Annie Murphy and I co-founded Creature Comfort Pet Therapy in 2011 with the vision of not only “Enhancing people's lives through therapeutic visits with caring volunteers and their pets” (our mission), but we also wanted to create an organization solely dedicated to pet therapy, an organization where our teams could meet each other, learn about different topics, trade ideas and socialize. We had no idea back then how pet therapy would be so widely recognized today and the demand grow so rapidly.  Our little organization (until Covid held us back a bit) was expanding by leaps and bounds.  

     This past year has seen a pet therapy resurgence – and in all kinds of new areas.  We are seeing more businesses than ever before call on CCPT to help relieve stress in their employees.  Schools are recognizing pet therapy as an essential part in helping lessen children’s depression and anxiety, especially after these last difficult “Zoom” years.

     I’ve witnessed the unique power of pet therapy many times – from the little girl in the hospital being treated for a dog bite who bravely touched my dog, to the man who “didn’t get it” until he had a dog hug, the young boy who hadn’t moved in the hospital but reached out when he was told there was a dog there, to the woman who got down on the floor with my dog, hugged him and cried after coming out of a chemotherapy session.   And these are just a very few examples of my own.

     We have wonderful, giving volunteers and such an incredible, hard-working staff who make all this happen.  Please consider joining my team, passing the word, and making a donation to enable us to continue this valuable work.