Elmhurst resident Catherine Sullivan greets Holly, the 3-year-old therapy dog. Research has shown that contact with pets can help people deal with a variety of physical and mental health issues.

When Cynthia Vanaudenhove first adopted her springer spaniel, Fallon, eight years ago, she quickly realized she wanted to share his wonderful personality with others. So she began bringing him to the former Zambarano Hospital in Burrillville to visit with the patients there.

As many as 25 patients at a time would gather in a room for her weekly visits, waiting to play with and pet the dog. She called it “The Friends of Fallon Club.”

It was informal and fun, she recalled. “I was just winging it,” she said. But even back then, she thought Fallon’s visits could be more organized and more meaningful.

So she signed up for the Pet Assisted Therapy Program offered at the Community College of Rhode Island, where she learned how pets like Fallon could be used in health-care facilities, schools and social service programs to help people achieve their goals.

These could be as simple as bringing a smile to the face of someone suffering from depression, or stirring the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient, or helping a person who was paralyzed after a car crash learn to brush, feed or play ball with the dog.

“I never would have imagined it,” said Vanaudenhove.

That’s why Pearl Salotto, who created the Pet Assisted Therapy Program, a continuing education course at CCRI, is promoting it as a paid profession — to be treated the same as any other form of therapy used to help people in health-care facilities, schools, prisons and social service agencies.

Pet-assisted therapy really can change the lives of everyone involved, Salotto said, from the people who enter the program in hope of using their pets to enhance the lives of others to those who benefit from the services of a pet-assisted therapist.

In fact, she said, she’s convinced that pet therapy, as a paid profession, ultimately will help “to build a better world.”

The use of pets in therapy or for treatment programs dates back at least 40 years, according to Michelle Cobey, a spokeswoman for the Delta Society in Bellevue, Wash., a nonprofit group which is internationally known for its mission of promoting the use of pets to help improve the lives of people. Pets have actually been informally used this way for generations, she and others said. But Dr. Boris Levinson, a noted child psychiatrist, is credited with coining the phrase “pet therapy” in 1964 after researching and documenting the ways that animals helped children with psychological disorders.

Research has since proved that pets can help people deal with a variety of other physical and mental health issues, whether brightening the day for someone suffering from terminal cancer, or helping to reduce the violence level among prison inmates, Salotto noted.

Cobey said there are a variety of programs all over the country that train volunteers and professionals on how to use pets to help other people. Her organization, which has offered training sessions here in Rhode Island in the past, offers two specific programs.

The first, she said, involves volunteers who want to provide “animal assisted activities.” These are people who basically volunteer to share their pets with people in a variety of settings, from hospital and nursing homes to schools and prisons.

Delta also provides training for “animal assisted therapy,” in which licensed professionals, such as physical therapists or social workers, incorporate pets in the work they’re already doing.

Delta’s training programs are among a variety of such programs offered by different individuals and groups around the country, Cobey noted. There are no national guidelines or standards when it comes to teaching people how to use their pets to help others, let alone any requirements for what they need to know.

Cobey also wasn’t aware of any move anywhere in the country to create an entirely new category of therapists who are specially trained solely in the practice of pet-assisted therapy.

That’s what Salotto is trying to promote, saying that pet therapists should be a category of their own.

Salotto was first introduced to the practice in the late 1980s. Her children had given her a Samoyed as a gift. She named it DJ, to replace another dog that had just passed away. She signed up for a pet-assisted therapy program at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., where she took four courses that led to a certificate in 1987.

From the moment she brought DJ into a nursing home for his first visit, she knew: “I wanted to do this full-time.”

In fact, she said, she believed that every person in America had a right to a loving dog. And she believed that every medical and social service institution in the country should have a pet-assisted therapist on staff, to help make that happen.

Salotto knew pet-assisted therapy historically was considered volunteer work, but she believed it was important enough to be a paid profession — that professional pet-assisted therapists could be part of a person’s overall “treatment plan” for a variety of physical and mental conditions.

For example, she said, pet-assisted therapy could be used to help patients in nursing homes in a variety of ways, such as stimulating conversation or encouraging memory recall, or working on range of motion — whether throwing a dog a ball or feeding it a treat.

A professional pet-assisted therapist, she said, could set treatment goals and document the results and track the patient’s condition during the course of therapy.

But this would require a person to be trained in all these facets of therapy; so she devised a certificate program of her own for the continuing education division of the State University of New York in Brockport, N.Y., starting in 1990.

Salotto, a former elementary school teacher, said she worked with a psychologist and two veterinarians, and created the program based on what she’d learned at Mercy College and what she’d experienced with her work with DJ. It’s a three-part program, she explained. The first course focuses on the history of pet-assisted therapy, as well as ethics and legal issues and explaining how to launch a business as a pet-assisted therapist. The second course concentrates on training. And the third course is an internship.

