By Jason Winsky
Left to right: Ariel, Destiny and Miguel Ortega look at the pictures in Dr. Seuss’s “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” as they take turns reading to Schotzi the dog.
Today’s children live in a fast pace world. Television, video games and the Internet are always encouraging them to speed up, to move faster. Patience, it seems, is no longer a virtue.
Children are now learning to read in ever expanding class sizes. A key component of their education in reading is learning to do so out loud, to an audience. But some students fall behind; perhaps they learn at a slower level, or sometimes stutter over words. Some kids have no problem reading at all; they simply lack the confidence to read out loud to their peers.
The Pima County Public Library System has a program to assist children of all ages who love to read, called “Read to a Dog,” during which kids can select a book and read it out loud to a trained therapy dog. The dogs, although they come in all shapes and sizes, share one thing: a love of children.
At a recent session of the program at the Dusenberry Library (at River/Craycroft), Schotzi, a large poodle, was making new friends and hearing new stories. Schotzi, which is German for “sweety,” is a specially trained therapy dog who loves nothing more than listening to children. “This program gives children who are beginning to read a chance to read to an audience that doesn’t judge or correct them, it can transform a child who is shy about reading out loud,” said Meg Beer, the Children’s Librarian at the Dusenberry Library.
Erin Provancha, Schotzi’s trainer and handler, works at Garvins Divine Canines, and explained that therapy dogs are certified through a group called the Delta Society. She has taken Schotzi to classrooms, libraries, hospitals and juvenile detention centers.
A recent study conducted by Tufts University found that “students who read to the dogs experienced a slight gain in their reading ability and improvement in their attitudes toward reading, as measured on the Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) and Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS), respectively—while those who read to people experienced a decrease on both measures.” The results, published in Science Daily, August of 2010, compared a group of students who read to one another, and a group who read to dogs. In the first group, a third of the children failed to complete the program. Not a single student failed to finish the reading to dogs program.
Back in the Dusenberry meeting room, Miguel, Ariel and Destiny Ortega crowd around to read to Schotzi. Destiny has selected her favorite Dr. Suess book, and Schotzi listens intently to her as she reads out loud. In a light hearted moment, she turns the book around to show Schotzi the picture inside. “They just love it, especially Destiny,” said their mother Yvonne.
The Pima County Public Library System offers the Read to a Dog program every Friday afternoon. To learn more, visit library.pima.gov, and to learn more about therapy dogs, visit garvinsdivinecanines.com.
