Catherine Swift uses man’s best friend to help young people to learn how to read. Swift, the resident master of Minton Commuter College, trains dogs as part of a program to get children excited about reading. Her affiliation with the Reading Education Assistance Dog (R.E.A.D.) program started during her graduate work at Texas A&M University anpit 10 years ago. The R.E.A.D. program was the topic of Swift’s doctoral dissertation.
“The young children that participate in R.E.A.D. programs show high amounts of participation and excitement about reading to a dog,” Swift said. “The 284 respondents to my study had a total of 2,373 hours of training, had tutored 6,786 children, and had spent 11,875 hours in tutoring sessions in 2007-2008.”
InterMountain Therapy Animals founded the R.E.A.D. Program in the early 1990s. R.E.A.D. currently has active programs in 49 of the 50 states in the United States and other locations abroad, Swift said.
Swift recently conducted a R.E.A.D. workshop for the Central Arkansas Library System at the Main Library in Little Rock. The pet partners practiced with children from the library who read books to the dogs. The workshop prepares the pet partners to work in summer reading programs at libraries throughout the state.
Swift has a therapy dog of her own, Rugby, that lived in State Residential College with her and her family for three years.
“[Rugby’s] job was to meet and greet students when they came to my office and even had his own wing back chair to sit in,” Swift said. “Pretty impressive because Rugby is a Mastiff and Newfoundland mix who weighs 100 pounds.”
Swift said Rugby also made visits to local public schools and libraries.
“On the UCA campus, he held reading sessions with the international students in the Intensive English Program and hosted a summer Saturday reading program called ‘Reading with Rugby’ in the Torreyson Library,” Swift said.
Rugby is now retired from the reading program, but Swift is now training a new dog, Lily, to be a therapy and reading dog. – Lisa Burnett