She taught the program in upstate New York for a few years, until she moved to Rhode Island about 15 years ago to be closer to her two grown children.

Salotto launched her pet-assisted therapy program at the Community College of Rhode Island in 1996, where she’s offered it each year since. It’s a non-credit course taught through the continuing education division, so it doesn’t count toward a college degree , a school spokeswoman said.

In addition to teaching her theories on pet-assisted therapy, Salotto also has worked with a variety of local programs and institutions. She was hired, for example, by the Children’s Crusade of Rhode Island to work with after-school programs to teach children about responsibility for themselves and for animals. She’s worked in several local schools, including 10 years in the Central Falls school district, using her animals to motivate students to complete their school work.

Salotto also wrote and self-published a book called Pet Assisted Therapy, and she created the Windwalker Humane Coalition for professional pet-assisted therapists.

DJ died a few years ago, but she now promotes her cause with Maj-En, a 12-year-old Samoyed, and Panda Girl, an eight-year-old Great Pyrenees.

She said she’s traveled across the country to promote public awareness about the use of pet-assisted therapy, and to lobby for it as a recognized profession.

It’s an uphill battle, Salotto said. “Society has really not funded pet therapy as much as we would like. Society does not have enough funds for existing professions, let alone a relatively new profession.”

As a result, she said, “a few people make money doing it, but most do not.” She was only aware of a handful of nursing homes, schools and social service agencies in Rhode Island that have paid for pet therapy. But she’s continuing to push her agenda, calling for national standards regarding education, training and ethics to protect everyone involved.

Unfortunately, she said, “that’s a long way down the road.”

Dr. Chris Hannifan, president of the Rhode Island Veterinary Medical Association, said there’s no doubt as to the benefits of the relationship between humans and pets. “It’s a proven fact,” he said.

And there’s been an increase in the use of animals to benefit people, especially in nursing homes and other institutions, he said.

That’s why Rhode Island is among a growing number of states that now require that pets brought into nursing homes and other health facilities licensed by the state be examined and certified by veterinarians, to make sure they’re healthy and vaccinated. The goal, he said, is to make sure they’re “happy, healthy, friendly animals and (that) they’re not going to bring any diseases or pose any type of threat or injury” to people inside these facilities.

But even so, he said, the vast majority of these pets belong to people who want to volunteer their services — not people looking to be paid as therapists.

That said, Hannifan said, he wouldn’t be surprised if doctors eventually start prescribing pet-assisted therapy for treatment in certain cases. But for that to happen, he said, individuals — and their pets — would have to be highly trained in providing that type of therapy. They also would need to be licensed by the state if they expected to get paid. Even landscapers and hairdressers need to be licensed, he said. “Once you start getting paid for it . . . then some type of professional oversight would be required.”

But it’s not yet to that point here in Rhode Island, Hannifan said.

Cobey, of the Delta Society, wasn’t aware of any such licensing program anywhere.

Cobey did say that many people who undergo training, whether through Delta or other programs such as Salotto’s, are already licensed in their fields.

She said many physical therapists, social workers and other health-care professionals take classes to incorporate their pets in their regular therapy sessions.

Some volunteers also do some work that could be considered therapy, as Salotto has suggested, whether encouraging people to talk about the animals or playing catch with the animals.

But there hasn’t been much demand for people who specialize in pet-assisted therapy as a profession, noted Carol Bramble, who also works with the Delta Society. She said they have 10,000 “teams” of volunteers — pet owners and pets — who work with local facilities nationwide and around the world. “As for a paid program, I don’t see it happening ... because we have so many volunteers.”

But Salotto said these volunteers don’t get the recognition — or reimbursement — they deserve for all of their hard work.

“Why not?” asks Deb Yablonski of Pascoag. “People get paid to do art therapy and floral design. Why not pay for pet therapy?”

Yablonski, who owns a small farm and does landscaping, gardening and greenhouse work, recently completed Salotto’s three-part program at CCRI. She and her dog, Layla, a 19-month-old German shepherd, have volunteered their time at the former Zambarano Hospital, now known as the Eleanor Slater Hospital, and she was recently hired as a professional pet-assisted therapist to work at the Tockwotton Home, an assisted-living program in Providence. She declined to say how much she is being paid. Yablonski said she’s a firm believer in the benefits of pet-assisted therapy. “It’s so simple, it makes perfect sense,” she said.

She saw the benefits with her own family members, from a sister with multiple sclerosis who interacted with her pet shih tzu from her wheelchair, to her dad, who had Alzheimer’s disease who had a cocker spaniel “who he related to even when he didn’t relate to anyone else.”

