EASTHAM — Dogs are not known for their literary prowess, their exceptional reading comprehension skills, nor for staying put for extended periods of time. Yet on the morning of March 2, in the children’s program room at the Eastham Public Library, four dogs from Hearts & Paws laid down their heads and listened to local children read aloud from canine-themed picture books.
Three-year-old James Colantropo can’t read yet, but he flipped open Good Dog by Cori Doerrfeld and turned its pages to face Ruby, an orange-haired pup belonging to Bob Shyllberg of Eastham, so that she could read it for herself. He seemed confident that expressing and sharing a love of literature might be the first step toward knowing how to actually comprehend it yourself.
“If kids have a fear of reading in public or with their peers, the dogs don’t judge,” said Amy Usowski, president of Hearts & Paws, a nonprofit based in Sandwich. “It’s good practice.”
Reading to Dogs has been held every first Saturday of the month at the library since December.
Hearts & Paws brings dogs and their owners for the occasion. The dogs receive “canine good citizen” training over the course of eight weeks, which teaches them how to be friendly to strangers and respond to commands.
“It is so joyful,” said Youth Services Librarian Fran McLoughlin. “It is my favorite day of the month.” McLoughlin organized the monthly visits to the library after the success of an event the library held during the Turnip Festival last November.
Researchers have, of course, looked into whether reading to dogs is a smart thing to do. According to a 2022 study by psychologists at St. Mary’s University in Canada, children who read aloud to dogs saw greater benefits in their reading ability than through “adult-assisted intervention.”
All of the children at Reading to Dogs last Saturday were too young to read by themselves, including four-year-old Isla Clifford from Brewster. Instead, Isla’s mother Oriana read McDuff Comes Home with Isla sitting on her lap and a dog named Ruby gazing up at the two of them. The mother and daughter just happened to stumble upon the event, and at first Isla was hesitant about greeting the dogs. By the end of the hour, she was leaning her head on Sophie’s and petting her.
“You notice most of these kids came in a little hesitant about touching the dogs,” said Usowski. “And now they’re very much in each other’s laps.”
Usowski started Hearts & Paws in January 2022, and the organization now has 40 members and 24 certified dogs. Members whose dogs are not yet certified are invited to accompany other dog owners and support their events.
Susan Reiter, who lives in Wellfleet, and her dog, Jake, got involved after Reiter went to a Reading to Dogs event. She saw how delighted her granddaughter was to read her favorite book, Where Dogs Go, to a dog named Violet and “knew I wanted to get involved.”
One visitor to Saturday’s program had never met a dog before. Three-month-old Ainsley Fitzgerald of Eastham was wheeled into the library still asleep in her carriage. Upon waking, she found that she was surrounded by four well-mannered dogs. Her parents, Kaitlin and Matt, lifted her out of the carriage and helped her put one hand out to touch a dog on the head.
Ainsley will forever know that she met her first dog in a library, perhaps uniting in her mind the comfort of a furry friend with a place devoted to literature.
