Pam Osbourne

Pam Osbourne received her Bachelor’s Degree from Northern Illinois University and her teaching credentials from Iowa Wesleyan College before beginning a long career in the publishing business. She established a publishing company which compiled the first database of women and minority-owned businesses developed in the United States. She also started a company which manufactured and sold an original product she created for children, “The Restaurant Survival Kit.” Pam and her husband, Rick developed “Pull Your Own Weight”, a program designed to prevent childhood obesity and related problems. She has over 30 years of writing, editing, and publishing experience.

She edited and published Animal Assisted Therapy Activities to Motivate and Inspire in 2009. She is the author of "Connectons: Animal Assisted Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias," which has just been re-titled “A Dog Takes a Bite Out of Alzheimer’s.”

Osbourne’s extensive experience as an Animal Assisted Therapy handler coupled with her simple and complete descriptions of directed activities provide an exceptional resource to anyone interested in learning new, innovative techniques for this therapeutic approach.

Pam and her therapy dog, Rufus, first became registered with Rainbow Animal Assisted Therapy in March 2007. They continue to successfully complete the required annual testing for registration with Rainbow. More recently, they became registered with the Alliance of Therapy Dogs animal assisted therapy group in order to serve a wider variety of populations. In the twelve years they’ve worked as an Animal Assisted Therapy team, schools, hospitals, libraries, and senior/memory care communities are among the many facilities they have served.

When Pam and Rufus aren’t delighting residents at Villa St. Benedict or listening to kids read to Rufus at the library, she can often be found at the gym where she can deadlift more than her body weight. Long marathon runs have given her plenty of time to strategize treatment options and ways to make the connections that are so critical to successful Animal Assisted Therapy interventions.