Can a cat’s purring heal you? Cats can be more helpful therapy animals than dogs do to they are less expensive, less effort, and less training. First, we need to know what a therapy animal does, and how they are helpful. Then the training a dog most have to be a good therapy dog and how dogs can miss communicate. Finally, evidence to show cats do show love in other ways than dogs. Therapy animals are not service animals.
Many people confuse the phrases therapy dog and service dog, they are actually very different. “A service dog helps individuals perform tasks they cannot do for themselves because of a disability.” “A therapy dog is there to be petted and provide comfort and affection to individuals at various places that request its visits.”
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These requirements include the dog to accept a friendly stranger’s touch, to sit politely for petting or grooming, to walk calmly on a loose leash, to calmly walk through a crowd, to sit, lay down, stay, and come on command, a polite reaction to meeting other dogs, and to act calmly to distractions. “The toughest test for many dogs is the ‘supervised separation’ with owners/handler out of sight for 3 minutes.” The supervised separation test is to see how the dog acts without the supervision of their owner or handler. For a dog to learn to do these things the dog must go against their natural instinct, in this process the dog is handicapping themselves. There is no established guide for owners/trainers this makes it easy for an inconsistency in training the dog. If this happens then the dog may become frustrated, confused, and fall into bad habits. In a public situation, these habits may be unacceptable.
Another thing that needs to be taken into consideration is a miscommunication between the animal and the human. How humans and animals express love is very different. Cats and dogs will lay on their back, exposing their mid-line the most vulnerable part of their body. Humans do the same thing, but in the form of a hug, animals may take a hug as a threat. The human is wrapping their body around the cat or dog which scares or makes them uncomfortable. Professionals are not completely sure of the capability of cats in therapeutic situations but are continually surprised about how they affect