Canine Companions is leading the service dog industry so their clients and their dogs can live with greater independence. They provide service dogs to adults, children and veterans with disabilities and facility dogs to professionals working in healthcare, criminal justice, and educational settings. Since their founding in 1975, their dogs and all follow-up services are provided at no cost to their clients.  

To learn more, please visit their website

The purpose of this website is to provide both occupational therapy practitioners and pet owners with disabilities the adaptations they need to succeed in pet care.

The American Occupational Therapy Association describes occupational therapy in the following way:

Occupational therapy promotes health, well-being, and participation. Occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants focus on the things you want and need to do in your daily life. Occupational therapy intervention uses everyday life activities (occupations) to promote health, well-being, and your ability to participate in the important activities in your life. This includes any meaningful activity that a person wants to accomplish, including taking care of yourself and your family, working, volunteering, going to school, among many others (AOTA, 2024).

Occupational therapists practice within the scope of the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (OTPF). This document lists "Care of Pets and Animals" as an instrumental activity of daily living. This means it is an activity that supports daily life within the home and community.

Occupational therapists are highly skilled in evaluating an individual's specific need and determining an intervention method to improve function. This same skill set can easily be applied to pet care. 

The occupational therapy curriculum provides practictioners with the knowledge they need to succeed in a pleathora of roles. Because occupational therapy spans so many different areas of life, it would be impossible to provide education on each individual practice area.

Currently, pet care is an underdeveloped area within occupational therapy. It is our hope that this website provides occupational therapists with the knowledge and language they need to help their clients succeed in spite of this gap.

My name is Julia Drahzal, and I am an occupational therapy doctorate student at Boston University ('24). I decided to complete my doctoral capstone on pet care for individuals with disabilities while I was working at a pet store in Brookline, MA, where a customer in a wheelchair asked me if it would be possible for them to adopt a pet with their disability. After looking through the current evidence, I found little tangible advice. Thus, I decided to work on bridging that gap myself, and hopefully inspiring others to continue to do so.

This capstone was completed in partnership with Canine Companions, the nation's leading service dog industry.