Blog 8: Final Reflection

When I first came into this WRD-110 class, I seen it as a waste of my time, but I have actually learned quite a bit of useful information that I intend to carry on with me throughout my college career. Some things I found challenging was the whole community project because I never made a connection between it and the class. I was really disturbed by the documentary project because of having to make a documentary video. I think the video is what really scared me in this class because I spent the first two weeks focused on other classes and never had a chance to get a head start on the project like I would of liked to. Besides the documentary video and documentary over a community, I loved the class. I have made a couple good friends in that class that I know I can rely upon in the end of this semester and still talk to in the future. This class taught me how to do finer research and how to go about when writing other new subjects. I learned some new writing and citing material that I didn't know beforehand and thiswill greatly be beneficial to my future classes here at the University of Kentucky. I found myself to be very successful in everything related to the my community and documentary process becauseI found a subject that I loved, but that's the only reason I think I have succeeded in these graded assignments. I think instead of doing a final documentary video with a final documentary reflection, I would do something more related to writing and communications. Some things that surprised me about the class was how helpful and open the teacher is with us. She puts herself out there in order to help us succeed. I was also surprised by the fact that the class was as small as it was, which i loved because I got a little more peer-peerreview and help while also having time to ask the teacher questions in class which also benefitted me. Overall, the class was very well taught and informative, but I just didn't agree or see the point behind a documentary video.

Storyboard

Steven Murphy

Jennifer Hudgens

WRD-110

November 10, 2015

I would like to start off my documentary off by using some pictures of the new puppies that a service dog organization here on University of Kentucky’s campus has gotten in. The whole purpose of doing this is because I want to emphasis that they get their dogs from puppies and train them for a year and then send them off for further training at ADAI in Ohio. The sole purpose of this picture is to give an insight on how young it is that dogs can begin their training to be a service dogs. In the background I will have a very common happy, up-rising tune to brighten the mood upon seeing a very young puppy(8 weeks old to be exact). I chose to use a beat that is very happy and exciting because I think it will set the tone and mood of puppies and a good vibe, which is the job that these dogs do once trained properly. I want to just start off with this one picture of one of the puppies, even though not all puppies that go into service dog training are this exact breed or size, it just goes to set the tone that I will be doing my documentary over something involving dogs, which will lead me to my next point.

After this opening scene, I would like to actually go about defining a service dog for a short bit and just inform the audience of the several types of service dogs around the country, and the world. I will input information all the way from a definition of service dogs, all the way to what allows dogs to go into buildings with their person and some other common rules, regulations, inquiries, and charges etc of service dogs. Definition of service dogs-dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. All of this information is going to come from the website provided here- http://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm

I would like to provide all of this information because I feel it is some common knowledge that everybody should know about service dogs in general because it is something we will all run across in some time and place in our life. Plus, it will give us a better idea on the way service dogs work and a better way to approach a situation if we see need to help someone with a handicapping disability explain why their service dog is allowed in the store with them and that no excuses may prevent the dog from entering the store. This website also gives us all basic information of service dogs, which I think most people need to understand

