dr. cynthia otto. dr. tto is the founder, executive director or the vet working center at the university of pennsylvania. her research focuses on canine health and behavior. dr. otto has been involved with search and rescue dogs, pennsylvania urban search and rescue task force including deployments to hurricane katrina and during 9/11. dr. otto? >> thank you, good morning, chairman johnson and ranking member carper. it is a pleasure to be here. i'd like to introduce one of the dogs to the program. 10 1/2-week-old german shepherd born in texas. he's donated to our program. his name is jerry. like all the dogs donated to our programs he's named after one of the dogs that worked at 9/11. he's been handled by a veterinary student from penn vet, meagan ramos. you'll be able to meet him after the hearing and learn more about his future career. we're a not for profit research and development center for detection dogs. our program was developed based on our experience with a wide variety of organizations including

dr. cynthia otto. dr. otto is the founder, executive director or the vet working center at the university of pennsylvania. her research focuses on canine health and behavior. dr. otto has been involved with search and rescue dogs, disaster sponz as response as member of the pennsylvania urban search and rescue task force including deployments to hurricane katrina and during 9/11. dr. otto? >> thank you, good morning, chairman johnson and ranking member carper. it is a pleasure to be here. i'd like to introduce one of the dogs to the program. 10 1/2-week-old german shepherd born in texas. he's donated to our program. his name is jerry. like all the dogs donated to our programs he's named after one of the dogs that worked at 9/11. he's been handled by a veterinary student from penn vet, meagan ramos. you'll be able to meet him after the hearing and learn more about his future career. we're a not for profit research and development center for detection dogs. our program was developed based on our experience wi

i'm so pleased dr. otto is here. when we take a look at airport security, we talked to director -- or secretary jeh johnson. always on his mind is threat in materials of air, airlines and airline safety. a canine unit can be an effective unit in keeping our nation safe and air traffic safe as well. again, i'm really looking forward to this hearing. looking forward to the testimony. i want to thank the witnesses for coming and your thoughtful testimony. for that, we'll turn it over to senator carper. >> thank, chairman. thanks for bringing us all together. i think most of us in the room probably had a dog or two in our lives and chairman mentioned he once had a beagle, a plump beagle i think he said. reminds me when i was a little boy, until i was 12 or 13, we had jack and jill. husband and wife team of beagles and they were great rabbit dogs. they chased a lot of rabbits. they were not plump. and they were in great shape. it sort of, like, reminds me of the joy we had with all of them using their noses to find not cu