THERAPY ANIMALS OF SAN ANTONIO

2016 Annual Report

www.therapyanimalssa.org animal@therapyanimalssa.org

210-614-6734

Bringing People and Animals

Together for Healing

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From the President,

The contributions of Therapy Animals of San Antonio (TASA) volunteers are often hard

to put in words. The smiles, the tears, and the expressions of ‘thank you for being

here’ are just a small part of the overall experience.

As we complete our 27th year of service, our all-volunteer organization remains a

viable and successful animal therapy organization. This is due to the many dedicated

volunteers who give their time to TASA and most importantly, to the mission. While

years pass and the ages and settings for services vary, our mission remains the same—bringing people

and animals together for healing.

Just as we have impacted the lives of many, there are community members and others who believe in our

mission and who have supported our work through grants, donations, sponsorships, and memorials. This

support allows us to continue with our mission and to serve those who are in a vulnerable population.

This was also a difficult year as several members lost animal partners due to age and health associated

conditions. While they are no longer with us, they live on in our memories. Two of these animals were

Junior and King Tut, both well-recognized therapy cats who together combined for more than 26 years of

service and made a significant impact, touching the lives of thousands of folks. We are comforted by the

knowledge that other animals, some currently in training, will carry on their mission.

As a final thought, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the commitment of the Officers and Board

members who worked tirelessly on administrative tasks supporting our organization. While this is not the

front line, without these volunteers our ability to provide community services would be severely curtailed.

As a Board, we have made great strides in enhancing the organization and continue to move forward in

our unwavering commitment to provide services to the vulnerable populations in our communities and

to measure our progress by the standards that meet or exceed national best practices as identified in

research.

Sincerely,

Dr. Kathryn Meade, President Therapy Animals of San Antonio

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2016 Goal Attainment

Succession Planning

Engaged members in governance – circulated agendas, minutes, invited to Board meetings, made 1:1 contacts

Sent Volunteer System general announcements and notices

Aligned membership interests and competencies with opportunities

Solicited members for open positions and upcoming positions resulting in several new additions to the Board and other areas of organizational need

Electronic Policy Manual/Forms

Updated various policies within the Volunteer System for full membership access

Began discussion of transitioning old records to electronic form

Conducted Evaluator meetings to address changes in evaluations and ensure processes that support teams and current best practices

Increase consistent use of Volunteer System / capture real contributions

Orientation to system upon joining

Reminders and support to use system offered periodically

Ongoing encouragement to report all service provided!! (volunteers contribute more volunteer time than recorded)

Formalized timing for membership list updates to ensure consistent statistical analysis

Increase our connections and networks with our sponsors, facilities, and community

Holiday cards sent to facilities

Facilitated service through established member liaisons at high volume program sites

Facility Request form created and now on our website to expedite contacts with facilities requesting services

Build and maintain presence in the professional human-animal community

Affiliate member of the International Association of Human-Animal Interaction Organization (IAHAIO)

Development of several standing retractable displays to help provide education to the community during presentations or activities

Enhanced working relationships with various animal groups

Funding Successful 18th Annual Fiesta® Pooch Parade

Encourage various opportunities for donations

Participated in Big Give S.A.

GuideStar – Gold Level maintained Build and sustain membership capacity

Ongoing training support for new and renewing teams

Develop improved mentorships and contacts following classes

Promote a ‘meet the team’ to help connect and support teams

Identified additional volunteers interested in becoming an evaluator to address changing national mandates and organizational needs

Conducted three in-service trainings with outside facilitators: Doga (yoga with dogs); Hospice Presentation; Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT)

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Steve Fontenot Vice-President Always having a cheerful attitude, Steve is a TASA Officer serving on the Board as vice-president. He maintains the TASA Facebook page and is instrumental in media contacts. These sometimes require getting up early to appear on 6:00 AM newscasts! Steve was also the coordinator for our participation in The Big Give SA.

