What Is A Reading Dog Anyway?

Here I am with Morgan and one of my great reading friends. *

Sometimes people ask me how I got to be a Reading Dog.  I used to start by saying, "Well, it all began in the back of a humble barn, five years ago, when a beautiful Great Pyrenees female gave birth to a litter of puppies..."  I soon discovered, however, that this was not what people were asking about.  They even seemed, dare I say it?  A little bit bored when I started to tell them my whole life story.  This was quite surprising to me because ...

(Morgan says - "Courage, you need to get on with it.  You're rambling, you'll lose your audience.  Just tell them about how you trained to be a reading dog.  Try to keep it simple, O.K. Bubba?")

Harumpf!  That's typical of Morgan, interrupting me when I'm in the middle of blogging.  She thinks she's the leader of our reading team, and usually I humor her but lately...

(Morgan says - "Courage! Get to it!")

Alright, alright.

Just in case anyone doesn't know what a Reading Dog does, let me briefly explain.  Reading Dogs and their human partners travel to schools and libraries and listen to kids read stories.  Some kids are excellent readers and just want to practice reading out loud to an audience.  Some kids are very young and they haven't started reading yet.  Those kids just want to show me the pictures and tell me about what happens in the book.  That's fine, I love that!  Some kids have a little trouble reading, and they would rather read to a dog because dogs love the way everybody reads.  We dogs don't mind if you take a little extra time to sound out words, or if you need to get a some help from your Mom or Dad, or your teacher.  Best of all, we Reading Dogs, never interrupt anyone when they are reading. We just lay down, or sit down, and listen.  Of course, we love to have our belly's rubbed or our backs petted while we do it.

Some of my readers like to snuggle on me just like a big, fluffy pillow.*

It may sound like a great job, and guess what?  It is!!!  But in order to get a job like this you have to be the right kind of dog, and you have to have to train your human very carefully.  Morgan and I took FOUR tests in order to get certified as a complex therapy dog team before we began volunteering.

If you would like to learn more about the classes and the tests Morgan and I took in order to be a reading dog team, please stay tuned to this blog for more posts on what it takes to be a therapy dog. You can also visit the wonderful people at The Austin Dog Alliance  web site for more information on therapy dog teams and a list of  on going classes.

* Special thanks to Morgan's Mom for taking these great pictures of me with some of my Readers.