 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly online event. Yes, we are a webinar. You can call us that. We won't be offended. Where we cover anything of interest to librarians, any activities or topics that librarians across the country would be wanting to hear about. The show is free and open to anyone to watch and we do the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. You could always go to our website and look at our archives. We have every single show that we've done since the beginning, recordings of those along with the PowerPoint slides and any links websites related to them are all together in the show notes. So you can go there. We do a mixture of things here on the show, presentations, interviews, many praying training sessions, book reviews. Basically, as I said, if it's library related, we want to have it on the show. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations and we bring in guest speakers as what we have done today. Today, we're going to hear about dogs. Unfortunately, we don't have any of the dogs in the show. It would just be pictures of them. I saw this presentation first at our Nebraska Library Association State conference last fall and I was a little sad that they didn't actually bring dogs along to show. But that's OK. So pause to read. Carney Public Library has been doing a program with bringing therapy dogs into the library to help the children with their literacy skills. And on the line, we have Christine Walsh, who's from the library. Hi, Christine. Hi, Christa. And Kim Williams, who is from Therapy Dogs Incorporated, an organization in Carney that helps them do this. So I will hand over to you guys. So go ahead and take it away with your presentation. Sounds good. Thank you, Christa. Cool. Posteries program that we've been running at the Carney Public Library for probably 10 years, maybe somewhere in that ballpark. It was started as a cooperative venture between the library and Therapy Dogs Incorporated and Good Samaritan Hospital. And since that time, Good Samaritan does not have as large a role as it used to. But we certainly have continued the project. And then with Therapy Dogs Incorporated and the library, we continue to kind of reinvent what the program looks like as our readership and audience changes. But why don't we start by introducing ourselves? So we have a little bit of an idea of who's here. And I'm sorry, there aren't any dogs. They would have been very happy to attend, but I'm not sure if they would have, you know, they're not very good at speaking online. Well, my name is Kim Williams. And if you look at the slide, that is my Pimbroke Corgi Penny. I've been a member of Therapy Dogs Incorporated since 2006. And then I became a tester observer in 2008. Tester observers evaluate potential teams to see if they'd be appropriate for working with in therapy situations. And then in 2012, I became a board member for Therapy Dogs Incorporated. Penny is now a little bit closer to 11. She's been doing therapy work for eight years. And she's currently mentoring in the fall was one new puppy. And now currently is two puppies at home who may or may not have therapy potential. I'm Christine Walsh. And this was something, you know, how your kids get you into things. Well, my eldest daughter got us into this and bless her heart for doing that because it's been a fabulous experience. Teddy is a Cavalier King Charles Daniel. He's about five years old now. We both learned how to be handlers and tested with Teddy so that either one of us can take him to events and we are all registered handler dog teams. So if Sarah wasn't available to do something, I could do that. She did it her last couple of years in high school and now she's off to college. So we don't do as much with Teddy because he also has gone to college with her. And so I am now working on a new puppy at home as well, hoping to get her tested by fall so I can continue attending events and doing pause to read at the library and the other things that the therapy dogs do. Why let your library go to the dogs? Why not? I mean, who doesn't love to come in and see dogs at the library? And then to add the bonus of reading to dogs. I mean, it seems like a win-win situation to us. We're obviously a little bit biased, but I think the benefits are wonderful. So on a little more serious side, the reading to the dogs gives the children extra practice in reading and some kids get so nervous at school reading out loud or even just they aren't comfortable reading in that crowded environment. The dog is an absolutely non-judgmental listener and they can sit and pet those dogs. And as we all know, petting the dogs helps people calm down, they can focus better and practice those reading skills. Some kids just love to know that the dogs are there and so it motivates them to sit and read a book. They might not have wanted to sit down and read a book at all. They go home and read to their own pets after they've come to the library and done pause to read because either they wanna finish the story or they think their dog needs to hear the story. Sometimes it challenges them to try books that are more difficult than what they would normally do. They're willing to take something off the shelf and since the dog doesn't comment that they mispronounced a word or they can't see all the pictures or whatever it is, they'll give it a shot and really try. And then last of all, of course, the research studies have shown that reading fluency can increase after participating