How to find a therapy animal, align with best practices, add to the research, and more in a Q&A with the executive director of the Association of Animal-Assisted Intervention Professionals.
There’s a saying that Dr. Taylor Griffin, PhD ’18, lives by: Be the person your dog thinks you are. Positive. Empathetic. Accepting. Giving.
Those qualities in animals also bring out the best in people. Dr. Griffin knew this as a child who brought home strays and now as executive director of the Association of Animal-Assisted Intervention Professionals. The organization brings training, certifications, and evidence-based professional competencies to those leveraging the human-animal bond to improve health and wellness.
As an undergrad psychology major and dog trainer, she began volunteering to bring her yorkiepoo Lucy into senior living facilities, hospitals, and libraries to share her love with people in need. Those powerful, moving experiences led her to a mental health counseling master’s program.
"I hoped I would have a private practice with a menagerie of therapy animals to help serve people in need," she says. "At that time, though, I was taken aback because there were so few resources for professionals who wanted to integrate therapy animals into their work."
After earning her PhD in Psychology at Walden University, she was recruited from the volunteer ranks of Pet Partners to a national director role.
Their focus was volunteer animal handlers, and seeing the need to support healthcare providers, educators, and others. Dr. Griffin helped them launch the Association of Animal-Assisted Intervention Professionals (AAAIP).
We caught up with Dr. Griffin on everything from getting started to being successful with animal-assisted interventions.
How can people in different professions incorporate animals in their practice?
One of the beautiful things about animal-assisted intervention is that it can be so creatively adapted and widely applied. We have mental health counselors who see the animal’s ability to help build connection and open up conversation. We see teachers bringing animals in to meet educational needs. We see dentists bringing in therapy animals to sit in the laps of patients who have anxiety.
I was involved in a reading program at the Department of Juvenile Justice. We did sessions where they would practice reading to my rescue bulldog, Charley. They would say that in reading to a dog, they didn’t feel judged.
I had to double check my data because after just a couple of sessions, they were making such big gains. As a researcher, I hate to say the word magical, but there was something quite magical about that.
What are some of the myths about animal-assisted interventions?
There are so many. When I’m out with my therapy animals, the first thing is people tend to be confused. They see my dog vested and they think, oh, that’s a service animal. I can’t touch them. So, I spend a lot of time talking to people about the differences between therapy animals, service animals, and emotional support animals. Therapy animals have a one-to-many relationship. They don’t serve the person holding their leash, they serve other people.
There’s also the myth that you can just go online, order a vest, put it on your dog, and call your dog a therapy animal. There are organizations like AAAIP that have best practices that are incredibly important to follow.
Read “How a Service Dog Helped a Navy Vet Through Medical School.”
What do people need to consider if they are interested in providing animal-assisted interventions?
If you’re going to provide animal-assisted interventions, the No. 1 thing is to work with an organization that is supportive of you.
If you’re a volunteer, you can go to therapyanimalstandards.org and see the competencies for any volunteer-based organization. They should provide education and liability insurance to you as the volunteer handler. There should be best practices such as infection prevention, zoonosis considerations, and limitations on hours.
If you’re a professional, there are competencies you should align with. There’s a knowledge-based assessment called the Animal-Assisted Intervention Specialist Certification exam. And then, of course, staying actively involved as a lifelong learner. Doing this work is so important to protect you, your clients, and your animals.
What do you look for in a potential therapy animal?
There’s no such thing as a perfect dog. All of my therapy animals have wildly different traits. They’re not the most obedient dogs. They know their basic cues, but I don’t want them to be obedient for the sake of obedience. I want them to be able to freely communicate with me. If your animal likes meeting new people and isn't stressed out by going out into public places, I highly encourage you to consider this role because we need more therapy animals in the world.
We love partnering with veterinarians because they’re one of the top groups who can suggest a therapy animal. We ask them to help us spread awareness about the need for more therapy animal teams.
How do you look out for the wellbeing of a therapy animal?
One of the things I teach people is to find the population that their animals work best with, because that protects the animal’s welfare. I have some senior poodles right now who love to go to the senior living community. That’s their speed. I have a very silly dog who would like to play with all the kids in the world. There are dogs that have a unique response to people with eating disorders or have a unique response to people with memory impairment. You need to take time to see how your animal is interacting with people from different walks of life.
How do pets help with our own personal wellness?
How did earning a PhD from Walden University help you with your career?
I like to joke and say that I was going to go as far as I could in my academic pursuit to be allowed to have as many animals as I want and it be socially acceptable. I tell people, you can call me Doctor Crazy Dog Lady.
On the other hand, I really want people to take this work seriously. I want people to see my dog in a vest and say more than “Oh, that’s a cute idea.” I want people to understand that I am a serious professional dedicated to research and best practice.
To be able to say I’m a doctor and I have studied this at the highest level helps me break down barriers. I now can talk with other professionals, with academicians, with researchers, and at the policy level when we talk about lawmaking or guiding people through red tape at facilities.
Tell us about your dissertation and the results of your research.
When I chose Walden’s program, it was important to me to work full-time to have a stable career and stay in touch with direct services where the human-animal bond is in action. When I enrolled, I was working at a nonprofit in Atlanta that provided pet care for domestic violence survivors. I was so fortunate to do my dissertation research “Survivors’ Experiences of Pet Abuse Within the Cycle of Domestic Violence” within that community. We talked about the massive barrier that exists for people if they can't find pet care. People would say they wouldn’t leave if they didn’t have a safe place for their pet to go.
The Adtalem Global Education Foundation provides grant support to RedRover that provides resources for veterinary professionals to better prepare clinic staff to identify and respond to domestic violence and animal abuse.
Cats in therapy is one of the things you’ve been researching since graduating.
We see so many requests for therapy cat visits but have a hard time finding people with therapy cat candidates. Cats are received differently than dogs. There are people who are scared of dogs or just prefer cats. In that research, people talked about feeling like cats pick them, whereas dogs have the stereotype of liking everyone. So, someone feels more special when interacting with the therapy cat. People on the autism spectrum have different ways interacting socially. My dogs might be a little bit overstimulating. Cats don’t always have that same impact.
What has surprised you most about animal-assisted interventions?
I’m continuously surprised when I hear stories about what therapy animals and their handlers accomplish. Kids waking up from a coma when a therapy animal has been present after months of not being responsive. I can’t explain that as a researcher, but I know it happened.
It’s actually amazing what can happen when we incorporate animals intentionally and professionally into the work that we do. I could do this for as long as I live and there will always be more stories to uncover.
For more information, email the Adtalem Global Communications Team: adtalemmedia@adtalem.com.
