Therapy Animals Assisting People

Operating under Paws to Love/PAWCART for the therapeutic assistance of people with mental disabilities

Background and History

For a few years my daughter had mood swings that everyone said was part of her becoming a teenager and partly because she had been diagnosed with ADHD.  At first I thought it was just her ADHD, but as she got older something just didn’t seem right to me.  I was seeing things happening with her that didn’t seem “typical” for a teenager and her mood swings happened more frequently and became more and more intense and out of control. 

We had this beautiful child in therapy and practically begged for a diagnosis.  We were told that they didn’t like to “label” young kids as it was a stigma for them.   It took my daughter being placed in the hospital before anyone would finally say she was Bipolar.

I thought things would be easier now that we had a name for her behavior problems, but I was wrong, it’s been an up hill struggle.  The problem hasn’t been getting her help, it's been getting her to realize that she has an illness.  That is when I began looking into therapy animals for people with mental illnesses.  We have always had pets and she has always had a special bond with them.  Animals are more sensitive to our needs then most people realize and it’s because of this sensitivity that these animals can provide great comfort to those with mental disabilities during their times of crisis.

After doing research I found that most therapy programs consisted of animals that were owned by others and would be brought to those needing comfort or social contact.  I felt that my daughter and others like her would benefit more from having an animal that was their's, one that they would care for and that would care of them during their times of need.  In June of 2006, I began developing a program that would assist those suffering from emotional disabilities and I felt that I had what was needed to get this program off the ground, and so TAAP became my personal project.

The mission of the TAAP program is to assist in the safe and effective emotional recovery and on going support of people who have emotional disabilities by providing them with trained therapy animals to assist them during times of crisis.  The goal of TAAP is to provide this service free to all who need it, while making the public aware of this service and educating the public in allowing those with therapy animals the same courtesy they do other service animals.