If you are looking to get started with therapy animal training and registration, we would like to help. This page describes common paths to take, and outlines the steps involved in getting Pet Partners registration. Registrations need to be renewed periodically. If you are looking to renew a Pet Partners registration, see the bottom of this page.

Why become registered?

Different organizations can provide official recognition under their rules for a team (a handler and a therapy animal). Pet Partners uses the term “registered” for recognizing a team, so that is the term used here. When an organization like Pet Partners gives recognition, it is meant to indicate that the handler and the animal have both the training and the aptitude to be making therapy visits. Primary advantages to being registered include:

• Venues such as hospitals and schools will likely reqiure some sort of official recognition for team competence, such as a Pet Partners registration.
• National organizations like Pet Partners will cover you under their liability insurance if something goes wrong during a visit.

Pet Partners registers many animal species besides dogs. They also register cats, horses, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, birds, miniature pigs, and llamas and alpacas. However, much of the rules and infrastructure are geared for dogs, and the rest of this discussion will describe the process for registring a handler and dog team.

How can I get started?

To become registered with Pet Partners requires that the handler pass an online training course and then the handler and dog pass an evaluation exam. The evaluation can be viewed as assessing a combination of basic obedience training + natural aptitude. There is no requirement to have any official obediance training certification, but if you want to go that route, the standard Canine Good Citizen certificate exam assesses all the basic skills needed to pass a formal therapy dog evaluation. As for natural aptitude, the therapy dog evaluation will be testing for whether the dog will be upset by various situations that they will typically encounter. As you would expect this requires that the animal interacts well with people and accepts being petted and basic handling by strangers for things such as simple grooming. The evaluation will test for is whether your animal reacts badly to things like other dogs being around, nearby people arguing, sudden noises, people going by in walkers, crutches, etc.

Where can I get the details?

Here are links to various resources that can get you through the process.

• Pet Partners Website: https://petpartners.org/
• Once you start the registration process with Pet Partners, you will get access to the Volunteers site: https://volunteer.petpartners.org/s/. This will give you access to online training materials, information about the various local Community Partner organizations, an information resource library, and the listing of evaluation opportunities.
• At this time, our New River Valley group does not have an in-house evaluator. We encourge teams from the NRV region to get attend training and evaluation sessions offered by TheraPets of the Roanoke Valley, their website is: https://www.therapetsroanoke.com/.
• See this information page for details about the evaluation itself: https://petpartners.org/what-to-expect-at-a-pet-partners-evaluation/.
• For scoresheets, see: https://petpartners.org/what-to-expect-at-a-pet-partners-evaluation/.
• One requirement for Pet Partner registration is to take the online handler’s course. This typically takes about 8 hours to go through. It is self-paced and you can spread it out over as much time as you like.
• See the Pet Partners Handlers Guide: https://petpartners2.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#6A000001M5Yb/a/Ua000004efer/LAJSoEmemN.kofQFEgJm8UKl.y7Y59MlA4hdehXtF4U.

What about renewing?

Pet Partners requires teams to be re-evaluated every two years. However, the renewal process is intended to be much less complicated than the initial registration. See this information page about the Alternate Evaluation process: https://volunteer.petpartners.org/s/article/Alternate-Evaluator-Policy. It involves a small, online exam and an in-person evaluation that can be done by a certified dog trainer (for non-dog species, evaluations can often be done by a veterinarian). Contact us for recommendations on local dog trainers who can do the evaluation.