today i have why it who is one of our best cancer detection dogs and he's also my personal service dog this is only one our boy and he's he's got almost three hundred thousand airline miles so he's quite the f fuller and what type of dog is he he said rhodesian ridgeback and they come from africa and they hunt lions and they also protect the women and children and they're very unique howland because they are not only sight hounds but they're also sent down so they use their eyes and their noses now is he a shelter dog as well or he is not he's not but most of your dog a lot of our dogs are almost all the service dogs are especially for veterans that cancer detection dogs so far we've been using the radiation ridge facts because they have that dual purpose and they're pretty spare very smart too but they're they're pretty adept at things and they can size things up very quickly ok now why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself the organizations that you founded and work with because there's definitely more than one and we want to share the information with the people yes the first one is called merlin's kids marilyn's kids is a five a one c three that operates soley on donations and what we do is we take shelter dogs and we turn them into service dogs and cancer detection disease detection medical alert dogs like seizure alert blood sugar and all other kind of issues and what we do is we take those dogs we rehabilitate them for about four to six months and then after that they go into a specific training program and about a year later or so they are ready to go to their veteran or their child so merlin's kids and it's it's kind of a unique situation because i'm a canine behaviorist and i've got well since i'm seventeen so that's a few years that i've been doing this so i'm uniquely qualified not only with the special needs children but also with you know the canine end of it so a lot of people think oh i can just take any dog from a shelter and turn it into this great service dog and you know you there's a reason most dogs end up in a shelter and it's not because they didn't sit on command for a cookie they're usually there are behavioral issues so we fix those behavioral issues so that we're able to make these dogs do with their purpose once in a life have you ever found an animal that was like beyond fixing their behavior problems we have four of them at our farm who work clients dogs who the dogs were fine but the clients were a little questioning on and sometimes when people  are a little bit upset about something they get to get rid of the dog and we'll take that dog see what happened and then rehabilitate them so some of them are tough but you know there's if you love an animal or a person enough they're not hopeless exit well that's great now you as you were explaining you do have a lot of education and training in these fields is this something that you knew you always wanted to do and how did you get in into this  parents told me that my first word was pony and my second was puppy and then somewhere along the line mom and dad came out and i completely believe that because dogs and horses and pretty much every animal but there's such a connection and i was actually at seventeen doing what before there was any therapeutic riding i was already doing that with kids with autism and people with cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy so animals just have that unique connection find with us and when when you're what working like some of the children we work with or most of them have developmental issues and they've been maybe you know people made fun of them they've been downplayed let's say in the neighborhood saying it instead of you can do anything you want it was kind of like trying to do this and when you start putting your own feelings and expectations on someone i think it's very dangerous because you're limiting them so when we take like for instance a veteran who's lost a limb or two we try to get a three way we call tripod a three legged dog to be a great service dog for the person perfect and yet i can relate to it has already been has to also children in a courtroom setting which is another thing we do the court records old dogs when we do that same thing the children are looking and they've had some terrible trauma and joining this terrible trauma here they are the worst time of their life recalling the next worst thing that ever happened to them and they start getting stressed and the dog comes up and lays on their lap and makes them feel better and we're seeing huge huge changes in not only in the kids but in their ability to testify  get these you know deviants off the street because usually the the the kids will fall apart during the questioning and there's not enough evidence to and they go free these guys so people amazing so the dogs are able to help out and you know when the kids learn that the dog was not wanted that someone gave it up and they say why i want the dog and i think give up it's just a wonderful thing that's why we say animals and children helping each other now how was merlin's kids founded and who is merlin and how did that how did the whole organization like one day you just said i'm going to start the nonprofit because this is what i'm doing and then he came up with the whole concept well merlin was  love of my life he was a thirteen hundred pound lives on stallion you know the white dancing horses and he had this amazing long like three and a half foot long mean wavy white silver white and his tail dragged on the ground he was actually the model for one of the aladdin movies oh i did a lot of t v commercials and a few disney's and one of the things is that he's very he was a very big personality as