Denver Pet Partners (DPP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the Human-Animal Bond to improve quality of life, benefit human-animal interaction and enhance animal-assisted intervention (AAI) services in Colorado. DPP has over 200 members who embrace the DPP Mission "To enhance the social, emotional, and physical well-being of children and adults through comforting and supportive interactions with registered therapy animal teams, and to educate the community and inspire others to pursue this form of volunteerism." Visits from our therapy animals and their handlers improve the physical and mental well-being of people in a wide variety of settings including hospitals, schools, the judicial system, and more.
Imagine a community in which children are eager to learn to read, stroke patients are motivated to learn to walk and talk again, and women who have suffered from abuse gain the confidence to overcome their fear. We're doing our part to build healthier communities. It's about changing lives!
Mission
To enhance the social, emotional, and physical well-being of children and adults through comforting and supportive interactions with registered therapy animal teams, and to educate the community and inspire others to pursue this form of volunteerism.
Background Statement
Founded in 2001, Denver Pet Partners has been a community partner of Pet Partners, a 40 year-old national organization dedicated to promoting the human-animal bond, since 2002. Our extensive experience with a wide variety of people in many different settings along with our adherence to rigorous standards of practice helps us to collaborate with people and organizations to deliver safe, effective animal-assisted services. With over 120 handler-animal teams serving over 50 facilities in the Denver-metro area, approximately 40,000 lives per year are impacted by the healing touch of the human-animal bond.
We serve the community using our expertise in teaching, knowledge of the human-animal bond, and extensive ongoing experience in the field to help people be confident and effective volunteer therapy animal-handler teams and help clients have safe, productive and sustainable therapy programs. Through collaboration with international, national and local organizations and academia, we remain on the cutting edge of the latest research and take an active part in developing solutions to improve the value of animal-assisted therapy and ensure the utmost safety for all involved, especially the animal.
As an all-volunteer, non-profit organization that never charges for its services, we rely on donations from people like you to continue to do our work. Our therapy animals and their handlers visit hospitals, nursing homes, cancer care centers, hospice, veterans' homes, and senior living facilities; they participate in educational programs with children in schools and libraries; support at-risk youth; provide support to victims and witnesses in the judicial system; visit colleges and many other facilities and programs. We improve the mental and physical well-being of those with whom we visit.