Dogs Open Hearts Of Missouri Prisoners

By Bill McClellan
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/08/2010

One day last month, a correctional officer at the maximum security prison in Jefferson City was walking toward the employees' dining hall when he noticed something unsettling. A group of inmates — offenders, they're called in today's jargon — were looking past him toward Housing Unit No. 5. The inmates were staring at something. They were absolutely silent.

"Dead quiet can mean a couple of things here, and none of them good, so I quickly looked back to see what was happening," said correctional officer John Osborne. "They were staring at Koda."

She is a Siberian husky. She was in the first batch of dogs brought to the prison as part of a new program. Actually, Koda and her canine colleagues at the Jefferson City Correctional Center and another batch of dogs at the medium-security Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific represent an expansion of an old program.

Inmates at the women's prison in Vandalia have been training dogs since 1982. In the beginning, that program was restricted to training service dogs. Then rescue dogs were included.


Now the program with rescue dogs is being expanded to the men's prisons.

"I'd like to see every prison teamed up with a shelter in its community," said George Lombardi, director of the Department of Corrections. "I think it could be a win-win situation. We could help the shelters get dogs ready for adoption, and dogs are good for a prison."
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They certainly provide things that are in short supply in a prison — namely, love and trust. Officials at Vandalia say that the women consider it such a privilege to live with the dogs that they are careful not to lose that privilege.

Lombardi said that the program would have no cost to the state. All food and materials would be donated by private sources.

I was at the prison in Pacific when the dogs arrived last month. They came from a rescue group called Mutts n Stuff that works primarily with pit bull mixes.

Diana Roberts of the rescue group brought five dogs. Ten inmates — five trainers and their cellmates — came to the visiting room to meet their dogs. Roberts seemed to study the inmates and then study the dogs, trying to determine the best matches.

The inmates waited anxiously, like kids at Christmas. When they were given their dogs, they immediately reached down to pet them and the dogs seemed to respond.

"You can't normally show affection in here," said a corrections officer. "You don't give any. You don't get any."

Of course, you can't tell that to a dog. It might be living in a cage in a cell in a prison, but it's still happy to give and get affection. That's what has happened at Pacific.

"The dogs are doing great," Warden Jennifer Sachse told me last week. "They're being very receptive to the training. You can see a big difference between the time they got here, and now. In all likelihood, some of them are going to be adopted by our staff."

The program also seems to be thriving at Jefferson City.

Joseph Honee, an inmate who is training a terrier-beagle mix named Sissy, told me that men in prison have a special affinity for rescue dogs.

"Sissy had been abused and neglected. In some kind of way, that's true of a lot of men in here. And maybe you became aggressive, but you still have love in you. These dogs bring out the better you," he said.

And a better dog, too. "When Sissy got here, she'd hide in a corner. Now we can't keep her down," Honee said.

Recently, when the weather was still bad, somebody put 10 newborn puppies in a box and dumped the box in a park in Jefferson City. The puppies were brought to a shelter, but they needed more care than the shelter could provide. They were taken to the prison. Inmates bottle-fed them, and the puppies slept with the inmates for warmth. They all survived.

Mark Harris, an inmate from St. Louis, told me that one of the old-timers was having a tough day.

"We took a puppy and put it on his lap. He started singing, 'What a Friend We Have in Jesus.'"

Warden Dave Dormire has long understood the comforting influence that a dog can bring to a prison. He sometimes brings his own dog to visit the inmates in the prison hospice.

So he wasn't surprised when he got a note from Osborne about the men who were staring at Koda: "Their eyes were sad and wistful, as though they were remembering days long ago. I sighed with some relief and went and ate my lunch. ... Teachers learn from their pupils. It will be interesting to see what the dogs teach us."