Progress

This morning I had a meeting with my mentor. It was over the phone because we both have such busy schedules but she helped me get started on the right foot. We were talking about how I needed to interview some people to get their opinions on allowing therapy dogs in the court room. One person who we both thought would be very beneficial is Andrea Buccine who is involved in working with therapy dogs in the court cases. We decided it would be best to draft a letter and send it off to her asking if there was a time I could go and talk to her or even converse over the phone. Upon that decision I thought I should find out more about Ms. Buccine, so I did a basic google search. It is crazy what comes up about a person in a basic "Google" search! The first link I selected led me to a page that listed all the links of sights were her name was mentioned. In many of them it talked about the work she does with her dog Vivian, a yellow lab. Vivian is said to be the first service dog to work for a California district attorney's office. I found out that she and District Attorney Ed Berberian started a therapy dog program for court cases. They based theirs off of "Courthouse Dogs" which was started in Seattle in 2003 by Ellen O’Neill-Stephens. These service dogs used in the Seattle program are from a company called Canine Companions for Independence and there is actually a branch out in Santa Rosa that I would like to go visit. When doing further research on the program in Seattle I found their website: www.courthousedogs.com. It is basically talking about everything I want to do so I am going to try and get in contact with the creators. On the side there was a notice that said they were going to be in the Bay Area February 9-12 but it did not have a link or anything so I am going to try and see how I can find out more about that. I just finished sending an email to the creators and am hoping to get some news back in the next few days. I am excited that I am no making some progress on my project! Coming up I am hopefully going to go to a the Law Library in Solano County as well as do some interviews with lawyers and judges. My mentor had a great idea to poll people who are eligible to be on a jury and see if a dog would change their decision on a trial. I am going to try and ask about 200 people and break out of my bubble to not just ask people I know but people who I see on the streets. I can't wait to see what people say, hopefully they will be on my side!