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MORE PROOF OF THE POWER OF READING PROGRAMS!
Who doesn’t talk to their dog? There’s something in our dog’s social pack-animal brain that inclines them to be attentive and attuned to our vocal cues and body language and there’s something about being human that appreciates a good listener. Now we have some intriguing information from Jennifer Emmert, PhD, who manages our Animal Assisted Therapy programs, that the benefits of talking to a dog go beyond therapeutic value.
Jennifer recently led a study of one of our most cherished programs, Puppy Dog Tales, which uses specially trained dogs to coach children who are struggling to learn to read. In this program, students read out loud to a dog and its handler, who visit them on a regular basis at school or at a library. For some of these kids, English is a second or even third language. Others have learning disabilities, are held back by severe shyness or anxiety, or are otherwise considered “at risk” in the school system.
What she found in her research, conducted at a local school, E. R. Taylor Elementary, was that the children who read to the dogs made remarkable gains in literacy, in addition to the benefits to their emotional health.
Measuring the progress of 60 children overall—30 who read with the dogs for one 15-minute session a week over 10 weeks, and 30 others who practiced reading without a dog’s help—she learned that the experimental group improved by an average of 31.3 words per minute in oral fluency (words correctly read per minute), versus 9 words per minute for the control group.
Animal Assisted Therapy is driven by the idea that the animal-human bond of loyalty and affection is powerful in ways we can barely comprehend. We field more than 100 animal-owner teams, which make about 250 visits a month to hospitals, nursing homes, community centers, and youth facilities, enriching the lives of 75,000 San Franciscans a year. Not just dogs—there are therapy cats, birds, rabbits, chinchillas, even reptiles. One of our most popular animal therapists was a bearded dragon, a particularly serene lizard known for his calming effect.
Many people find a visiting animal disarming: they warm up to it, and then they warm up to each other. In a school, it seems the canine reading buddies silently encourage a child to overcome the reticence he or she feels around a human teacher. They never correct your pronunciation or make fun of the way you talk. The third- and fourth-graders Jennifer studied showed progress in so many ways: their confidence grew, their anxieties diminished, and there were fewer classroom outbursts or pupils who had to be excused in the middle of class time. Some ADHD children seemed to get better at just sitting still. Best of all, the students who read with the dogs showed an interest in practicing reading and began to look forward to it.
Our Animal Assisted Therapy program just celebrated its 30th anniversary. Puppy Dog Tales teams are much in demand in the community, and the SF SPCA is always looking for dogs and volunteers who would be a good fit for the program. It’s no walk in the park: animal-human teams need to undergo thorough training and screening, including a rigorous “Canine Good Citizen” certification to make sure the dog has the right temperament. But if you know an especially sympathetic canine, or if you want to support our animal therapist teams in some other way, please get in touch.
Posted By: Dr. Jennifer Scarlett, DVM (Email) | July 07 2011 at 06:00 AM
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Your Dog Is Watching You
Are you teaching him bad behavior?
By TARA PARKER-POPE
He knows you’ve got your eye on him.You may be teaching your dog new tricks, without even trying.
Dogs are constantly learning from the reaction of human owners, picking up facial cues and anticipating their owner’s behavior, new research suggests. The findings, published online in the journal Learning and Behavior, show that dogs essentially are always in training, and help explain how many owners unknowingly teach and reward their dog’s bad behavior.
Research conducted at the University of Florida focused on the role of eye contact and facial cues in influencing canine behavior. Earlier studies have suggested that dogs seem to know when they are being watched and even wait to perform forbidden behavior like digging in the garden when they know their owners aren’t looking.
In this study, researchers studied how human cues triggered begging behavior among 35 pet dogs, 18 shelter dogs and 8 wolves raised in captivity. First the animals were taught that the human strangers helping with the experiment were reliable sources of tasty treats. The testers stood close together and called to the animal, and both offered rewards of Spam cubes or Beggin’ Strips treats.
After four rewards, the experiment began. Two testers stood against a fence or wall, about 20 feet apart and with food in their pockets. The dog was held about 20 feet away, equidistant from both testers. In one condition, one tester faced the dog while the other turned her back. In another, a tester held a book near her face, while the other tester held the book in front of her face, as if she were reading. In a third condition, one tester held a bucket near the shoulder, while the other put the bucket over the head, blocking her eyes.
Then, both testers called out to the dogs.
All the animals -– pet dogs, shelter dogs and wolves -– ignored the person whose back was turned and sought food from the person who was looking at them.
“The question was, are dogs and wolves responsive to a human’s attentional state?” said Monique Udell, who is now an assistant professor of psychology at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla. “Do they have a feeling of whether we can see them or not? Turning your back — that’s a cue all the animals were sensitive to.”
But when the testers held books, it was only the domestic dogs who avoided the person who appeared to be reading the book.
“In a house where they’re used to people reading books, they are sensitive to those types of cues,” said Dr. Udell. “A pet dog will not beg from someone reading the book. They will go to the person looking at them. A wolf or a dog at a shelter is indifferent to that cue.”
Interestingly, in the bucket experiment, the animals, for the most part, were equally likely to seek food from the person with the bucket over her head as the person holding the bucket. Dr. Udell notes that most dogs don’t typically see a person with a bucket on his or her head, so they haven’t learned how to read that cue.
