The Working Animals Federation of Australia

is a centre of support for working animals and their people.

By connecting working animals, their handlers, trainers, relevant professionals, allied health practitioners and the Australian community we aim to increase welfare standards for humans and animals alike by offering support across the industry.

Working Animals Positively Change Lives. Let’s Change theirs!

Working animals support humans to live their best life by providing services such as assistance, therapy, detection and education support.

Working animals are essential to the livelihoods of their handlers and their communities, often displaying levels of endurance that far exceed that of any working human. This can mean that their health, wellbeing and other basic needs become secondary to the needs of their handlers and the safety of their community. We aim to change this as working animal, handler and community safety must be considered on equal footing by ensuring best practice is the norm. Together, we can make this a reality.

We do this through

Offering Australia’s first, gold-standards accreditation system for Working

Animals and their humans certifying our members as top quality practitioners

Supporting public access rights and animal welfare through a variety of initiatives

Providing free education professional development to our members

Profits planned to fund further research and national education initiatives

All of our support areas are accessible by becoming a member of our site

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What is a working animal?

Simply put, a working animal has a job. Working animals may also be pets, but their primary function is not. Working Animals are vital to Australia.

We define working animals to be

We have set a Gold Standard for Working Animals

We have established a set of ethical and professional standards that provide a community benchmark for the treatment, training and support of working animals and their humans.
Our standards aim to create uniformity across all stakeholders working with working animals to ensure their handlers, trainers and other community stakeholders are supported to be able to value their working animals and provide them with the best possible lives.
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Our Credentials

Our credentialing process certifies that the relevant party (the handler, animal or trainer) has met the standards
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How we make a difference

  • We advocate for the rights of working animals, their handlers and trainers.
  • We educate all working animal stakeholders on best practices to support the animals.
  • We connect the people working with working animals to each other and the relevant information they need to know!

Become a member and benefit!

We offer memberships for individuals and organisations, join us to make the world of working with animals better!

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