Canine Commandos to the Rescue

Tropical's fifth and sixth grade gifted and academically talented students have been working with our four-legged friends as part of their service-learning requirements. While watching a show on the Animal Planet Channel, a dog trainer stated that many dogs in the shelters are overlooked for adoption because of their highly strung behavior. He stated that these dogs could be trained quickly for furthering their success at finding a new home. Hence, Canine Commandos was formed. Canine Commandos received several small grants to purchase leashes, collars, chains, clickers and treats necessary for training. In small groups, the Commandos choose a dog not identified for adoption. Adults collar and leash the dogs then connect them to the fence (this prevents the dog from slipping out of the students' hands) with their trainers in waiting. The Commandos play with them until all the other students have their dogs.

Since the Commandos are confident with their training, they begin with the "watch me" command while holding a piece of cereal, Cheerios®. Once that command is satisfied, Commandos do the same with "sit," "down (the hardest command to teach)," "come," and "stay." All the while parent volunteers and teachers monitor, hand out supplies and work with students having any difficulties. A plus to the program is watching adoptive hopefuls walk around the dogs while in training. Seeing the dog in action enhances its chances of going home with new parents. Our hopes for the program, other than placing the loving dogs in loving homes, is to receive much coverage for expansion into other schools (we currently have two schools with 80 Commandos total).

The Commandos will be contacting schools to introduce and talk about the program. Another elementary school has recently just joined the Canine Commandos bandwagon allowing 75+ students now training dogs. We hope to have many schools training with us and find a professional dog trainer to meet the schools to provide training. In the classroom, Canine Commandos work on commercials, slide shows, brochures and a web page. Our PTO has donated $1700 to make training videos with a professional videographer which will take place this school year. DVDs will be donated to go home with adopted dogs while other DVDs will be sold with the profits going back into producing more.