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!

Useless Internet

I now have two mentors for my senior project. My government/econ teacher who I have had for two years now is my school mentor. My outside mentor is Suzanne, a civil lawyer who defends insurance companies. With both of their help I'm sure that I can make some progress with my project. Over the past couple of days I have been trying to research how to change internal court procedure. Every search engine imaginable came up with nothing that was of any help. I did find some cases were people actually did change court procedure so that gave me some hope. While sorting through the mess of links that were dead ends I found the supreme courts internal working procedures. It was like trying to read through a book written in old English, you can only read so much before thinking, "What did that just say?", and having to re-read it a thousand more times. I tried searching, "How to change internal court procedure", "Changing internal court procedure", "Amending internal court procedure", and not a single thing came up. At this point I am just going to wait until I meet with my mentor to see what other sites to find research. If finding information on the internet is this hard, I can only imagine trying to find text about how to amend the procedures.

Change of Passion

Although I am very passionate about giving back to the Children's Hospital and to all the patients, I am also very passionate about law. Whenever asked what I want to do when I grow up, I always respond, "I want to be a prosecutor". Normally people looked shocked when I would say that because it was such a big word and people didn't expect that to come out of my mouth. I have always grown up with law terms thrown around in my house becasue my Dad works in the field of law. I strongly believe in the prosecution side and I really want to help people in need. Today with my frustration of not being able to find a pet therapy program that I would be able to join I took a minute to read the newspaper. On the front page of the San Fransico Chronical there was an article titled, "Canine Comfort in the Court". As I started reading, it was about dogs being let into the court room to sooth young children and sometimes adults who needed to be comforted while testifying. It explains the benefits of having a dog let in the court room but also some of the objections by defense attorneys and judges. There is nothing in court procedures that says a dog is not allowed in the court room but because of that there is nothing saying a dog can be used during the trial. Becasue of that many judges choose not to let the therapy dogs in their court rooms becasue they do not want the case to be thrown out or appealed because of the animal. There was one line that particularly caught my eye in the article said by the senior deputy prosecutor in seattle who started the court house canine movement. She said, "One day, we'll have to make a compelling case why they (dogs) belong"(SF Chronical, A16). That is exactly what I want to do, I want to make that case. Now I know what my senior project is, and this time it's not changing.

To read this article here is the link:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/26/MNTM1B4S15.DTL

Endless Searching

Today is the second Monday of our two week break. I decided to do some more research on my project to see what I am really taking on. After much consideration I chose to have my dog and I become a therapy pet team. Sierra is trained in the basics; sit, lay down, high five/shake, and sometimes heal (if I'm lucky). I thought that with a little more help she could suceed in being a great therapy dog. Upon doing more research I found many organizations that offer these programs and became very hopeful. First I went on the ARF(Animal Rescue Foundation) website. ARF is located in Walnut Creek and I used to volunteer there when I was a freshman in high school. I looked at all the requirements and saw that my dog and I fit every one except for Sierra being certified as a Canine Good Citizen by the AKC. I then called ARF to see how I could accomplish getting Sierra certified. They picked up and I was transfered to the coordinators office and, shocking! I got the voicemail. I decided it would be easier to email her, so I sent a lengthy email voicing what I was trying to do. I then called back to see if she may have been on a lunch break and was transfered to another person who helps coordinate the animal therapy teams. She informed me right away that I was not old enough, the age a handler has to be is 21. This not being said in their requirements let me down. But that didn't keep me from pursuing this. I then looked all over the internet and found other organizations such as the Friendship Foundation and S.M.A.R.T Dogs Inc. that led me nowhere and were dead ends. Then there were organizations that offered classes to train your pet but all the classes were over by now. At this point I started thinking about other options for my senior project. This is when the doorbell rang and my neighbors with three little girls came over to bring holiday treats. I saw how good Sierra was with them, laying down and letting them jump all over her and pull her tail. This is when I realized that even though I went to at least 13 different organizations about therapy pets there had to be way that I could do this. I started to talking to my Mom and we can up with a good alternative to ask the ARF coordinatiors. We were thinking that maybe if I had an adult over the age of 21 to go with me to these classes they would be more willing. I then emailed the coordinator again and told her about my idea. Now it is just a waiting game for her to email me back.

Meet me and my dog Sierra. You will be getting to know a lot about me throughout my project. And the dog...she is just cute!

Deciding on My Project

It is the first week of the winter break for school and I am trying to decide what would be the best project to do for WISE. I would like to throw a carnival for the kids who are ill at Children's Hospital in Oakland. As of right now my mother is not 100% behind me on this undertaking. She says that this project will take a lot of time and dedication that I might not be able to devote. She does have a point because I do cheerleading and that takes a big chunk of my time. Along with this she says that I will also need to rely on others which is very true. I do not have enough hands to do everything that I will need to accomplish, especially the day of the event. My second option would be to train my golden retriever to be a hospital working dog. You may wonder why both of my choices deal with hospitals but I have a good reason to give back to them. First of all Children's Hosptial helped me along when I was having throat problems by removing my tonsils when I was in the third grade. Most recently I have come to have severe stomach aches that started when I was a freshman in high school, about three years ago and continue today. After being toppled over in pain and having to miss so much school as well as getting test after test run, everything came up negative. Of course I would want everything to come up negative but because it did, there was no answer. I was referred to Children's Hospital Oakland and was seen by the best, Dr. Gleghorn. She was the first to actually believe something was wrong with me and the pain was not in my head. She ran some more tests along with exploritory sugery. Again, nothing was found and everything came up negative. But she did have one inkling, maybe I had a digestive disease that about only 12% of the population has. The doctor started treating me with medicine that I slowly but surly was able to wean off of and started seeing results. My stomach aches now only happen once or twice every month and I now know how to prevent them not eating certain foods. Thanks to the wonderful care of the doctors and nurses at Children's Hospital I can finally get back to my everyday life. They are the reason why I want to help the other children in the hospital who aren't as lucky as me to be treated and just be kids. I am now ready to jump into the Kids Karnival or the hospital dog training head first so I can help these kids have a worry-free time, even for just a couple of minutes.