After providing all of that information, I would like to insert a small piece of a youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSn9WO1FCb0)  to back up my evidence of common things said to people with service dogs. I want this small video to be input into my documentary because it shows that I am not the only one out there that realizes that service dogs and their people are looked down upon, not quite so in a bad negative way, but in a disrespectful overlooked way. The next thing to follow is going to be some edited lines put on the screen to show common things said about service dogs, “Can I pet your dog,” “Your dog is so well behaved,” “Awww, your dog is so cute!!!,” “Are you blind sir/ma’am?,” and so on. The whole purpose of this opening is to put the idea of service dogs in your head and then to open your eyes up to the real problem at hand, how much service dogs are looked over and how they don’t get the credit they so well deserve. Once I bring up the quotes, I want the music in the background to stay the same, not quite what song yet, but any song with an upbeat musical to it will do. The whole tone behind this scene in my documentary will be a very mellow, yet serious because I want everyone to understand that the information being provided isn’t a funny problem, but instead a serious concerning problem.When I bring up the quotes, edited to pop to the human eye, but visible still, I will make sure to leave each one up for enough time to read each and every word in them, even though they are short, because I want them to process the words that are said by many to these working animals and their people. The purpose of this scene with all the common misconception things said to the people and their dogs is to set the mood and tone down to a sad low music level in the background after the small video clip because although repetitive after the video tells you, it just goes to show how repetitive a person and their dog hear it, which can sometimes be disrespectful to the dog and their person. That and when the person the dog is with can be very offended by these said things, which doesn’t help anything, but instead makes it even worse. I would like to do a voice over after these quotes are done saying, “What would you say to someone with their service animal?” I do this to set the tone to a very intense questioning tone.

After I do the voice over asking that question, I will go about informing people of some proper things to say. When it comes to communicating with someone about their service dog and their own disability, you should really just treat them the same as you would any other visitor into your building/shop/store. These people and their service dogs are no different from anyone else and they shouldn’t be treated as so.

Another short clip of a video on service dogs I would like to include is how service dogs benefit PTSD soldiers. In the video I will provide a short 20-25 second clip from it showing how service dogs can benefit PTSD soldiers when they return and I plan to take the background sounds out, except for the speaker in the clip, and add a sad music tune behind the conversation. i want to do this because it is sad how the soldiers return home with PTSD and there isn’t much that we can do to help, but that’s only us humans. This is why there are organizations that benefit these PTSD vets when they return, one distinct one is Paws for Vets, and I tell you about them because they serve the whole country, not just a state or certain states. The purpose of putting this into my documentary is to prove that service dogs don’t only serve as seeing eye dogs or the common service dogs that you’re used to seeing. The tone of this scene is going to start as a sad and depressing music theme and then change to an upbeat tone when the dog gets up in his lap to calm his PTSD vet after he got frustrated after recalling the moment where his doctor told him he had he had PTSD and “needed help.” First off, that isn’t the way he should’ve gone about it, but the whole point of the video segment is to show that service dogs are much more important than given credit for (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y_a_V1QD3U).

This is a piece of text from a source that I found on the uky library website (http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uky.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=9&sid=864d2e35-6a21-411c-b112-c2fb0d4a1811%40sessionmgr4003&hid=4110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=95611342&db=a9h). I chose to use this piece of text from the article off of UK Libraries website because it just goes to show how underprivileged some of the service dogs still are being treated even as of today in 2015!! It’s ridiculous and the tune of music I plan on putting in the background behind this scene is going to be a very assertive and upset tone, somewhat of a pissed off tune because the fact that not all service dogs perform the same jobs, or some don’t help people with handicapping abilities, go to show how low society can be. These dogs that benefit PTSD vets and help to keep them calm. If that isn’t being defined as doing a job, considering there are also organizations and groups of people that specialize in training service dogs for helping PTSD vets, then that’s why the tone and music behind this scene is going to be a bit aggressively aggravated/upset. The purpose of this scene is to get the message by that all service dogs, rather helping someone perform a task they cannot do by theirself, or just to help keep their person calm, should be allowed within any business that their person can get into.

http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/serviceanimals/reduction.php

The next scene I would like to include in my documentary is going to be a graph that represents some of the positions that service dogs are proven to help people out during and some graphs off their page showing these positions and what exactly service dogs(in this case, therapy dogs) help out and in what way. The purpose of providing these graphs is to give everyone that sees this documentary a visual insight on just how helpful service dogs can be for anyone that needs to undergo the slightest of work to their teeth or all the way to anyone who needs to have hemotherapy done or a major surgery. Behind this scene there will be a softer, but calming theme of music going on to make everyone understand that these dogs calm the people they are taken to help. I’m hoping by providing these graphs and the calming tune in the background will help the audience understand that these facts back up the proof that service dogs need to be given more credit than what they truly are given.

