As you might know, the assistance dogs help people with various physical or mental disabilities nowadays. But there is a program in the US and in other countries which helps children to improve their reading and communication skills.
R.E.A.D. program – The Reading Education Assistance Dogs was founded in 1999 in Salt Lake City and its aim is to improve the literacy of children using therapeutic teams with assistance dogs. And with quite a simple method - reading out to a dog. But it is no ordinary dog. All the dogs involved in the program are registered therapy animals.
The volunteers together with their therapy dogs visit schools, libraries or other facilities where they arise very positive responses of the children themselves as well as of their parents and teachers. The dog companion can encourage children to read, give them a reason to read, even when they do excel in it and it helps them to find the courage to improve themselves. There is a significant progress of reading skills in the pupils participating in the program and an improvement of their self-confidence, too. To learn how to read is often more about overcoming the fear than about mental limitations. That is why the program is focused on both ordinary pupils and the children with special needs.
R.E.A.D. is the first such program where therapy dogs are used to improve reading, communication and social skills of children and which also teaches them to love books and reading itself. Other non-profit organizations then started operating based on this program. R.E.A.D. teams work (except from the United States) in Canada, England, Italy, Finland, France, Sweden, South Africa, Australia, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Norway and in other countries. It could be a good idea to start such activity in the Czech Republic, right?
If your cat is going to pee or defecate outside its toilette, it is only seldom just an issue of training or hygiene. Cats are clever animals and they have no trouble to understand, where to go to toilette. Therefore, if they don’t abide the rules of...
We hear about the war in Syria almost every day. But have you ever thought about how does a war affect local animals and that the self-sacrifice must not always be made by an animal for humans, but it can also be the other way around? The person that...
Acupuncture wants to harmonise the body and the mind. Some of you may have tried it, it was a great help to me personally with issues with my back and breathing. Precisely owing to my positive personal experience, the possibility to indulge dogs and...
In the life of any dog, a situation might come up, when it is necessary to put on a muzzle. And if the dog is not used to wearing it, it might mean a stressful situation. I will advise you on how to avoid stress and how to get your dog used to wearing...
Same as in people, also our pets should go to regular check-ups to a doctor. We might neglect this quite often, but it is still something else in animals. A dog or a cat won’t come up to you to tell you, that they’re not feeling well. That’s why an...
You probably have someone among your friends, who has diabetes. However, do you know, that cats and dogs also suffer from this disease quite often?
The name distemper might be familiar to you, but do you know more precise characteristics of this treacherous viral disease? Let’s take it one by one from the historic roots up to the present day
Do you know, what dreams our pets have? Besides myself, also a number of scientists were interested in this question and they came up with various hypotheses. Would you guess what our four-legged friends dream about?
Maybe even you have a small four-legged stressed-out dog at home. In such case, read carefully, maybe you will find something here, what you haven’t tried yet, while trying to get your pet rid of stress.
You have probably encountered the opinion, that much more important than what you’re saying to your dog is how you’re saying it (the tone). But it shows, that dogs are able to understand the human language much better, than we generally credit them for.
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.3px 'Times New Roman'; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} All of us surely likes to take pictures of our pets. However, the photographs don’t always turn out according to our...
It could seem that the smaller the animal, the less care it would require. However, don’t let yourself be fooled. Even if you have a small mouse at home, a rabbit or maybe a guinea pig, you should adapt the care for them to the season and to situations...
