Therapy Pet Pals of Texas<\/a> was founded in Austin in 1984 by Kathryn Lashmit, and has been offering pet visitations to the elderly and infirm in Texas ever since.<\/p>\nThe overview<\/p>\n
Therapy Pet Pals of Texas is a private nonprofit created with the goal of assisting the elderly, terminally ill and mentally or physically challenged through pet visitations at nursing homes, medical hospitals, rehabilitation centers and other special needs facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur volunteers take their dogs to visit people at nursing homes, hospitals, hospice, schools, all kinds of things,\u201d Executive Director Nancy Gray said. \u201cOccasionally, we do special events where businesses invite us in for their employees to relax and pet a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
The benefits<\/p>\n
Pet visitations offered by volunteers and their therapy dogs can provide a positive bonding experience for those confined to institutional living facilities, according to the nonprofit\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe residents just know when you’re coming. They remember the dog’s name, not always yours. It’s all about the dogs for us,\u201d Gray said. \u201cAnd [the residents] just smile. Sometimes they’ve told us that they were in pain, but once the dog comes, they feel they don’t think about their pain for that few minutes they can hug on the dog, or sometimes they just want to talk to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of these residents have had no visitors come to see them aside from Therapy Pet Pals, Gray said.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Visiting] really makes you feel good, and just making them happy is what we try to do,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n
What else?<\/p>\n
The nonprofit\u2019s primary goal moving forward is to increase its number of volunteers, Gray said.<\/p>\n
Those interested can begin the sign-up process through the organization\u2019s website, choosing from two locations: Austin or Northwest Houston\/The Woodlands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen someone’s interested in volunteering, they will call us and then their dog has to have basic obedience before they come to us,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n
Once volunteers are in touch with Therapy Pet Pals, their dogs will go through training to become therapy dogs. Following this, they will take a Canine Good Citizen<\/a> test, and if they pass they may begin volunteering, Gray said.<\/p>\n“><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While sharing the company of a dog or cat may seem like an ordinary day-to-day experience for most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,246,8656,2244,2097,245,14629,1444],"class_list":["post-19114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-dogs","tag-elderly","tag-healthcare","tag-nonprofit","tag-pets","tag-therapy-pet-pals-of-texas","tag-volunteer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}