About Paws in Prison
The Paws in Prison Program works closely with area shelters and rescue groups which allows us the opportunity serve our community by saving dogs lives while providing quality programming for offenders.
The success of our program is the unique working relationship between our partners and the facilities and the volunteer dog trainers. The goal is to take homeless dogs and make them more adoptable by providing basic obedience training, house and crate training and indoor manners. We achieve that goal by each party doing their part.
Our Partner Agency's provide the prison with dogs may be at risk of being euthanized or have little chance of adoption for any number of reasons. It may be lack of space, an easily treated medical condition, or the stress of being in a shelter makes them unlikely candidates for the shelters adoption program. In any case, all they need is to be able to regain their medical and mental health, given training, leadership and attention and they transform in to wonderful canine companions.
We make certain the dogs have good temperaments, are vaccinated, neutered and micro chipped. We provide volunteer professional trainers, a curriculum, space, the program manager and other needed items. Most important, we provide motivated inmates to care for and train the animals.
We know that being a part of this program has made a lifelong impact on them and something they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
With each class, the offender handlers are becoming more confident and experienced. This means that the dogs are better trained and learning at a faster pace.
Each of the dogs learn basic obedience commands, walking on a loose leash, are house trained and crate trained. Many learn several tricks and other commands besides the basics. Much of the time is simply spent nurturing and socializing the dogs who may have been abused, abandoned, and/or not socialized in the past.
