Cameras and Modern Technology

Those of you that have followed the construction of our new kennel know that there are cameras almost everywhere - and no, we do not have secret cameras in the bathrooms! From afar, whether it be from the Director's home or literally from any computer anywhere in the world, we can look and see what is going on at the NGAP kennel. Hopefully good things! But when bad things occur, the cameras certainly serve their purpose.

A few days ago we had some volunteers in walking our dogs. They stopped in the food prep area to wash their hands after the walk and shortly after they left, one of our staff members noted that her cell phone was missing. We ran through the security recordings in the area where the cell phone was located and you could clearly see a large gentleman in that area. As we let the tape run at a speed of a frame per second, we would see the phone there and then see it gone. The only thing we couldn't see was him actually picking up the cell phone!

Now here's where the technology part comes in! We were able to take a one second frame and break it down into 30 parts. On several 1/30th of a second frames we can actually see the man's arm moving out, grabbing the phone and putting it in his pocket reflected in the sliding glass door! The whole thing took only one second, but we had all of the evidence that we needed. We could also take snapshots of the broken down frames with a click of the mouse. As it turns out, the phone was returned to us without police intervention but this was certainly an excellent exercise. We learned some valuable lessons that day; #1, staff should not leave valuables laying around and #2, we need to make sure that all visitors sign in.

This particular incident confirmed that watching CSI all these years was worth it! This is one of the tools that keeps our dogs, our employees, and our visitors safe. Soon, we will be able to see surgery in action. Won't that be great!