Our therapy dogs hold various “paw-ffice” hours during the term. You can see a complete schedule on our website for all the times each therapy dog is available for a visit.

All of our therapy dogs are personal pets owned by Carleton staff and faculty who have a strong interest in supporting our students. All of our dogs go through specialized training to ensure they are a good fit for the program. Additionally, all of our handlers receive special mental health training.

Our therapy dogs are chosen for a variety of reasons – temperament, availability of the handler, how much they enjoy being a therapy dog and even the size of the dog! We do our best to have a wide range of dog breeds and sizes to accommodate various student needs.

No. To be a part of the program, you must be employed at Carleton University as either a staff or faculty member. We do not have community members or students as therapy dog handlers.

Service dogs, or service animals, are trained to perform tasks and do work that eases their handlers’ disabilities. They are working dogs who 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 these signs, 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 the handler to pet the dog, but please understand their handler might be on the way to something, or they dog may be currently overwhelmed and can’t always accommodate the request.

The number of students who attend a therapy dog session 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 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.)

While there is no limit on the number of students who can attend a session location, 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.

Our therapy dogs are taking a “paws” on event requests at this time. We encourage you to visit us at our regularly scheduled “paw-ffice” hours across campus.

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

Although we aren’t actively recruiting for 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.