Community Corner

Children Read to Therapy Animals with Confidence

Children read with therapy animals at the Capitola Branch Library's Tales to Tails literacy program.

The Capitola Branch Library was full of children, adults and animals Wednesday, as children read to dogs and a cat during the library’s Tales to Tails program.

Tales and Tails is a literacy program that provides children with a half-hour opportunity to rid their lives of any reading-aloud fears by reading to certified therapy animals. By reading to animals instead of peers or adults, the library found that children not only read better, but build their confidence while having fun in a safe and educational environment.

Children read in sets of three with an animal handler and a dog or cat that has gone through several evaluations to become therapy certified.

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Eight-year-old Jasmin MacBird, who attends the program with her mother, says she goes more for the animals than the books, while her mother says she’s just happy to take her daughter to a place where she can feel comfortable reading.

“She’s really shy, does not like to read out loud, and when she comes here, she thinks about the animal and not the reading,” Jasmin’s mother, Sheri Conner, said.  “Something clicks to where she no longer worries about the reading or someone judging her or worries about the words being perfect; she just reads because she’s focused on entertaining an animal that’s not going to be critical at all.”

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Janis O’Driscoll, a library manager and director of Tales to Tails, said several of the children who attend the program have struggled with reading.

“They relax a lot around the animals, and then they realize that nobody is going to correct them, nobody’s going to tell them that they have to read a certain number of pages," she said. "They’re just going to do their best, and once they realize there’s no pressure, they just read.” 

Linnie Livingston says the program has worked wonders for her 7-year-old grandson, Kaleb Arroyo.

“I knew right away that it would be a perfect match for Kaleb, because he loves animals and he needs to develop a little fluency in his reading, and it helps him relax so he can do that," she said.

“He’s starting to relax more when he reads, not feel so tense. The relaxation helps with the fluidity—and having an animal nearby to promote that relaxation really works for him.”

O’Driscoll said the organization, Furry Friends, helped get Tales to Tails off the ground by helping the library figure out what kind of requirements and legal issues the program could entail.

“They helped us understand what we needed to do, what the kids need, what the dogs need," she said. "So we said, ‘Okay, let’s do this’ and put a call out, and we had something like 12 or 16 people with dogs respond, and we said, ‘Oh my gosh, we can really do this.’” 

Despite library cuts that have made it difficult to introduce new programs, O’Driscoll says community support has made the program not only possible, but a success.

All handlers are volunteers, and the library received a $1,000 grant from the , a Capitola-based organization that works to communicate the importance that dogs have in our community.

O’Driscoll said the library asked the group for enough money to provide books to dedicated children who have attended the program a minimum of 10 times. It got the full grant, which helps the library publicize the program.

“When you think about it being a small group of dog owners, that’s an incredibly generous gift, and we just received that this month," she said. "So now we’re going to get really serious and buy the books we want to get.”

Now the Santa Cruz Branch Library expects to have its own Tales to Tails program within a few months.

To get involved with the program or to learn more about Tales to Tails, click .


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