in the Reading to Dogs programs and there are programs across the country. So we are certainly one of many continuing to build this connection between the dogs and literacy and the libraries and the registered therapy animals. There's a lot of emotional benefits that come along with this. Children do think it's fun. We have families that have been here as long as I have since 2006 who are now in college. One young lady is actually about to graduate. So they have come yearly again and again just to see and read to the dogs. Most of the time what we see when children are reading to dogs is that they're comfortable. As Christy said, the dogs aren't judging if a word is mispronounced, they're not correcting and so they can feel more confident that someone is listening to them without evaluating them as they're doing it. There's a lot of research that indicates reducing stress, reducing blood pressure, reducing anxiety. Along with that, petting also helps with motor skills. So you have the calming and you have the motor skills. Nervous children who are petting can often become less nervous and pretty soon they're lost in the dog in themselves kind of world. Reading aloud can be very intimidating, especially for shy children. But they're not as nervous when they're reading to a dog. An example of that is that a child who is now in eighth grade had never read aloud, not even to his parents. The school had no way of assessing how well he could read aloud. We brought the therapy dogs into the situation and for the first time he read aloud. The teachers and parents were just thrilled. It was really cool, but he trusted the dog to listen to him. And the bottom line is confidence is boost. If you're a struggling reader, it gives you an increased sense of pride. The social benefits happen a lot too. We asked if the children take turns reading. They have to wait until the child before them has finished reading. We talk about kindness and empathy when they're petting and cuddling with the dogs. We practice communication, not just reading out loud, but can I pet your dog? Can I ask questions about your dog? And they interact with us as handlers. They often will sit down and read and other children will sit down around them and listen to the reader. It's a good way to learn and be educated about how to interact with animals, dogs or cats, and interacting with them safely and responsibly. The next part is about therapy dogs incorporated. And there are so many reasons to have registered therapy animals in your building. You know, we always worry sometimes at libraries about bringing animals in and what are the liability issues and things like this. Therapy Dogs Inc takes care of that for us so that it's an easier sell sometimes to the administration saying we've already covered our bases. These are animals that are accepted all over, you know, they go to hospitals, they go to special needs centers, schools, nursing homes. So they've already kind of got that card punch to say they've got permission for these special access points. So I'll let Kim talk about Therapy Dogs Inc. Therapy Dogs Inc. is one of the national organizations which means that they provide registration support and insurance for members who are involved in volunteer animal assisted activities. The liability only covers us, liability insurance, when we're participating in volunteer, we can't bring our dogs to school. Having said that, the teams are evaluated, they're judged to be as safe as possible. We know the dogs are healthy, we know the team is good, respectful, polite, educated on the rules and basically our objective is to find that network of individuals who want to share their animals and share it with the community. TD Inc goes back about 23 years or so. Their goal is to provide people like me that are testers and observers. We evaluate both the handler as well as the dog and our mission is outreach to bring joy and comfort to the people we visit. It is a volunteer position, we don't accept money if we go to talk somewhere, if we appear somewhere, if we're part of the library or we're part of a care home. It's all volunteer. And our liability is pretty good, it's about $5 million. Fortunately, we haven't had to use it very often, but it's nice to know for the facilities we visit that we do have it. Can you talk, Kim, just a little bit about just a summary on how you get to be a certified team because we have people that come into the library and they say, oh, can I bring my dog next time you do pause to read? Well, no, you can't just bring your dog. I'm sure you have a really nice dog, but you can't just bring that dog into the building and have it a part of the program. TherapyDogs.com, that is the national website. If you are in an area where you don't know someone who participates in therapy work, you can go to our website and our website will allow you to bring up the state that you're in and then we'll show you all the tester observers in your state. Once you're contacted by a tester observer, then our process is to evaluate both the handler and the dog. There is, we look at the dog, we pull on their tails gently, not hard. We touch their ears, touch their paws, we do everything that a child or an adult might do so we can know that the dog is non-reactive. We look at animals that are reliable and controllable, we know dogs are dogs. We look for them to be hugged and touched, outgoing and friendly and we go to several different areas, three places for observations to see how they