Gloria is president and founder of Puppies Behind Bars, a nonprofit organization that uses prison inmates to train puppies to become service dogs for the physically disabled or explosive-detection dogs for law enforcement. Through her dreams and efforts, Gloria has been able to provide a new “leash” on life for both the inmates participating in the program and the eventual recipients of the working dogs.
For the disabled who receive the specially trained dogs, Puppies Behind Bars gives them confidence and freedom to travel independently with safety and dignity. For the law enforcement officer who receives a trained explosive-detection canine, it provides a partner that helps keep society safe. For the inmates who nurture and train these special animals, Gloria’s program provides a sense of purpose, accomplishment and responsibility by allowing them to care for a small, dependent—not to mention wriggly—life. Prison inmates contribute to society rather than take from it.
“The knowledge that we’re doing something to help is a sense of great pride,” says Gloria.
The story begins back in 1990 when Gloria and her husband adopted a Labrador retriever from one of North America’s most prestigious guide-dog schools, Guiding Eyes for the Blind. Arrow had been on his way to becoming a guide dog, but was released from the program for medical reasons. Gloria started reading about Arrow’s training and was amazed to discover how much time, effort, love and money—$25,000—goes into each guide dog. She also learned there was a shortage of guide dogs in the United States.
Gloria wanted to find some way to help the cause. But how?
An idea turns real
It wasn’t until Gloria’s sister cut an article out of a magazine telling the story of Dr. Thomas Lane, a vet in Florida who started the first guide-dog prison program, that Gloria found her answer. But starting a similar program in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut meant leaving her job on New York mayor Giuliani’s Youth Empowerment Services Commission and heading out into a great unknown. Would anyone give her the dogs to train? Could inmates really be responsible enough to work with these dogs full-time? How would the puppies learn to be guide dogs if they were never exposed to a normal, non-prison environment? Was Gloria crazy to even launch the project?
It was finally Gloria’s husband who gave her a not-so-gentle nudge.
“I talked about it for two years, and after two years my husband finally said, ‘Gloria, you either have to shut up or do something about it,’” she says with a laugh.
She quit her job and got down to work.
Today sixty-two women and eighty-one men in seven different prisons in three different states are currently raising ninety dogs to be either potential service dogs or explosive-detection dogs. Close to 85 percent of these pups pass their tests to go on to get further training.
The program works. Puppies Behind Bars now has 303 working dogs helping people every day. Eighty-three are guide dogs throughout the United States, and 188 are explosive-detection canines in the U.S. and abroad. Eighteen are service dogs, including nine who have gone to soldiers who have come home wounded from Iraq or Afghanistan (under a new initiative Puppies Behind Bars calls Dog Tags: Service Dogs for Those Who’ve Served Us). Fourteen others function as companion and therapy dogs for blind children. They’re a well-traveled bunch. One former prison puppy now works to keep the president of Egypt safe. Another was at Pope John Paul’s funeral. Other dogs are used at Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. There are also Puppies Behind Bars dogs at the United Nations.
Lucie, one of the first guide dogs to come out of the program, gave a retired registered nurse, who was imprisoned in her home after losing her vision following a stroke, the gift of independence and mobility.
No wonder one of the inmate dog trainers currently in the program calls Gloria “an unsung national treasure, the poet laureate of puppies.”
A dog’s life
Certainly inmates at the maximum security prisons who take part in the Puppies Behind Bars programs must be screened carefully. The inmate has to have a clean prison disciplinary record for at least a year, must participate in facility programs and be considered reliable by prison officials. He or she must also have at least two years left to serve before potential parole, since dogs are with the inmates for a year and a half.
Once chosen for the program, puppies live in their cell and the trainers attend weekly puppy classes, and complete homework and exams. The trainers also swap the puppies so the dogs will be accustomed to different people and environments.
But dogs in training need to get out of the prison system, too. A weekend puppy-sitting program means the puppies stay with volunteer host families in the suburbs surrounding the prisons and in New York City at least six times a month. Some of these visits are for several hours, while others are overnight “furloughs.”
While the dog’s recipients and inmates obviously benefit from the program, inmates’ families also gain plenty, says Gloria. After the puppies find their way into their lives, inmates finally have something positive to talk about. They share their puppy’s reaction to the first snowfall or how cute they are when they dream. Family and friends see that the person behind bars is giving back to the community.
