Long-Term Effects of Therapy Dogs in Schools

A preschooler and media specialist in the library at Mark Twain Elementary School in Bettendorf, Iowa, pet Tinker, a golden retriever assigned to the school district’s therapy dog program as a reading buddy.

Swedish researchers published a study in 2017 that tracked 3.4 million people for 12 years and concluded dog owners had a significantly lower risk of death from heart disease and other causes.

But “does having a dog make you healthier or do healthier people get dogs?” asks psychologist Nancy Gee, a researcher on animal-assisted therapy at State University of New York at Fredonia. Overlooking the selection bias inherent in people self-selecting to be dog owners is one of many problems that weaken the body of research on the long-term benefits of dogs in schools, Gee adds.

Studies also suffer from small sample sizes, a lack of control groups, a bias toward positive results, lack of replication and long-term follow up and spin in media accounts by pet food companies, says Hal Herzog, a psychology professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C., who has studied human-animal interactions for decades. Some studies that found dogs produced no academic benefits in the classroom were not published, he says. Further, the field is so new that there hasn’t been sufficient time to run good long-term studies.

In short, researchers say, it is unclear whether dogs have long-term effects on student learning.

Easing Interaction
Herzog and Gee agree that plenty of good research shows therapy dogs comfort people young and old in the short term. Studies document that just by touching a dog, children experience a drop in blood pressure, anxiety and stress and an increase in mood-elevating hormones such as serotonin.

Dogs clearly provide a “social lubricant” for children, making it easier for them to interact and express themselves, particularly when they are anxious or surviving a trauma such as a school shooting, says Gee, who manages studies worldwide for human-animal interaction research for the Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition, a subsidiary of Mars Petcare. Gee’s own research shows dogs can help preschoolers improve their memory performance on certain tasks. “The dog focuses their attention and increases their motivation,” she says.

A team of South African researchers published in May 2014 results of their study using dogs to help 3rd graders improve their reading. They compared three groups of children, all poor readers. One group read to dogs, another to adults and a third to a teddy bear. A control group of poor readers simply continued with their normal school program.

The students were tested before and after the 10-week experiment, and those who read to dogs scored significantly higher than all other groups. This was a high-quality study, Gee says.

“That is pretty hard evidence that these programs can be effective,” she says.

Essential Training
Gee encourages school administrators to consider how therapy dogs might help them carry out their education mission. But if school leaders decide to bring therapy dogs into their classrooms, she says, they must be sure the dogs and their handlers are well-trained. And, she adds, administrators should know how they want to use dogs to reach specific goals, whether comforting anxious children or helping students read better.


— BILL GRAVES