All I knew about Lissa is that she posts a lot of dog related questions.
The “husband who works in a prison” part doesn’t come up in those threads, IIRC.
“My husband works in a prison and my dog is sick. Does anyone have any advice on my dog for me and my husband, who works in a prison? Thanks in advance from me, and from my husband who works in a prison!”
I was this close to still having water in my mouth when I read that. Your Keyboard Replacement Fund is safe for another day.
Not true. I’m filling in the claim form as we speak.
Damned pack-hunting giraffes…
And I could slip it in there easily, too. He developed a pound rescue program for puppies at his prison. Inmate raise and train the puppies in the hopes that some of them will be good enough to get into guide-dog school. (The others are adopted by the community.) It’s had amazing results, not only for the community, but for the inmates themselves.
As he said, one of the most rewarding moments of his career was when a defiant jerk of an inmate was put into a dorm where the puppies were being raised. Hubby would go down to the unit sometimes and see that spiteful, hostile inmate reduced to fits of giggles as he sat on the floor and the puppies tumbled over him. A couple of days later, the young man approached Hubby to ask how he could be assigned a puppy. Since he had been a discipline problem before, he wouldn’t usually have made the cut, but Hubby struck a deal with him that if the inmate stayed out of trouble for a certain length of time, he’d see to it that the inmate was approved.
He said after the inmate got the puppy, he was a new man. They no longer had problems with him, except for being stopped in halls for the inmate to show them new tricks that the pup had learned.
The dog he trained was not accepted into the guide-dog school. No one wanted to adopt it because it was a large-breed, and to tell the truth, kinda ugly. The inmate was not unhappy about this, because it meant he got to keep the dog for about two years.
Then, reports started coming in that the dog was being protective of the inmate and of his bunk space. Of course, this is unacceptable. Hubby called the inmate to his office and said that unfortunately, the dog would have to leave, and while he hated to do it, the only thing they could do was put it back in the pound.
The inmate begged, argued and protested, and while Hubby felt really bad for the guy, the safety of thr inmates in his care has to be top priority. The inmate was finally resigned to it, but begged to be allowed to have three more days with the dog. Hubby agreed.
On the second day, a group of inmates came to Hubby’s office, and asked to speak to him about the dog. “Honestly, my first instinct was to send them away,” he admitted to me when recounting this story. For the past twenty four hours, he had been besieged with pleas to allow the inmate to keep the dog. Everyone in the dorm had signed a petition. He always told them that he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do. If an inmate was ever bitten by a dog, the whole program would probably end. But he decided to hear them out.
When they sat down, he told them that he regretted what he had to do, but if they were here to argue with him, they were wasting their time. Oh, no, it wasn’t that, the inmates said hastily. They wanted to ask him if they could add someone to the list of those to whom they are approved to send money. They had spent the last 24 hours making calls, trying to find someone who would adopt the dog, so it wouldn’t go to the pound. They had found someone, but she wasn’t in the best financial condition, so they wanted to send her the money to pay for the adoption fees and food and had to have his approval to get the list changed. Hubby told them he would see to it personally that the addition was put through immediately.
The dogs have brought out the best in those people. I was a bit hesitant when Hubby first proposed the idea, thinking inmates might be cruel to the puppies, but it hasn’t been the case. Instead, it’s been a hugely rewarding experience all around.