In a 1980 study, researchers of the University of Maryland and Pennsylvania were to record and report the survival rates of ninety-two individuals with severe heart trouble, fifty-three receiving a pet animal of some sort. At the end of the year, eleven of the thirty-nine heart patients without a pet had died, while only three of the fifty-three with a pet had died. Why is it that the survival rate for those without pets was only seventy-two percent, while the survival rate for those with a pet was a whopping 94 percent? The simple answer can be found in later-conducted research: simply being in an animal’s presence both lowers blood pressure and reduces stress, while stroking an animal leads to the release of endorphins, the brain’s pleasure chemical (Gorman 1). For these reasons, among others, many hospitals, nursing homes, and therapists across America use dogs to aid patients. However, these are not the only situations in which dogs have been used to improve behavior: beginning in the 1980s, programs have been pairing up puppies with prisoners in the hopes to both lower the rate of recidivism and to train dogs to become service animals.