Ten-year-old Harvey St. Martin used to be afraid of his friend Sunny. He wouldn’t come near her. In fact, the first time he saw her, he screamed.
It took months for the two to get acquainted, and now, Sunny and St. Martin hang out on Wednesday afternoons.
Sunny didn’t mind the wait — that’s part of her job.
Sunny, an 11-year-old yellow Labrador retriever, is a trained therapy dog who visits Forbes Library on Wednesdays from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Kids can sign up to read to her in 15-minute time slots.
“Some kids just want to read a whole chapter. Some kids want to pet Sunny, talk to Sunny, cuddle with Sunny — just depends on the kids,” said Gail Thomas, Sunny’s owner. Thomas hands out bookmarks of Sunny that say, “Sunny is a good listener. She likes to hear stories and look at the pictures, too.”
Parents sometimes stay during their children’s sessions to take pictures of their kids with Sunny, but others leave them be for the 15 minutes.
“Some parents hover a little bit and try to correct the children, and I try to explain that this is a time to be comfortable with reading, and that Sunny doesn’t care if they mispronounce a word,” Thomas said. Some parents will ask what Sunny’s favorite kinds of books are, to which Thomas replies, “Books about dogs or poetry.” (In fact, Sunny was the cover model on Thomas’s own poetry book, “This World.”)
When Sunny was a puppy, Thomas took her to get certified through Bright Spot Therapy Dogs, which trains dogs to visit facilities like hospitals, schools, nursing homes and even Bradley International Airport.
“She passed with flying colors. They do all kinds of things at that therapy training. They run wheelchairs around the dog, they run bicycles around the dog, they set off fire alarms. There were dogs that couldn’t tolerate that, but she was calm through the whole thing,” Thomas said.
Once Sunny was credentialed in 2018, the duo worked with hard-of-hearing students from Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech who were taking classes at Leeds Elementary School, then Emily Williston Memorial Library in Easthampton. When Forbes Library lost its previous therapy dog a few years ago, Thomas applied for Sunny to take the spot, and the duo has been there ever since. Sunny usually averages three or four kids who sign up each afternoon she’s there, which means she’s met hundreds of children at Forbes, by Thomas’s estimation.
“There are kids who establish a bond with her and want to come every week, or who maybe need reading help, and the parent wants them to come more and more. Just last week, new kids came who’d never met her before,” Thomas said.
Of course, adults love her, too: “Between here and the parking lot, everybody is stopping and [saying], ‘Can I pet Sunny? Can I read to Sunny?’” Thomas said.
Sunny also has a particular fondness for the library’s custodian, Mark Dufault, because he gave her a big dog treat the first time they ever met. “All she has to do is hear his cart, and she’s like, ‘I want to see him!’” Thomas said.
Sunny’s reading sessions are aimed at kids between the ages of 4 and 10, but Thomas once had a Smith College student sign up so she could practice reading to Sunny in Italian. A few weeks ago, a parent even brought in their baby, who crawled on the floor and grabbed Sunny’s fur — but Sunny didn’t even flinch, Thomas said. Whenever she’s recognized on the street, kids will roll down their car windows and call out, “Hi, Sunny!”
“She pretty much makes friends wherever she goes, even when we’re not working here,” Thomas said.
Last Wednesday, St. Martin and his mom, Katie Rosenblatt, walked into the Children’s Department. St. Martin usually likes to read Sunny books from Jerry Pallotta’s “Who Would Win?” series, but this time, he’d brought one of his own: a handwritten, hand-illustrated book called “Who Would Win: Polar Bear or Grizzly Bear or Orca or Moose?”
“Seeing Sunny here at the library has made Harvey have more confidence that dogs are safe, dogs are our friends, they are good companions, and they’re soft and sweet, and that he didn’t have anything to be afraid of,” Rosenblatt said. Meeting with Sunny has given St. Martin the courage to pet his school’s therapy dog sometimes, too.
“I remember when we first saw Sunny, I wouldn’t even come close at all. And now look at me!” St. Martin said.
St. Martin was the only kid signed up to hang out with Sunny that day, so once he was done reading, he had a bit of extra time. He gave Sunny more cuddles and a pre-sliced bite of her favorite treat, a carrot.
He’d come a long way from the first time he’d ever touched Sunny, when his mom invited him to place his hand over hers as she gently petted the dog’s fur. He gave it a try for a brief second, then yanked his hand away just as quickly.
This time, however, he sat happily with the dog as other kids nearby played on computers and perused the shelves. He asked Thomas when Sunny’s birthday is. “I think it’s August 7,” she replied. “She’s a Leo.”
It was easy to tell that Sunny was happy, too: “The tail doesn’t stop wagging, if you notice,” Thomas said.
“She loves people and voices,” Thomas added. “She likes it here.”
To book a timeslot with Sunny, call 413-587-1010 or sign up at Forbes Library in person at the Children’s Desk on the lower level.
