Community Corner

UPDATE: Reading Assistance Dogs Coming Back Tonight

The Marion Public Library will be hosting the Corridor Reading Assistance Dogs again tonight at 6 p.m., as a part of a program designed to make reading less scary to kids.

Grant Shulz’ mom, Pam Schulz, said her son has difficulty reading.

It’s not that he struggles a lot with identifying words, it’s that the 7-year-old and his brother Jackson, 5, can’t seem to focus on a book long enough to finish it.

But Thursday, Jan. 19, Grant Shulz was thrilled to read and had no trouble finishing what he started.

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He was one of the first children in Marion to take advantage of the new monthly program, where kids read to trained reading assistance dogs for a 15 minute period in an effort to make reading less intimidating for youngsters.

"Now I know how to read to a dog," Grant Shulz said. "His eyes were even closed."

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His mom is thrilled that both her sons were excited to read to the Corridor Therapy Dogs. Usually, they only get excited about being read to.

Shulz and her husband are big readers, and she has been struggling to keep her boys interested in reading. She’s enrolled them in special programs in school and taken advantage of summer and winter reading programs at the library. 

But this program is different, the Marion resident said. The very fact that her kids are reading to gentile, adorable dogs seems to make reading much less intimidating to her kids.

"This gives them a place where they can gently fail," she said. "The dog doesn’t care if you make a mistake."

Beyond the comfort involved in reading to gentile, furry creatures, Shulz said the biggest advantage of this program is that it has made her kids excited to read.

"When you are excited about something then you want to do it more," she said. "The only way you can build a good reader is to build on their success."

Olivia Stoner, the children’s coordinator at the Marion Public Library, said they had a great turnout yesterday, pulling in more than twenty people. 

She said she expects more as word on the program spreads, adding that they hope to run the program indefinitely.

And while it is too early to tell the impact the event had on Shulz’ kids, she said the confidence building aspect of the program alone makes it worth coming back next month.

"If he can read that to a dog," she said. "Why can’t he read that to someone else?"


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