{"id":348113,"date":"2026-07-22T02:45:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T02:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/348113\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T02:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T02:45:11","slug":"11-year-old-logs-100-hours-reading-to-shelter-animals-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/348113\/","title":{"rendered":"11-year-old logs 100 hours reading to shelter animals"},"content":{"rendered":"

An 11-year-old boy in Florida has spent more than 100 hours reading to pets at his local animal shelter<\/p>\n

\"KateJACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014<\/p>\n

An 11-year-old boy in Florida was recently recognized for spending 100 hours reading to pets at his local animal shelter.<\/p>\n

Nehemiah Turner logged 100 volunteer hours at The Jacksonville Humane Society over more than two years with his grandmother, Action News Jax reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Soothing, feels good, calm, comforted animals, not like a whole bunch of barking is happening,” Nehemiah told the news outlet.<\/p>\n

He joined the organization’s Pawsitive Reading program in 2024 and was determined to reach 100 volunteer hours, a first for a child, JHS said in a Facebook post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nehemiah particularly loves reading to dogs in the “hopes that reading helps them feel more calm and find homes faster.” He read to a dog named Hopper during every visit until he was adopted after more than a year in the shelter.<\/p>\n

Jacksonville Humane Society CEO Lawrence Nicolas said that Nehemiah’s recognition is well-deserved.<\/p>\n

“Nehemiah’s story perfectly embodies our core belief at the Jacksonville Humane Society that generosity breeds joy,” Nicolas told PEOPLE in a statement<\/a>. “In a world where we’ve become increasingly reliant on screens, here is a young man who quietly set a goal to help homeless animals by reading books and, in doing so, has inspired his entire community.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An 11-year-old boy in Florida has spent more than 100 hours reading to pets at his local animal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[142245,137121,344,4271,142251,28,18293,142250,142248,116,118,15838,117,142240,142249,142241,142242,16228,142247,142243,142246,85722,142244],"class_list":["post-348113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-100-hours","tag-11-year-old-boy","tag-action-news-jax","tag-animal-shelter","tag-children-volunteering","tag-florida","tag-grandmother","tag-homeless-animals","tag-hopper","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-humane-society","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-kmnd","tag-lawrence-nicolas","tag-nehemiah-turner","tag-pawsitive-reading","tag-pet-adoption","tag-reading-to-dogs","tag-reading-to-pets","tag-shelter-animals","tag-shelter-pets","tag-volunteer-hours"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}