Ten-month-old Ghost Mottaghi, a member of the AKC Canine Partners program, looks very handsome in his reading glasses in this photo submitted by his owner, Marjan Mottaghi of Waltham, MA.
Dogs may not be able to read, but they make valuable contributions to helping children learn to read. Many programs around the country organize therapy dogs to visit schools and libraries so children can read to the canine visitors.
A study by researchers at the University of California, Davis confirmed that children who read to Fido really do perform better. Young students who read out loud to dogs improved their reading skills by 12 percent over the course of a 10-week program, while children in the same program who didn’t read to dogs showed no improvement.