See Dick read. See Jane read. See Dick and Jane read to Fido. Reading is going to the dogs and this is great news.

A reading dog is one that helps children learn by being the audience they need to encourage reading. Across the U.S., the U.K. and New Zealand, classrooms and libraries have introduced specially trained canines that partner with children who have struggled with reading skills and interpersonal communication.

Reading in front of a class can be frightening but reading to a nonjudgmental dog is calming and encouraging. Whether a reader is struggling due to a learning disability, learning to read in a second language, is shy or unmotivated to read, dogs dissolve those barriers with their friendly, attentive presence.
“Kids have to practice, practice, practice to be good readers,” said Francine Alexander, the chief academic officer at Scholastic, the children’s book publisher. “And yet when you’re practicing, if you make a mistake, it can feel risky and uncomfortable. But if you’re practicing with a dog, you don’t mind making the mistake.”

Much as therapy dogs vary in their degree of training, reading dogs may be trained to participate in book “selection” while others are brought in by volunteers simply to calmly sit with the reader. Reading dogs provide the reader with the chance to read aloud, an important component in building reading skills in beginning readers as they sound out words. For children with socialization challenges, dogs unleash (pun intended) their inhibitions.

Reading Dogs programs have been around at least 15 years and the concept has spread along with the success stories. A study by researchers at the University of California, Davis confirmed that children who read to Fido perform better. Young students who read out loud to dogs improved their reading skills by 12 percent over the course of a 10-week program, while children in the same program who didn’t read to dogs showed no improvement.

To find out if there is a Reading Dogs program in your community, contact your local library and school district. If there is no program, suggest one from the many that can be found on the internet. One helpful website is Library Dogs.com.

Here, Fido!