react, how long does it take them to calm down are they naturally confident in those situations. The flip side of that is we're also looking at the handlers, we want people who have good social skills, who can smile, relax and be comfortable in the different situations we find ourselves. We want someone who follows instructions, we have rules, those rules must be followed in order to keep our liability insurance as well as to make us a predictable team when we're in a facility. We want someone who's educated about their dogs. I might ask them, how do you know if your dog is stressed? And they go, oh, our dog is never stressed. Well, we know that's not true. Dogs do become stressed and we look for signs of knowledge. But what we really look for is the bond between the teams. Does the dog look for the handler to give instruction? Will the dog listen when the handler needs to change directions or to do something different? And is the handler in tune with their dog? Is it a bad day? Is it a good day? Is the dog tired? Is it thirsty? So we really look for that connection between the two teams. An additional part of this is since we go to a variety of facilities, libraries deal with patron confidentiality. Hospitals, we have to adhere to the HIPAA rules and things like that. So all of the teams that come in are aware of what those different requirements are for each facility that we visit. And so just because you saw somebody at the library doesn't really mean that you're supposed to go home and talk about it. Just as when someone calls the library and says I need to know if someone's there, we try to protect that patron confidentiality. And so the teams are well aware of that. And that also makes it a good fit for the library because it's respected. Most of the time we don't even know the kid's name. Some of them you get to know just because they've been there for years and you know who they are. But a lot of times it's just a familiar face. Now they know our names because we've all got name tags and the dogs all have name tags. So they get to know who we are. We've also had bookmarks down the road. And so they collect them kind of like trading cards that they have their favorite dogs and somebody always wants to see Nilly or they always want to see Penny. Some kids really love the big dogs and some kids really love the little dogs. So they kind of collect those and then they have their favorites that they want to see each time they come in for the program. Anything else there? No, I think that's it. So pause at the library. As you see, here's one of our bloodhounds. This is a team of two bloodhounds, Magic and Molly who have been with the program for years. One of them just retired, but the other continues on. But here's how it works at Kearney Public Library. It supports our library admission statement and as with any library program, that's what you're striving for. You want to be engaged in the community, you want to promote the library and those other things such as the pursuit of lifelong learning and just the general enjoyment of reading. Partnerships within the community are wonderful and libraries are such a natural place for so many of those to happen. So this partnership between the TD Inc. or other registered therapy teams was an easy partnership to sell on both sides. I mean, you have to demonstrate that it's viable that there's a need and it supports the mission of both organizations. But it was pretty easy for us. Now, Good Samaritan Hospital Volunteer Services, not everybody, but most of the teams are also registered as volunteers there as well, which means that those dogs that come here for pause to read are also dogs that can go in and visit at the hospital. It gives us some access points that we wouldn't normally have if we just were registered therapy teams. It also, you know, the library likes that too because then you've added another community partner working with Good Samaritan and volunteer services. And that is, you just never know where those unexpected benefits come from and how you can help each other out throughout the community. Funding, it's a pretty low budget program. So if you're looking to start something, there's not a huge investment from the library. For us, the bookmarks are provided by Good Samaritan Volunteer Services. So that's at no cost to either the handling team or the library. Another bit of community partnership. They're kind of a standard of our summer reading program. They're usually there on kickoff day and visit, I believe, weekly during the summer that varies from year to year. And then they're always there at the end. So the kids, even if they didn't win a prize at summer reading or whatever it is, they can come pet their favorite dog. So that's a good thing. Talking about funding, a few things that we have done as the programs developed here in Carney. The bookmarks, she mentioned already that Good Sam takes care of and that's great. It's like I said, they're kind of like trading cards. We have put together baskets of books that each handler dog team picks up when they come in at the beginning of a session. The dogs come in once a month for a couple of hours and they find a spot in the children's room and they get a basket of books and those books sit with them. What we found is the kids spent so much time trying to find a book to read that they did never really get to sit down and read to the dog. So by having a basket with 20, a variety of children's books in it, they could just pick something from