Behind The Noose Short Film

I think this documentary was really good. I enjoyed it because it had the reality of what police officers could face in situations like these. Yes I know, these situations don't happen often, but it is a possibility. I thought that the music that was paired with short was very fitting. The music gave the short a little more suspense than it already had. There were a few points that I thought were a little unrealistic about the short I had watched. When he was searching through the buildings there was a body hanging but he somehow missed it, which I don't understand. They could've put the body in a more secluded place where it would've been understandable that he missed the body. The short went from very sunny day to a pitch black night within a matter of two minutes. I think the short was overall very good and entertaining, but it could've been more realistic at a few points.


 Link to Article

Primary Research Survey

For my primary research I decided to do the survey I submitted on blackboard. I handed out the survey to various members in my dorm. I didn’t know what to expect when handing this survey out. I thought I’d receive various different answers about the survey and what students knew about Wildcat Service Dogs. I had 37 participants in this survey The survey questions I asked were:

1. Do you have pets at home?
1. Yes
2. No
2. Do you know anything about wildcat service dogs?
1. Yes
2. No
3. If your answer was yes to question 2, please explain what you know.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Would you like to learn more information about the program?
1. Yes
2. No
5. Would you consider joining the Wildcat Service Dog Program?
1. Yes
2. No
3. Don’t have enough information
6. Do you know anybody who is a part of the program?
1. Yes
2. No

For the 1st question I received 29 “yes” answers and 8 “no” answers. I asked this question to see if it would relate to question number 5 in determining if there is any relation in people that have pets wanting to be a service dog trainer or not.  

The second question I received all “Yes” answers form the 37 participants.

The third question I had a lot of similar answers. The three most common answers were; “They are trained by students here at UK”, “They are dogs that help students with disabilities”, and “Anybody can become a trainer”.

The fourth question I was surprised about. Only 19 of the 37 participants wanted to know more about the Wildcat Service Dog program. I think they said “no” because the figured I’d send them emails about it and be that annoying survey guy nobody likes.

The fifth question was what I had expected. I had 31 students say “yes”. I thought that those who had pets would be more likely to want to become a part of the Wildcat Service Dog program. Of the 29 students who had pets, 25 of them would want to join the program.  There were also 6 students who didn’t have pets that also wanted to join the program. I did not have any students say they “did not have enough information”.

The sixth question I only received one “yes” answer. The girl said she knew somebody from her hometown that was a part of the program. I think many of the “no” answers are because many of the students in my dorm are freshmen and don’t know too many upperclassmen here at UK.

Reflection on the Blog Posts

When we were first assigned the blog posts I was very uninterested in them. I thought they were a waste of time and given to us for busy work. I would write them just for the sake of the grade and not really care what the information I was looking up actually was. It was hard choosing a topic that I actually wanted to learn about, but once we were put into groups I instantly loved the topic. The Wildcat Service Dogs and service dogs in general are so fascinating. I actually enjoy doing the research (to an extent). I have learned so much from the 3 blog posts a week. The blog posts are a great idea. Like I said earlier I didn’t understand what the point of doing them was, but now that we are actually starting to get into writing and directing our documentary, they are a great source and easy reference. I don’t need to keep looking up different items to put into the documentary. Everything I have already researched is summed up into a nice little paragraph or two. If I need more information from a specific source, I know where to find it. I can also use my group member’s blog post to retrieve and look for information I didn’t find. Overall I am pretty happy on how the blog posts have helped in terms of research. What I wasn’t a fan of was how repetitive some blog posts got to be. The information I was finding was very similar to other blog posts I had done. It was tough finding new information that wasn’t completely boring. These blog posts will be a big help to me when doing the documentary in the near future.

Pros and Cons of Service Dogs

The article I’m writing about is titled “Pros and cons of getting a service dog. The article can be found online at doggoestocollege.com. The article was written and published by doggoestocollege.com.

The are many pros and cons to service dogs. The first pro is the main reason service dogs exist: assistance with one’s disability. The dogs are there to help their owners get through everyday activities in life. Service dogs help their owners achieve greater independence. Without their service dogs many owners couldn’t do regular activities and could feel restricted on what they can and can’t do. Dog’s that can help to detect medical alerts can actually be the difference in if the individual (owner) can get a drivers license or not. Happiness is right in front of the individual at all times. Sometimes people with disabilities can become depressed or unhappy, but it is pretty hard to become unhappy with a loving and caring dog next to the individual. Service dogs give some owners a piece of mind. Knowing that someone or something is there for you at all hours of the day can be really comforting to some people. Although there are many pros of having a service dog, there are also a lot of cons. One problem that a lot of service dog owners run into is the denial of entering some public places. There is a federal law granting all service dogs to be allowed into public areas, but some public place owners still don’t let the dogs in. They question whether the validity of their service dog is true. Another concern that many service dogs owners have is the constant remarks and questions they receive throughout the day. A lot of people are very curious about service dogs and want to know more about them. It isn’t that these people are doing anything wrong, but the owners are asked these questions very often which can get annoying. Many people with disabilities have to learn not to be self conscious about their disability. With a service dog it is obvious that this individual has a disability and can really harm him or her knowing that people are staring at you because of your disability.

