HELENA – The Carroll College anthrozoology undergraduate program will be seeing significant changes in the 2018-19 school year.
When the program was first created it only had a handful of students but this year over 100 students, including 7 high school students through the Early Access program, will be taking classes on human-animal interactions.
In order to accommodate the growing program, Carroll will be breaking ground on their new Perkins-Call Canine Center this coming spring which was made possible because of a $1.25 million gift.
The center is named for Dr. Anne Perkins who founded the Carroll anthrozoology program and Whitney Call.
New head of the program Dr. Marie Suthers says this is a very exciting time for the program.
“Our students focus on both horses and dogs when they major in anthrozoology,” said Suthers, “We have a Carroll College equine center, and we’re actually looking to expand our equine center into another location, and really make it state-of-the-art.”
The program will be taking in eighteen dogs from shelters around the state with many of the animals coming from the Lewis and Clark Humane Society, to help alleviate some of the shelter’s overcrowding.
“We like working with the shelters because they give use a wide variety of dogs,” said assistant professor of anthrozoology Dr. Jesse McClure, “They’ve been great partners to work with and the staff at Lewis and Clark Humane Society have been really great in identifying good dogs for our program.”
McClure is also a new addition to the program this year and has 3 years of experience as a military working dogs trainer for the United States Marine Corps where he trained dogs for explosive detection, protection and more.
McClure said most of the dogs in the program won’t become service animals but will become great pets.
“It’s my job to teach the students how to train those types of working dogs,” said McClure.
For more information about the Carroll College anthrozoology program visit here.
