Pet Therapy Society of Northern Alberta

The Pet Therapy Society of Northern Alberta (PeTS) is a registered not-for-profit organization. Our human volunteers and their personal animals provide free pet therapy services to facilities in and around Edmonton.

A therapy animal is not the same as a service dog or an emotional support animal. Service dogs and emotional support animals assist their individual owners/handlers, while a pet therapy animal assists other people, with the assistance of their owner/handler.

Our human volunteers take their personal dogs and cats to assisted-living facilities, hospitals, corporate offices, senior-living apartments, prisons, airports, schools, libraries, and other locations, to give others a chance to interact with the animals.

What is Pet Therapy?

Pet therapy is a guided interaction between our volunteer’s personal companion animal and clients. This interaction generally involves clients petting the animal and conversing with the handler. During a pet therapy visit, our therapy animals are kept on-leash, with the handler always in control of the leash.

Our ratified dogs wear a flat collar with a quick release buckle and our cats wear a flat harness with quick release buckle. Our teams do not use prong collars, choke chains, head halters, martingale collars, front-clipping harnesses, or retractable leashes on a pet therapy visit.

The duration of an entire pet therapy visit is around 1 hour, with the pet therapy team spending a few minutes with each client.

We require our human volunteers to wear a PeTS-issued name tag, and carry their membership card and personal ID with them on visits. Our animal volunteers wear the appropriate collar/harness and a PeTS-issued bandana displaying our logo. Some of our facility partners may have additional uniform requirements, like volunteer t-shirts, closed-toe footwear, and facility ID badges.