Lynda Melendez Secretary

In addition to coordinating a community based program, mentoring many of the new

teams, and evaluating prospective Pet Partner registered teams, Lynda is a TASA

Officer on the Board serving as secretary. Minutes are recorded for each of our

meetings and approved by the Board prior to submission to membership. All

members are welcome to attend Board meetings and contribute input.

Beverly Oakes Treasurer & Volunteer System Manager

Beverly is a TASA Officer serving as the long-time Treasurer. This requires many hours of careful work to ensure our finances are in order. She also manages the on-line volunteer system program. This system tracks all volunteers, their evaluations, and their hours of service. In addition, Beverly mentors new teams and completes many therapy and presentation visits throughout the year.

Eileen Gaughran

Membership Chair The overall membership continued to remain stable from 2015 with team

membership reflecting a small increase at the end of the period. As the membership

chair, Eileen’s responsibilities include tracking memberships, sending reminders,

and as necessary archiving membership information. As of the end of 2016, TASA

had 131 members (includes families and individuals) and 57 of these members were

registered Teams.

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Susan Gould

Phone Committee Chair A committee of four volunteers answered the TASA phone line throughout the year and responded to community inquiries or made referrals to the appropriate TASA member for follow-up.

Charlotte Wenger Webmaster Timely updates to our website, tracking the year’s events, providing feedback to ensure program follow-up and accuracy are Charlotte’s hallmarks. Her efforts in part, included a quarterly ‘meet the teams’ project and facilitating organizational movement to electronic document storage. Besides visiting her facility, her therapy animal, Luka, was the proud King Anbarkio for the 2016 Fiesta® Pooch Parade. Tammy Castro-Leduc Quartermaster

The creation of a new animal vest that is cooler and has pockets was overseen by Tammy in addition to monitoring the inventory of TASA shirts and patches. Tammy was instrumental in the creation and mailing of our annual Holiday cards to our facilities.

Linda Porter-Wenzlaff Education Chair Dr. Porter-Wenzlaff served in multiple roles over the course of 2016 including as a Board member, an Evaluator, a facilitator for new team placements, and as an advocate/consultant in providing guidance in policy decisions and meeting national best practice standards. Linda also wrote and designed the content for the retractable signs.

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Service Metrics Our teams provided more than 3,702 hours of animal assisted activity (AAA) and animal assisted therapy (AAT) to more than 70 facility settings in 2016, with visits to more than 32,000 people. 41 individual TASA teams (172 teams accumulated participation) participated in 42 special events including presentations, de-stressors, and community informational events. It was estimated that the group events involved contacts with more than 6,338 people. Organizational business included activities such as attending the ten board meetings and the annual meeting in November in addition to other administrative or organizational activities. TASA is committed to providing resources, training and on-going evaluation to our Teams. The process of becoming a new team is rigorous and is staged to provide developing knowledge and skills as well as progressive evaluation. Prospective teams attend an 8-hour class without their animal, a screening process focused on basic obedience tasks, a Team evaluation, a mentoring process, and a background check prior to their first visit to a facility. Each stage involves different individuals to promote a non-biased evaluation. Evaluations are consistent with national criteria and are conducted by trained evaluators. It is not uncommon for prospective teams to need support as this process unfolds or to need additional time and development to be fully successful. Our ultimate goal is a well-developed team that can engage across our communities of service with confidence and provide consistently positive human animal interactions. We deeply value the many special people and animals who are committed to community service at this level of quality and know the dedication it takes. They are a gift to us all.

3702, 53%

945, 13%

710, 10%

1649, 24%

Service Hours by Category

AAA/AAT Visits

Group Events

Classes, Screens,Evals, Mentoring

Organizational

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Kathi France & Zac Team Training Chair Therapy Team Training classes are held three times each year. The classes are interactive, and include videos and role-playing to give potential teams a true sense of what it means to serve with their therapy animal. Kathi fielded inquiries and sent out information to potential volunteers. There were more than 65 requests for application paperwork in 2016 with 31 completing the process. The applications this year included several family teams and young handlers. Thank you to our primary class instructors: Brenda Leiser, Carlynn Ricks, and Malinda Red Cloud.

