Each year our school gets about 15 dogs from local shelters that we use during the year for animal handling labs, ultrasound labs, etc. to teach us how to work with real animals, and then they are adopted out at the end of the year. Students can sign up at the beginning of the year to be dog walkers and they are assigned a dog (either on their own or with one other student). They are responsible for taking the dog out of its run for at least an hour a day as well as taking it to a behavior/obedience class once a week. Most students end up spending a lot more time with their dogs though since you are allowed to take it out for as long as you want provided that they are back in their run before the are scheduled for use in a class. Many students take their dogs home on the weekends and for holiday breaks.
My roommate Alicia has "joint-custody" of one of the colony dogs this year - her name is ChaCha. She is a 1-2 year old pit-terrier cross. She and Levi met briefly a couple weeks ago when we took them for a walk together at the arboretum on campus. Today Alicia brought ChaCha home for the first time and she and Levi got to play. They had a blast and I'm sure Levi would have liked to keep playing for another hour (or 5) but we made them stop before ChaCha got sick of him. :-)
Levi can't wait for ChaCha to come over to play again.
Oh, that was so cute. They were having so much fun! Think what they'd do if they were in your backyard with more room.
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