Northern Lights Therapy Dogs

Our Program

When words fail, dogs do not

Therapy Dog at School

NLTD trains and certifies volunteer AACR teams who provide comfort and resilience across hospitals, schools, senior care, crisis events, and more. Teams are screened, rigorously trained, and tested bi-annually to meet national gold-standard expectations.  

Volume doesn’t drive our mission — trust does.
The numbers simply show the need — over 25,000 visited statewide in 2025.  

Well-behaved dogs are only the starting point; readiness for AAI and AACR work is developed over time.  Our program includes thoughtful screening, evaluation, and progressive training before team placement. We intentionally curate each team’s onboarding to ensure safety, consistency, and long-term success.

What We Do

Northern Lights Therapy Dogs provides Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) and advanced Animal-Assisted Crisis Response (AACR) throughout Gallatin County and beyond. Our certified dog-handler teams operate through a tiered training and testing model to support individuals across a spectrum of need—from companionship and emotional regulation to trauma response and critical incident care.

Who We Serve

Northern Lights Therapy Dogs supports people across the lifespan who are experiencing stress, trauma, isolation, or significant life challenges. Our teams serve:

  • Seniors facing isolation, memory loss, cognitive decline, and end-of-life needs
  • Students in general education, literacy programs, special education, and neurodivergent classrooms
  • Children and families navigating disability, developmental challenges, or behavioral and emotional needs
  • Healthcare patients and staff coping with medical stress, burnout, or extended hospital stays
  • Community members involved in legal, forensic, or victim-witness processes
  • First Responders and public safety teams under acute operational stress
  • Individuals and communities impacted by crisis, including:
    • suicides
    • school crises
    • assaults
    • mass-casualty events
    • line-of-duty deaths

Our work spans everyday therapeutic support through full AACR crisis deployment, ensuring care that meets people exactly where they are—whether in classrooms, hospitals, senior centers, courtrooms, or active crisis environments.

Services We Provide

Tier I — Senior Care (AAI)
Comfort, connection, and dignity for seniors and memory-care residents through visits that reduce loneliness, ease anxiety, and support end-of-life wellbeing.

Tier II — Integrative Intervention (Advanced AAI)
Emotional and behavioral support in schools, healthcare, and youth settings. Services include stress mitigation, early crisis intervention, special-needs classroom support, literacy engagements, dog-care life-skills training, presence at sporting events, and morale support for educators and healthcare staff.

Tier III — Advanced Crisis Care (AACR)
Deployment to acute trauma events including suicides, school crises, mass casualty incidents, child forensic and court environments, line-of-duty deaths, and First Responder critical incidents. Tier III teams provide grounding, psychological first-aid, stress detection, and specialized scenting to locate individuals in silent crisis.

Make a plan ahead of a disaster for your full family – furry members included   https://www.ready.gov/pets 

Animal Assisted Crisis Response (AACR)

AACR

NLTD Cadet Puppy Program

Developing tomorrow’s therapy dogs through strategic, age-appropriate training.

Curious Puppy

The NLTD Cadet Program identifies promising young dogs and guides them through a progressive development pathway that builds confidence, resilience, social skills, and facility-readiness for future therapy work. Cadets participate in short, structured senior-center outings under close supervision to promote positive early exposure and create a pipeline of exceptional therapy dogs for NLTD’s Senior Care, Children’s Outreach, and Crisis/Trauma programs.

 

Cadets

 

4-H

Northern Lights Therapy Dogs is proud to offer one of the nation’s very few certified Therapy Dog Projects for 4-H, delivered in partnership with Gallatin County Extension 4-H.  

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This groundbreaking youth pathway gives students a serious, structured, and highly rewarding route into professional-grade therapy dog work.
Our 4-H Therapy Dog members have demonstrated exceptional commitment—building strong dog-handler teams, completing 4-H dog obedience requirements, advancing through NLTD’s screening and preparatory trainings, 4-H Therapy Dog Bookwork and and logging extensive training and volunteer hours as all adult volunteers within NLTD do across schools, senior care, healthcare, and public programs. Many have also earned project awards at fair, served as youth ambassadors, and taken advantage of unique educational opportunities that would not exist without this partnership.

We are equally proud of our former student members who continue their service by transitioning into NLTD’s Tier II training and certification process—entering the world of “adult-style” Animal-Assisted Intervention and Crisis Response volunteering with professionalism and maturity.  Watching these members challenge us all to be more, be better, follow their leadership- what a humbling privilege to partner with such a caliber of young adults.

This pipeline reflects what NLTD values most: excellence, service, compassion, teamwork, and the belief that young people—with the supportive training, mentorship, and joy—can rise to remarkably high standards and have a real impact in their community.