Wyatt is the first graduate of the prison's service dog program, an outgrowth of another program that trains abandoned dogs from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough animal shelter so that they're better candidates for adoption.

Wyatt ended up at the shelter as a young stray. He will flick light switches with his nose and fetch cell phones and keys in his mouth for his new owner.

Ondell's wife, Reece, said she's looking forward to Wyatt helping with her husband's post-traumatic stress disorder.

"He has a lot of anxiety and the dog will help him stay relaxed," she said.

William Ondell suffers from a brain injury, and back and knee problems. While he was on patrol in Iraq in 2005, a suicide car bomber drove into his Humvee. Shrapnel hit Ondell in the face and his body flew out of the vehicle, he said.

He hopes Wyatt will help him with mundane tasks, especially when pain gets so bad he can't move. He's also looking forward to having a constant buddy, he said.

The dog Friday lay on the floor for most of the half-hour ceremony, ignoring the prison orchestra, the entrance of Gov. Sarah Palin into the room, and a 3-month-old puppy down an aisle.

"Wyatt is very calm. He doesn't get excited," said Tamara Riley, the prisoner who trained him for the past year and a half.

During his training, Wyatt rarely left Riley's side. For eight hours many days, he rested on a pillow underneath her sewing machine at her prison job making uniforms. He took his place under the cafeteria tables at meal times, never begging for food. He attended orchestra practice with her and listened to her play the violin. He slept in a kennel in her room.

"He's unbelievably in-tune with whoever he is with," she said. He's a very intelligent dog. I'm so glad he went to the people he went to."

To get him used to the outside world, corrections officers took Wyatt home sometimes and on errands to the grocery store. Other officers took the dog to the male prison at Point MacKenzie to get him used to men.

Corrections Sgt. Keith Conlin is one of the people in charge of the dog-training programs.

"It calms the prisoners' attitudes," he said. "The same thing that dogs do to people on the outside happens in here, the effect dogs have on us."

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Information from Anchorage Daily News