WMCC Puppies for Parole celebrates 500th adoption
On Monday, August 28 Western Missouri Correctional Center (WMCC) celebrated the 500th adoption in the Puppies for Parole program. Puppies for Parole is a unique program partnering Missouri prisons with area shelters. Offenders work with dogs teaching them basic obedience skills and properly socializing the animals, making them more adoptable. Once the dogs have successfully completed the program, they are adopted through their original shelter.
Warden Sherie Korneman said the offenders who are involved in the program have had their lives impacted in a good way and staff has also benefited from the presence of the dogs. Korneman has also adopted a dog from the program.
According to Lori Parkey, Puppies for Parole Coordinator at WMCC, the program began with a committee of nine people to decide how the program would run and in 2010 the first dogs arrived at WMCC. One of the biggest questions asked about the program is how much is the prison spending on the program. The simple answer is – nothing. The entire program is run by donations, sales in the canteen to offenders, and donations from the staff and the community have kept the program going. The program is doing so well, they have been able to offer donations to other communities in need.
Puppies for Parole requires a lot of cooperation between staff and offenders in the facility, and a good cooperative effort between the prison and Kathy Turner of the Cameron Animal Shelter. Parkey thanked Turner, staff, and the 89 offenders who are dog handlers in the room for all their efforts in the program. Parkey told a story of one offender who asked her to be in the program, he was constantly in trouble and on activity restrictions. She told him, if he could be offense free for a year, she would allow him in the program. When he had gone ten months without a problem, he reminded her how close he was and she allowed him into the program early. The offender was six foot tall and a very big man with tattoos everywhere, including on his face and eyelids. Parkey said she gave him the smallest dog she could with long hair, which she told him he had to fix every day. Every day she had him bring the dog to her office and every day the dog had a different hairstyle. When the offender was about to be released, according to Parkey, he came to her office and thanked her for giving him the chance to prove that he had changed and also for the opportunity to style the dog’s hair. He had four daughters at home and had never learned to do their hair, thanks to the experience with the dog, he was going to be able go home and do their hair.
“To be a part of the dog program is a privilege and not a right,” Todd Hickcox, a dog handler offender from Housing Unit 5 said. “We are just a few who have been chosen to be a part of something very special and that is a dog’s life.”
Hickcox went on to talk about the dogs, who come from shelters, and how the offenders welcome them with open arms, teaching them some manners and maybe a few tricks, with the ultimate goal being to get them ready for adoption. He went on to talk about the responsibility and higher standard offenders who are dog handlers are held to.
“As offenders we are some of the most selfish and self centered people out there,” Hickcox said. “Having to make sacrifices and be giving of ourselves to meet their needs challenges our self centered core.”
Hickcox went on to talk about the need for teamwork and communication between staff and handlers to deal with the dogs.
“Puppies for Parole is a win-win situation for everyone, for offenders there is an opportunity to save a dog’s life. There is an opportunity to learn, to grow, to live responsibly, and indirectly there is an opportunity to give back to our communities that we have taken and taken from.” Hickcox said. “In an environment where negativity runs rampant and where people are often violent, the dog program is breaking barriers every day by bringing people and dogs together who would typically not mix.”
“I’ve had the privilege of being in the program since it began back in 2010,” Sam Erwin, a dog handler offender from Housing Unit 8 said. “It has been great to see the program grow from just a couple dogs to what it is today, the 500th adoption from Western Waifs.”
Erwin talked about the handlers being taught to be accountable for their own actions and those of the dogs. He went on to say in the dog handler program there is no race, religion, affiliations, identity or anything else that separates them as offenders, for a moment a common goal brings them together.
“Something that has really humbled me, thinking about it over the years. When we first began in this program and we got through our first adopted dog, I thought I was something great and wonderful,” Erwin said. “Now after almost ten years I think back and think, wow I am part of something great, it isn’t me personally.”
Cooper, the 500th dog adopted from the program was introduced along with his family. The family was presented with a care bag with his favorite treats, heartworm medicine and other things Cooper enjoyed while in the program. A plague was presented to the Warden to commemorate the 500th adoption.
After the ceremony, the offenders went back outside and released balloons to honor the 500th adoption from the program. For more information on dogs available for adoption and the Puppies for Parole program, visit https://web.mo.gov/doc/PuppiesForParolePublic/
