(upbeat music) - Intermountain Therapy Animals is a nonprofit organization with over 300 therapy teams visiting 170 facilities and spending time with individuals going through difficult experiences.

Preston Chiaro is here today.

He has his registered therapy dog, Fred.

Hi, Preston, welcome, Fred.

- Hi, Mary.

- Fred's so attentive.

- Yes.

- So, okay, some people get confused about what's the difference between a therapy dog, a service dog, and a companion?

- Yes, so I'll start sort of at the lowest level would be a therapy dog.

Therapy dogs are meant to be shared for across many people.

So I take Fred to visit the airport and hospitals and so on, and he meets lots of people there.

And they don't have any special rights of access to public spaces.

They have to be invited into those facilities.

An emotional support animal would be sort of the next level up.

They are prescribed by a doctor for someone who needs that emotional support.

And they do get special rights of access for living like an apartment complex that may not allow dogs, otherwise, they can go in.

And then the highest level would be a service dog.

Super highly trained.

They do get special rights of access.

They can go anywhere their human does.

And you should never bother a service dog, by the way.

They're performing duties all the time.

- Oh yeah, we've all learned that.

Yeah, yeah.

So talk about all the great benefits of a therapy animal when you go visit, yeah.

- Sure, I mean, the simplest way to describe it is, Fred puts a smile on someone's face.

But it's medically shown that petting a dog, a therapy animal, can lower your blood pressure, lower your heart rate, make you feel more calm, more relaxed.

And for kids especially, we have a reading program called R.E.A.D, Reading Educational Assistance Dogs.

They actually help children learn to read more easily.

- That's great.

And I know you take him to hospitals.

- We do go visit hospitals and schools and nursing homes and the airport and cancer camps for kids and lots of places.

Fred's 10 years old.

- He's 10?

- He's experienced.

- Fred, you're in great shape for 10, darling.

Yeah, he's beautiful.

- Thank you.

- And so how long did it take you to train him to be a therapy dog?

- Well, Fred was pretty smart.

The Intermountain Therapy Animals has about 25 behaviors that you have to teach a dog.

He learned it all within a few months.

- [Mary] Great, great.

Well, thank you for being here, and thanks for bringing, Fred.

Thank you.

- My pleasure, thank you.

- And if you'd like to know more about Intermountain Therapy Animals, you can go to therapyanimals.org.

That's therapyanimals.org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact".

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