the basket, read it to the dog. If they really wanted it, obviously they're welcome to take that home and check it out or read it to the next dog, whatever. But it's kind of helped everybody have smoother transitions. Yeah, yeah. We also did bingo cards. We were finding that kids weren't always sharing as well as we wanted them to. They would try to monopolize one dog. Well, we wanted to encourage them to explore other dogs and give other kids turns, as Kim talked about earlier. So with the bingo cards, they needed to get some of those checked off and when they get a bingo on it, then they get a book to take home. So one square might be it's a white dog, another one is a dog that's more than five, one is a fluffy dog. A dog with spots, the bingo cards are not super fancy, but it keeps the kids moving around because they want to see the dogs and they also want to get their bingo so they can pick up that new book. So the library did, I believe we started with a grant to get some of those back baskets of books and also to get the books that we are giving away to those kids as they complete their bingos. That is something that the library, whether we have grant funding or support from our friends or our foundation, we will certainly continue that, we're committed to continuing to get books into the hands of those kids and it's their frequent reader reward. We have it set so whether the kid, the child is telling the story with a picture book or they're reading a chapter out of a chapter book, there are ways for everybody to be successful. So we try to work that in. In addition to the volunteers that come in with their dogs, we have some of our youth volunteers come in too and they will walk around and make sure that there are books in the baskets, if we need more bookmarks somewhere, if they need their hands down because they wanted to get their paws down on their hands for the day. Those youth volunteers are really great and they kind of help keep the kids moving too or if they've got somebody that is looking for a new dog to read, they're watching to see who might be open or who's gonna be available next. It's just nice to have another set of hands to be there. And the kids love it because they also wanna pet the dogs. Refocusing every couple of years, Kim and Shauna Linder, who's our youth services librarian and I'm sorry I didn't give her credit earlier but certainly she and another gal, Amy Cook, were the ones who really got it started here at Kearney Public Library and have sustained Shauna and has been instrumental in sustaining it in the library. So much kudos to Shauna for doing that. But Kim and Shauna and I get together every year so to kind of say what's working, wasn't working. Are we still on track with supporting the mission of increasing literacy in youth? And some of the baskets and the bookmarks and the mango cards are a result of those conversations to refocus and make sure it wasn't just a petting zoo but we were on track with that mission support. Okay. The cool thing about being a therapy team is that boy, we go everywhere. You can find this in Kear Homes, the library. The picture that you're looking at right now with a group of college students. We're in the public schools. We go to the Children's Museum. Hospital visits, Cancer Center. We do a grief camp every year for youth where the dogs are used as an icebreaker when the kids come in to talk about the loss of their loved ones. We do memory walks for the Alzheimer's. We also do bark for life, which is a cancer fundraiser. We say we're a little bit like vampires. If you ask us in, we're there to stay. This picture's, we participate yearly in the Veterans Day Parade. We go to both hospitals in town, Richard Yen Hospital, as well as Gibson Maritain Hospital. Kristy, if I wanna take this one. This was kind of, this is one of our success stories, but it also, it adds to getting exposure because we use this as a really great PR tool once we got in. Kearney High School a couple of years ago staged The Wizard of Oz and Kim and I were drama parents because our kids were involved in the production. Well, they were gonna use a stuffed dog and we were very disappointed because we thought we knew exactly who had to be Toto. So after jumping through a lot of hoops with the administration of the school, stating in our case that a therapy dog would be a really great fit, that they already could deal with the the multitudes of people and things like that made it easier to sell. So Teddy became Toto. His 15 minutes of pain. And there he is with the cast of course. Now the cast fell in love with him which was really, really fun and he just took it all in stride and thought it was wonderful. In order to have a successful production we obviously went to rehearsal and Kim and I and my daughter Sarah were the handlers behind the scenes making sure he was where he was supposed to be. If he'd not been a therapy dog and if he had not been out active and paused to read, I don't think that the school would have even entertained the idea of having a live dog in the production. One of the fun things we got, additional fun things we got to do is they did a breakfast with the stars. So the cast and crew had breakfast Saturday morning as a fundraiser for the school. The therapy dogs all got to come and they were there to support Teddy which was great fun but it also gave us an opportunity to say hey, you wanna see these dogs again. Teddy's not the only one, your other dogs would now come to the library and you