Saw this on the newstand yesterday in Smithsonian magazine. It was the most heart-warming thing I’ve read in a long time: let prison inmates train seeing-eye dogs. The training is intensive and extremely expensive (if you don’t have prisoners do it for you). At the same time, the inmates are cynical, detached, and hardened to just about anything that humans can throw at them. But working with dogs cuts right through that. It’s a great story about people helping dogs and dogs helping people. Only a few paragraphs of the story are available as HTML (New Leash on Life) but you can read the whole thing here as a PDF file.
4 thoughts on “Dogs in jail”
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Rambles Blog at Star Chamber 
Dogs help all kinds of people. Detached prison inmates as well as detached autistic people. There’s a wonderful organization called Caring Canines that provides trained dogs to autistic individuals. Hint, hint …
Ha ha, Ned. I hear you’re gonna get a dog soon.
Great idea! I was working at the polls the other day and a man came in to vote…with a yellow dog! (We tried to vote him, but he was too young.) The man was training him to be a guide dog. He keeps the dog a few months, trains him to be a good house pet, learn a few commands, and then sends him off for intensive training to be ready to guide a blind person. Inmates would be very useful up to that point. The problem is, as the trainer said, he gets so attached to the dog it’s hard to give him up. Also good idea for Gulley household. It is a bit daunting to think of the work involved, but lots of payback. And you wouldn’t have to give him up!
Dogs and puppies are great to have around as friends. Dogs are great for the kids too. I had a golden labrador once and they are very fun to play with the kids.
But what about hot dogs? I am a vegetarian so..hehe
Great blog!