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Midwest FurFest is pleased to welcome our charity for 2008: Rainbow Animal Assisted Therapy!

Rainbow AAT was founded in 1987 to assist the therapeutic needs of special needs children. Since their humble beginnings with just seven dog owners, Rainbow now service the city of Chicago and the surrounding six-county metropolitan area, operating over 75 programs and reaching more than 1000 children per month.

Among their many programs, Rainbow AAT uses trained and certified therapy dogs to help hospital patients with occupational/physical therapy, bedside and waiting room visitations, and in-patient and out-patient psychiatric therapy. The dogs also go to schools to help with special and remedial education, and to residential centers to help with recreational and group therapy. Rainbow also offers “Read to the Dogs”, giving a child a nonjudgmental environment and a willing and attentive listener, as well as classes designed to help children overcome their fear of dogs and to teach dog safety.

Another important program that Rainbow AAT offers is crisis response. After the terrible tragedy at Northern Illinois University earlier this year, several of Rainbow’s members took their dogs to the campus – not to perform, not to talk, just to be there for the students.

Rainbow Animal Assisted Therapy will have a table as well as several of their therapy dogs at Midwest FurFest. They will be showing off all the fine work they do, and will be happy to answer any questions you might have. They will also be presenting several panels to talk about various aspects of their organization. Don’t miss our Charity Auction, where the always-entertaining Uncle Kage will auction off donated items to help raise money for Rainbow AAT. To find out how you can donate items to the Charity Auction, see our web page at http://www.furfest.org/2008/mff2008-charity.html.