At Red Deer Polytechnic, we have students who rely on the use of a service animal. Please become familiar with the difference between a service animal and therapy animal.
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Therapy Animal
• Provide psychological or physiological therapy to individuals other than their handlers
• Have stable temperaments and friend, easy-going personalities
• Encouraged to interact with a variety of people while on-duty including petting the therapy animal
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Service Animal
• Trained to perform tasks that ease their handlers’ disabilities
• Help to attain safety and independence of handler
• Not for petting as it could prevent animal from performing their job correctly
(Therapy Dogs, 2017)