Remember Billy and Old Dan and Little Ann? Here’s a hint from the book jacket: A loving threesome, they ranged the dark hills and river bottoms of Cherokee country. Old Dan had the brawn, Little Ann had the brains, and Billy had the will to train them to be the finest hunting team in the valley. How about Clifford? He’s big and red and the subject of over 70 children’s books. And who could forget Jack London’s White Fang or Fred Gipson’s Old Yeller? From White Fang to Old Yeller to Old Dan and Clifford to Eloise’s pug dog Weenie, man’s best friend has been transforming the lives of children one book at a time for decades.
Locally, Oliver, Val, Yoshi and Heidi, real-life Paws with Purpose therapy dogs and stars of the Ruff, Ruff, Read to the Dog program are helping third graders at J.B. Atkinson Elementary School in Portland become better readers, more effective writers, and all-around successful students.
Every Tuesday, one of four PWP volunteers, along with their dog, visits the elementary school for an hour. During that time, two students spend 30 minutes each reading aloud to “their” dog, most often from a book about- you guessed it- dogs. While the handler sits nearby, ever ready to help sound out a word or offer a definition, in essence, it is just the student reading to his or her dog.
“Oliver doesn’t care if they mispronounce a word,” said Elaine Weisberg, a PWP therapy dog owner. Veteran Read to the Dog participant, fifth-grader Porsha Murphy explained, “He’s a best friend to me.”
Ruff, Ruff, Read to the Dog, one element of PWP’s therapy dog program, a spinoff of the organization’s service dog training program, is the brainchild of teacher Beth Fuller. Fuller teaches intervention classes for third graders who struggle with reading and writing. “They haven’t been successful,” said Fuller. “They don’t like learning. They’re frustrated with reading,” says Fuller, herself an accomplished scholar who holds degrees from Bellarmine and Indiana University Southeast.
Murphy entered Fuller’s class in 2009. At the time, Murphy was an exceptionally shy, quiet third grader, and was reluctant to read or answer questions in front of the class. Words weren’t necessary to convey Murphy’s dislike for language arts – the pout she wore expressed as much. “She was never really excited about reading,” said Fuller.
As part of her effort to engage and motivate students like Murphy, Fuller replaced classroom chairs with exercise balls, individual desks with a u-shape arrangement of long tables, and staid graphic organizers with hand-drawn, paw print inspired ones. The room is carpeted and cheery. It’s easy to understand why nine-year old Alyssa Maxwell, who is graduating from the class and reads to Val, unprompted, remarks forlornly, “I’m really going to miss Ms. Fuller.” “But,” she continues, this time in an upbeat manner, “I’m going to be able to visit her a lot of times, so I can just say hi to the class and be with everybody else in the class.”
“The kids struggle so much in a traditional classroom,” said Fuller. “They need non-traditional ways of learning, because they’re not being successful. They want to be a better reader so that they can read to the dog. This helps motivate them all year, all month, all week, all day.”
When asked if reading to Val had helped her graduate, Maxwell’s response is immediate and matter-of-fact: “Yes, very much. It helped me by understanding that reading really isn’t just being bored. And it can be fun sometimes.”
Fuller got the idea from an aunt who lives in Delaware and takes her dog to elementary schools there. Fuller realized, “I really want to do that, but I didn’t even know where to start. So, I started researching programs in the area with dogs, and I found Paws with Purpose.”
For various reasons, not all dogs that enter PWP service dog training graduate from the program. Even dogs bred for this special purpose, may, on occasion, develop an unforeseen medical issue, such as hip dysplasia or vision impairment. Others have to be “released” because they display an overly excitable or fearful personality or high prey-drive. “It’s a lot when you put two years into a dog and it gets released at the last minute. We had two dogs last year who developed juvenile cataracts. Perfect, great dogs and we had to release them. It was very sad,” says PWP’s volunteer coordinator.
Weisberg became Oliver’s PWP volunteer trainer when he was five months old. As his training progressed, she began to recognize that Oliver was having difficulty with some of the more advanced commands. It seemed every time he overcame an anxiety, another one would crop up. In October 2007, still clumsy with exchanges and eager to chase squirrels, PWP decided Oliver wasn’t going to pass muster as a service dog, so Weisberg signed the release papers and adopted Oliver.
Today, Murphy, confident and smiling, keeps literary pace with her peers. “He [Oliver] helped me with big words I didn’t know,” she says. Speaking assertively, she says she is reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” in her free time, and she aspires to be a veterinarian.
“Oliver and I started going once a month and because it went well I asked another volunteer if she would be willing to go with her dog,” said Weisberg. Because things continued to go well, the PWP board voted to formally institute a therapy dog program. Then, in January of this year, PNC Bank began sponsoring the therapy dog program.
“If you’ve got a dog with a good temperament, we try to find a career change for them—something better suited to them —rather than just being a total pet dog,” Weisberg explained. “They’ve had so much training and a lot of time has been invested in them.” In addition to Read to the Dog, PWP therapy dogs also make the rounds at Frazier Rehab, Kosair Children’s Hospital, and Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital.
“Working with Elaine and Oliver, I slowly started to see her confidence grow,” said Fuller. “I started seeing all these things happening because of what Porsha had learned with Oliver, and then it translated into good things in the class. Neither one of us knew what we were doing or what was going to happen. They were willing to just come out and bring a dog and see what happens. And it’s been great.”
–Sarah Laster
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