Next I would like to run in some further details on the details of a service dog's training and what the requirements are for these dogs to then be considered a service dog. These requirements are produced and approved by ADI(Assistant Dog International). As listed below:

• The dog be specifically trained to perform 3 or more tasks to mitigate aspects of the client's disability.
• Dog demonstrates basic obedience skills by responding to voice and/or hand signals for sitting, staying in place, lying down, walking in a controlled position near the handler and coming to the handler when called.
• Dog works calmly and quietly on harness, leash or other tether.
• Dog is able to perform its tasks in public.
• Dog must be able to lie quietly beside the handler without blocking aisles, doorways when possible.

(https://www.nh.gov/disability/information/community/serviceanimals.htm)

I want to incorporate this information into my documentary because training a service dog isn’t as easy as it is made out to be and it takes much longer. These are some more common misconceptions that are made about service dogs and I plan on having each one of these go along the screen in my documentary one by one so I can give a short description of why this is important when it comes to training a service dog and why each one is needed. I feel like by doing this I will be able to give a better insight on what service dogs have to go through in order to become the service dog position they’re being trained for. In the background I would like to insert a softer, somewhat relaxed music tune in order to be able to describe why each of these are important and the role that they serve while my audience reads them off the screen. The tone of inserting each of these facts is to be an informative message to my audience. My purpose of inserting these is to also create the informative message that service dogs don’t have it as easy as everyone looks and thinks that they do because they work as hard as anyone else does and hold a job as well as we do.

Lastly, I would like to include a final transition between the last scene and this one with a  change in the music in the background to a supportive themed song to show that I support the service dogs. The purpose of this scene is going to be to show my support of the service dogs, not just here on campus, but all of the service dogs everywhere. The tone of this final scene is going to be very upbeat and peppy because I want everyone to feel happy and somewhat excited, possibly to the point to where they may want to help out with service dogs someday. I am going to put a couple final photos of some service dogs up on this final scene because this is something that the trainers of dogs here on the University’s campus go through, is giving their dogs up, so that the dogs can move on to the next stage in their training process to becoming a service dog in a field. The dogs have to move on, and I will also provide a picture of a facility nearby that helps the service dogs in training brought in from here on our campus. Our campus!! Yes we have service dogs and yes, students here on campus train them. The purpose of the pictures are going to be to provide support on how well it is for students to train service dogs because it helps both the students here on our campus and it helps the dog with social skills with all people because it is a broad community here on campus so the dogs are introduced and made social through meeting all the people on campus. This is also a requirement for service dogs is to be social so it benefits the dogs in the end to be trained by these trainers here on campus, which are actually students who want to help the handicapped in the future with the dogs that they train.

WORKS CITED:

Goren, William D. "Service Dogs And The Rights Of The Disabled." Gpsolo 31.2 (2014): 42-45. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

"Service Animals." ADA Requirements. U.S Department of Justice, 12 July 2011. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

"Service/Assistance Animals." Governor's Commission on Disability. Governor's Commission on Disability, 2009. Web. 17 Nov. 2015

Shit People Say... to Service Dog Handlers. Dir. Morgan Krug and Britt Novitch. Perf. Morgan Krug. Youtube, 2012. Film.

Watch Service Dog Calm War Vet's PTSD Reaction. Dir. USA Today. Perf. Erick Scott and Gumbo(dog). Youtube, 2014. Film.

Weiss, Thomas. "Pet Therapy - Pain Reduction from Animal Assisted Therapy." Disabled World. 13 Aug. 2014. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.