can see them once a month and do this. So it was really fun to be able to, not only was it fun to do the production but it was fun to be able to just reach out and say connect with these animals somewhere else. They're not just show puppies, they have other things that they do. These dogs know that they are working, they have a bandana, they have a collar, they have a leash and when you put those on, those dogs know they are going somewhere that they are on and it's really, really fun to watch them do that. Now when Teddy did this, of course everybody gets a little stage fright. He didn't show it too much but before that it's one thing to be in rehearsal, it's another thing to have that curtain go up with an audience, with an auditorium full of people. So we all kind of held our breath on opening night when that curtain went up and he made his first entrance and Dorothy Blesser Hart took him out there and the whole auditorium just, it was this communal, oh my goodness, it's a puppy, sort of reaction. I mean, it was really fun and he just did his job, what he was supposed to do and being cute is one of his specialties. Yeah, it doesn't mean that every therapy dog would be able to tolerate the large production, the live audience, the live orchestra as well as a cast, but it does illustrate that most therapy dogs are very comfortable with groups of people, with meeting strangers, with being a part of Dorothy, being a part of the Tin Man. Their patience is extraordinary. I was looking at the pictures here, I especially liked the one in the upper left very, I guess he was so relaxed, he fell asleep on the stage. No, I think, yes, he did. That was closing night and by the time he had gotten, I think, five performances, the kids are exhausted and he was too, but the kids couldn't sleep on stage. She couldn't sleep on the stage. So down the road, we hope that maybe these guys will be the next crew that come in and those are our current projects. Kim's is the big fluffy black one here and she has another one too that isn't in the picture and then the two on the left are a mother-daughter crew that have moved into my house since last July, so it's pretty fun. Poster Reid is one of the staples here at Kearney Public Library. People expect those dogs to show up and be here. We have parents and grandparents who thank us for having this opportunity. Sometimes they plan to come in because they've seen it in our newsletter and things like that. Other times it's just they happen to have the grandchildren for the weekend and they stumble into the library at the right time and the dogs are here. But they're always willing, if they come in and they have a little bit of time, everybody is willing to take that time and let those children read to those dogs and then usually the kids, they especially think that dogs like to read Clifford books, which I think is really smart. So it's fun to see the kids go and pick out books, but they think that dogs are going to enjoy or a favorite of theirs that they want to share with a special dog. So that part of it is really fun. We come every second Saturday of the month to the Kearney Public Library and then we participate during the summer reading program more frequently. Probably the biggest misconception we have are the kids that turn the dogs head to the book and say, okay, he can read now. No, no, you get to read to him. So it's fun. So I guess it's just, it's one more way that we try to encourage literacy in the library. And obviously the dogs are great ambassadors outside of the library and so many people make that connection. It's great. You know, it just helps build both programs and we love continuing to support it here. Now, maybe we need to start doing it for the adults too and have a coffee and pause or something like that so that we could get the adults to come I like that idea. come and visit with the dogs as well because certainly there are adults that have literacy challenges as well and we have a fairly active literacy council here in Carney. So maybe that's another avenue that we need to explore is how do we connect those dogs with those adults who are trying to overcome literacy challenges. It might just be another tool that we can use to help those lifelong learners as well. So our contact information is all here. Please don't hesitate to call or email us. We're happy to answer questions. If you are in Carney, please stop by the library. We're happy to not only give you a tour but if you're here on that Saturday or if you want to come on that Saturday, give me a call and let me know and it's fun to come and observe if you're thinking of starting something like this or participating in it. We would love to have you come and attend and see how it all works. I think that's about what we have, Christa. Are there questions? Yes, actually we do have some that have come in. Thank you guys very much, Kim and Christy. This is great. Like I said, I specifically attended this session that our state conference last fall and thought it was awesome and great program. And I know lots of libraries. I've heard of other libraries doing this and academic libraries doing this as well during finals weeks. Yes, yes. When the students are stressed out beyond belief and they will bring in the dogs and it's not a reading thing as this one but they are therapy dogs that I've heard of places doing from particular organizations and it's just in the meeting room in the back from two to four this afternoon, come in and pet a dog and calm down