By Ryan Palencer
PLAINFIELD — Though some may not think it’s a great idea to send puppies to prison, the Indiana Canine Assistance Network (ICAN) begs to differ.
ICAN, which matches disabled children with puppies, brought nine yellow and black Labrador puppies to the Plainfield Correctional Facility on Thursday.
The program allows the inmates to train the puppies, which will end up with the children when they are of age.
Sally Irvin, with ICAN, said the program allows for a lot of opportunities.
“Putting two groups together — dogs and the offenders, and then the people with disabilities — gives an opportunity for the offenders to learn a lot of job and life skills that they might not have had the opportunity to do before,” Irvin said. “It also gives them the opportunity to be responsible for something. We’re bring them 8-week-old little lives and they’re going to be more than parenting surrogates for the next four to eight weeks with these pups.
“For the pups, we have two guys assigned to each one. It gives them the opportunity to train skills early on and help house train them too. Really, it’s an opportunity for all of the different facets to come together through the common denominator of a dog, to make a difference.”
This litter of puppies was born on Christmas eve, so they all received Christmas-type names.
Wendy Knight, superintendent for the facility, said she doesn’t think twice when ICAN contacts her.
“It’s really awesome,” Knight said. “It really changes the guys. They are here not because they want to be. We tell them what to do and how they have to do it and they have to adjust. To have such a break in their monotony in what they have to do, is such a positive thing for them.”
Knight said there is a visible change that occurs in the inmates when they take ownership of a puppy.
“They were a little hesitant, but when the little dog started wagging its tail and giving a kiss, you just begin to see them realize this is going to be pretty cool,” she said. “Their behavior changes ... For a lot of them, their thought is ‘what am I going to get out of it?’ Now, you see them think ‘what can I give back.’”
The first ICAN group of puppies, which was sponsored by the Tony Stewart Foundation, is still in the training stage.
“This is our P.L.U.S. program, which stands for Purposeful Living Unit Serve, which is a faith-based group,” Knight explained. “The first group was our G.R.I.P., which was our substance abuse group. We’re having our G.R.I.P. unit mentor our new trainers as well. We can kind of co-train, and they can tell them what they went through with the first group to help them do their training skills. We’re going to take two units and begin cross training. It’s really a phenomenal experience for everybody.”
Irvin said growth in the prison training program has been enormous.
“Plainfield is the program that we started and it has grown in the least amount of time,” Irvin said. “We delivered our first set of puppies here, the Tony Stewart litter, back in August. We’ve just been doing it for six to eight months and we have doubled in size today.”
Irvin said she believes these puppies will follow the same course as the first litter.
“We kept them together here for about four months,” Irvin said. “Then we divided them up between our three other prisons. These guys will have these puppies here for about eight weeks, then we will divide them up between our other prisons as well. This is our pup starting prison, where they come to get a lot of early learning.”
ryan.palencer@flyergroup.com
