Unlike other dogs trained for specific work, these therapy dogs don\u2019t appear to do much. In a circle of students sitting on the floor learning to read by reciting simple sentences from paperbacks, Maverick and his colleague, Polly, a brown and white miniature Pinscher, mostly sniff the kids\u2019 feet and wander around.<\/p>\n
But the mere presence of the dogs\u2019 affection \u2014 without a whiff of criticism \u2014 helps the young readers relax into learning. Their extensive training makes the dogs reliably calm, no matter the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe train for the unpredictable because that\u2019s what the school environment is,\u201d said Trisha Baker, founder of Attitudes in Reverse. \u201cIs the dog going to be walking down the hall with hundreds of students, in chaos? Is there going to be a school shooting drill? We have to teach them to be calm and quiet during that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot every dog is able to fulfill the requirements. Sometimes dogs have anxiety themselves and are better off home on the sofa,\u201d she added. \u201cThat\u2019s perfectly okay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike other dogs trained for specific work, these therapy dogs don\u2019t appear to do much. In a circle…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":325402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,18728,4654,1448,2830,18729,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-325401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-charter-schools","10":"tag-dogs","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-pennsylvania-education","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115421207913073777","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}