Skip to main content
Tails of Joy Animal Assisted Therapy
Upcoming Events
Events

Providing Therapeutic Benefit to People
Through the Use of Animals

Tails of Joy members volunteer throughout Hartford, Tolland and Windham counties and neighboring towns in Connecticut.

News / Articles

Mtani Featured on Senator Lieberman's Website

Published on 2/17/2005
Senator Lieberman honored Mtani (pronounced TAHnee – silent M) as one of CT's Best for his work as a Reading Education Assistance Dog for the program Tails of Joy. 

Kindergarten teacher Jennifer Faning got the idea to do this when her mother-in-law sent her a picture of a child reading to a dog that ran in a North Carolina paper. Mtani and his owner, retired kindergarten teacher Daphne Wilcox, have been meeting individually with four first-graders since November to help improve their reading skills. 

For Some Students, Teacher's The Pet

Tails of Joy member Daphne Wilcox and Mtani — which means "special friend" in Swahili were featured in a Hartford Courant article about the R.E.A.D. program. 

"Mtani and his owner, retired kindergarten teacher Daphne Wilcox, have been meeting individually with four first-graders since November to help them improve their reading skills. The theory is that struggling readers might be embarrassed to read in front of a class or even a teacher but that the dog provides a comforting, nonjudgmental audience.