When O'Neil was younger, he said, he had been a bit of a mess himself. He couldn't focus, and he wasn't good at school. But nobody gave up on him.
He believed the people around Ruby had seen the same thing in her. The two of them, he felt, were a lot alike.
Most dogs can be trained in a matter of months. Ruby took a year and a half. O'Neil refused to quit, and in 2011 she became a certified K-9 trooper.