It was really interesting to see that there are some cons of owning a service dog. Most people know of the good that service dogs do. They help their owners with many simple tasks throughout the day, that without the service dog they wouldn't be able to do so. What I want to know is, How are some public space owners allowed to not serve those with service dogs? I had read in a previous article I wrote about that they are only allowed to ask two questions, “Is this a service dog?” and “What is this service dog trained for?”. They aren’t allowed to ask any other questions regarding the validity of the service dog. I could further my research on this specific example on looking up what happens to the individuals who don’t grant access to service dogs. Are they fined, or is there a harsher penalty? 


Link to Article

Seizure Alert and Response Dogs

The article I am writing about today is titled “Seizure alert/response dogs” and was written and published by the website servicedogcentral.org. In my earlier blog post titled “Service Dog in the Yearbook” I learned that some service dogs are trained to predict epileptic seizures. I found this very interesting and thought I’d look further into it.

The article starts off by talking about how many dogs are actually able to predict seizures. Only fifteen percent of dogs are able to predict seizures before they occur. Usually these predictions can be made around 10-20 minutes before the seizure happens, giving the dog an opportunity to notify friends or family. This is the seizure alert dog. The seizure response dog helps the individual when a seizure occurs. Some of the tasks these dogs help with are clearing vomit from the individual’s airway (gross I know, but very crucial), operating a K-9 phone, helping the individual balance if needed, and other activities that help the individual survive for some time before help arrives. These two dogs combined are simply called “Seizure Dogs”. Nobody knows how the dogs know when a seizure will occur. There are two theories: “(1) that the dog is able to smell minute changes in the person's biochemistry, possibly in their blood chemistry or (2) that they are able to detect fine motor changes imperceptible to human eyes”. This ability to detect seizures is natural and only occurs in some dogs, but not others. Dogs can be trained to detect seizures, but without knowing when a seizure will happen, there is no way of training. For most seizure alert dogs it takes them close to six months before they can accurately start predicting when their owner will have a seizure.

This to me is beyond amazing. It is unbelievable to think that dogs can predict when an individual will have a seizure of some sort. It’s also crazy to think about how these dogs are trained to respond to an individual having a seizure. How are these dogs taught to help individuals experiencing a seizure? How do you train them to turn the body over so airways aren’t blocked, or to call on the K-9 phone? I could research this using the internet, but talking to a trainer that trains these types of dogs would be much more satisfying.


Link to Article

Guide Dogs Bring More Than Sight

The article I am writing about is titled “ Guide dogs bring more than sight” and was found at the Academic Search Complete database from the University of Kentucky library website at http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uky.edu. The article was written by Allison Gray and was published as a newspaper article by USA Today.

The article starts off talking about Deni Elliott, a legally blind woman who wanted not just a service dog, but a best friend. She didn’t care what type of dog it was, what color it was, its gender, or its size, but she did care about its personality. Deni and her dog, Alberta are among 7,000 guide dog pairings. These pairings are more than just a guide dog and their owner, its like a marriage. Alberta went through a lot of training to become a guide dog, and it first started with a year and half program with puppy raisers. These puppies will be trained in crowded areas to see how they handle people, and will be tested on how they react to little distractions like a coin falling to the ground. These dogs can be much more than just guide dogs. A college student was too shy to eat in the cafeteria, but once she received her service dog she was no longer shy. Other service dogs can help owners with peanut allergies smell if there are any traces of peanuts in the food they eat.  Many legally blind people like Deni prefer guide dogs rather than canes. Deni says, “My world now is as big as a guide dog can sense, which is a whole lot bigger than the arc of a cane”.

This article was cool to look at and read. I was fascinated about how dogs are trained to sniff out the slightest bit of peanuts to help their owner. I was curious about the 7,000 pairing number. Is that number just based off of legally blind people, or does it include others that have service dogs as well? If I wanted to pursue this question towards my research I could easily find out how many total service dogs are active today by doing a couple quick google searches. 


Link to Article

Service Dog in the Yearbook

The article I found is titled “Service Dog Gets His Own Photo in the Middle School Yearbook”. I found this article on the online database the UK library provides at http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uky.edu. The article was written by Samantha Grossman and published by time.com.

