 Each year hundreds of children in our region find themselves victims of child abuse and they receive services at Judy's Place for Kids. Last week the staff at Judy's Place added a new tool to their arsenal to fight child abuse. His name is Leslie. Well, this is my facility dog, Leslie, and he's here at Judy's Place for Kids and he's placed through Canine Companions for Independence. As we researched whether this was going to be a good fit for our program, one of the things that we did was visit a conference with other facility dogs and really got to talk with other programs about the benefits that the facility dog had made for them and for the kids and families. And so, you know, while the dog won't necessarily be used with every child, it will be an option for kids to be more comfortable and relaxed. And so, when we're more comfortable and relaxed, we're able to participate better in talking about hard things. And so, giving more details, more information, and just when we're less stressed, we're able to talk with other people better. So he'll start out at the beginning meeting them at the forensic interview. He'll go through the medical process with them, then go through the therapy process, attend the attorney meetings, and ultimately culminate with him being allowed to be on the stand with the child witness while they testify and run the judge and the jury. So that's our ultimate goal. He's met one of the judges. We just have to let him meet everybody else and hope they fall in love with as much as we have. Our ultimate goal is to end child abuse. And so, when children who have been abused are able to tell more details about what's happened to them, it ultimately helps the investigators help be able to do things to stop the abuse and keep that child safe.