Jenny Cordell Team Evaluation Chair After attending the class, the next step to becoming a team is completing the screening process. The screening is for dog teams only. While this process is now optional, it is strongly encouraged as it gives the potential teams an opportunity to see how their dog will perform in a non-familiar environment. The focus is on the basic obedience skills necessary to successfully pass a more in-depth therapy team evaluation and has been a strong predictor of success at the evaluation. Volunteers, headed by long-time member Aileen Holeman and assisted by Dee Dee McGhee, Jenny Cordell, Susan Gould and others, facilitated

four screening processes for 34 potential teams. The evaluation process is coordinated by the Evaluation Chair, Jenny Cordell. Therapy teams must re-evaluate at least every two years, a process that includes a veterinarian completing a health check on the animal and the volunteer passing a background check. Thus, evaluations involve both new prospective teams in addition to teams that are due to renew. All teams must be current in registration to visit in the community. Evaluations are volunteer intensive. Each morning and afternoon shift typically requires 10 volunteers (4 actors one of which is a male, a neutral dog team, two evaluators, two office staff and a photographer). During 2016, 41 volunteers worked at least one and many worked more than one shift. Thank you to our Evaluators: Lynda Melendez and Amy Gamber (TASA’s Pet Partner evaluators) and Linda Porter-Wenzlaff and Cindy Page (TASA evaluators). There were five evaluations conducted in 2016. While dogs dominate the majority of the teams, the year included three cat teams and one guinea pig team. A total of 53 teams evaluated with a success rate of 77%. The number of evaluations represented an increase from the 41 completed in 2015. Of those successfully passing the evaluation, 22 (~54%) were new teams and 19 (~46%) were renewing teams.

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Animal Assisted Activity and Animal Assisted Therapy The primary mission of Therapy Animals of San Antonio remains the provision of animal assisted activity (AAA) and animal assisted therapy (AAT) to persons across San Antonio and the surrounding counties. The latter involves specific treatment goals identified and documented by a professional for each visit while the former is more spontaneous, without specific treatment goals, and is often described as a “meet and greet” contact. Two of our teams Emma (Ginny Flanders) and Bailey (Donna Schweitzer) both earned their American Kennel Club (AKC) therapy dog distinguished titles in 2016. The title requires documentation of 400 visits.

“This young lady came up to me yesterday while we were doing a presentation/booth. She told me she was the aunt to a little boy that Tessa and I had visited in Hem/Oncology at UHS not too long ago. She told me the little boy had passed away and Tessa was part of their memories with him. She showed me a video on her phone of Tessa and him interacting together. He was all smiles and at one point picked up Tessa's two front paws and pretended to dance with her. As I watched it and recalled the moments, tears came to my eyes. It is hard for me to comprehend sometimes what a privilege we have of sharing in moments like these.” Beverly & Tessa “I think people often want to read about a “miracle” visit, but for me, the routine visit is just as special. One nurse always greets us with a “Good morning Luka,” and when another staff member sees us he says, “It's Luka day!” One resident likes the softness of Luka's ears and always strokes them. Another one gives her a neck massage. Some tell me they were just thinking about us and wondering when we would get there. A couple of others had bad experiences with dogs in the past and were initially a bit hesitant to pet Luka, but now they're as enthusiastic as life-long dog lovers. Unfortunately, in the age group we visit death is not uncommon. In August, the woman we spent the most time with died. For the next 3 weeks, when we got to her door Luka would sit, look at me, and refuse to budge until we went inside so she could see that her friend wasn't there. Luka shows this same loyalty to all those we visit.” Charlotte and Luka

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Collaborative Programming with the Community