“It strengthens family bonds, because there is a common positive thing to talk about. Families can feel proud of their incarcerated loved ones instead of just feeling embarrassed,” she says.
Even dogs that do not make it all the way through the training program after they are released from the inmates’ care go on to help people. These dogs are given to families with blind children. One boy, a quadriplegic blind child who received “Jack” as a pet, is now able to move his arms to pet him.
“We do effect change. I don’t mean to say that lightly or with arrogance, but we really do affect a lot of people’s lives,” Gloria says.
For more information visit www.puppiesbehindbars.com or write to Puppies Behind Bars, 10 East 40th Street, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10016.
KAREN HARPER
FIND THE WAY
KAREN HARPER
New York Times bestselling author Karen Harper is a former high school and college English teacher. Winner of the 2005 Mary Higgins Clark Award for her outstanding novel Dark Angel, Karen is the author of fourteen romantic-suspense novels and three historical novels, as well as a series of historical mysteries. Karen and her husband, who divide their time between Columbus, Ohio, and Naples, Florida, love to travel both in the U.S. and abroad. For additional information about Karen and her novels, please visit www.karenharperauthor.com.
CHAPTER ONE
“You mean you’re going to get a Seeing Eye dog?” her mother demanded, her voice rising. “But you don’t even like dogs, Alexis. You’ve always been a cat person!”
“I’m not looking for another pet. It isn’t like that at all. And they’re called guide dogs, not Seeing Eye dogs.”
Alexis heard her mother flop into the beanbag chair. She had been expecting surprise at best, scolding at worst when she’d made her announcement. She knew her mother wasn’t going to accept this bolt from the blue so easily. No, that would not be like Jillian Michaels at all, so there was surely more protest coming.
Her mother had been visiting for two days, and it had taken Alexis this long to mention her big decision. Before she was permanently blinded by a head injury when she fell down a flight of stairs while fleeing a stalker, Alexis Anne Michaels had been an independent twenty-six-year-old on her own in the big city of Elizabeth, New Jersey, just a short hop to both Newark and Manhattan. But these last two years, everything had been sadly different.
She fought to keep calm, to explain things well. “Guide dogs are raised and trained to be gentle and would never jump up on anyone or hurt them. It’s like a partnership.” She stared at the spot where she judged her mother’s eyes to be. The memory of that pert, pretty face suddenly illumined the darkness like a TV being turned on.
Before her mother could say more, Alexis plunged on. “These dogs are only part-time pets beca
use they’re working dogs when in harness. They’re intelligent and well behaved, so much so, I hear, that I can keep Chaucer, too.” She bent over to pet the gray-and-white longhair Persian rubbing against her ankles.
It had taken the poor cat only one day to learn she could no longer put herself in her mistress’s path without getting kicked or causing a tumble. Only when Alexis was sitting, standing or lying down did Chaucer approach her now.
“I know you haven’t liked using your white cane,” Jillian said, “but I thought you were considering my suggestion that you move back home with me for good. I can see why you can’t cope with a busy, crowded neighborhood in a huge city. You need to be home with me where it’s much more quiet—and safe. Since your father’s no longer with us, I can devote myself to taking care of you, to getting you here and there, just like old times before you could drive. You know, my old soccer-mom days.”
“We have to accept that my blindness means there are no more old times, only new ones,” Alexis reminded her mother. “You have your friends at home, your bridge and reading clubs. Now that Daddy’s gone, you’re still finding your way into a new life, too.”
Alexis opened the crystal of her braille watch and felt the hands and numbers. Nearly five o’clock; she wanted to fix soup and a sandwich before her mother set out on her two-hour train ride home. Besides, if Alexis had something to do with her hands, she wouldn’t wring them. Her mother didn’t want to admit that anything in their lives had changed. Not that her husband had dropped dead from a heart attack two years ago at the age of sixty-two, or that four months later, a sick stalker’s obsession had resulted in an accident that had ruined her daughter’s sight.
At first, after two tragedies so close together, Alexis had been very willing to let her mother take care of her in her small New Jersey hometown. But she’d felt like a child, and despite fears that her stalker might turn up again, she had returned to E-town, as the locals called it. After all, Blair Ryan, the detective investigating her case, had eventually concluded that “the perp” had fled the area.
