Prisoners rehabilitate death-row dogs

Program trains dogs to be adopted, also helps reduce violence behind bars

LANSING, Kan. - The prison yard is filled with the sounds of men grunting as they lift heavy barbells that clang noisily when iron hits concrete. But Jerry McMullin is oblivious, focused only on a young German shepherd named Tess.

On his hands and knees in the nearby grass, McMullin gently talks to Tess, smiling as he coaxes her to lie down.

“Tess down,” he says, and she obeys.

“You want this?” he continues, handing her a chewed up red rubber ball. “Good girl.”

The scene is something of a paradox: sweaty, muscled men heaving to the rhythms of their workout while a kennel's worth of puppies are doing what puppies do best. Yet it's a fairly common setting at Lansing Correctional Facility, where 2,500 criminals are serving time for everything from forgery and robbery to rape and murder.

Since August 2004, the Safe Harbor Prison Dog Program has brought animals destined for doggie death row at area shelters to inmates like McMullin for training as pets.

On any given day, about 50 dogs are being trained by some 100 inmates at the combined medium- and maximum-security prison. They frolic in a penned area in the shadow of guard towers and high fences, or splash in a plastic wading pool. Because they can be trained quicker as pets than as service animals, they're ready for adoption in just a couple of weeks.

More than 1,000 dogs adopted
About 1,200 dogs of all breeds and ages have been adopted under the program, financed by donations and a $150 adoption fee covering vaccinations, spaying or neutering.

More adopted dogs means more that can be rescued.

"We still want to save as many as we can,” says Janet Florence, the program's president.

Warden David McKune thinks so much of the program that he kept it alive even after founder Toby Young in February spirited a convicted murderer out of prison in a dog crate in her van. The pair were caught about two weeks later in Tennessee.

“Closing that program wasn't a thought that occurred to me. That program is much bigger in its accomplishments than one person,” said McKune, whose prison is where killers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, profiled in Truman Capote's novel “In Cold Blood,” were executed in 1965.

McKune says what he believes to be the largest prison-based dog adoption program in the country helps reduce violence among inmates. “They may be having a crummy day and a dog comes up and starts licking them and things look better for them,” he says.

McMullin, 62, whose prison job has him compiling traffic accident data for the state Transportation Department, spends about 15 minutes four times a day training his dogs, rewarding them with treats from the leather pouch on his belt. They seem to respond better to hand signals, a technique he developed training deaf dogs.

“You don't want to work with them too long or they stop paying attention. They get bored,” he says. “I use no force or fear, positive reinforcement only. You've got to get them to do what you want and make them think it was their idea.”

First program was started by nun
The first prison program to train service dogs was started in 1981 in Washington state by Sister Pauline Quinn, a Dominican nun. Similar programs to train dogs as service animals or pets sprang up across the country, including California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Maine, New Hampshire and Wisconsin.

 


Headline

 

 

Stop ai dolori articolari

 

Tutti i poster che vuoi!

Google