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| Canine Partners for Life, established 1989 |
It is pretty obvious that puppies are awesome. I mean, you can be in the worst mood ever, see a puppy and you cannot help but smile. Dogs in general can do pretty amazing things, from sensing oncoming storms, to sniffing out bombs, and for people like myself they can sense oncoming medical issues. But what would you think if I told you that there is an organization that raises and trains service dogs to help people with disabilities, and that half of those dogs spend the first year of their lives in a maximum security prison being raised by the prisoners? For Canine Partners for Life in Cochranville, Pennsylvania, that’s precisely the case.
The Prison Puppy
Raising Program was created in 2001 at the Maryland Correctional Institute for
Women in Jessup, Maryland. When asked about the program and how it impacts
the puppies and the prisoners, Canine Partners dog trainer, Annie Savo says “it
gives inmates a purpose and a way to give back to society” and that “the
puppies…bring a positive additive to a place that can be pretty grim.”
While half of the puppies spend their first year in a
prison, the other half spend their time in a local home with a family raising
them and giving them their first basic set of skills. My dog, Zido, was one of
those that had a community home with a mom and a daughter who raised him. I
love being able to reach out to them and let them follow our story through my
pictures and blog posts. They say that it is such a relief to see the naughty
little puppy that they had to install baby-safe cabinet locks on their cabinets
once he learned how to open them now literally saving my life every day. Canine
Partners wants to make sure, however, that each dog becomes exposed to the
different environments of a prison and a community home, so for one month of
the first year, they do what is called a “puppy swap” and will switch the dogs
from homes to prisons and vice versa. So I guess it is pretty cool to say that
my boy spent a year behind bars.
The following video gives a brief snapshot of the Canine
Partners for Life organization as a whole. Stay tuned for a more in depth look into the
Prison Puppy Program and what the inmates, puppies, and future partners can
come out of it with.