Blog 7: Documentary Process Reflection

My process had actually started with a topic that I am no longer doing. I had originally started with a community here on the University of Kentucky's campus only and I couldn't get enough information to work with from the community so I went another way with the information that I did have already. So I changed my subject from the Wildcat Service Dogs to just Service Dogs in general. It may be more general,but this allows me to get more information that is broadly accepted and a fact is proven by professionals and studiers of service dogs. This may have made it more easier to get my information and obtain it quicker, but it also makes it harder for me because there is now information that is out there and I have to narrow it down from information that I obtain and then make sure it is correct information and cross examine it all. I haven't that much from this project because as the project was announced in class, I had already began to join the organization of WSD, Wildcat Service Dogs, here on UK's campus. There are still a few things that I have realized and learned that I hadn't beforehand, which is why I am happy that I have done my documentary over Service Dogs in general because it is such an overlooked job, even though it isn't performa by humans. Yes, humans do train the dogs, but it's the dogs who actually perform the job itself. I don't know much about documentary or what it has to do with communication skills, but it is very challenging. If anything, it really is the only challenge that I have run across in my process, and I don't like it. I have never enjoyed messing a lot with technology, as in putting videos and files together, but it is graded heavily so I have to. I haven't quite started but I do have an idea on what I want in my documentary, which is also another challenge, deciding what I want to put into my documentary. The successes that I have run across is already knowing a lot of information about Service Dogs, thanks to the WSD organization here on campus. Another challenge is the storyboard because I don't quite know what I want in my documentary, which makes the storyboard much harder. My whole process of putting my documentary together has actually been deciding what I want in my documentary and finding what is most related to what I need.

Blog 6- Scholarly Second Secondary Source

MLA Citation:
Rintala, Diana, Rebeca Matamoros, and Laura Seitz. "Effects of Assistance Dogs on Persons with Mobility or Hearing Impairments: A Pilot Study." University of Kentucky Libraries. Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development, 2008. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Summary:
The whole purpose of this piece is to give everyone the examples of how the service dogs that's getting trained today help everyone out, but in particular, people with hearing and movement disabilities. This journal over service dogs will help me with my piece because it shows that service dogs aren't just used for one thing or towards one disability; instead, they're can be used for a variety of fields and they're trained properly to do so for the field that they are put into by the service dog trainers. 

Blog 5: Scholarly Secondary Source

MLA Format Sited Source:

 Yount, Rick, Meg Olmert, and Mary Lee. "Service Dog Training Program for Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress in Service Members." http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uky.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=6&sid=94d86ac1-0936-4bf6-868c-b7f0f8b7e5bd@sessionmgr4004&hid=4110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=79808391&db=a9h. U.S. Army Medical Department Journal, 1 June 2012. Web. 18 Oct. 2015. <http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uky.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=6&sid=94d86ac1-0936-4bf6-868c-b7f0f8b7e5bd@sessionmgr4004&hid=4110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=79808391&db=a9h>. 

I chose this secondary source because it discusses where the use of service dogs first came into action and how it's still an overlooked job in our entire communities. This article was a bit more focused on PTSD and how the service dogs help members of our military or retired military members with PTSD. I chose this article in particular because it covers two major problems that we still haven't discussed. 

This piece grabbed my attention from the start when I read over it because I never truly understood how much PTSD and service dogs were looked over and forgotten about. Knowing someone who had PTSD helps me see the true problem now that I have read upon it and been informed. Thats why I want to use this piece as a secondary source. It brings up just how overlooked service dogs are and how well trained and varied they are. This is my secondary source because it is what backs up my Wildcat Service Dogs and why they do what they do.

WSD Photo Essay

Steven Murphy

Mr. Jennifer Hudgens

WRD-110

October 13, 2015

WSD Financials

WSD, also known as Wildcat Service Dogs, is the community that I chose to do. I have chose this community because they’re a student run organization, only available to join here on University of Kentucky’s campus. This is also a well known organization on campus because they are one of only two organizations that train service dogs for helping the impaired. By this, I mean they are always seen around campus and they’re identified by the blue vest on their dogs, not the red vest. The red vest is for 4 paws organization, which they do their own dog training as well, but the dogs that they get aren’t new and young like WSD’s dogs are. 

