melted with the dogs.
Is It The Calming Effect of Dogs?
A great deal of research suggests that for people who like dogs, petting dogs lowers their heart rate, blood pressure, and stress level. It's one of the reasons that therapy dogs have become such popular visitors to courts, hospitals, and airports.
But the contextual effect—the cooing doctors and nurses who drop to their knees to rub a little belly—seems different. These seem to be people who are tense and stressed and looking for some unconditional love.
And, if they got to ignore the to-do lists in their brains for some real, not virtual, interaction, all the better.
