Our commitment to mental health

At Harmony New Beginnings, we believe that healing can be found through animal therapy.  We know that animals can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, ease loneliness, encourage exercise and playfulness, and even improve your cardiovascular health. Caring for an animal can help children grow up more secure and active. Pets also provide valuable companionship for older adults. Perhaps most importantly, though, a pet can add real joy and unconditional love to your life.
That’s why Mental Health is at the core of much of our work.  We’re proud to focus on behavioral health in our daily work.  Our efforts can be seen in the following programs:

• We help aging seniors, many with Alzheimer’s, with "animal therapy" - we have dogs and horses and other animals that we train as emotional support animals.  They come to us or we take the smaller animals to the nursing homes and hospice locations. Dollars donated to this program go into the training and care of the animals as well as the travel costs, etc. 

 

• We have hospice-specific program where we take pets from patients going into hospice and put them into especially trained foster homes who take the animals to see the hospice patients any time they need time with their beloved pet and then when the patient passes, we heal the animals and usually roll them into our animal therapy program. 

 

• We have a service animal program for people suffering from PTSD where we provide all the food and training and veterinary care for them so that they can have the service animals.  During covid, a lot of them lost jobs, income, even homes, so we've increased the amount we put into that program substantially in recent years.

 

• We have a youth program that brings young people who have come to us mostly from the sheriff’s office - they have been in abuse situations, survivors of assault, some have been rescued from trafficking or child abduction, etc.  They have animal healing time and work with us so that we can train them on how to train service dogs.  It gives them time with kind adults and animals while learning how to provide service and value to others.

 

• We have a partnership with animal control in several cities/counties that when they go into a home where there is a clear mental health issue, we come out and do training for those individuals and teach them how to care for the animals and how to handle a service dog so that they don't get arrested for abuse or neglect.  It isn't intentional on their part, many of them can't get out of bed due to severe depression and in turn forget to feed their animals, etc.  We show them how to set manual feeders, etc.  We also become part of their "extended support system" meaning they can call us if they need help getting food because they can't get to the store, etc. 

  

• For law enforcement and shelter staff, we offer a compassion fatigue program.  Because we are a no-kill rescue, we receive intakes from many law officers and requests from shelter employees for animals they truly believe need a second chance.  Because these people are dealing with pain, suffering and abuse daily, they need to know there is a support system to help them when needed.  We provide that opportunity for them to provide that second chance.  We also offer them animal healing time at the rescue when needed.

​There is always more work to be done, especially in the mental health space but we are proud to contribute in the ways we can.   We appreciate your assistance in helping us make a difference each and every day.
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