well as being a stallion and when you start seeing an animal who has that power to connect to people and can look into the people souls and has that you you try to find it another way to help and merlin was just just an amazing animal so he passed away due to some veterinarian malpractise and i kind of lost my mind i just didn't know how to go on without him and i had thirty or forty other horses it wasn't that it was my only horse but he was my heart will my heart horse and you know basically what happened was i looked for a reason that that this would happen to him at eleven years of age and been doing the therapeutic riding in the service dogs for a long time and i said you know i'm going to honor merlin and i'm going to a beautiful thing have his name you know forever remembered and all this able to do for people that's fantastic that's a really great to us yet the the organization does a few different things we do the cancer in disease detection dogs we do courtroom cortisol dogs school cortisol dogs and i can explain very quickly the cortisol is a stress hormone that the body gives off when we're under stress there are a lot of different stress hormones but that's a primary one so what we're able to do is actually train the dog to detect rising cortisol levels now normally the  ol will precede the reaction so if you have a child who is about ready to have a meltdown the dog can predict and meltdown so it's pretty incredible and the same thing with the court room dogs it's just it's just an amazing connection that the children have and what we're trying to do is not only just allow the children to get through that and horrible time but to get through it and heal from it because that's a big thing once they're able to talk about it they can start to heal and the dogs help them do that and then some of the kids when they go through that we then place a private service dog with them wow now where where is the charity located is it based out of a certain new town it's in it's in new jersey or in new jersey we're actually looking to acquire of place in princeton here and we have a few play as we've been looking at but of course you know property is expensive and we don't want to you know a half acre thing that we can't even you know have the dogs run around we want the dogs to have fun we have a beautiful farm in missouri and it's like one hundred twelve acres and the dogs are on and the kids run and we have enclosed areas where we can have the autistic and special needs kids kind of running around with the dogs where the parents don't have to be grabbing for the ms they're going to run into traffic and we wanted to do that literally in princeton which was what was so cool when you called me and i said oh my gosh we're trying to find this so far in princeton now what is the money is always great because veterinarians and food companies need to be paid but we really are looking for that special piece of land or that special form that we can kind of set up and dig our roots in because there's a tremendous need in the community and in this it was holding area now do you have a large staff or a large group of volunteers that kind of help you coordinate all this yass we have i think at lest was about four hundred fifty  tears and then we have at the farm in missouri we have eight paid people we have one paid person in new jersey because unfortunately people need to eat and i have that problem i just don't need it if there is nothing there but  you know we run on a very very tight budget like ninety eight percent of our money goes right to programs services and everybody gets paid way too little and they're ok with that then because they have to be that kind of person to where you soul from within actually we don't just hire someone we only take people who volunteered and we take from our volunteer pool of people who have given themselves very six months a year two years three around and then when they're paid position comes up and we provide a tremendous amount of training we were hooked up with rutgers cornell a few other colleges syracuse there a few universities that we're working with and what we what we need is just really people who have the skill we need everything from people to build things to people to do grant writing and fundraising and outreach and education so that we can kind of expand the program outwards so we have right now in new jersey and new jersey and we're looking to eventually have one in each region of the country wow that would be fantastic than merlin's kids dot org is very easy or the eight hundred number which is far as service dogs is there are certain types that really are the best yes you know the problem is there isn't one like we've done i've done thirteen hundred service dogs myself that i've personally trained in thirty some odd years and one thing i see is that there are not two dogs that are perfect for the same child and there are not two children who are perfect for the same dog so when we have a child who has let's say growth deformities we might need to take into consideration is he going to be small or large or how big are his parents any kind of health issues are there seizures potentially going to happen so nothing is really black and white it's we joke at nothing it's black and white it's all  brown because all of our dogs are pretty much for help but when we find a dog we make sure that we match it to the right person and that might take six months just to find that person or even a year but typically like one of the dogs that stands out is a dog huey is a great dane mix i don't know what the rest of them is but he's definitely half day in and he was up in niagara falls new york in the shelter up there and he was on a seven day