Reading to Rover: Tales for Tails

For days Lilly Kepner thought about what she was going to read.  She didn’t want to get any of the words wrong and, above all, she wanted to make sure the book would please her audience of one: Maggie, a golden retriever.

“I think she picked books she thought the dog would like,” said Jennifer Kepner, Lilly’s mother. “She loves, loves, loves dogs.”

Lilly, a third grader, was one of several children to participate in "Tales to Tails" at the Wilton Library on Saturday.  The monthly program allows young children to read individually to trained, certified therapy dogs from The Good Dog Foundation. 

Reading aloud to dogs not only encourages beginning readers to feel confident, it helps bookworms blossom.

“I’m not sure who is helping who, the kids or the dogs,” said Chris Buse, father of Alex, 7, who sat cuddled next to Maggie, a golden retriever.

According to the National Institutes of Health, dogs reduce stress.  When people pet dogs, their blood pressure drops and their heart rate slows. In short, canines can calm.

Leslie Keogh, head of the children’s library, had arranged the dogs’ blankets around the room– a snowflake fleece blanket for Libby, an American Eskimo dog and a Sponge Bob towel for Brodie, a golden retriever.  Mason, a Portuguese water dog sprawled on a blue carpet and Maggie, the other golden, lay on a green blanket.

Wearing dog bone-shaped nametags, each child had between ten to fifteen minutes with the dogs.  The children chose from several dog-related titles, including “Harry the Dirty Dog” and “Barkis.” The dogs listened with enthusiastic wags of the tail, quizzically cocked heads and occasional pats of their paws.

The dogs spend about nine weeks training with the Good Dog Foundation, which is based in Brooklyn. The dogs usually work with children, the elderly, stroke patients and psychiatric patients.  Trainers work with dogs and their owners and expose them to a variety of situations through role-playing.

Karen Ugol, a nurse, began working with the foundation a couple of years ago.

“He’s very well-behaved,” Ugol said of her dog Mason, as Tyler Kennedy, 6, read ‘Harry the Dirty Dog.’ The first grader just started learning how to read this fall.

“This helps his confidence,” said his mother Andrea.

Another trainer, Paula Hannon of New Canaan will soon take Brodie, a year-and-a-half old golden retriever, to Norwalk Hospital where he will work with psychiatric patients and patients recovering from strokes.

“Our children are all grown up and I thought it would be a good job for him,” said Hannon.  “Any excuse for him to be with people.  He’s a working breed and I thought, why not do some good?”