"The unconditional love of a dog is powerful healing"

Emotional Support

An emotional support animal is a type of animal that provides comfort to help relieve a symptom or effect of a person's disability. Under the governing law, an emotional support animal is not a pet.

Therapy

A therapy dog is a dog that is trained to provide affection, comfort and support to people, often in settings such as hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, schools, libraries, hospices, or disaster areas.

Service Detection

A detection dog or sniffer dog is a dog that is trained to use its senses to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs, wildlife scat, currency, blood, and contraband electronics such as illicit mobile phones.

Our Animal Assistance Programs

The Flying with Air Women Survivor animal assistance program has three separate pathways reflecting the three types of dog assistance programs. The development of these programs are outlined below:

Emotional Support Dogs 

We understand healing is a lifelong journey. Additionally, we understand dogs can provide tremendous healing in a way most therapy, medication and other mental health services cannot. Because of these reasons, we are wanting to provide the opportunity for survivors who have completed our rehabilitation therapy program to be able to adopt an emotional support dog. 

Individuals who have completed the program are now in a state of mind as well as have a solid foundation in their life to be able to add to their family. It is essential that survivors have financial independence as well as security for this program. The survivor will need to demonstrate they are capable of providing the needed resources for the dog including but not limited to shelter, veterinarian visits, and food. This is why it is offered at completion. 

An emotional support dog provides a therapeutic benefit to the survivor through companionship,psychiatric disabilities and other mental impairments. This includes the reduction of triggering episodes, panic attacks and stress. The underlying reason why we need to provide the opportunity for survivors to receive an emotional support dog is to prevent the regression of their healing. Examples of regression of their healing may include returning to the mindset of a victim, becoming a victim of human trafficking or other violate relationships, or even suicide.  

We plan to obtain emotional support dogs through partnering with local humane and animal shelters in the survivors geographic area. In this way we are able to assess the right temperament and connection between the animal and survivor. When placing survivors with animals from shelters we are better able to know which dogs are better suited for individuals who have received trauma in their history. The end result is two survivors, the dog and their owner, are able to move forward in their healing. It is the goal of Flying with Air Women Survivors to be able to properly license the chosen animal support dog as well as provide initial six week dog training. 

It will be a requirement of the survivor to follow-up with Flying with Air Women Survivors to evaluate the relationship with the assigned emotional support dog as well as partake in a psychological assessment survey for evaluating their well-being with the animal. This information will help us make our program better for the survivor as well as future survivors interested in the opportunity. 

Therapy Dogs

Therapy dogs have an enormous value to survivors of complex trauma. It is our plan to house two therapy dogs in which they can provide comfort and safety to survivors progressing through the mental health services program. Responsibilities of these dogs will be detecting and responding to soothe survivors experiencing emotional outbursts, panic attacks, PTSD episodes as well as jion survivors on their private and group therapy sessions. 

In the beginning of the healing pathway, we have noticed that some survivors best respond to a trained therapy animal than a human. This may be because their trauma is associated with a human injustice. Having a therapy dog accompany survivor sessions will provide comfort, security and a calm atmosphere. These additions to therapy sessions will allow for a higher quality of treatment. 

Service & Detection Dogs

We understand the importance of service and detection dogs in the aid of rescue for human trafficking victims. At this time we do not plan to house service and detection dogs. It is our goal to be able to help provide our surplus resources to law enforcement or private foundation rescue dogs. These resources could include food, toys, bedding, etc.

We are thankful and grateful for all donors, partnerships and sponsors.

While financial sponsors are very helpful, we are just as much in need of various types of professionals and companies who can provide in-kind resources. Flying with Air Women Survivors is seeking both partnerships and sponsors to unite with us in the development, implementation and outreach of this program. We are seeking both financial assistance as well as in-kind donations that fit the needs of the program.

The types of partnerships and sponsors needed:

  • Financial Sponsors
  • Businesses that can provide Animal Care Resources
  • Animal Shelters & Humane Societies
  • Trained Veterinarians
  • Dog Trainers
  • Marketing and Public Relation Partners
  • Legal Aid Professionals