Therapy dogs helping New Kensington-Arnold students practice reading

Therapy dogs are helping New Kensington-Arnold elementary students overcome emotional and academic issues exacerbated by the covid pandemic.

First and second grade students at H.D. Berkey Elementary School were the first to take part in a program new to their school in which they read to dogs.

“It went extremely well,” elementary Principal Nicole Roberts said. “The teachers were so excited. They said it went so much better than they could have imagined. The kids were on their best behavior. Their reading sounded even better to me.”

The school board approved the use of therapy dogs in classrooms at no cost to the district at its meeting Tuesday, following that first visit Feb. 23.

The dogs are with Therapaws, a group with the Westmoreland County Obedience Training Club in Delmont. It’s affiliated with a national group, Alliance of Therapy Dogs, based in Wyoming. Gloria Frick of Delmont is the chair of therapy with Therapaws.

Frick has been involved with therapy dogs for 19 years and with programs in schools for eight years. She has seen people in nursing homes and memory units who would not respond to anything or anyone, but would to a dog.

“There are a lot of kids who don’t like to read or don’t like to read out loud. They’re afraid someone is going to make fun of them, and they’re very shy about it,” she said. “They will sit down and read to the dog because the dog is totally noncommittal. These trained dogs will just lie there and listen. The child relaxes.

”They’ll read to the dogs when they won’t read to anybody else.”

Frick said she met with Roberts before the dogs’ first visit and was there that day.

“The children really liked it,” Frick said. “They asked appropriate questions about the dogs. They wanted to know more about them. They were interested in what breed the dogs were. We explained to them what the dogs were bred for. Some of the kids told us about their dogs.”

As she saw the 6- and 7-year-old kids reading to the dogs, first grade teacher Nicole Banko said she didn’t know what to expect.

“It definitely had a positive effect in so many different ways. It was so cute,” she said. “Kids love dogs. I love dogs. It was definitely sweet to watch them reading to the dogs. It gave the kids who might be timid to read out loud self-confidence. They wanted to show these dogs they could read. It was so sweet.”

Roberts said she had been talking for months with Mary Balich, a counselor at Bon Air Elementary in the Burrell School District, about getting a therapy dog for her schools. Burrell has its own therapy dog program.

“I was researching and found out that the Alliance of Therapy Dogs also brought dogs into schools to read with kids and wanted to do that for our schools,” Roberts said. “I contacted Gloria, and we have been trying to plan things since before Christmas.”

Emotional support

Because of covid and being home a lot, Roberts said students have had emotional issues along with needing practice reading. Reading to the dogs helps with both, she said.

“We’re doing everything we can to close what happened during covid,” she said. “Our kids are doing good. They’re surprising us.”

The dogs are scheduled to come back to Berkey three more times in March. Roberts said she wants to expand the program to cover kindergarten through sixth grade by taking it to Martin and Roy A. Hunt elementary schools.

Banko said her students are eager for the dogs to return.

“They keep asking me, ‘When are the dogs coming?’ ” she said. “It was a great morale booster for the class. They thought it was the best thing, and so did I.”

Roberts bought a puppy herself that is being trained to be a therapy dog. Her goldendoodle, now 16 weeks, can be certified when she is a year old, and Roberts expects to bring her to Berkey and Martin in the fall.

“I want her to be a therapy dog for our school,” she said. “It’s not only for the kids, it’s for the teachers, the staff, everybody.”