“For us as humans, having a bucket over your head is very silly,’’ she said. “Dogs and wolves don’t get that. For the most part dogs and wolves would be equally likely to beg from someone with a bucket on your head because buckets don’t hold much meaning.’’
Surprisingly, one dog, a Labrador, performed very well on the bucket task, and the researchers wondered if perhaps the dog had seen its owner wearing a motorcycle helmet or hats. In the end, they couldn’t find an explanation for the dog’s strong performance and say it may simply be that the dog just got lucky in its guesses.
The experiment shows that dogs are tuned into whether humans are paying attention.
“Dogs don’t have to read our minds. Dogs read our behavior,” said Dr. Udell. “That might be why dogs are so successful in human homes. They are watching us. They are quick learners, they can figure out when you are going to give them the next treat or whether you are going to give them a bath. Whether we know it or not, we are training them.”
Dr. Udell said pet owners often get frustrated with bad dog behavior without realizing that they themselves have reinforced it, either by giving the dog a treat when they beg, skipping a bath when they protest or letting them sleep on the bed or couch.
“If we as owners don’t remain consistent, the dog is learning what it’s allowed to do, even if in our heads, that’s not what we desire,” said Dr. Udell. “They are really good at knowing how to live the life they want inside the human home.”
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Impact of Canine-Assisted Ambulation on Hospitalized Chronic Heart Failure Patients' Ambulation Outcomes and Satisfaction: A Pilot Study
Abate, Samantha V. BS, RN, CCRN; Zucconi, Michele MSN, RN, CCRN; Boxer, Bruce Alan PhD, MBA, RN, CPHQ
Background and Research Objective: Chronic heart failure (HF) is a prevalent and costly disease process. Early ambulation has been shown to have a positive impact on patient outcomes and length of stay. Animal-assisted therapy is a novel modality that has shown to be a safe and effective adjunct to a number of traditional treatment plans. This study sought to synergistically combine ambulation and animal-assisted therapy by using canine-assisted ambulation (CAA) to improve the ambulation outcomes of HF patients.
Subjects and Methods: Sixty-nine hospitalized patients with a primary diagnosis of HF were approached to ambulate with a restorative aide. After recording their initial response, they were given the opportunity to participate in CAA (walking with a therapy dog). Initial ambulation refusal rate was compared with a historical population of 537 HF patients. Distance ambulated was recorded using a pedometer and compared with a randomly selected, 64-patient sample from the historical HF patient population, stratified by day of hospital stay. Patient satisfaction was assessed through a 5-item Likert scale survey.
Results and Conclusion: The 537-patient historical HF population had an ambulation refusal rate of 28%. When offered the chance to participate in CAA, only 7.2% of the study population refused ambulation (P = .0002). Of the 69-patient study sample, 13 initially refused ambulation then agreed when offered CAA (P = .0009). Distance ambulated increased from 120.2 steps in a randomly selected, stratified historical sample to 235.07 in the CAA study sample (P < .0001). Patients unanimously agreed that they enjoyed CAA and would like to participate in CAA again. Canine-assisted ambulation is a safe and effective adjunct to an early ambulation program for HF patients. Canine-assisted ambulation may decrease hospital length of stay and thereby decrease the costs of HF care. Additional research involving CAA's application to other disease processes in various settings is warranted.
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Medical Study Shows That Therapy Dogs Pick Up Nasty Germs
NEW YORK TIMES, May 11, 2009
Both human and canine hospital visitors can pick up germs from patients’ rooms. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times) A new study of pet therapy dogs shows just how easily hospital germs can be transmitted to visitors.
Canadian researchers studied 26 therapy dogs who visited patients in hospitals or long-term care facilities. Before and after each visit, a dog’s forepaws and the hands of its handler were tested for three bacteria that commonly cause hospital infections — Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci and Clostridium difficile.
To detect whether a dog was carrying germs on its fur, the researcher also sanitized her hands, petted the dog and had her hands tested for the pathogens.
None of the dog paws, handlers or the researcher tested positive for the bacteria before the hospital visits. But after the hospital visits, two of the dogs were contaminated. One dog, a greyhound, had C. difficile on its paws. Another dog, a pug, appeared to pick up MRSA on its fur. (MRSA was found on the hands of the investigator after she petted the dog upon its return.)
So how did the dogs end up as carriers of the risky germs? The dog with C. difficile had shaken paws with several patients. The pug with MRSA on its fur had spent time in patients’ beds and was kissed repeatedly by two patients. The findings were reported in a letter published in The Journal of Hospital Infection.
The study shows how easily germs can travel in and out of health care settings and the importance of vigilant hand washing. Compared to human visitors, animals typically visit a larger number of patients and staff members and walk bare-pawed on hospital corridors, possibly making them more likely to pick up germs. However, countless numbers of people who visit hospitals regularly shake hands, hug and kiss, and sit on hospital beds in patients’ rooms.
“It’s unrealistic to think that we can sanitize an animal visitor’s body between patients,” said investigator Sandra Lefebvre of the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College. “But we can and do ask human visitors to sanitize their hands so they don’t spread germs.”
TAXES!
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All of your volunteer miles are tax deductible!
Driving to and from visiting, and driving for any reason
related to your volunteer work (going to the store to get supplies for an event etc.)
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