Snout in a Book

With the help of some attentive, well-trained dogs, children across the country are learning to read

By Barbara Geehan
CTW Features

It all began in 1999, when Sandi Martin began to wonder if therapy animals might help kids read. As a nurse and also a board member of the Intermountain Therapy Animals group, she watched animals encourage people to push themselves in the medical arena. Might they also help children with reading problems? As it turns out: definitely. Today, there are hundreds of Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.) teams in 49 states across the U.S. as well as in Canada, England, Italy and even Finland. Just recently, the program was invited to visit and teach R.E.A.D. in Japan, but it first needs funding to translate the sessions. “If we ever wondered if we were going to be a flash in the pan, that’s over,” says executive director Kathy Klotz. “ We just keep steadily growing.” Here is how it works: When a young boy, for example, is learning to read out loud in the classroom, he feels the spotlight. He gets nervous and embarrassed if he stumbles over a word, and some children -- especially if there already are behavioral or performance issues -- decide reading is too hard and just disengaging from the whole process. This program has a child read one-on-one to an animal. Most often it is a dog, but R.E.A.D. has some cats and even a parrot. The animals are trained to “study” the page, to help turn the pages with a nose or a paw, and to stay attentive to the child. The dog, in this case, can be better than a human, because it never judges the child. “Dogs always present their whole selves in any situation,” says the R.E.A.D website (www.therapyanimals.org <http://www.therapyanimals.org>). “No pretense. That kind of presence is very compelling for people in any therapeutic or learning situation.” The dog’s handler also learns special skills, such as when to support the child’s efforts or when to speak for the dog. For example, the handler can tell the child that the dog has never heard that word before; can you tell him what it means? Merilee Kelley, chairman of READing Paws, an affiliate of R.E.A.D. with teams in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Arizona, first learned about the program while at a Delta Society convention in 2003. Thrilled to find another avenue for her therapy dogs, even though they already were visiting patients in hospitals and nursing homes, she was trained by R.E.A.D. and began the affiliate. Today, READing Paws sends 50 teams out to schools, libraries, bookstores and events to teach kids to read. Kelley and her three therapy dogs teach 200 children a year. She has a golden retriever and two “designer dogs” as she calls them, a cross of lab and retriever. One of them, Erica “is not a dog,” says Kelley. “She has a zipper, and inside there is a little human.” Kelley says the seven-year-old is “the most intuitive dog I have even worked with.” She has helped patients with Alzheimer’s, the disabled, and “she is rock solid, calm as a cucumber.” At most sessions, Kelley and one of the dogs will go to the classroom to get the child. The dog carries the book in her mouth, and using a doubled-handled leash the child walks and gives commands to the dog as they make their way to the session room. “You cannot believe how empowering that is,” says Kelley. “Other children see them in the hall, and say ‘wow, she has a dog.’” Kelley recalls one child Erica worked with -- a first-grader who just couldn’t stop moving. He had major outbursts the first 10 minutes in the room, and Erica just sat quietly. Soon, the boy, finding no reaction to his behavior, would sit near Erica and settle down. “The teacher said that when he would come back to class he was so incredibly relaxed. It was like going to yoga,” says Kelley. And through the school year, his reading skills and behavior improved. Another young girl was so scared of Erica that she would not enter the room. She was finally persuaded to read from the hall. The next session, she moved to the doorway and then sat by the door, whispering the book to the dog. Half way through the school year, she was stroking Erica as she read to her. By the end, not only were her reading skills better, she was no longer afraid of animals. She persuaded her parents to get a dog of their own, and she still e-mails Erica about her progress. “Erica gets e-mails all the time,” says Kelley (www.READingpaws.org). “She has gotten invitations to dinner and even a report card.” Graduate students from Vanderbilt are doing their thesis on the impact of children with learning disabilities reading to dogs. “We know there is a benefit, now it will be measured,” says Kelley. More on the R.E.A.D. program and links to numerous literacy sites can be found at its Web site (www.therapyanimals.org).

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