and relax before you have to go and do your papers, final papers or four tests. We'll be at the University of Nebraska at Kearney actually the end of April. Cool. For that very reason. Great. We have some questions that come in. First question is pre-registration required for to do the participate in the program? No, it is purely drop in. You are welcome to come and stay as long or as short as you like. We did tweak it a little bit so that the first hour and a half that the dogs are in the library we really try to make sure that it's reading time to the dogs and kids keep moving through there. The last half hour we kind of relax a little bit and let it be at your favorite dog time. So the children don't have to sign up for anything it's just you say during this time it's available come in and on the fly type thing. Exactly. Okay. And how much time does each child get to spend reading with one of the dogs? You know, it depends on how many kids we have attending from week to week. We start with about five minutes. Sometimes it's longer than that and you really hate to cut the kids off which we don't. Everybody's pretty respectful of how much time somebody needs. If we have 15 dogs and 10 kids then obviously they get more time. If we've got five dogs and 25 kids that changes up because the volunteers bring the dogs and we don't always have a set number there's a consistent group of eight that are here for pause on a monthly basis but it all depends on what the volunteers schedules are in the rest of their life as well. If that does make sense. How popular it is each time is going to matter. How do you do promotion for the program? How do you get the word out about it? We've always got it in our newsletter. We have bookmarks that we try to stuff in books as people check out to encourage people who may be new to the library. I know that Shauna gives it a plug at story time and things like that. When the dogs are out doing non-library things. We advertise, talk about it, go with the bookmarks again. And if we get TV spots whether it's for a post-reader it's another therapy dog something we always plug it on the radio and the television locally as well. So all the usual places that you'd promote anything. Do you think out specifically like into the schools maybe to tell them that this is a program? Like partner with them? Schools are a little more challenging. In the past couple of years and we've just recently gotten back into the schools they went through at least locally a period of time where they did not allow animals. I mean you couldn't bring an animal for show and tell it was almost a building by building decision whether the administrator wanted to work with you to bring the therapy dogs in for reading in the library or not. And then the district kind of said no as a district we're not gonna do this because they were concerned about I think pet allergies. Not about the behavior of the animals. It wasn't due to an incident or anything. It was due to the kids having allergies to pets and everything. These animals have to be groomed. Bath, everything, at least no more than 24 hours before they visit a facility. So they can walk into the hospital. So they're groomed on a regular basis and they just get used to it. But in terms of clean, they're pretty clean. So there are libraries that other members of the group in other communities contract with the school where kids who maybe have more of a reading challenge can meet one-on-one with the therapy team and get extra credit or extra points. And so that is an idea to consider in your own community all the opinion on your school system. Definitely, yeah, because reach out to those kids that specifically need the help. I'm glad you mentioned the allergy thing. Nobody asked that, but that is something I think I remember someone mentioning at the conference that if what if there are people who have allergies and I remember you mentioning that they clean them as well as groomed and bathed as well as they possibly can be. Yeah. I know some libraries have had issues with they have library cats as just pets in the library and that some people have taken issue with that and some kind of thing, they're kept out of the public areas. Sometimes they figure out how to do it. Right. How to deal with it. And some of our dogs shed more than others. So we bring a blanket or beach towel or something and they sit on that. So at least this is the first contained. But that was why the schools kind of said for a while that isn't going to happen. And that was the other reason we were excited about the Wizard of Oz thing is it was a demonstration to say, hey, we can do this. And the whole audience and everybody who interacts isn't going to be having massive allergy attacks by being in proximity. Right. Definitely the best choice for that kind of thing. Okay. We got some more questions that came in. Do you find, do you guys find it distracting at all to have the dogs and readers out and about in the stacks? Has that been an issue? It really hasn't been an issue. I mean, we certainly haven't gotten any complaints. For the most part, we stay in one area so that the kids know to come to where we're at. But we have an awful lot of adults who just come and observe and watch and listen and interact in between kids too. And that we spread out throughout. We're lucky to have a really nice sized youth area and so we can spread the animals out. And if somebody really doesn't want to interact with them there's certainly other options not