Yablonski said that through Salotto’s course, she learned about “the depth of the field” — from medical aspects, such as lowering a person’s blood pressure, to the psychological benefits that are seen through working with people such as kids with autism.

She said she can now put some of what she’s learned into practice through her job at Tockwotton. “I have to kind of prove myself there, which is fine,” she said. But that’s the difference between having a paid position and a volunteer one, she noted. “I will always volunteer, but obviously you put more into it . . . when you have a program that you’re working at, and you’re accountable, and you have to give a report and give feedback.”

Yablonski said she benefits, as well. “One woman, I’ll knock on the door, and she’ll say, ‘Oh, go away. It’s a bad day.’ And (when she sees Layla), she just melts and we’re in there for 45 minutes sometimes.”

One day, Yablonski recalled, that woman said to her: “God sent you to me.”

And that’s why Yablonski loves this type of work, regardless of whether she’s paid.

“It’s just so worth doing.”

Stephen Westerman, supervisor of therapeutic recreation for the Zambarano Unit of Eleanor Slater Hospital, agrees. The Zambarano Unit is a long-term care facility for people with physical or psychiatric needs.He recalls the case of one gentleman who’s blind and deaf and suffers from multiple handicaps. The staff members put him on the floor to play with one of Cynthia Vanaudenhove’s dogs, and he now pets the dog from his wheelchair. “That was a big breakthrough for that resident,” Westerman said. It also was big for the staff, he said, since, “we were at a loss for how to program for him.”

Vanaudenhove’s first therapy dog, Fallon, has since died, but she continues her visits with Abbie, a 13-year-old springer spaniel. She works with individuals and with groups. “She has them walk, brush and feed the dog,” Westerman said. And the residents respond in other ways, too, such as one woman who made the dog an afghan.

Westerman said he’d love to see pet therapy as a paid position, but doesn’t believe it will happen with the current budget constraints. So he can’t envision the pet visits as therapy. “When somebody volunteers to do that, you don’t know when they’re coming or how often they’re coming, so you can’t really use that as treatment.”

But it definitely has impacted the residents there, he said. For some patients, it’s been “a breakthrough.”

That’s also the experience of Sheila Parenteau, a certified occupational therapist at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital’s geriatric psychiatric unit, where patients can’t wait to have volunteers visit with their animals. “You tell them someone’s coming with a dog, and you can see them perk right up,” she said.

She definitely considers it therapy. “It’s better than sitting alone and doing nothing.”

Cynthia Vanaudenhove, who lives in Pascoag, has been doing volunteer visits for nearly eight years — and she loves it. But some families pay her $75 an hour to work individually with their family members, and she knows other people who make as much as $100 an hour. She said Salotto believes people should get as much as $150 an hour, but she admits she doesn’t see that happening — yet.

“It’s nothing I can see making a living out of in the future,” Vanaudenhove said. But the work has other benefits.

She remembers one man, in his mid to late 30s, who was the victim of “a terrible car accident.” He was in a wheelchair and wouldn’t speak to anyone, since he was overcome with depression over his injuries. One day, a staff member brought him down to a pet therapy session with Fallon. “He’d just sit there and watch,” Vanaudenhove recalled. And gradually, over time, she’d bring her dog closer to him.

“He started to reach out to her, physically to reach out, which was a big thing because he’d reached out to nothing at that point,” Vanaudenhove recalled.

Eventually, it got to the point that he was interacting with the dog. He had a clear plastic tray on his wheelchair, and Vanaudenhove would line up dog treats on his tray. “And he’d reach over and feed her, one by one.”

Soon after, Vanaudenhove recalled, “he was brushing and feeding her, and calling her name. This was a guy who wouldn’t speak before. He and she (the dog) had a great bond.”

Over a three-month period, Vanaudenhove said, she saw the man change from the point where he had to be brought down to the activity room to see the dog to the point where he got himself out of his room, onto the elevator and downstairs — often to meet Vanaudenhove and Fallon when they walked in the door.

“That was a huge, huge change for this young man, from sitting in a room, staring at a wall, to knowing that today’s Tuesday and Fallon’s coming and I’m going to get myself ready for her,” Vanaudenhove said.

This change brought tears to the eyes of the man’s mother, Vanaudenhove recalled. And he eventually went off to live in a group home.

“Fallon really was his motivating factor,” Vanaudenhove said. “There’s no question in my mind, the staff’s mind, or his mom’s mind.”

That’s why Vanaudenhove believes pet therapy is so important — and why it would be great to make it a profession, for which she and others would get paid.

“When you find something you love to do, the joy involved in that, the benefits, are tremendous,” she said. “I love going to work — quote, unquote — every day. And so do my dogs. . . . The joys are different, the benefits are different, every single day.”