OUR HISTORY

PAWS Therapy Dogs was started in February 2004 by a group of Therapy Dogs Inc. certified teams wanting to create a Therapy Dog Club.  PAWS began with less than 20 teams, but grew over the years and kept increasing the number of facilities that they visited. 

In 2011, Joanne & Joe Rittenhouse joined PAWS Therapy Dogs and Joanne created our Humane Education Program.  This brought many more visits to PAWS as we were now adding children’s visits as well.  

Our membership grew dramatically!

Therapy Dogs Inc. changed their name to Alliance of Therapy Dogs and PAWS Therapy Dogs starting spreading out to neighboring counties.  Our visits also started to include Disaster Relief.  

The beginning of 2020 was a challenge with the pandemic, but under the direction of Joanne Rittenhouse, PAWS continued to be creative with the types of visits we made and continued on. 

In October of 2020, Joe Rittenhouse led PAWS Therapy Dogs to become a not-for-profit corporate entity and then a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization as PAWS Therapy Dogs Inc.  

With Joe as our President, PAWS Therapy Dogs, Inc. is set to continue doing great things in the future.

Our thanks to long-time member Kitty Wayne for the history.