Inmates help prepare dogs for adoption
 

Thursday, June 21, 2007

By ROBERT PASCHEN
Record Staff Writer

By Joy Parker/Record Inmate Michael Bailey walks American Eskimo dog Effrum in the yard of the Corrections Medical Center on Harmon Avenue. Tender Loving Care Canine Rescue in Grove City sends dogs to the facility, where they are trained by inmates to prepare them for adoption.

 

After Don and Tracie Cobb of Grove City rescue American Eskimo dogs from central Ohio and around the Midwest, they want them to go to prison.

But it's not any form of punishment.

Strange or not, Ohio prisons have become locations where inmates save dogs' lives, and dogs save the lives of inmates.

In two years, the Cobbs, through their nonprofit Tender Loving Canine Rescue organization, have sent around 120 American Eskimo dogs to the Corrections Medical Center (CMC) on Harmon Avenue near state Route 104.

"We pull them from pounds and shelters," said Tracie Cobb. "We have them as owner-surrenders, people who don't want them any more and we get them. We've picked up a few as strays.

"We talk with the prison on an almost daily basis. They call with questions and we may call with questions. I don't know what they are in for, murder or drugs. I do believe that the dogs have a positive impact on the inmates."

The inmates have a positive impact on the dogs, as well.

The Cobbs provide American Eskimo dogs for what is known as the "Eskies Behind Bars" program, which itself is part of a larger statewide "cell dog" initiative by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections that now has approximately 450 dogs in 28 institutions, including CMC in Columbus.

Through the cell dog program, inmates give abandoned, neglected, abused and rescued dogs basic obedience training so that these canines are more "adoptable," said Wanda Suber, ODRC administrator of the community service program.

"If a dog needs housebroken, they will do that," Cobb said, as well as correcting "behavior issues."

Some dogs would be put to death if not for the cell dog program, Suber said.

"Inmates are here 24-7, so they can raise and train dogs and give them the care they need," Suber said.

Humane societies and rescue organizations, which provide the dogs, including Tender Loving Canine Rescue, also buy the animal food, water dishes, leashes and any other item needed for the program.

Once the Cobbs send one of their American Eskimo rescues to CMC for training, the dog's next stop is the homes of an adoptive family.

Inmates receive training on how to teach dogs "sit, come, down, and stay," Cobb said. Some ODRC cell dog programs are advanced, with inmates training canines to work with persons with disabilities, or to be therapy dogs in hospitals, where the sick and infirm feel better through petting friendly canines. Some "dogs are trained to turn on and off lights, or to pick up the telephone and place it on the lap" of their owner, the corrections official said.

The relationship between inmates and dogs is a tender, mutually beneficial interaction, said both Suber and Cobb.

"I think it's very positive," Cobb said. "These dogs are their workload. They have something to do. They have something to focus on. Dogs help calm a person. It can teach these guys companionship.

"They develop a relationship with these dogs."

"It changes the attitude of the offender," Suber said. "Some (inmates) don't have visitors and now they have unconditional love.

"One inmate said that a dog kept him from committing suicide," Suber added.

Moreover, Suber said that dogs provide a sense of calm to prisons' general populations, not just for the inmate-handlers themselves.

"Other inmates want to pet the dogs," she said. "They are happy to see the dogs and are protective of them."

The cell dog program started in 1992 with female inmates at the Franklin Pre-Release Center in Columbus and the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville training canines as "pilot dogs" for the blind, Suber said. The benefits to the dogs, inmates, and communities at large resulted in the program spreading to other institutions around the state.

News of the cell dog program began spreading, and calls from corrections officials across the country began coming in requesting information. Recently, Suber said that she's received calls from Austria, Italy and Canada. And Animal Planet has run a series of shows on cable about the ODRC dog-inmate program.

The Cobbs have six American Eskimo rescue dogs at any given time receiving inmate training at the Corrections Medical Center. The Cobbs focus solely on "Eskies."

Unfortunately, Cobb said, the supply of canines in need of rescue seems to be going up.

"We're finding more and more," she said. "Not just this breed, any breed. People want a dog, but they don't have the time and money to give dogs what they need."

The number of abandoned dogs has risen so much recently, it seems to Cobb that they are "basically dropping from the sky."

The Cobbs have traveled to Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Tennessee to pick up rescued dogs. Through Tender Loving Animal Rescue in Grove City, they have found homes for saved American Eskimos across the country, including Colorado, Florida, and "quite a few in Ohio."

All of the dogs, on their way from bad homes to good ones, find their way behind bars, under the care of inmates who want what's best for them.

"A lot of times when we drive by (on Interstate-71 south of Columbus) we can see the dogs out" in the yard at CMC, Cobb said. "We see them out their playing with the guys."