FACILITY COORDINATORS

Ginny Flanders

Lynda Melendez Beverly Oakes

Mary Kay Stewart Steve Fontenot

Therapy Animals of San Antonio supports several community based programs wherein an experienced member coordinates the program team selection, training, and services of multiple Therapy Teams to provide human-animal interactions to specific populations in a program specific manner. Ronald McDonald Houses - serving children and their families during times of stress and separation from their local support systems. Three locations are currently served. Cyndi Taylor Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center - promoting the rehabilitation and well-being of offenders and their families in a residential setting. University Health System Paws Up Program - serving Pediatrics and other areas with identified need including visitors and staff. The hospital considers our Beverly Oakes and Junior to be the ones who started pet therapy there and who helped it develop into the program it is now. Warrior and Family Support Center - working with wounded warriors and their families as well as visiting the inpatients at San Antonio Military Medical Center. Red Cross - serving military and community. Children’s Bereavement Center, Children’s Shelter - programming for a very vulnerable population with the mission “to foster healing for grieving children and youth, their families and the community” and “restoring innocence and strengthening families” respectively. Our animals put smiles on the children’s faces and give them a warm, furry body to hug.

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StoryTails, a Literacy Program for Children

Pat Storlie StoryTails Chair Our StoryTails Program focuses on increasing the reading skill of younger school age children, supporting literacy through the message that reading can be fun, and promoting overall life-skill development. The process involves the student reading an age appropriate book to our animal team in settings that include schools and libraries. Teams attend a program specific training class prior to providing this service in addition to being a registered team. One class was held in

2016 with nine teams attending.

The combination of the loving acceptance of the animal, lowered anxiety and blood pressure, and the enjoyment of the animal interaction allows reading to become fun and non-stressful. Research has documented measurable grade level reading skill improvements made by students involved in animal assisted reading programs. Qualified teams made 113 visits focusing on these youths in 2016. We continue to have more requests for the reading programming than we have teams.

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Presentations and Group Activities

Malinda Red Cloud Presentations & Group Activity Chair Therapy Animals of San Antonio continued our strong community presence in 2016 by our involvement in general presentations, special events, and educational programs to groups with specific areas of focus. This included attendance at citywide animal events such as the Bark in the Park event where we provided community members education and information about therapy animals, their benefits and our organization. We also participated in several parades, military ceremonies, and university de-stressors to help students manage mid-terms and

finals, and other general presentations. Additionally, grant funding has allowed the purchase of several retractable displays that will be used to visually display many of the benefits of animal assisted activities and therapy during presentations to community groups.

The 2016 totals included 12 presentations, 13 de-stressors, 5 parades, 5 booths/information tables, and 7 other general presentations or activities. The 42 events were supported by 41 individual teams (172 teams accumulated participation) with approximately 6,338 people visited in more than 90 hours of contact. It is noted that all Teams adhere to a 2-hour time limit at activities to ensure our animals are not overly taxed so that they also enjoy the activities as well as to be consistent with the national Pet Partner standard and international best practices.

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One of the challenges of a large volunteer organization with members who reside in multiple Texas counties and across San Antonio (the 7th largest city in the United States) is ensuring that our team members remain current with new health policies that impact our work and stay up-to-date with national and international research in human-animal relationships. In-service seminars and events such as the Animal Cracker’s picnic and annual meeting provide opportunities to share information. We have learned about dog food quality and safety, animal massage, grooming, hospice care, training, HIPAA, etc. and practiced DOGA (Yoga with our dogs). These quality programs are hard for many of our volunteers to attend due to driving distances and time availability. The 2017 goals include sharing more information by reaching more members through electronic modalities.

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Annual Awards

The award’s selection is a very challenging task as there are many individuals who deserve recognition each year. The members below were selected for 2016 based on their contributions to the community and to the organization.

