Professional training for people who want to select, train, and monitor therapy animals, assistance dogs, and human–animal teams with care.
A therapy- and assistance-dog trainer guides not only the animal’s learning process, but also the person, the partnership, and the context in which they will function. This requires behavioural expertise, coaching skills, ethical awareness, risk management, and a strong focus on animal welfare.
For whom?
This program is intended for professionals who want to specialise in the selection, preparation, training, and long-term monitoring of therapy animals, assistance dogs, and human–animal teams.
What do you learn?
- professionally assess behavior, learning principles, and body language;
- evaluate suitability, temperament, and resilience;
- timely recognition of stress, overload, and well-being risks;
- create an individual, welfare-focused training plan;
- translate a support need into concrete, trained tasks;
- guiding humans and animals together;
- tailoring training to the future living or working context;
- preparing for evaluation, certification and recertification;
- develop sustainable follow-up and stopping criteria.
Active Therapy Animals and Assistance Dogs
With an active therapy animal the focus is on professional work for different clients alongside a Therapy Animal Practitioner. With an emotional-support dog or assistance dog the focus is on supporting one specific person. Within our quality framework, the dog learns at least three individually selected support tasks. Each pathway requires appropriate selection, training and follow-up.
Animal welfare as a starting point
An animal is not forced into a predetermined profile. The training teaches you to formulate realistic goals, take signals seriously, and adjust or stop a program when the combination or context turns out not to be appropriate.
Collaboration and quality assurance
Therapiedier vzw organizes the professional programme, with Toscanzahoeve as its content and practice partner. The programme connects directly with our work on screening, certification and ongoing welfare monitoring.
Would you like to know when the training starts or what prior knowledge is appropriate? View agenda or contact us.