Therapy ARC’s mission is to provide the best possible animal assisted activity and therapy services, with teams of trained and registered individuals and their companion animals, to clients in Middle Tennessee. We are dedicated to the ideal of promoting the benefits of the human-animal bond. Since 2001, we have provided extensive hands-on training to volunteers and their companion animals and serve over sixty middle Tennessee area facilities. These include hospitals, medical clinics, rehabilitation facilities, Hospice, senior care centers, schools, jails and more.
Meet some of the volunteers and their animals in our program
What We Do
Our Training Program
The people we serve have unique needs. We believe to serve them best requires hands-on, specialized training. Our approach consists of five stages which teaches the theories and best practices of animal assisted therapy and simulates real life scenarios allowing our volunteer teams to properly pepare for visiting in diverse environments. We are proud to currently be an affiliate of Intermountain Therapy Animals and have licensed instructors and evaluators who have a wealth of training experience. Interested in becoming a Therapy ARC team? Learn more about our classes here.
Team Effort
Therapy ARC is not just a training program! We support our volunteers by offering ongoing events and education. Because we are an entirely volunteer run, non-profit organization, we encourage our volunteers to get involved in key Therapy ARC roles. Although our training and evaluation program is through ITA, we also welcome and include volunteer teams from other internationally recognized AAA/AAT organizations. And we collaborate with professionals at the facilities we serve to ensure life enhancing practices for the clients we serve and that health and safety standards are met.