To find our Therapy Dog Schedule, see the “schedule” portion of our website or check-out the main page on our Wellness website for Therapy Dog visit times.

Our Therapy Dog Handlers are all staff and faculty at Carleton who have their own pet and are interested in supporting our student population.

All of our dogs and Handlers go through specialized Therapy Dog training, and our Handlers go through additional training to support student mental health!

Our dogs are chosen for a variety of reasons – temperament, availability of the Handler, how much they enjoy being a Therapy Dog, and size of the dog! We do our best to have a wide range of dog breeds and sizes as some people prefer larger dogs and others prefer smaller dogs.

No. To be a Carleton Therapy Dog Handler, you must be employed at Carleton University as either a staff or faculty member. We do not have community members or students as our Therapy Dog Handlers.

Service animals are trained to perform tasks and do work that eases their handlers’ disabilities – they help attain safety, independence, and offer support solely for their handler.

Therapy dogs provide psychological or physiological therapy to individuals other than their handler.

You never want to pet a dog without the owner’s permission! It’s important to pay attention to the dog’s vest and leash – most service dogs will have multiple “DO NOT PET”  or “WORKING DOG” signs on the vest! If you see this, do not distract the dog from their very important job!

All of our Carleton Therapy Dogs wear red vests with our CU Therapy Dog logo. If you see one, you’re more than welcome to ask to pet the dog but please understand their handler might be on the way to something and can’t always accommodate the request.

How many students attend the sessions typically depends on the time, location, and how busy students are at that time!

In some of our busier spaces, like outside of the Wellness Desk, we can see around 30-50 students per visit. However, some of our dogs are in quieter spaces and tend to only see 5-15 students per visit (Loeb and 482 MacOdrum Library tend to be quieter spaces!)

There can sometimes be a bit of a wait, especially for our dogs that only see a few students at a time, so make sure you aren’t running late.

If you’d like to schedule a visit with our Therapy Dogs, please complete this form.

We require a minimum of 3 weeks’ notice to book the Therapy Dogs for an event, it is important to complete the form as soon as you can.

If you have questions, please email wellness@carleton.ca

Although we aren’t currently recruiting for a new Therapy Dog team, if you are a staff or faculty member at Carleton and are interested in being put on a waitlist, you can email wellness@carleton.ca