Zoo Program Trains Service Dogs

 The Memphis Zoo is full of wild animals, but a domesticated one is calling the zoo home for a few months. A Memphis Zoo curator is helping train a dog who will eventually go on to be a service animal.

But like the saying goes, it takes a village. Several people in the Mid-South have been instrumental in raising future service animals.

A group of service dogs visited the Memphis Zoo Friday. It’s not quite the crowd you’re expecting on a summer day at the Memphis Zoo.

Just like the Zoo’s regular visitors, the service dogs in training are interested in the animals, and the animals are very interested in them.

“It benefits both parties because not only is [the dog] getting exposed to a lot, the zoo animals are getting to see an incredibly well-trained service dog,” said Memphis Zoo Curator Courtney Janney.

Janney is training a Golden Retriever named North until November when he’ll go off to service dog school and eventually serve a person with a disability.

For the first year of North’s life, he learned the basics from an unlikely group — inmates from the Hardeman County Correctional Facility.