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Children With Anxiety And Attachment Issues

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Sara (pseudonym) is a sweet and lively nine-year-old girl who loves soccer and softball. She is bright and does well in all her school subjects, except reading. In reading, she had been hovering around the first-grade level for two years, frustrating and vexing Sara, as well as her teachers and her parents. Sara is an adopted child with anxiety and attachment issues that often come up in stressful situations. This learning deficit led her to become increasingly stressed and frustrated about her ability to read. In one effort to help, Sara’s parents enrolled her in an Assisted-Animal Therapy program for students struggling with reading. Lo and behold, after a few months, Sara’s teachers noted that her reading improved markedly. During in class reading assessments, Sara’s reading level jumped an entire grade level with the dog present. The teachers called in her parents for a conference, happy to share their findings. Sara’s parents decided to adopt a therapy dog for their home. Soon after, her family adopted “Elsa” a six-year-old chihuahua. Sara’s school therapist was impressed with her reduced anxiety levels and how her therapy dog positively affected her life, and her reading confidence. It is obvious that in the transformation from a struggling reader to a confident student, a large amount was in fact due to her interactions with the dogs. Given that dogs have such positive effects on people in their everyday activities, I wondered how these effects could translate to

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