The article first talks about the odd new face in the yearbook at Hector Garcia Middle School; a dog! The dog’s name is Taxi and he is a service dog to a young lady Rachel Benke. Rachel has been suffering from epileptic seizures for her whole life and had a corrective brain surgery when she was six. The surgery reduced the amount of seizures she has, but she still experiences them today. The reason Taxi is so important to Rachel is because Taxi can sense when Rachel will have a seizure “up to an hour and a half before it occurs”. Once Taxi senses she will have a seizure, he alerts her teachers and or parents, whoever is around. Taxi is with Rachel every single day at school, and the thought of adding Taxi to the yearbook started as a joke. Taxi has saved Rachel’s life twice already. One time occurred when Rachel was on  trampoline and the other, when she was in a pool.

When I first read the title it automatically caught my interest. What could’ve been so special about this dog that he got a spot in the school yearbook? Its really a cool story. The fact that Taxi can predict when Rachel has a seizure is mind blowing to me. How is Taxi able to predict when this happens? What type of training can allow a dog to be able to do this? I could further my research to look into service dogs that are primarily for seizure patients, instead of service dogs in general.


Link to Article

About Wildcat Service Dogs

The article I’m writing about today can be found at wildcatservicedogsuk.webs.com. The article is titled “About Us” and was written and published by the Wildcat Service Dog Team.

The article starts off saying that the Wildcat Service Dog organization is relatively new to the University. All Wildcat Service Dogs are trained by college students for up to two years. The trainers of Wildcat Service Dogs must attend weekly training sessions.The WSD (Wildcat Service Dogs) program was started in 2011 when Katie Skarvan got a service dog to train. She brought the dog to many classes and she received many questions pertaining to the dog. Another student named Jennifer Hamilton then received a training dog as well and the program took off from there. The service dogs are being trained to help individuals with disabilities accomplish everyday tasks. Service dogs help with many tasks: opening doors, turning off lights, retrieving dropped items, and many more. Puppy raisers at the university receive their dogs when they are 8-12 weeks old and keep them for close to two years. The trainers are responsible for teaching the puppies simple obedience commands such as sit, stay, and other commands. To become a WSD trainer there are many things one must do. Some of them include attending orientation meetings, classes for humans, training classes, as well as many more. For the students that aren’t ready to become a puppy trainer, they can become puppy sitters. The puppy sitters watch the dogs while the trainers are busy with labs that the dogs aren’t allowed in. The Wildcat Service Dogs are only used for the basic training and are then given to a much more advanced training program.

I enjoyed learning more about this organization. I had only known that one could become a puppy trainer, but I had no clue that one could become a puppy sitter. I really want to be involved in the puppy sitting. The article doesn’t specifically say what things will get you selected to become a trainer. What are the attributes or qualities do they look for? Does an individual wanting to become a puppy trainer have to have any prior experience with animals? To further my research I could look at the link provided in the article and find more information about service dogs in general. 


Link to Article

5 Best Therapy Dog Breeds

The article I’m writing about today is called “5 Best Therapy Dog Breeds”. The article was written and published by Therapy Dog Certification and can be found at Therapydogcertification.com.

This article tells us which breeds of dogs are best for therapy. The first dog breed that is good for therapy is the German Shepherd. The German Shepherds are known for their loyalty and intelligence, as well as their hard working ability. Although German Shepherds are great dogs for training programs, it is very tough to find the ideal German Shepherd. The second dog is the labrador retriever. The labs are very smart dogs and are not aggressive. The dogs are extremely obedient and are very friendly with people and other dogs. Labs are one of the friendliest dogs there is and most people, if not all, love them. The third dog is the greyhound breed. The greyhounds are very obedient and calm to their owners. Greyhounds do not bark for the most part and they love to run. If their owner wants to take them on a run, they will be more than happy to go. The fourth breed of dog is the Beagle. Beagles are fun, small, and loyal which makes for the ideal therapy dog. Beagles look very friendly which helps create friends and doesn’t put people off. The last breed of dog is the Rottweiler. Rottweilers have everything that is needed for a therapy dog. They are smart, strong, calm, and very powerful. The stereotype of rottweilers being mean is true, but it is just because the are protective of their masters. Most all dogs are good candidates for therapy dogs, but these five are your best bet.

I was shocked when I saw Rottweilers in the five best therapy dogs. I wouldn't have guessed that they would be included because they are known as being mean and vicious. They can also be calming to some people. I’m a dog lover and I know that all dogs have a sweet side, but I just didn’t picture the Rottweilers to be in the top 5. I noticed that labradors are number two on the list and not number one. What makes them worse than the German Shepherds? I’ve noticed that most the service dogs on campus are Labrador Retrievers. I could further my research by asking the trainers why the service dogs are labradors and not German Shepherds. Is it because the ideal German Shepherd is hard to find, or is it just the program’s preference or previous experience with the dogs?


Link to Article