Bark and Read

This is Aoife posing with one of her favourite books to help me tell you about a new scheme being launched in the UK this weekend. It's called Bark and Read! Sadly there are lots of children who don't know how to read even though they are going to school. They get scared about making mistakes and being laughed at if they say the wrong word so they just don't look at books. Of course if they were like Caoimhe they would probably be eating them!

But as you know we dogs are not so mean as to laugh if someone makes a mistake and we are quite happy to lie down and snooze if little peeps want to read us a story - we won't mind if they don't know a word or stumble when they read. This kind of scheme has been successful in the United States and now the Kennel Club in England are launching a foundation to support schemes like Pets as Therapy and Reading Education Assistance Dogs that take dogs into classrooms so that children can read to them and become more confident about reading books.

It is being launched at Discover Dogs which is a big event where people can go and meet dogs and find out about different breeds - and about this new scheme. It is on at the weekend 12-13 November at Earls Court in London. Children under 12 go free and can go and read to dogs in a special area set aside for them.

If you want to know more about it you can find it on the Kennel Club website:
www.thekennelclub.org.uk/barkandread

We think it is a very good idea because if the little peeps grow up not knowing how to read how are they going to read about our blogging adventures or the books that tell them about how to look after us? You have to plan for the future and little peeps are our future owners!

I also wanted to tell you about a great day I had yesterday at York Racecourse but it was so dark and misty the pictures did not come out very well! That was Leigh's excuse anyway but we met a lovely mini schnauzer puppy called Daisy with her owner and had a good time chasing seagulls:

This is Daisy in her lovely bandana and here she is with me. I'm looking a bit cross because I thought Daisy might have been going to get a treat for her lovely pose!

I did so much running on that racecourse that when I got home I just had to snooze for the rest of the evening - and my sister lay down to keep me company even though she hadn't been running at all!