Public Service
Promoting Positive Animal-Human Relationships Within our Community
Healing Strides
Healing Strides is an Equine Activity and Therapy facility in Boones Mill that demonstrated a very different functional design from the shelters and other facilities that we visited. The facility provides treatment to approximately 300 people per week with a wide range of physical, psychological, and mental needs.
Helping PAWS
Community organization that is a satellite of Pet Partners, which is an International Organization that provides training and therapy pet certification for animals and their handlers. Last fall the student leadership of VT Helping Paws decided to develop a separate organization that could handle scheduling of therapy team events that took place at Virginia Tech as well as at offsite locations. This allowed the organization to include community members in the leadership, and provided consistency in the management of the growing number of events where pet teams were requested. However, there remains a strong alliance between Helping PAWS and PAWSative Partners. Note that VT is no longer in the organizations name. The stipulations relating to the use of the “VT” logo have become restrictive and use of that logo is discouraged in the names of registered student or community organizations.
PAWSative Partners
PAWSative Partners is a second organization that emerged from VT Helping Paws. This is a registered student organization (RSO) that continues some of the activities of VT Helping Paws and the students plan to expand this into a University wide organization that offers a larger range of animal-human activities.