A black Labrador retriever named Casey joins the Penn Vet Working Dog Center training program.
A Labrador retriever, Casey is the 100th puppy enrolled in the Penn Vet Working Dog Center training program.
A “confident and resilient” 8-week-old black Labrador retriever is the 100th puppy to enter the Penn Vet Working Dog Center research-based training program, and “he looks like he’s going to be a great pup,” says Annemarie DeAngelo, training director.
The puppy’s name is Casey, in honor of K9 Cassy who served at the Pentagon following the 9/11 attacks.
“Casey has a lot of good attributes we look for in a puppy that young,” DeAngelo says. “His play drive is high. He’s social. He’s not afraid of things he wants to try.”
Casey will enter the Working Dog Center’s basic training program to learn skills including obedience, agility, control, and searching.
The Working Dog Center opened seven years ago, on Sept. 11, 2012, as a national research and development center for detection dogs. The Center was founded by Penn Vet professor and veterinarian Cynthia Otto, who monitored the health of dogs who conducted search and rescue after the attacks. The Center’s puppies are named in honor of those dogs.
Casey is related to Socks, the program’s first graduate who was among the first cohort of puppies trained at the Center. Casey’s father is a brother to Socks, who is now on the Penn Police force as an explosives detection dog, paired with Officer Julie Wesley.
Socks was the first graduate of the Working Dog Center training program in September 2013, paired with Penn Police Officer Julie Wesley (right). Veterinarian Cindy Otto (left) founded the Working Dog Center. Maureen Rush (center) is Penn’s vice president of Public Safety and superintendent of the police department. (Photo: Steven Minicola)
“One hundred is a good number; that’s a lot of puppies to put through a program that started with seven puppies seven years ago, especially considering it’s a research-based program,” DeAngelo says. “Each one of those dogs has taught us something and given to this program.”
Of the 100 dogs, 66 were donated and 34 came through the Center’s breeding program, she says. Casey was donated on July 23 by Stephanie and Emily Kaiser of Kaiser K9 Scent Detection Training in Catonsville, Maryland. Most puppies arrive at 8 weeks old, from breeders all over the country, DeAngelo says. At the moment, 26 dogs are in training.
Casey will enter the basic foundation training program to learn skills including obedience, agility, search for odor, search for live humans, and direction and control, DeAngelo says.
“As he develops, we will see where he is the strongest and what he enjoys doing the most—that’s when they declare their major—and place him in a career where he will be the most successful,” she says.
Griffin Pitt, right, works with two other student researchers to test the conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and temperature of water below a sand dam in Kenya.
Griffin Pitt’s upbringing made her passionate about water access and pollution, and Penn has given her the opportunity to explore these issues back home in North Carolina and abroad.
Helping robots work together to explore the Moon and Mars
Penn Engineers, NASA, and five other universities tested robotic systems designed to help unmanned explorers cooperate in the dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, paving the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
From framework to actions: Provost John L. Jackson Jr. talks Penn Forward
In a Q&A, Provost John L. Jackson Jr. explains the relationship between the strategic framework In Principle and Practice and Penn Forward—a new University-wide process and action plan that will advance Penn forward for the next decade and beyond.
