How the Family Dog Can Help Your Child Learn to Read

Dog-Reading-BuddyOur canine pets can enrich our lives as well as the lives of our children, and may also have the ability to boost their learning. How has your dog helped your family learn or improve on something?

Seven-year-old Zachary stared at the page of the book in front of him, chewing his lip in concentration. “The dog began to g-g- ... What’s this word?”

“Remember your reading tools?” said his sister, Zoe, leaning over from where she was reading her own book. “Try reading the rest of the sentence.”

“The dog began to g- ... the bone in his paws.” He squinted at the illustration, resting his hand on the fluffy Golden Retriever sitting next to him. “Gnaw! That’s right!”

Beaming, he gave the dog a treat and went back to the rest of his story, pointing out to his dog, Brody, the particularly funny parts. After he finished the book, he took out a Post-it and wrote “gnawed” on the paper, dropping it into a bag labeled “Tricky Trouble Words Bag.” Once mastered, the word goes onto his “Doggone Brilliant” poster hanging in our kitchen.

Zach and Zoe are part of a group of children participating in How Your Dog Can Help Your Child Read, Lead and Succeed, an eight-week program devised by educator Dr. Lori Friesen as a way to integrate literacy, humane education and life success skills. I signed them up out of curiosity. Could our goofy dog really help them become better readers? But we left the program with so much more than a few new vocabulary words. More than a simple “read to a dog” program, this class requires the involvement of the kids, the family dog and even me. Each of us has weekly “Bonework” assignments supporting the week’s new skill, a fact the kids are happy to remind me of every day.

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