April 2025 | Service & Therapy Animal Month

According to the AVMA’s U.S. Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook, 38.4% of American households have a dog; 25.4% of households have a cat; 2.8% have birds and 0.8% have rabbits and horses, respectively. The total number of these animals in the U.S. is as follows:

Dogs: 76,811,305

Cats: 58,385,725

Birds: 7,538,000

Rabbits: 2,000,000

Horses: 1,914,394

See the section below (Emotional Support Animals)

for other animals that can be ESAs! You might be surprised!

Compare that to just 500,000 service dogs in the U.S., and you can see that we have a critical shortage of dogs to help the roughly 61 million Americans living with disabilities (about 26% of the population), according to the CDC.

How do You Define a Service Dog? Service dogs are “individually trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability”, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act. And while you might be very familiar with guide dogs helping the blind and visually impaired and service dogs that assist with mobility and other tasks, did you know that there are also service dogs for the hearing-impaired, along with medical alert dogs who can signal the onset of a medical issue such as a seizure, low blood sugar or alert its owner to the presence of allergens, to name just a few?

There are also psychiatric service dogs to assist with disabilities such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, PTSD, schizophrenia and other conditions. According to the American Kennel Club, examples of work performed by psychiatric service dogs “could include entering a dark room and turning on a light to help with a stress-inducing condition, interrupting an individual’s repetitive behaviors and remind their owner to take a medication.” Finally, autism service dogs are trained to alert their handlers of certain behaviors by providing stability and a calming influence. They can help provide focus to their handler and have been shown to help with abstract and concrete thinking (AKC).

There are other categories of “service animals”, but they are not considered actual service animals by the definition above. However, the work they do is very important to the individuals who own them!

Emotional Support Animals (which can include any type of pet) provide comfort just by being with a

person (we can all relate to that!). You might be surprised that not just dogs and cats can be emotional support animals! A list of other ESAs: ferrets, snakes (yes, eeeek!), rabbits, miniature horses, pigs and hedgehogs have all made the grade as emotional support animals. Flirty, pictured here, was the first miniature horse to fly on a commercial flight. According to American Service Pets, in the past two years airlines have seen over a 77% increase of animals on planes. But don’t just take your pet on a plane the next time you fly! Airlines REQUIRE you to have an ESA letter certified by a licensed mental health provider.

Therapy Dogs provide “opportunities for petting, affection and interaction in a variety of settings on a volunteer basis” (AKC). You’ll see therapy dogs in hospitals, assisted living residences, schools and with victims of traumatic events or disasters.

Courthouse Dogs are fairly new in the U.S. Several states allow these types of dogs to accompany a child or vulnerable person during trial proceedings.

Facility Dogs are a growing category of therapy dogs that work in institutional settings such as schools, airports or health care facilities.