far away. I think it's similar to any program you have depending if it's out in the library not in a specific room or somewhere that you deal with it in the same way. Exactly. Yes, there's an event going on over here. Try a different area, try a different floor, whatever you can work out. Or it won't be going on an hour from now. It'll be over and if you wish to come back, yeah. Exactly, yeah. Someone else in the library says that they've apparently done the same thing, I guess the way she's talking here. Oh, Alice from Bellevue Public Library. But they've used bookmarks but she's looking at making trading cards. I know you said the kids like to collect the bookmarks. She's looking at making trading cards featuring a photo of the dog and other facts such as favorite toy, favorite food, birthday, et cetera. Have you done anything like this or is there too much turnaround with the dogs to produce something that's specific to each animal? Well, for our program, we've also looked at doing that too. We have a pretty stable group but we do constantly get new people in. So we haven't exactly gone to it just yet but it's a fun idea. It gives more information personalized for the dog than bookmarks do. But for us anyway, we have a fairly stable group. So it sounds like something we probably need to get going on because we have toss it around and we just haven't acted on it because we have the nice bookmarks and I suppose that didn't push us to go ahead and do the trading cards. Yeah, do something that's more like a baseball card type thing or something. Yes, exactly, exactly. Now I think you maybe did answer this question when you were talking about just the kids from the schools. She asked, do you mention having adults who like to sit and watch and listen as well when the kids are reading to the dogs? Has this been a problem when you have kids who maybe are shy or hesitant to read aloud that there are these other strangers out there now watching them read? You know, I don't think it really is. Like Kim mentioned earlier, the kids get in that dog book zone and really they don't even, you know, the handler's always sitting right there but we're just kind of part of the furniture and I don't think that it really interferes with them continuing to read and enjoy their time just with the dog. They get so involved in the dog itself. Yes, and sometimes they are reading pretty softly but I imagine they would kind of regardless who was there. And I will say that the handlers try not to correct. We feel that that's not really our job unless specifically asked. Sometimes the kids will have trouble with a word and will help them out. But our goal we feel is to just get them reading at all. So we're not there as reading educators, I guess. But yes, we do assist them. Cool, okay. And we do have one comment. Emily, who's our cataloger here at the library commission, she's in another office you're watching. And she says that she's seen the libraries create catalog records for their therapy dogs so that you can see them that they're in the library. And she sent a link that I'm including in the show notes here from Harvard Medical School, I believe it is, where they have Cooper, the Countway Library Therapy Dog, Countway Library of Medicine is the name of the library and has his own little page on their website specifically about the dog and explaining when he'd be there and about what kind of dog he is and everything. I love it, I'll see if I can work on our catalog. There's a lot, people are doing all sorts of special things. Sell that one, Emily. So lots of creative uses and we're always looking for new ideas and it's one of those continuing to evolve programs, which is always fun. And I would say, I mean, we are therapy dogs, it's in our title. However, we do have a cat in the program. Oh. He's not a reading cat, he's a little bit older cat, but he does go to the care centers in the hospital. But there's really no reason if you don't have a good cat out there, you'd be willing to sit still to consider doing therapy work with them. Yeah, any animal that you can at least vet and see, you know, have someone who knows what they're doing, figure out ahead of time as you, like with a test or observer person, is this an animal that can do this kind of thing? Yeah. People have been cats into like nursing homes and stuff too, along with the dogs I've seen. Yes, absolutely. We do not have any therapy snakes or any therapy dogs. No, that's okay with me, yeah. I don't think that would be a positive. There would be a very limited curve that would want to reach to this. Yes, there'd be a smoke, there'd be certain kids that would love that, yes. Another suggestion from, actually, a request they've gotten and this is actually really cool, they actually, they give out a free book after several visits to the kids if they've done it a certain number of times and she said someone had asked them if the dogs would autograph the free book, like doing their paw print on it. Oh, I love it. And she wants to know, how can we do this safely? Is there a special kind of painter ink we could use to make the paw print? And I know that I've gotten, actually, I've gotten an item that's been autographed, as they call it, you can guess. I know there is things that would be safe, like the non-toxic type paints that kids would use, I would assume, would be okay to use for that. But I received a movie that had ferrets in it and they had the ferret who started it paw to graph on the front of it, their paw