ABSTRACT
One of the best ways to minimize the risk of injury or accident while practicing animal assisted therapy (AAT) is to make sure one understands how to properly apply established techniques. AAT in the counseling field should be practiced only by a credentialed professional counselor or a student in training who is under proper supervision. Remember, AAT is not an independent profession, but rather it is a treatment modality used by professionals consistent with that professional’s training and practice. In addition to being a credentialed counselor or supervised counseling student, the practitioner should have some standardized training in AAT. At a minimum, the counselor and therapy pet should have registration equivalent to Delta Society Pet Partners training or Therapy Dogs International (TDI). In addition to obtaining an entry-level credential to practice AAT, I highly recommend you obtain additional training to enhance your professional AAT skills. The entry-level credential is necessary and sufficient for volunteer AAA service, but in my opinion an entry-level credential is not sufficient by itself for professional AAT work. An example of a more advanced AAT training curriculum is the AAT Applications Course offered by Delta Society for the animal’s handler or owner (not the pet). This is a half-day workshop that covers AAT topics such as client screening, assessment, evaluation, treatment planning and goal setting, documentation, and a variety of client interventions. When I teach this Delta Society course, I supplement it with my knowledge and experience working as a counselor using AAT. This training provides the therapist with the tools necessary to determine which clients may or may not benefit from AAT and how to integrate various AAT techniques into the therapy process to achieve a variety of treatment goals. Although workshops are a good device for providing brief and concentrated AAT training, I believe that comprehensive AAT training is best provided via a college or university course format, but currently this type of semester-long training course is difficult to find. But hopefully, the popularity of AAT in a counseling setting will grow to the degree that more counselor education programs will offer an AAT training course.
