Benefits of Reading Therapy Animals

Why Reading Therapy Animals Make a PAWsitive Difference

"A therapy animal is an incentive, a motivational tool, and a non-judgmental listener…all in one." ~Read With Me, a Pet Partners Program

Benefits of reading therapy dogs in school settings abound. The reading therapy dog is a calming, objective listener. When children are given the opportunity to read aloud in a non-judgemental environment, their reading confidence and literacy skills improve, ultimately leading to better fluency and a greater love of reading. See the links below to explore research about and benefits of reading therapy programs.

Man's Best Friend as Reading Facilitator

When Reading Gets Ruff: Canine-Assisted Reading Programs

When Reading Goes to the Dogs

Why Schools (and Other Places) are Going to the Dogs

THERAPY ANIMALS IN EDUCATION

(Excerpt from a Pet Partners published paper titled "Imperical Support for Therapy Animal Interventions") We now know that therapy animals can help us feel better, but can they also help us learn? The findings from research on AAI (Animal-Assisted Intervention) in educational settings give us plenty of evidence to suggest the positive impacts of incorporating therapy animals in the classroom. Research on AAI in learning environments has shown that therapy animals may help with the following aspects:

• Foster reading abilities, such as reading rate, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension (Treat, W. A. (2013). Animal-assisted literacy instruction for students with identified learning disabilities: Examining the effects of incorporating a therapy dog into guided oral reading sessions (Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Cruz).)

• Enhance primary skills such as object recognition and categorization (Gee, N. R., Church, M. T., & Altobelli, C. L. (2010). Preschoolers make fewer errors on an object categorization task in the presence of a dog. Anthrozoös, 23(3), 223-230. 16; Gee, N. R., Gould, J. K., Swanson, C. C., & Wagner, A. K. (2012). Preschoolers categorize animate objects better in the presence of a dog. Anthrozoös, 25(2), 187-198.)

• Mitigate stress levels, especially surrounding events like final exams (Barker, S. B., Barker, R. T., McCain, N. L., & Schubert, C. M. (2016). A randomized cross-over exploratory study of the effect of visiting therapy dogs on college student stress before final exams. Anthrozoös, 29(1), 35-46; Reynolds, J. A., & Rabschutz, L. (2011). Studying for exams just got more relaxing—Animal-assisted activities at the University of Connecticut Library. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 18(4), 359-367; Trammell, J. P. (2017). The effect of therapy dogs on exam stress and memory. Anthrozoös, 30(4), 607-621.)

• Provide a source of motivation, stimulation, and focus in learning (Gee, N. R., Gould, J. K., Swanson, C. C., & Wagner, A. K. (2012). Preschoolers categorize animate objects better in the presence of a dog. Anthrozoös, 25(2), 187-198.)