Prison Inmates Help Rehabilitate Abused Rescue Dogs for Adoption and Learn to Love Again

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“To some, redemption comes with a collar.” That’s how the documentary series Saving Castaways introduces its work of enlisting prisoners in rehabilitating and training shelter dogs. An initiative of Debi Stevens, the supervisor and founder of the Offender Trained K9 Companion Program, the project aims to rebuild the lives of dogs and people who have been “rejected, unwanted, and unloved.”

Stevens began the program in 2002 with just five rescue dogs paired with inmates in a Southern Colorado women’s prison. As it expanded, the dogs were rehabilitated to be adopted, serve as service animals for people with disabilities, or even work as K9 dogs with law enforcement.

“Since that time we have trained 12,578 dogs, 4,508 of which were rescues,” Stevens told the Pueblo Chieftain. Though she retired in February 2019, she can look back on her work with pride.

“Some of the changes in these offenders are like night and day. When I started the program I thought I was going to save a bunch of dogs lives, which I did, but what I did not see coming was how many humans we were saving.”

For Stevens, the premise of the program was relatively simple; over a million dogs are euthanized each year in American shelters after failing to be adopted. Many of these animals have been abandoned, neglected, and abused, rendering them poorly socialized and scared of human contact.

Partnering with local humane society shelters and organizations like the National Mill Dog Rescue in nearby Peyton, Colorado, she found dogs that needed a second chance. When she would go into shelters, staff would point out particular dogs to her, implying that “[i]f you can take that dog at all, please do because they don’t have very much time left.”

Inside the walls of America’s prisons, there are over 2.2 million prisoners according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. As Stevens explained in the trailer for Saving Castaways, “When you come in prison doors, what you discover is that there are a lot of people in here who have made some poor choices and mistakes. But they’re still people. I think sometimes people on the outside of the fence don’t realize that.”

For those prisoners who get to work with the dogs, it’s a transformative experience. As one female prisoner explained in the trailer for the series, “Everybody deserves the chance to show that they have made a change, that they can make a difference, and can possibly make a positive impact on the world.”

One of Saving Castaways’ most viewed episodes, with over 7 million views to date, told the story of Esther, a Labrador rescued from a dog mill, and her trainer Jason Mayo. When one of Stevens’s partners, Theresa Strader, the founder and director of National Mill Dog Rescue in Peyton, Colorado, found Esther, the dog had clearly been mistreated.

Fighting back tears, she told Stevens, “You know a Lab, this is not what you think of when you think of a Lab. Flattened out and terrified like that.” Esther was so scared of human contact that when approached, she would urinate uncontrollably. With dogs like Esther that are rescued from puppy-breeding mills, Strader explains, “We really have to believe that something a little more severe and traumatic happened to them than not being socialized.”

When Esther was taken to the Trinidad Correctional Center, a minimum security prison in Trinidad, Colorado, she was assigned to offender and trainer Mayo. After five weeks of training to prepare her for adoption, Esther was almost unrecognizable. She was no longer fearful of human contact, could walk on a leash, play, and be the dog she was meant to be.

Mayo developed a special bond with her. “Esther is a dog who has definitely stolen my heart,” he said in the episode devoted to her. “She’s been a great learning experience for me and I hope that I’ve been able to help her have a happy life.

“The more work you have to put into them, the more special they become to you. She was a lot more than I’ve had to put into a dog for a long time.”

It was clear that when the time came to say goodbye, both offender and dog had a hard time letting go. Mayo was clearly emotional as Esther clung on to him. “It was hard to let her go,” he added. “She didn’t want to go. I’m going to miss her.” Thankfully, Esther is going to a forever home where she will be loved and taken care of.

Esther and Mayo are just one partnership out of the thousands of success stories that the program has racked up over 17 years in operation.

For Julie Justman, the associate director of Pueblo Animal Services, there’s a perfect symmetry behind it. “[A] particular dog might have just come from an awful background and ended up in an animal shelter,” she explains. “This prisoner came from an awful background and ended up in prison. Here they are together, maybe getting a second chance.”

For Debi Stevens, who devoted the better part of her career to making the innovative program work, “[t]he dog allows the offender to feel like a person again. Not a number, but a person, a human being.”