Nehemiah Turner is 11 years old and lives in Jacksonville, Florida. Every week, he arrived at the Jacksonville Humane Society shelter with a book under his arm, sat in front of a cage, and began reading aloud, not caring whether the dog understood the words or just the tone of his voice.
He did it so many times that he ended up accumulating 100 hours of reading to dogs and cats waiting for a home. He became the first child to reach that milestone in the Pawsitive Reading program, designed to help animals reduce stress by listening to a calm, steady voice.
While Nehemiah practiced his reading in a safe place, without the pressure of a classroom, the shelter animals found something just as valuable: companionship. No one asked him to come back so many times. He simply decided that those 100 hours were worth it.