The benefits of reading to (human) kids are well documented — not just for learning, but for strengthening emotional connections and improving mental health.
But could there be benefits for other species too? Specifically, for dogs in shelters?
At least anecdotally, staffers and volunteers at Pasadena Humane — an L.A.-area shelter that’s been around since 1903 — say they’re seeing real benefits to pairing volunteer readers with dogs.
When LAist’s How To LA podcast team visited recently, there was music playing over loudspeakers for the dogs in their kennels. They sometimes play audiobooks too, and each week a handful of volunteers also reads to the dogs in person.
The idea, spokesperson Kevin McManus says, is that it’s inherently stressful for the dogs to be in a shelter, so playing music or reading to them one-on-one helps create a “calming, more serene environment.”
Volunteers with the “Reading Rovers” program read all different kinds of books — or sometimes the newspaper — to the dogs.
“We have a lot of kids who do it after school,” McManus says. “It’s great for the kids, [and] it’s great for the dogs cause it’s a nice calm environment and a soothing voice. And for a shy dog, it really helps them come out of their shell a little bit. It helps them get adopted.”
On a recent Friday, third-grader Mirabel and her mom Elizabeth were at the shelter for their one-hour shift. Sitting next to each other on beach chairs, they took turns reading Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul to two dogs — Terry, a 1-year-old Akita mix, and Logan, a Siberian Husky mix, also about a year old.
“Reading is a little therapeutic and I think it's beyond species,” Elizabeth says. “They come up and they listen and they hear the kind of slow pulse of your voice and it calms them down. And consequently I calm down and [Mirabel] calms down and we kind of cuddle up to a good book.”
After spending some time with Terry and Logan, Elizabeth asked Kevin: “Do you know anybody who's sad back there that needs a little reading?” The answer was Bandit, and she and Mirabel headed there next.
A few rows over, volunteer Stefan Bucher was seated near a 2-year-old black and white pitbull named Twizzler, a “real sweetheart” whom he checks in with every week.
As for what he reads to the dogs, Bucher says it’s a wide variety. “They seem to like British society mysteries.” But his book that day was a bit more on the serious side — “Right now I'm reading to them about inclusive language. You know, because they’ve got to be ready for the world.”
Bucher says he starts his weekly volunteer shift with a walkthrough.
“Usually I pick a dog that seems to be kind of sad or agitated,” he said.
After he sits with them, “they take a minute to settle in. But then it's really nice when they just kind of chill out. And that's the best, when they kind of splay out and go like, 'Ah, OK, this is nice.' So you can kind of tell when they're responding to it.”
Volunteer Molly Litteken was making her rounds too, and had stopped to read to a dachshund (one of her favorite breeds) for a bit. Litteken has Down Syndrome and found out about “Reading Rovers” while looking online for volunteer opportunities with her mom, Nancy Litteken, who heads up the Club 21 Learning and Resource Center for Individuals With Down Syndrome.
“I love dogs so much,” Litteken says. “They make me happy, they need me.”
Angie Aguirre is Molly’s aide who comes to volunteer sessions with her and works with her to help her gain life skills and become more independent. She says the “Reading Rovers” program even helped Molly get her first job, handing out dog food samples at local pet stores, because of the experience and confidence she’s gained while volunteering.
“It's a way for her to connect with the dogs, and it's also a way to connect with herself — her more mature self,” Aguirre says. “I kind of walk away and she doesn't need any guidance when it comes to animals. She just seems to know what to do. And she's great at sensing the dogs that maybe need a little extra attention.”
Find out more about the “Reading Rovers” program here. (For cat lovers out there, we hear a reading program is in the works for feline friends too.)
Editor's note: This article has been updated with a clarification about how Molly Litteken began volunteering with Pasadena Humane.
