MOULTRIE , GA. Moultrie Technical College psychology students in Ashburn and Tifton learned that you can teach a young dog amazing tricks. However, “tricks” are an understatement for the service that two-year-old yellow Labrador retriever Cassie provides for Tifton resident Denise Millette.

Denise Millette, a visually-impaired resident of Tift County, far left, demonstrates the concept of operant conditioning with her guide dog Cassie for psychology students and their instructor Leanette Roberson, far right, at Moultrie Technical College’s Turner County campus. Millette also visited the psychology classes at the MTC Tifton campus.

Millette, a visually-impaired secretary at Victory Baptist Church, lost vision in one eye about five years ago and partially lost sight her other eye two years later. With the help of The Seeing Eye, Inc., the oldest existing dog guide school in the world, she was paired with Cassie in 2006 and spent a month training with her at the organization’s Morristown, New Jersey, campus.

Moultrie Tech psychology instructor Leanette Roberson invited Millette to share her experiences with MTC students in late November for the purpose of reinforcing the concept of operant conditioning.

“This is the concept that we learn from our consequences.  Behaviors that are rewarded increase in frequency of occurrence, and behaviors that are punished decrease in frequency of occurrence,” Roberson explained. 

“I asked Denise to come so that my students could see operant conditioning in action.  It’s one thing to read something in a text but quite another to do it yourself and see it done in front of you,” said Roberson, “…it is also a rare treat to see an animal with this amount of training up close and personal.” 

Millette gave a brief lecture on the background and training provided to the dogs of the Seeing Eye, Inc. She used the remainder of the instructional time in the psychology classes at the MTC Tifton and Turner County campuses to demonstrate Cassie’s skills in addition to conditioning the canine to locate classroom doors, steps and other obstacles.