Therapy Dog Reading Program

Therapy Dog Reading Program for Kids at the Library Thursday, October 30, 6:30 - 8:00 PM Saturday, November 15, 10:30 - Noon In the Therapy Dog Reading program, a child can read out loud from a favorite book to a specially trained, calm, friendly therapy dog. It helps the children develop self esteem, as well as improving their enunciation, vocabulary, and expressive oral reading skills. Children may sign up for 15 minute slots to read to the dogs, by coming in to the Children’s Department, or calling 385-4165. The therapy dogs are friendly, non-judgmental, and good listeners. Reading to the dogs is especially meaningful to many children, including:

• Children who may feel nervous reading aloud to adults
• Children whose literacy skills may not be at grade level
• Children who have reading or speech difficulties
• Children from homes where another language is the dominant one, who are learning English
• Children who are afraid of other dogs find that these dogs are so very gentle and move so slowly, that they feel very safe with our therapy dogs.

Then there are the children who are voracious readers and just love to read aloud to an appreciative audience! Our founding member of the Therapy Dog reading program is Sue Monroe. She comes on a regular basis with Paddington, a certified therapy Newfoundland and Lola, his “little” sister Newfie, a therapy dog in training. They are certified through R.E.A.D. Reading Education Assistance Dogs, www.therapyanimals.org/read Sue was our first, and for many years our only volunteer with a therapy dog. She began coming to our library in 2004 with her award winning Newfoundland, Salle. Over the years we have celebrated Salle’s birthday each year with a party for all the children who came to know and love her, and when the sad time came for Salle to depart this world, some of the reading children attended, and spoke at, her memorial service. Now we celebrate Paddington’s and Lola’s birthdays with parties in the late spring or early summer, and Paddington has followed in Salle’s paw prints and taken up his big sister’s proud position as chief Newfoundland therapy dog in the Children’s Room, teaching his little sister and apprentice, Lola, through example, how to charm the children with his winning personality and good listening skills. Sue has a very gentle, hands off approach and lets the child form a relationship with Paddington, only intervening to facilitate the bonding. Call 385-4165 to get the latest schedule for Paddington.