stray hold and at the end of the seven days he would be euthanized and i happened to show up for another dog at the five and his cage card read growing use extrusion caution will bite so of course i walked in with the slip lead i sent everyone away and i said let me take this dog and he's for i think there are a slip lead on him walk them around for ten minutes and brought them back into the room with their we were doing a symposium so there were about one hundred people there and i said oh here's our crash test dummy for the afternoon his name is huey and everyone's always so nice and he's kissing everyone and looking everyone and one of the people there who was in charge of the shelter said oh i don't recognize him and i said yeah he's mr grouting use extreme caution will bite and he's going home with me when he comes off a stray hold he has about a month from being placed with an amazing veteran named walter who lives in chicago and is all a lot of times people try because they know in the behaviorists what they try to do is is try to get me to take their dog was a behavioral issue i had one particular lady called me just as i have this great border collie he'd be a great service dog i can't keep him anymore so i said he's such a great dog why are you getting rid of him oh he bit three kids but he's great with older people and i think the words out of my mouth were  ma'am he's aggressive we can't take him why not he's a great dog i said well why don't we fix them and you keep them and she went to people we fix to be a viral issues all i do is work with bad dogs so when i come home at the end of the day and i gets view with wyatt in all my dogs you know it's kind of like whoa teagan presley but i think people give up too quickly on dogs and they say oh he's destructive or he's you know he's growing and they don't think like a dog they don't think  why they should be fixing it they just don't know and right people think like people and people do what people do because we're people like dogs do with dogs do because they're dogs and once you start to understand how a dog thinks then you can see not only where he's going to be behaviorally but where he wants to be for a job because every dog is going to want to purpose like we want a purpose why its purpose right now is keeping the run from levitating but you know you if you look within the animal it's very very easy to find what the dog is good at and when the dog is able to  he's passed out but that's really what's amazing and actually why it in my dog's helped me to evaluate other people and other dogs because why it evaluates he's evaluated thousands of kids and veterans so when we walk into a place or people come to visit us at the farm the first thing that we do is set why it up with them and we let wyatt kind of determine whether or not there is you know that can be a good fit and if so what kind of dog would be a good fit and then we also do that with him with other dogs if the dog is dog aggressive and goes after him then we know we have to work with it or we don't take the dog but we have people in my company united canine professionals which is the canine behavior company that i founded we have thirty eight states ten countries and the island of aruba that we have our people in so if there's a dog like just happened in california i have people in california that will go out and check the dog and pull the dog for me and i've taught them all we have a convention every year which we had in princeton last year and we worked with service dogs and temperament testing so when i have somebody say hey this is a good dog it's not like it's somebody's going to have a really cute little dog frame ideas around those who actually know i have been trained personally by me and that i can trust them are there generally in your experience like size dogs or age or breeds that you know this is that will be a dog that just never is going to fit any of the a profile yeah we don't feel although i love all dogs other than maybe jack ross because they they just they're they bite a lot but there are there are we look for personality and the only problem is that our insurance company doesn't cover us for any of the quote unquote dangerous breeds so although rottweilers shepherds we have a shepherd and there we have pity mixes it but if it's to be placed they have to be perfect and for them to be perfect you have to be able to trust them and a lot of dogs are great with people but they're not great with other dogs and i can't tell you how many times and why it's two hundred ninety two thousand airline miles we've had dogs lunging at him in airports or grappling or you know so they have to be great with people they have to be great with little kids they have to be great older people we run them through a gamut of basically a year or less situations quiet you know the whole bit because and if they're afraid of lightning i've heard  that that a problem they take off and run and hide well it depends on their reaction and that's it's like with a horse i have horses i breed philippa's on horses and new york there are brands but the problem is if the dog or the horse gets scared and  blocks well that's something you can work with but if they're if they take off right away you know it it can be a problem and that's one of the things we run through a full year typically of seasons and we do fireworks and  we are always when we see construction down the road we get in the van and we does drive dogs let's go to the construction site you know to get them used to all that but it's amazing that if you if you have that connection with the dog what i do it's with the united canine professionals where we train other people to be a behaviorist we have purpose