ABSTRACT
The training a therapy pet needs to work in Animal-Assisted Therapy requires proper socialization, touch desensitization, species-appropriate behavior training and, ideally, some special skills and trick training. The training of a pet by the pet’s owner for therapy work is really not much different from the training any pet should receive to be a well-behaved citizen of the community. Any pet that is going to go out and work in the community needs to be well mannered. The best way to provide for this is to socialize the pet; that is, to expose it to a variety of stimuli starting early in the pet’s life while it is very young. From the time the pet is very young, it should be handled gently and frequently. It is important for a young pet to become desensitized to human touch so that it may be handled by unfamiliar persons.
