By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
ALLENTOWN — There’s no barking allowed during storytime at the library, and Amber, Boomer and Jack could be counted on to follow the rules.
The three pooches — all highly trained certified therapy dogs — listened in attentive, nonjudgmental silence as groups of youngsters took turns practicing their reading skills at the Allentown Public Library last week. Afterward, the children peppered the dogs’ handlers with questions about their dogs’ lives beyond the library’s walls.
”Does she have a job? Does she herd cows or sheep?” 7-year-old Angelo DeRose asked Amber’s handler, Susan Morton, as he gently stroked the head of the white Shih Tzu mix, who has one dark brown eye and one pale blue.
”Oh, no, her only job is to make people happy,” explained Ms. Morton, a former teacher and longtime Allentown resident who now lives in Hamilton.
Ms. Morton said she first met Amber at homeless pet adoption day at the Hamilton PetSmart and couldn’t leave without her. Amber’s polite, easy-going personality and eagerness to be around people soon made her quite popular with Ms. Morton’s neighbors, and this led to the realization that Amber had the right qualities to become a therapy dog trained to bring comfort to people in hospitals, nursing homes, schools and other institutions.
”She doesn’t bark, she doesn’t jump up on people,” Ms. Morton said. “She’s just a really nice dog that loves to be around people.”
Amber, who is certified and insured through Therapy Dogs International (TDI) and wears a burgundy bandana with the organization’s emblem, makes at least 17 therapy visits a month. The destination is usually area hospitals and nursing homes, Ms. Morton said, but Amber has also visited students in local elementary schools and even an Ivy League university. (Amber was one of a contingent of TDI therapy dogs that visited Princeton University in the spring to hang out with stressed students studying for their exams, she said.)
”She loves children; children are her favorite people,” Ms. Morton said.
In libraries and elementary schools, therapy dogs provide calm reassurance to young readers, who often pet the dog as they read aloud to them. Unlike grownups who sometimes cannot resist the urge to correct young readers’ pronunciation or finish a sentence for them, therapy dogs listen patiently no matter how long it takes.
The other two therapy dogs at the Allentown library July 5, Jack and Boomer, are trained and certified through the Monmouth County SPCA. Like Amber, both Boomer and Jack are former homeless pets who found their forever homes and their calling as therapy dogs after being adopted.
Boomer, a doe-eyed brown and white Australian cattle dog mix belonging to Lori Thompson of Neptune; and Jack, a handsome Burnese mountain dog mix belonging to Dianne Roebuck of Interlacken, are veterans of the nursing home circuit too. The visit to the Allentown library storytime session last week was their first, but they responded to the children like seasoned pros.
All three dogs, in fact, were unperturbed by each other or the commotion of 15 youngsters, parents, librarians and a photographer’s camera in the crowded storytime room. Each dog worked with a group of five kids of widely varying reading skills and listened patiently to stories that ran the gamut from easy-reader rhymes, to nonfiction books about planets, to novels about boy wizards.
The dogs were so attentive that a few of the younger children responded by flipping the books around after each page to show their canine pals the pictures.
Some children said their families didn’t have dogs, and they wished for a pal like Amber, Boomer or Jack to read to at home. But those who already have dogs set the rest of the kids straight about the typical canine’s attention span.
Angelo and his 5-year-old sister, Samantha, were asked if their dogs, Joey and Oscar, would sit still and listen quietly to a story.
”No way!” Angelo said.

