Animals used in therapeutic contexts must be protected from the welfare costs of repetitive human contact, and ethical standards ensure therapy animals benefit from rather than suffer through their work.
Therapy animal welfare is an often-overlooked dimension of animal-assisted intervention. The focus on human benefit can mask welfare harm to animal participants. Stress responses in therapy animals — yawning, lip licking, attempts to move away — are welfare signals that require trained observer attention. Overworked therapy animals, inadequate rest periods, and handlers who do not recognize stress signals create welfare harm justified by the good done for humans. Ethical animal-assisted therapy requires genuine attention to animal welfare including rest protocols, stress signal recognition, and animal agency in ending sessions.