Prisoners and puppies changing lives 4 paws at a time

Puppies Raised In Prison Go On To Help Disabled Veterans
WNPR
David Desroches
December 29, 2017

Prisons have actually been training dogs since the 1980s. A Dominican nun is credited with  bringing the first training program to a Washington state prison back in 1981.

Jerrod Chapel working with his dog, Pete, teaching him how to fetch things for a future disabled veteran.DAVID DESROCHES / WNPR 

Inside Enfield Correctional Institution there are all the expected security measures: Huge steel doors. Armed guards. Barbed-wire fences. Locked gates.

But in one area of the prison, there's something a little different.

There's a room with a huge mural painted on the back wall. It shows men and women in army fatigues playing with dogs. One woman is in a wheelchair. Inside this room, there are all sorts of props built to mimic items in a home: a refrigerator; a portion of a wall with a light switch on it; a door -- literally a door to nowhere -- in the middle of the room, with a leash attached to a handle.

This room is where inmates train puppies to be service dogs for veterans.

One of the dogs Santiago got to train was Caspar, a big yellow lab, mixed with a little golden retriever. A few months ago, Caspar found a home with Bob Rapone. He's a Vietnam veteran who's been living with PTSD ever since he came home nearly 50 years ago.

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Shaken soldier thinks a dog could be a tonic

Shaken soldier thinks a dog could be a tonic
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 03:04 AM
BY JESSICA WEHRMAN

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

WASHINGTON - A blast from a suicide bomber on a motorcycle in Afghanistan gave Joshua Endicott injuries from his head to toes.

Doctors and the medical staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington worked to heal most of those wounds.

But 10 months after Endicott, 20, of Columbus, was hit and ultimately evacuated from Afghanistan, the emotional scars remain.

Endicott, like many coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, lives now with post-traumatic stress disorder. Previously outgoing and carefree, the Purple Heart recipient now says he's constantly "stressed out" and always alert. Once an avid runner and swimmer, he now can do neither because of his injuries. "I don't feel safe, ever," he said.

For the first few months of his recovery, Endicott was assigned what the military calls a "non-medical assistant" - in this case, his brother-in-law, Jack Brock, who stayed with him as he navigated the recovery process. But in late May, Brock had to go home.

Endicott was alone.

But he has an idea of what might help him. He'd seen dogs aiding other injured veterans and had read about dogs helping victims of PTSD. Alone in Washington, he believes a companion dog might be what he needs.

"I have nothing," Endicott said. "A companion dog would be perfect for me."

While a number of initiatives use dogs to help service members, there is no current process to provide a dog to an individual soldier with PTSD, said Lt. Cmdr. Kathleen Watkins, deputy director for family programs in the behavioral-health division of the Office of the Surgeon General for the Army. The Army is developing a policy regarding service animals and also is involved in an overarching Defense Department policy on the use of dogs, she said. "In the course of treatment, health-care providers may on occasion facilitate contact between a service-dog nongovernmental organization and a soldier in need of a dog."


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Shaken soldier thinks a dog could be a tonic

Service dogs help ease veterans' postwar pain

Service dogs help ease veterans' postwar pain
Government to test how dogs can help troops cope with post-traumatic stress disorder.

By Janie Lorber
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: 11:00 p.m. Saturday, April 3, 2010


WASHINGTON — Just weeks after Chris Goehner, 25, an Iraq war veteran, got a dog, he was able to cut in half the dose of anxiety and sleep medications he took for post-traumatic stress disorder. The night terrors and suicidal thoughts that kept him awake for days on end ceased.

Aaron Ellis, 29, another Iraq veteran with the stress disorder, scrapped his medications entirely soon after getting a dog — and set foot in a grocery store for the first time in three years.

The dogs to whom they credit their improved health are psychiatric service dogs specially trained to help traumatized veterans leave the battlefield behind as they reintegrate into society.

Because of stories like these, the federal government is spending several million dollars to study whether scientific research supports anecdotal reports that the dogs might speed recovery from the psychological wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In dozens of interviews, veterans and their therapists reported drastic reductions in post-traumatic stress symptoms and in reliance on medication after receiving a service dog.
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Service dogs help ease veterans postwar pain

Dog helps Iraq vet with PTSD: 'My little Marine'

Dog helps Iraq vet with PTSD: 'My little Marine'

Life has become calmer, safer and less stressful for Chris Goehner since he paired up with Pele, according to this story by the Associated Press.


Goehner, 25, a Wenatchee Valle, Wash., native now attending Central Washington University, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which has afflicted him since serving two tours as a U.S. Navy corpsman attached to a U.S. Marine Corps emergency room unit in Iraq. He worked as a medic in Kuwait and Iraq in 2004 and 2005, before being diagnosed with PTSD and discharged in 2006.

Pele is his service dog. Since November, the two have become inseparable.

Goehner is one of only 21 Iraq War veterans suffering from PTSD who have been paired with service dogs since the military recently started a new program to try to help soldiers with the disorder.

Pele was trained for the program by an organization called Puppies Behind Bars. The nonprofit organization uses prison inmates to train service dogs in several New York regional prisons.
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Dog helps Iraq vet with PTSD