Excerpted from http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/10/22/dogs.irpt/index.html
Meet Bailey. She's a registered therapy dog, but you won't find her in hospitals or nursing homes. Instead, Bailey makes weekly visits to libraries and schools. She sits quietly or snuggles up to kids as they read her a book. She’s actually helping these children learn to read.
The philosophy is simple. Children who are just learning to read often feel judged or intimidated by classmates and adults. But reading to a dog isn't so scary. It won't judge, it won't get impatient, it won't laugh or correct if the child makes a mistake. In a nutshell, dogs are simply excellent listeners. And for shy kids or slow readers, that can make all the difference.
Kathy Klotz is executive director of Intermountain Therapy Animals, which runs a nationwide program called R.E.A.D. -- Reading Education Assistance Dogs. She says there's another benefit of reading to the dogs that she didn't anticipate: confidence. "A factor that we never planned for, that turned out to be really important, is that the child feels like they're letting the dog understand the story," she says. "They get to be the teacher, the storyteller, the one who knows more than the dog for a change. ...They just blossom when they get to be the one who knows more than the dog."
The children know they're not actually teaching the dog, of course, but for the kids, the idea that they know more than the dog and can share their knowledge is a powerful one. And now that volunteers are aware of that aspect, Klotz says they actively foster the idea of the child as the teacher. She says it's typical for the kids who read to dogs for just 20 minutes a week to improve their reading skills by a couple of grade levels in one school year. She's even seen as much improvement as four grade levels in a year."
One of the things you do in the program is you always speak for the dog," says Klotz. "Like if [the child] doesn't know a word, the dog doesn't know the word either. And then they're not alone, and they can look it up in the dictionary together." "It's not just reading scores," she says. "They start to speak up in class, and volunteer, and finish homework. They don't want to miss school when they're going to read to the dog, so it improves attendance. It kind of just flows over onto everything."
Bailey and her owner, Jim Wilmoth, participate in weekly reading sessions at local libraries in West Virginia with kids who are generally between 6 and 12 years old. They're part of the "Sit. Stay. Read." program, which is similar to R.E.A.D. Programs like these have popped up in nearly every state to help improve literacy rates in the United States. And then, of course, there are the proven physiological benefits of interacting with dogs
