CELL DOGS GRADUATION

Last week we were invited by Judge, friend to the Orange County rescue community, and all round good guy, Tony Ufland to stop in at the OC Juvenile Hall.

Not an invitation you receive every day, that’s for sure but one that definitely sparks one’s interest. By the way bring your camera he says.

Knowing the Judge to be the all round good guy we steadfastly avoided any pre event research, packed our bags and turned up at the supplied address and on time with I.D.’s at the ready.  

Turns out we were there for the graduation of the current class of CELL DOGS. I know, sounds like a hard core Rap Group, but in fact a very cool organization that rescues dogs, brings them in to correctional facilities. Then they match the dogs with suitable inmates who get trained to train the rescue dogs to be good pets, process takes three months and by the time the dogs are trained there’s families found to provide them with forever homes.

Everybody learns valuable lessons and if you’re in the market for a rescue dog you get one that’s really well trained.

Or as the website says, in more elegant prose, “We rescue dogs from local shelters and enroll them in basic obedience training programs. These classes take place in correctional facilities and actively involve program trainers. For each training cycle, we make sure all dogs are lovingly adopted or promoted to our advanced training program for specialized service dog training.”

Anyway we spent a pleasant hour at the graduation ceremony where the trainers showed off how far the dogs had come in three months talked a little about the and handed them over to their new owners.

Here’s the graduates (I know, not the most dynamic set of images but for obvious privacy reasons we were limited as to what we can post. I’m also going to make excuses as to the difficult shooting environment but there you go………….)