The human-animal bond provides genuine mental health benefits — but welfare must be maintained as a genuine priority rather than as a secondary concern to human benefit.
The therapeutic benefits of human-animal interaction are genuine and scientifically well-documented — but these benefits create an ethical obligation to ensure that the animals involved are genuinely willing participants with high welfare, not merely tools for human benefit. Therapy animals working in hospitals, schools, and care homes face significant stressors: unfamiliar environments, unpredictable handling from strangers, crowding, and lack of control over their social interactions. The welfare of therapy animals requires active monitoring through validated welfare assessment, genuine rest opportunities, and freedom to disengage from interactions. A therapy animal showing signs of stress or anxiety is not achieving the mutual benefit that ethical animal-assisted therapy requires.