Gregg: And, you have a friend here with us today? 
 
Dan: I do. This is Buttercup. 
 
Gregg: Buttercup? 
 
Dan: She is a nine month old yellow lab. 
 
Gregg: Okay, tell me a little bit about what you do here at Stafford Creek with Buttercup. 
 
Dan: Well, we're training service dogs here and Buttercup came to us from a puppy raiser they had used to try to help her with some of her basic behavior, and exposing her to a lot of different elements and a lot of different environments. So that she came to us pretty raw, but with an idea of what some good manners were. So then our job is to practice with her, what we call six priority behaviors, which are critical to people who will be receiving these dogs. And those would be disabled vets and children have also received dogs from this program. Those priority resource would be, our priority behaviors would be a dog walking with a loose leash at your side. So they don't pull. Imagine if somebody had stability issues you wouldn't want the dog to pull them along. They have to just walk calmly beside them. A dog waits at a door before we…and waits for us to go through before they can go through the door. They have to be invited through the door. And so that way they're not trying to rush ahead. You've seen dogs that try to rush ahead of the owner to get out the door, and that could be dangerous as well. And then, maintaining a down, as you see she's doing right now, without any other cue. I gave her a down and she's maintained it since, with a little positive reinforcement. That's all we do with these dogs, is positive reinforcement. There's no corrections for the dog doing a behavior we didn't want. We just ignore that behavior and don't reward it. And according to the principles of the operant conditioning that they work under, if the behavior is reinforced it will be continued. It will be repeated. If the behavior is not reinforced, it's likely to not continue. So, then we'll be on a schedule with a dog anywhere from a few months to maybe eight months to a year. Depending on how much time you have, and the dog you have, you can train up to 55, 60 cues. And we call them cues, not commands. We're not commanding this dog. All we're doing is putting behavior that they already know on to a verbal cue. 
 
Gregg: Okay. 
 
Dan: And we use verbal cues. 
 
Gregg: Can you give us some examples? 
 
Dan: Okay, yeah. So, she'll start out with the basic ones that people are familiar with, sit, down, the stay, a stand. And then we'll get more complex. I might say go through. So if I walk up to an elevator and I push the elevator button, I can say "Go through," the dog will walk through, then turn around and face me and wait for me. We also teach, besides the heel position, the side position, front, behind. They'll turn on the lights. We'll do up, light, to turn the light on. Up, switch, to turn the light off. I give her objects. You know I just will take the object and go to somebody with it or up, to get up on something and grab some...you know that, whatever I want, the item that I might want. Say, this box of pizza is over here, we'd say, "Up, get it," and she'll grab that box and get it to me. She might enjoy some of it on the way over but yeah, that would be where we're going with it. And so, you can see that, besides the basic cues that you'd give a dog, basic behaviors you need, those that would aid somebody who had some disabilities. And we've also trained a diabetic alert. I did a lot of scent work in the service training bomb dogs, drug dogs, and some of these dogs, they might need for a diabetic alert. And that would alert somebody who had diabetes. If their blood sugar was getting low the dog would, however we trained it, would give that person an indication. Maybe scratch on their leg. Maybe sit. If the person didn't respond to the sit then they might get a little excited and try something a little more extreme like rubbing on or scratching on the leg. 
 
Gregg: How rewarding is this for you? 
 
Dan: For me it's very rewarding. It's made an entirely different…it's created an entirely different attitude for me as far as doing my time. I have... 
 
Gregg: How much time do you have, by the way? 
 
Dan: Well, I have, and down now under a year, but I had done ten years. So, for the majority of that time, you know, I worked different jobs, but prisons can be a grind. You know, just doing the time. Well, I never find any free time, you know, because I can always put it to use. It's not work. You know, it's more of just a rewarding experience. As I said, I worked dogs in the military, but that was a different method. So, what we do now in this method is all positive reinforcement. And so, maybe I was a grumpy guy, or a guy with a short temper, when people would get into my space or do the things that, you know, go on around in a crowded environment, in prison. Well, what I found after working the dogs with all that positive reinforcement, is that I have a much more positive attitude now.