For 18 months, Robert Wojcik spent every weekday taking care of a black Labrador puppy. Shadow went everywhere that Wojcik went. When Wojcik would go to breakfast, lunch or dinner, Shadow would follow. If Wojcik had responsibilities or work to tend to, Shadow was at his heels.
Wojcik was training Shadow to become a service dog, and the young Lab would eventually go on to serve as an aid for a woman without function in her arms or legs. Wojcik and Shadow’s relationship began and ended in an unlikely place: the Northeastern Correctional Center in Concord, Massachusetts. The pair was part of an unusual experiment that, over the past 21 years, has expanded exponentially and shown tremendous results. Known as the Prison PUP Program, the initiative trains dogs, and as a result, rehabilitates prisoners. Inmates train the dogs to become service animals, and the dogs help hone inmates’ life skills, including responsibility, patience and confidence.
The program was launched in 1998 by the non-profit organization NEADS, formerly National Education for Assistance Dog Services and Dogs for Deaf and Disabled Americans. Having just passed its 20th anniversary, the program has helped hundreds of inmates — and dogs — find a new take on life.
Wojcik, who was incarcerated from 1993 until 2009, was one of those inmates. He spent 11 years in MCI Norfolk before being transferred to the Northeastern Correctional Center, a minimum security prison. There, he saw other inmates working with the dogs, and as a lifelong dog lover, wanted to get involved.
“It was an unbelievable experience,” Wojcik said. “I spent so many years incarcerated that I hadn’t touched an animal in 11 years. Now, all of a sudden, you have this dog who’s putting his head on your lap, and you’re taking care of him, and it makes you feel alive again. You feel like someone is relying on you. You’re not just there wasting away.”
According to Wojcik, caring for a puppy can give inmates a sense of purpose that is hard to come by while in prison. He described a softening of the men who participated or who interacted with the dogs, and recounted seeing seemingly-hardened prisoners, covered in tattoos, cooing at the puppies.
Wojcik, too, felt himself emerging from his prison-solidified “tough guy” mode and slipping into paternal care for another being.
“The main thing [about the program] is that it’s about helping people, but the rehabilitation that can be received from doing that is unbelievable. Some of these guys may have been drug addicts their whole life and never had responsibility for anything. Now, all of a sudden, they have responsibility for this dog, and it matters. It matters to somebody if that person is there or not. I believe that can change people’s lives. That can change people tremendously.”
By the time Shadow graduated in 2009, the puppy could take off his owner’s shoes, put them back on, remove watches and perform other necessary tasks. Shadow was trained on a leash that could be worn around his owner’s chest.
As for Wojcik, the program helped prepare him for life outside of prison, he said.
Audrey Trieschman, manager of communications for NEADS, has seen this transformation in inmates’ lives.
“It is a very moving experience for many of them. It changes their lives,” Trieschman said. “They feel like they’re doing something to give back to society, whereas in the past maybe they’d just been taking from society.”
In 2018, NEADS placed 42 dogs with clients in 10 states. Typically, between 40 and 50 dogs graduate from training each year, and each have a unique placement after graduation. Some dogs work as hearing guide dogs, others work for children with autism or developmental disabilities. Others serve veterans, classrooms, or courthouses. Of all the dogs trained by NEADS, 90 to 95% are trained by inmates, according to the organization’s website.
According to Trieschman, the program is essential for NEADS to continue doing the work that it does. Having multiple inmates who can train puppies at seven prisons — six in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island — allows more dogs to be trained per year, and more clients to be matched with service dogs.
When it comes to raising the puppies, however, inmates are only part of the equation. Once or twice a week, a trainer from NEADS hosts a training session with the inmates and their puppies. Further, before becoming service dogs and being placed with their final owners, the puppies need to get accustomed to a variety of different environments and circumstances.
As such, on the weekends, the dogs are picked up by volunteers known as weekend puppy raisers, and are taken to experience life outside of prison. Steve Boris, a now-retired lawyer, has been a weekend puppy raiser since 2010, and has helped raise four different dogs — Jenny, Chappy, Hector and J.C.
"It's one of those rare programs that helps every constituent that's involved."
- Steve Boris, weekend puppy raiser
“It’s one of those rare programs that helps every constituent that’s involved,” Boris said. “From the feeling at the institution, to some of the guards, to definitely the prisoners, to definitely the weekend handlers, to definitely the people who ultimately end up with the dog, to NEADS. It’s a cycle that keeps going.”
Weekend puppy raisers are tasked with working on the pups’ house manners, socialization and training beyond what is done in the prison. Weekends at home help expose the dogs to different things: car rides, air and train travel, grocery shopping, movie theaters, restaurants and other day-to-day tasks they wouldn’t otherwise experience.
Boris got involved with the program through his wife, Jenifer Drew, a former associate professor of social science and justice studies at Lasell College, who led a class in researching the Prison PUP Program at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Framingham.
According to their 2013 study, in addition to benefiting clients and inmate trainers, the Prison PUP Program can help change the prison’s environment as a whole. The study examined the impact of the program on inmate trainers and the institution’s atmosphere, and students were in charge of interviewing inmates, guards and prison administration officials.
“As far as the institution went, it was softening,” Drew said. “Guards dress in kind of scary outfits — black pants and black shirts and black boots. They carry themselves very tough, except for when a puppy comes around. So there they are, like anybody who sees a puppy, baby talking to the puppy. This guy who’s been really mean and really tough or really scary, suddenly shows another side of himself.”
The prisoners see a different side of the guards, and the guards, some of whom have a fondness for the puppies, see them being cared for by the inmates, Drew said. This cycle of caring has a warming effect on an otherwise stony environment.
Prison environments offer little in the way of emotional connection, Drew said, and the dogs are able to fill that void in a valuable way. The dogs see no difference between those who are free and those who are incarcerated, and are able to love in a way that is rare in the correctional system.
“[It’s] just having something to love,” Drew said. “In the report I noted that sometimes officials see that as a negative. I see it as an unqualified positive. How would you not benefit by having someone to love, and someone who loved you without question while you’re incarcerated?”
Wojcik remembered the value of this from his time in prison.
“You’re making a difference in someone’s life,” Wojcik said. “A lot of people in prison — which some people don’t understand — they’ve done bad things, but they’re not all necessarily bad people. They made some pretty crazy mistakes in their life, they’ve done some stuff, but inside, they still have that caring about other people and animals.”
