Reading with Dogs Benefits All in Bugbee Classroom

As the school year comes to a close, students typically hold celebrations and craft thank-you's for loyal volunteers who have helped in the classroom.

On Thursday, Jessica Grenier's first graders held a thank you party, and presented special thumbprint bandanas that they had created for two of their favorite volunteers, Sailor and Renny. Both volunteers are dogs.

Sailor, a pug owned by Denise Bolduc, and Renny (short for "Renegade"), a Shetland Sheepdog owned by Samantha Mewbourne, are Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.), and are two of the four dogs that are frequent visitors to Grenier's classroom. Bolduc, who is also licensed with R.E.A.D., sometime brings her other pug, Scarlett, who is Sailor's sister. Mewbourne will sometimes bring Lucy, Renny's grandmother, to read with the Bugbee students.

This is the second year that Grenier, who has two of her own dogs, has had the therapy dogs in her classroom. Last year she taught kindergarten and learned that one of her students who has a developmental disorder had a therapy dog at home.

Grenier knew from research that dogs could help all readers build confidence. She wasn't able to get that boy's dog to come to school because of liability issues, but she started exploring other options.

Grenier brought her ideas to Bugbee Principal Noam Sturm, who will admit to not being an "animal" person. "He laughed and said he would never have animals walking the halls," Grenier said, but gave her a chance to present her argument.

When Grenier delivered what she called a "dissertation," Sturm couldn't argue, she said. Sturm now shows off the dogs when he gives tours of the school.

Once Sturm agreed, Grenier began the relationship with R.E.A.D., and handlers Boduc and Mewbourne and their dogs have visited at least once a week ever since. Grenier looped with her class last year, following them to first grade, and so did the handler/dog teams.

"I like to explore what reading to a dog is like," said Madison, one of Grenier's first-graders. She said that her favorite book to read to Sailor and Renny is Dr. Seuss' "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." She doesn't have a dog at home, but reads to her cat. "He just sits down," she said.

Dogs in the R.E.A.D program are first registered as therapy animals with other organizations, and are then certified by R.E.A.D., a Utah non-profit which is part of Intermountain Therapy Animals. 

"The handlers also know how to support the kids while reading to the dogs," Grenier said.

The kids are highly motivated and engaged when reading to the dogs. "Nobody in class is under grade level," said Grenier. The boy with the developmental disorder is now reading, even though he didn't know his letters at the beginning of the school year.

The students are more relaxed and confident when reading with the dogs, and the dogs are completely non-judgmental. "When the kids can connect on that level, it supersedes teaching," Grenier said.

"We read on the blanket. It's a no-judgment zone," said Bolduc. "The whole focus is that that child tutors the dogs. They're teaching the dogs."

The dogs are calm and don't bark in the classroom. Their demeanor is amazing, Grenier said. Their presence also helps students who may have previously been afraid of dogs. The kids who have fears, the fears go away," Grenier said.

All of the handlers are volunteers, and both Bolduc and Mewbourne have fulltime jobs and live across the river. Bolduc is a nurse anesthetist at St. Francis Hospital and Mewbourne is an animal behavior technician at the Humane Society in Westport. "We are both glad to do it," said Bolduc, who will also be helping train the Newtown Strong Therapy Dogs to be R.E.A.D. dogs.

Thursday's party was a thank you to the handlers and the dogs, but the kids were also presented with "pawtographed" books courtesy of their four-legged reading companions.

Grenier's students will be done with first grade in a few days, but the dogs will remain, ready to become reading companions to a new group in the fall.