Patch Portrait: Mom Turns to Dogs to Help Struggling Readers

For the past five years a Highland Park woman has been helping kids across the North Shore learn to read.

Carole Yuster founded back in 2007. She first got the idea in a hospital. She was visiting her mother, who was struggling with cancer, when a therapy dog was brought into the room. It was the first time Yuster had ever seen one, and she was impressed by how much the dog "helped to reduce the stress of the moment."

After her mother died, Yuster got her own dog, Minny, and trained it to be a therapy dog. At first she brought Minny to hospitals, but her mother's love of reading gave Yuster a more unique idea for her pet. "My mom was an avid reader, so I thought it was a legacy to start a children-reading-to-dog program," Yuster said.

Yuster's program started with 10 therapy dogs and that number has nearly doubled since. In addition to meeting monthly with children at local libraries, members of the program (and their dogs) also frequent elementary schools to target children who are struggling to stay at the reading level of their classmates.