          WSD gets their dogs when they’re still little puppies, meaning 8 weeks old, and they start the training from there, while 4 paws gets their dogs after the dogs have already gone through some training with prisoners on good behavior. Another difference between WSD and 4 paws is one is student run and the other is a multi-college run organization. The main difference I want you to know about is their financial differences. With 4 Paws for Ability being a multi-college run organization, it becomes much  easier for the organizations to gain financials and get their name out in the open, but on the other hand, we have WSD, a single college organization, which raises it’s funds all by itself in order to pay for their dogs, crates, and all the other necessities that a dog will need. In the picture provided below, I give you one of the many puppies that WSD has purchased for this year’s trainer’s. With this picture you can tell by one of the trainer’s faces, Izzy , that they cherish their dogs from being brand new in the program, all the way until they have to take them to ADAI for their further training. WSD sends their dogs off to ADAI, after a year of training the dog themselves, and then ADAI takes over from that point and test the dogs to see what skills they can do and which they cannot, which is the deciding factor for the dogs on where they get placed and go to after training.  

The founder of Wildcat Service Dogs is Katie Skarvan. She wasn’t originally an attendee of our university. Instead, she was a transfer from Texas A&M, who was originally from Louisville where she was volunteering at Paws for a Purpose from her seventh grade year on. When she decided she wanted to start a dog training program here on campus, then she talked to Paws for a Purpose about getting a dog. In order to get the organization started, she first had to run it across the administration of the university. This would usually strike some fear into people because they’re having to go in front of the administration of their entire university. This didn’t affect Katie Skarvan thought, because stinging today is the Wildcat Service Dogs.

One thing that all trainers tend to find hard about the program would be something every dog lover would find hard about raising a dog. The fact that it’s much harder to let go than it is to get attached. Skarvan started by training each dog through a two year plan, but eventually lowered the dog’s training down to a one year training process with their trainers, after getting help from another dog training program in Ohio. This company is known as ADAI. ADAI is an organization in Ohio that prospers in Service Dog Training programs. It’s also a program that has been available for over 25 years now and has assisted in the life of over 250 people and their communities. ADAI is the program where WSD sends their dogs to after their year of training here with the trainers are done, which then sends the dogs through their process and places them where they see fit. For example; they can be placed in the Puppy Prison Program, Therapy Dog Program, Service Dog Program, Facility Therapy Dog Program, School Therapy Dog Program, or a Special Needs therapy Dog Program. Each one of these programs require for the dog in training to know certain skills and be able to perform certain task that a regular dog wouldn’t know how to do without being taught.

WORKS CITED:

Blackford, Linda. "Students Make University of Kentucky a Laboratory for Training Service Dogs." Kentucky.com Lexington Herald Leader. Lexington Herald Leader, 31 Dec. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

"University of Kentucky Students Training Service Dogs." Life With Dogs. ADMIN, 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

Blog 4: Primary Artifact 2

For my second primary artifact, I would chose a picture. The picture I have chosen is actually off of their Facebook page because I haven't met with them to get some pictures, video film, and do a survey. I have chosen this picture because it is a picture of a dog that they have trained. The picture shows a dog that they have spent a year training before sending them off to be trained the rest of the way by ADAI. They go there for further and more advanced training before they decide where they go off/ into for their servicing.
The reasoning behind this picture is because this is what they do in this organization. They go around and are offered dogs to train and they go through with it and train these dogs to be obedient and learn commands that they will be given by their servicee(the person that they are assigned too). These commands can either be given as a verbal or a gesture command. The command being given in the picture below is lay/ or relax. It can be said many different ways, but WSD does it in was different than others usually do. WSD is the organization that I chose and I've chosen this picture as an artifact to use for my organization and report because this picture here describes everything that it is they do.