Bunny Besties mission is to provide standardized high-quality Animal Assisted Interactions (AAI) with rabbits to support the emotional wellness of our community, with an emphasis on serving children, adolescents, and young adults as well as those facing challenging life transitions.

Bunny Besties vision is to enhance lives through Animal Assisted Interactions (AAI) with rabbits.

A Message from the chair of the Bunny Besties Board

One might wonder why a physician is passionate about a non-profit devoted to human-rabbit interactions.
​As a retired psychiatrist and university administer who devoted his career to addressing student health, I am intimately aware that diminished mental health is the number one public health challenge facing college students today as well as a leading health concern for the general population. I have also witnessed the tremendous value of unique and creative programming that supplements traditional responses to this current crisis. Bunny Besties’ is a perfect example of harnessing the powerful experience of the human-animal bond to help college students and others in the community adjust to stressful transitions.

Bunny Besties provides the rabbits to the Pet Away Worry and Stress (PAWS), a program I co-founded with program coordinator Tanya Bailey on the Twin Cities Campus of the University of Minnesota. PAWS is the largest such campus program in the world. Although many campuses have opportunities to interact with animals during the heightened stress of midterms and final exams, PAWS makes drop-in sessions available four days a week when school is in session. Included within these opportunities are bunny “hoppy hours” with bunny meditation on Wednesdays. Evaluations and anecdotal comments repeatedly demonstrate the power of these experiences to reduce student stress and help manage mental illness. Several students have even attributed the program to having saved their lives. In addition to the PAWS program, Bunny Besties provides similar experiences to those in a homeless shelter, a hospice, and multiple senior living settings. Bunny Besties also helps children learn to read with bunny assisted reading in Hennepin County libraries.

Bunny Besties represents a creative public-health approach to stress reduction and mental health. Please explore our website to learn more about Bunny Besties programming, all volunteer staff, and adorable bunnies. And please consider supporting us if you like what you see.

​Gary Christenson, M.D.

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Presidential Volunteer Service Award

Bunny Besties is a proud certifying organization for the Presidential Volunteer Service Award. The PVSA program utilizes two groups of organizations to certify service awards.  Certifying organizations or CO's are an integral part of the PVSA process to recognize outstanding citizens in our communities.  

How did Bunny Besties become a CO one might ask?  A CO is an organization that has been granted authority to approve volunteer service hours.  This prestigious honor is given through an application and review process to outstanding organizations.  We are proud to be an Official Certifying Organization of the Presidential Volunteer Service Award.

Please apply with us to become a volunteer!  Click on the apply button up top of our page.

therapy rabbits that are too cute to miss

Bunny Besties was awarded the prestigious Presidential Volunteer Service Award for our volunteer service within our community.  This gold level award requires that our organization puts forth more than three thousand volunteer hours into volunteer service.  We have been awarded the Presidential Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) in 2017 and 2018.  Many of our volunteers also won individual awards for all the individual hours accumulated working with us in service to our mission in our hometown.

Bunny Besties rabbits focus on our program at the University of Minnesota where we work in the PAWS program and Boynton mental health and focus on spreading friendship, joy and the importance of mental wellness.  We also do community outreach working in the Twin Cities.  Our Bunny Besties rabbits are fully vetted, behavior certified and come with full liability insurance up to $2 million. Our human volunteers are Bunny Bestie Certified, background checked and committed to our mission and vision.  When completing this extensive process they are considered Bunny Besties Ambassadors.

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