In 1998, Sister Pauline Quinn started what is believed to be the first prison-based dog training program. This program was first held in Washington State as a cooperative effort among Washington State University, Tacoma Community College and the Washington State Department of Corrections. This beneficial program helped inmates at the Washington state Corrections Center for Women learn how to train, groom and board dogs within the prison walls. The program was later incorporated in 1991 as a separate not for profit organization.
Fast Forward to 2008. There are now programs in almost every state where prison inmates are used to train dogs either to be used as service animals or to improve their social skills to be placed in a forever adoptive home. In fact, programs have spread to Europe. The Ribibbia Prison for Women in Rome, runs the ConFido Prison Dog Program. Inmates there take dogs from local humane society shelters and train them to be Assistance Dogs for the disabled.
In Austin, TX, Austin Dog Rescue participates in the Paws in Prison Program at a Women’s correctional facility in Lockhart, Texas. This program focuses on taking adoptable dogs and improving their training and manners so that it will be easier to place them in forever homes. For eight weeks, the dogs are matched with two offenders who share the responsibilities of caring for and training their dog. They attend lessons twice a week with a professional dog trainer and then practice every day, teaching their dog all they are learning from the trainers. The dogs are socialized and exposed to many different people, places and noises. Each dog is house trained, crate trained, and taught basic obedience commands such as sit, down, stay, leave it, come, loose leash walking, wait, and off. In other words, they learn to be good canine companions. Only non-violentoffenders are chosen to work in the program. The women not only learn a marketable skill which they can use outside the facility, but they also build their self-esteem, learn to trust, work together as a team and for some, possibly experience unconditional love and trust for the first time.
Much closer to home is the Puppies Behind Bars Program. It was started 11 years ago by Gloria Gilbert Stoga who recognized that there was a shortage of families willing to provide the basic training and socialization that a service dog needs as they grow through their puppy years. Since 1997, this program, which is based in New York City, has raised 483 dogs utilizing inmates in 7 prisons in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.
In New Jersey puppies are raised and trained at the Edna Mahan Women’s Correctional Facility in Clinton. In this program, all the dogs are either Labrador retrievers or Golden retrievers who arrive at the prison at eight weeks of age. The dogs live with their trainers in the cell in their own crate learning 82 commands in their 20 month stay. The prisoners in turn learn everything from teaching a dog a basic command to how to modulate their voices and appropriate eye contact which will assist them in their work with the dogs.
All of the offenders in these area prisons have committed major felonies-some of them violent. This does not mean though, that these inmates do not have something positive to contribute to society. Puppies Behind Bars gives them the opportunity to give back and to provide freedom-something they no longer have-to a disabled person. Many of the dogs in training now will ultimately go to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Puppies Behind Bars is actually trying to improve their outreach to veterans to make them aware of the availability of these service dogs.
People can help dogs, dogs can help people. Next time I will look at programs developed specifically to help young people through their work with dogs.
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