About PeTS
Who is PeTS?
The Pet Therapy Society of Northern Alberta (PeTS) is a registered not-for-profit organization that provides free pet therapy services to facilities in and around Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
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.
Meet Some of Our Pet Volunteers
Each month we feature a few of our pet volunteers. We could not do it without them!