energy respect connection and health if the dog if you find his purpose and his purpose is to please you or to do a particular skill and energy if your energy is calm and you're able to give that over to the dog and let the dog pick up on your nice calm confident energy and if we set rules and boundaries so the dogs know what they're allowed not allowed to and we build up a connection of the dog knows he can trust me no matter where we go what we do we can take a fearful dog and i do it all time lexi a little lexi who is twenty five pounds came from arizona she was so terrified when i got her she i mean she was just huddled up it was so heartbreaking and her first night we went to my friend julie julie and brooke have julie has well brooke is the dog and julie is the little girl she turned twenty one she has special needs julie and i brought little lexi in to basically a disco party and she was fine and i handed her off to about thirty different  the next day she was a different dog was she a little nervous yeah she was a little nervous but i've been nervous to go into things you still do it right but it was that love and then that feeling of connection that the dog understands hey i don't i'm scared of this but i trust you and i'll go and wear for you and that's what we do and we build a step up and now if people watching have a problem dogs or they just want training or they want to you know help around you do services in people's homes and so yes they can also go to that same web site or is there and that would be united the letter k the number nine pros p r o s and dot com and united canine pros what we do there is that's the behavioral it's like the sister company so if somebody has a dog that they're thinking of relinquishing or someone has a dog who's you know we say oh i can have my company over i can a friends over the dog drag or the people i call the four am ers you know what a four am or is no for a emerson some of you watching are saying what is that it sounds like it might be me it probably is those are the people who get up and walk their dogs at four am before the joggers and bikes come out at five am because your dogs are so misbehaved and one hundred percent of the money that i make and a percentage of each of my people's money goes directly towards merlin's kids but when i go out on a class everything goes to the so it's a good thing now let's see here so we gave the information we give the website again is there a telephone number for a yes that's going to be eight five five the number for the letter k the number nine pros or you can call the eight five five high why because everyone remembers that and they say hi wyatt i need help now do you think that most people need to read or learn something or get some kind of training whether it's at a local pet store or having someone like you come in so that they learn how to act appropriately with the dogs at home and with other people yes actually we have a number of rescues including the eleventh hour which is one of my favorite rescues and i work with about two hundred rescues around the country i've written a lot of books my favorite one it's called she happens s h h h i don't think that people s h h h happens dog behavior one zero one by janice wolf you can get it on amazon it's nine ninety nine but it is a great book if you have a puppy if you have a dog with an issue it does not discuss aggression because like the movie the show that they used to have a i think i can say it's called jackass they say don't try this at home and then you see all these copycat kids breaking their bones and all so if you have a dog that has any kind of growing or any kind of aggression or extreme dominance or you're having problems you need to call one of us united canine pros and the book still is great because it goes through developmental phases i think a lot of times people don't realize what happens in each of these phases and why the dogs develop behavioral issues but most of the problems are addressed in the book and it's great just to learn and i actually had a client who was a geneticist and he said to me he said you know i'm impressed with your book i said really why he said genetics is so boring and you actually made genetics fall so i don't know if it's fun but i it's easy to understand and behavior is so complicated yet it's so simple and if we stop getting our our brains in the human mode and start thinking like a dog it's so easy dogs are so simple and we just complicated and dogs don't speak english they don't speak japanese they don't speak anything other than dog unease i call dog unease for dog lish because when you say like to eat tell a dog to sit and it's jumping or running out the door all that means is that the dog is is going to put his butt on the ground it doesn't mean that the dog is going off and it going to do that behavior you have to think about changing the dog's brain instead of the body position if i if you were very angry and you came home and i said oh  down calm down or you know joey sit down calm down here's a cookie you wouldn't write so why do we do that with our dog to understand why they're barking out the window why is the dog barking out the window why is he doing what he's doing that because he's protecting you if you're a good knowledge him then he doesn't have to bark anymore instead of yelling at him and and just having it continue on and on so you know the cancer and disease detection dogs have to be not only behaviorally s all the service dogs do but they really have to kind of trust and have a deep connection and we're going to get to that more in our second show so that's it for this episode we want to thank you so much for coming and thank you wyatt for coming and that th