This project is capped at 5 brothers and 5 pledges. If you fail to show up at the training or project, you will lose 1 service credit. All volunteers are required to attend a training session on February 2 from 10-12 at: Doggie Dayz Care and Training Facility 500 Capital Circle SE B1 Testing day is during the dog show located at the Tallahassee Fair Grounds 441 Paul Russell Road Contact Donna Dowler at 8500-997-6459 From the event organizers: "Max, Thank you so much. I am very excited that you can help! The dogs are already safe and have been through basic obedience training. We are doing a Canine Good Citizen exam at the same time and most dogs are testing for both. The Therapy Dog International Exam actually requires more obedience (including a group sit stay and a group down stay) then the Canine Good Citizen. The concern for therapy dogs comes from 2 main areas. 1) Can they handle people in weird situations or are they skittish? Sometimes the dogs will be hesitant to approach a wheel chair and this will cause a fail. This is the temperament testing we need help with. The second area of concern 2) is whether they can handle being away from their owners. The dogs have to handle being completely away from their owner (who hides out of site) for 3 minutes while a volunteer holds the dog. Sometimes the dogs will whimper or try to pull after their owner, causing a fail. Donna (the tester) will also drop a crutch or make a loud noise to see how they handle distractions, but this will be done by her so if any fear reaction (which has never happened in the 5 years I've been helping) does happen, she is the only one in addition to the owner who is present. We would love as many volunteers as might be possible but we really only need about 5 to 8. Michelle McLaughlin is administering the Canine Good Citizen exam at the same time and will be utilizing some of the Therapy Dog volunteers as well. If we had more volunteers we could give her volunteers of her own and this would also allow the volunteers time to walk around the AKC show. As a volunteer you get free admittance to the AKC show and they have pretty cool things going on. They always have the agility course that you guys are volunteering at, usually have some type of demo display (last year they did search and rescue) and great booths set up. If anyone is hesitant about the dogs, please tell them to contact Donna Dowler. She has been doing the testing for Therapy Dogs International since they were formed and is also a professional dog trainer (as is Michelle) with both AKC and UKC titles in competitive obedience, rally, and herding. Both Donna and Michelle also train for and participate in the North Florida/Southern Georgia search and rescue team, so between the two of them problem dogs are turned away before they are even allowed to sign up. Thank you again for your help. We greatly appreciate it!"