Volunteer of the Year

Lynda Melendez (Chesney, Pax, Grace*)

Visiting Award

Graham Bishop (Victoria) Visiting Award

Donna Schweitzer (Bailey)

Versatile Award

David Newman (Rex*)

Versatile Award Liz Shively (Faith)

Dedication Award Lucy Destin (Cisco)

Dedication Award Bonnie Mayers (Jack)

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Power of the Team Award Steve & Kassia Fontenot (Bellin)

Rising Star Award Martha Whitney (Dixie*)

Above & Beyond Awards

Melissa Allen-Jones (Mylie, Maggie)

Jenny Cordell (Roxxii)

Alicia Thompson (Isis)

Charlotte Wenger (Luka)

Malinda Red Cloud (Bonnie)

Beverly Oakes (Tessa, Junior*)

* animals who crossed over the “rainbow bridge” in 2016

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Financial Report As an all-volunteer organization, Therapy Animals of San Antonio is extremely fortunate to have a stable financial situation as a result of good fiscal management and the Fiesta® Pooch Parade. We are a GuideStar Exchange Gold Participant. Our income is primarily derived from:

the Fiesta® Pooch Parade – our primary fundraiser membership dues therapy team fees grants, donations, memorial tributes

The 2016 income reflects a very successful Pooch Parade that included great weather for families to attend and an increase in community sponsorships. Additionally, Therapy Animals of San Antonio received a $10,000 grant in 2016. A portion of the grant money was used to increase our visibility of our mission in the community in addition to designating a training fund to support renewing and potential teams. We hope that over time we will be able to recruit and support additional team members who will help reduce the number of facilities that have requested and that are currently waiting for a team to become available. Many of these waiting facilities are in underserved areas of the community.

2013 2014 2015 2016

Income $41,695.53 $59,950.41 $48,220.32 67,995.12

Expenses $42,930.00 $43,841.14 $42,557.74 40,550.28

Variance ($1,234.47) $16,109.27 $5,662.58 27,444.84

($10,000.00)$0.00

$10,000.00$20,000.00$30,000.00$40,000.00$50,000.00$60,000.00$70,000.00$80,000.00

Budget Reconciliation 2013 - 2016

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2016 Fiesta® Pooch Parade …. 18 Years Strong

The annual Fiesta® Pooch Parade winds its way through the tree lined streets of Alamo Heights the last Saturday of Fiesta®. A family-friendly event, educational activities, informational vendors, and a costume contest precede the parade. Congratulations to Luka, selected as this year’s King Anbarkio. The parade arrangements involve a tremendous amount of volunteer time over the entire year to ensure that all permits, sponsorships, insurance, advertisements, and other needs are met. Melissa Allen-Jones and Alicia Thompson headed this year’s effort. Expenses for the parade in 2016 were just under $12,000. Each year a design is selected that is used on 1,200 T-shirts that parade registrants receive. The 2016 T-shirt design was created by John & Lindsey Garland. As our primary fundraiser, the sponsorships of and community engagement in the Fiesta® Pooch Parade continue to be critical to our ability to offer quality services following national best practices to the vulnerable members of our community. We are profoundly grateful for the many opportunities that this support provides. Viva Fiesta® !!! Luka - King Anbarkio

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Thank you to our top sponsors for 2016

18th Annual Fiesta® Pooch Parade

North Park Subaru

Grande Communications, Natures Goodness, Petco Foundation, Petco, Woof Gang Bakery & Grooming, Purina Acosta Properties (McDonalds), Beverly & Dan Oakes, Frost Bank, HEB, Kriser’s Natural Pet, Kubena Pediatrics, Loop 410 Veterinary Hospital, Pet Supplies Plus, Raising Cane’s, St. Luke’s Episcopal School, State Farm Insurance-Jacqui Lugar, The Forum at Lincoln Heights, University Health System, Wag More Dog Store

See additional sponsorship & logo information at

http://www.therapyanimalssa.org/about/fiesta-pooch-parade/parade-2016.html

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In Memory Of Those Who Passed in 2016