Reading to Rover

The medium-yellow colored Labrador Retriever trots into the public library on a mission.

He sprints to the rear of the library’s circulation desk to meet the first librarian.

“Ranger’s here,” she calls out. Fellow employees flock to greet Ranger who wiggles and wags his tail as he receives pats from each person. Then he stands still and looks around.

“Where are the children?” he seems to ask.

Most every Tuesday afternoon during the school year, the public library in the small mountain community of Buena Vista, Colorado invites kindergarten-to-elementary-school-age children to read to dogs. They sit on the floor, and read out loud from a favorite book to their assigned canine for fifteen minutes. The canine’s handler sits nearby to help with pronunciation or meaning of a word when needed. The children pet their canine listener as they concentrate on words, and the dogs respond, often by snuggling up to them.

From coast to coast, libraries, schools and nonprofit organizations offer similar programs with a variety of names including: Reading With Rover; All Ears Reading; Sit, Stay and Read; Paws for Reading; and BarkNBooks. Studies show that children’s reading abilities increase, sometimes dramatically, when reading to a canine. https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/reading-rover-does-it-really-help-children-veterinary-school-says-%E2%80%98yes%E2%80%99/ and http://ucanr.edu/delivers/?impact=800

“Dogs are not judgmental” says Mary Beth Moser, Youth Services Director of Buena Vista’s library. She encourages youngsters to practice reading the book they’ll read to the canine if they arrive early.

Moser, a former teacher, says the key to reading is repetition which builds confidence, fluency and comprehension. It also allows for “practicing expression and makes the student an all-around better reader.”

The idea for Buena Vista’s hour-long weekly library program started with Moser. She’d used reading dogs in her first-grade classroom in Northern Illinois and noticed how much her students’ reading abilities improved.  She says that the children loved to read to dogs. In fact, one boy, she recalls with a smile, always ate waffles with syrup for breakfast on reading to dog days so that Miles, a black Newfoundland therapy dog, would lick his face!

In the fall of 2016, Moser approached the new library director about offering a free program for children to read to canines. Kim Grindrod, the director, embraced the idea. At the time, Moser had no idea that Grindrod was familiar with a reading to dogs program. Grindrod’s former library in Boone, N.C. had a such a program called “BarkNBooks.”

Kelly Nary, with an employment background in child development, joined the library in January 2017 and teamed up with Moser to develop a Reading to Rover pilot program that launched last spring. Moser and Nary decided on fifteen-minute reading blocks to keep the attention of the readers and have them wanting to read even more when their session concluded. Since the two-plus-month pilot program was so successful and well received by the community, parents, and children, the library decided to offer Reading to Rover during the school year, excluding holiday weeks.

The program attracts children with a range of reading abilities: readers who are at, above and below their grade levels. Some readers attend each week, and others walk in and read when a spot is available.

Library staff receive feedback from the participants’ parents that their children “are really enjoying reading to the dogs.” Dog handlers notice improvement of both reading skills and confidence of their readers, sometimes after only two sessions. Some readers ask for a specific dog; others just want to read to any available canine.

One parent, Jennifer Hanlon, has witnessed the program’s benefits. Her daughter used to resist having to read but now enthusiastically does so. She says that every week the youngster looks forward to Reading to Rover. And her daughter’s reading skills have dramatically improved.

But the biggest part, Hanlon says, is her daughter’s “enjoyment of reading. She just loves to read to Ranger.”  That’s pretty obvious. The child wears a huge smile on her face as she walks towards Ranger with a stack of books in her arms. She sets the books on the floor and then turns to hug Ranger. He responds by wagging his tail and slurping her face. This youngster, who loves animals but doesn’t have a dog at home, reads as long as permitted, often running over the fifteen-minute allotted time.

After reading to their canine, children receive a sticker that features a headshot of their particular dog with “I read to” and the dog’s name. Nary wanted to award some kind of “badge of honor” to each reader, so she developed the personalized stickers as a reward for reading and to help the children remember the name of their dog. The youngsters love receiving their sticker, week after week!

Enjoyment of the program extends to the dogs and their handlers. Ranger recognizes regular readers and licks the faces of many as he wags his tail. Then he settles down for scratches and a nap. Layla, at age twelve plus, coos and stretches out for a nap.

How does a library or nonprofit organization start such a program? Nary says she contacted the public elementary and Christian school staff who posted flyers advertising the program. She also spoke with the president of the local Bark Valley Dog Club to recruit handlers and dogs. And she spread the word by word of mouth.

Nary, who runs the nuts and bolts of the program, screens each dog-handler team by meeting with them in person. Her library requires proof that the canine is current on its rabies inoculation, and holds an American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizen certificate, or is associated with a therapy or service dog organization. So far, two Siberian Huskies, a Golden Retriever and an American Shepherd-Chihuahua mix, as well as six Labrador Retrievers, have served as “listener dogs.”

“Everyone loves the program,” Moser says. She hopes to reach out to parents of home schooled children to add  those youngsters to the program.

Nary is always looking for more children to participate in Reading to Rover as well as additional dog/handler teams. She encourages participants to sign up in advance to make sure a dog listener is available and also asks that the parents of readers, and dog handlers alert her if they need to cancel a session for any reason, including illness.

Contact Nary at knary@buenavistalibrary.org. for more information or to sign up to participate in this rewarding program!

Scroll down below the library staff’s photo to meet the newest Reading to Rover “listeners” and their handlers.