Great idea - take people with a lot of time on their hands and who aren't going anywhere soon (prisoners) and give them the labor intensive task of training service and guide dogs. They also train for explosives detecting.
From Puppies Behind Bars:
A New Leash on LifeWhat a wonderful program with a wonderful result.
How We Got Started
In 1990, my husband and I adopted a Labrador Retriever from one of North America's most prestigious guide-dog schools, Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, New York. 'Arrow' had been on his way to becoming a guide dog but was released from the program for medical reasons. Upon adopting Arrow, I began reading about the special breeding and training that had gone into him and was amazed to discover how much time, effort, love, and money ($25,000) is behind each guide dog.
A large part of the extraordinary effort that goes into these special dogs comes from 'puppy raisers' -- individuals or families who take specially bred puppies into their homes when the pups are just eight weeks old and who spend the next sixteen months teaching them basic obedience skills and socializing them to enter the world at large. Socializing the dogs is actually the main component of a puppy raiser's task, for socialization is what helps these dogs become confident. Confidence is the most important trait for a guide dog to have, but as it is not hereditary, it is the one trait which cannot be bred into dogs. Dogs become confident by being around human beings and by being introduced to a variety of situations at a measured pace. After sixteen months, the dogs leave their puppy raisers, return to the guide-dog school from which they came, and are given a series of tests to determine their level of confidence. If they pass the tests, they go on to five or six months of professional guide-dog training.
Dr. Thomas Lane, a vet in Florida, thought that prison inmates would make excellent puppy raisers, and started the first guide-dog/prison program. Not only do inmates have unlimited time to spend with the puppies, but they benefit from the responsibility of being puppy raisers in ways that are especially important to their rehabilitation: they learn patience, what it is like to be completely responsible for a living being, how to give and receive unconditional love, and -- since puppy raisers take classes and train the dogs together -- how to work as a team.