print. That's a wonderful idea. I think you could use any, even just a regular non-toxic stamp pad that you would use with young children in a program on the dogs, the dogs wash. And you make paints of things like food coloring and water and cornstarch, things like that that are all safe, natural, nothing chemical. Right, the challenging part, I think this would have to be an outside activity for the paw to graph. Or we could take them out of the garage where the bookmobile lives so we have somewhere we can get more paw. Getting the dogs to actually participate would be possibly. Yeah, well they would get really exuberant, we might have more paw prints that we needed. We could have a lot of fun. That's a wonderful idea, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, so have you worked or talked to Alice here at Bellevue before that you guys are doing this? I don't think I have. Oh maybe you guys can check in with each other, yeah. Yeah. We did another question that actually came in that over the two hours that you have the dogs there, do they take breaks? Do they get breaks from it? The dogs do, certain dogs have longer tolerance than others. That's part of what I said about being in tune with your animal. And we just tell the kids, oh she needs a breath of fresh air so we're gonna step outside and they find, they go on to another dog or they'll wait patiently for us. So we don't take planned breaks, it kinda depends on our animal and the need we see. And that's up to the handler to decide, the library doesn't decide that one. Right, the handlers just need to know their animals if they need to go out for a bit or if they're just done for the day. Those are. You know how your animal's doing and you can tell. Yeah, and just like all the rest of us, some days they are gonna sit for hours and fall asleep and some days it's half an hour and they just don't wanna play anymore. It works though, most of the time they're just trying to sit there and get petted. Oh of course, yeah. They know it's their job. Mm-hmm. As long as you're petting me, I'm good. Yes, exactly. It's a tough job to do, isn't it? Yeah, so that's all the questions we had at the moment. If anybody else does have any other questions, feel free to type them in, we can ask. Oh, there's nice, is that at your libraries at somewhere else? I wish. I wish, you know, I don't know where this is. Kim found this great book. Pittsburgh actually. Ah, nice. But we think every book library should have one of those too. She's a little bit biased with the corgi there. It's okay. Yes. Definitely. Well, it doesn't look like anything else has come in rushing in at the last minute here. I'm just a couple of, this is very helpful. Thanks so much for your presentation. Oh, you're very welcome. Our pleasure. Thank you. So thank you everyone for attending. Their contact information was up there in that previous slide. So if you do wanna get in touch with them, you can do it that way. And Christy, if you'll send me the PowerPoint, I'll be able to post that up with the show notes. I can do that. And then everyone will have access to that there as well. You can talk, call Kim, Christy or Shauna for more information about what they're doing with the program. So thank you guys, Kim and Christy, for this. This is great. I'm glad I got to have you on the show here. Like I said, I saw your presentation at our state conference and thought it would be great to share it with other people out and about there too. Thank you. We're always glad to talk about our PAWS program. Now we just have to figure out how to get the dives to come with us. Yes. And that's the presentation. We'll try and have live demonstrations. Yes, exactly. Great, okay. So I am going to pull back control here to my screen. Here we go. Okay, so thank you very much for speaking and for everyone for attending. That will wrap it up for this morning show. It has been recorded. So the recording will be available later if you need to watch it again or share it with colleagues who are unable to join us today. I hope you'll join us next week when our topic sounds very dangerous is Killing Dewey. Jasmine Dean, who's the director at the Port Nof District Library in Chabuk, Idaho is gonna be on there. One of the libraries out there who has gotten rid of Dewey and have switched how they're cataloging and arranging their books. And so she's gonna come on the show and talk to us about that. So I hope you register, sign up for that next week. And also if you are on Facebook and Compass Live is also on Facebook, we have a Facebook page where you can follow us like us on Facebook and you'll get notifications of new shows that are coming up when recordings are available. I always give reminders every Wednesday morning that the new show, whatever the topic is, is about to start. So definitely if you are a Facebook user, follow us there. All of the links for the TherapyTogs and the McCartney Public Library and the Pet Partners I mentioned are delicious. I'm gonna include that in the show notes later too. And just wanna show you, I did find the page that Emily, our cataloger, was talking about Cooper, the Countway Library Therapy Dog. Here's Cooper's page on their website so you can see they have their information there for when he is available, Tuesdays and Thursdays, all day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wow. So other than that, that wraps it up for our show today. Thank you very much for attending and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.