Still, Alexis had changed apartments—with the help Detective Ryan and another officer had insisted on giving her. She knew they were still trying to trace Len Dortman, the man who had stalked and assaulted her. Dortman wouldn’t find her at the high school where she’d taught either, because she’d had to take a leave of absence, which she was afraid would be permanent unless a guide dog could work miracles.
Previously Alexis had shared a renovated town house with a friend, another high-school teacher, who’d been married last summer. The place was too expensive for Alexis to afford on her own, had a loft, a basement and a curving staircase. Her new apartment was smaller and cheaper and all on one floor, though she’d had to learn its layout since she’d never seen it.
She’d been here over a year now, and the fact that nothing had happened surely meant that Len Dortman had fled with no clue where she was. Otherwise, his disturbing phone calls, the bizarre letters and the all night vigils he’d made out side her old place would have started up again by now. Alexis had had a lot of time to memorize her new place. She supported herself with disability checks and income from tutoring students in her apartment. Despite her visual impairment, she helped them with reading comprehension and composition skills to prepare for college entrance exams. She also graded essays for two other teachers by having her talking scanner read the works aloud, then she dictated her corrections and suggestions.
During her days of deepest depression, it had boosted her spirits that her former students had taken up a collection and bought her software that read e-mail to her. Alexis was getting more proficient with braille, but only as an aid, so she relied on talking books a lot. For ten weeks, a special bus had picked her up and taken her to a center for courses that taught her to trust her senses of touch, smell and hearing. But, even with all that and her white cane, her sense of independence eluded her. After barely escaping being hit by a truck that cut a corner too close, Alexis feared going out on her own.
“Come on into the kitchen while I fix us a light early supper,” she said, gently moving Chaucer aside with one leg.
“Here, let me take care of that,” Jillian said, popping up so quickly she created a draft.
“Mother, what have you been buying me all these fancy talking devices for if you don’t let me open my own cans?” Alexis felt along the familiar cupboard shelf for the can she wanted. She’d had them placed in a specific order, but her mother must have scrambled them.
“Well, it’s one thing to tell a tuna can from a soup can,” Jillian said, following Alexis to the door of the narrow galley kitchen. “But those little things I bought online will tell you exactly what kind of soup and play a helpful little message, too. How did you ever do it on your own, or do you just eat potluck?”
“Didn’t you see these braille markers I attach to the tops with rubber bands? I can label them that way, just as I do my clothes, to know what’s what. I just remember which marking is which,” she explained, then realized her mother must have removed her braille markers from the cans and replaced them with these new doodads. Alexis jumped when she touched the tiny button on the magnetic cap and it spoke.
“Hi, darling, your mother here,” the recorded message said. “This is a can of cream of mushroom soup, which goes well with almost any sandwich. You can pick out veggies by touch to make a salad, but be careful cutting things up. You might want to doctor this soup up a bit by add—”
Though Jillian had spoken quickly, the message ended in midword. You might want to doctor this up…echoed in Alexis’s mind as her mother came over and reached past her to play the messages on the other cans, joking lamely that living at home with a doggedly helpful mother would be better than getting a dog. But Alexis was hardly listening.
Doctored up, she thought. The best ophthalmology specialists and surgeons had not been able to doctor her up to restore her sight. Her fall had caused a stroke, which had affected her optic nerve but nothing else.
Her relationship with her stalker had started normally enough. Len Dortman was the assistant custodian at the school where Alexis taught. He hung around a bit too much, always trying to help her, but that was all. At first she’d tried to be nice, then to put him off, then to avoid him. When she’d told him to leave her alone, Dortman had stalked her for weeks, though she hadn’t realized it at first. Eventually Alexis had phoned the police; an officer ordered Dortman to completely avoid her. When he didn’t, she’d obtained a restraining order. The fallout from that got him fired; evidently he’d tried to assault her as she jogged. She still had memory loss from the day of the attack, but she must have fought him off and run. Either he’d pushed her or she’d fallen down a flight of steps at the old amphitheater in the park. Two teenagers looking for some privacy had found her and called 911. But the police had not located Dortman, who had left his apartment and not returned. Alexis prayed he never would.
Though she dreaded recalling that final confrontation with Dortman, Alexis had tried to get the memory back. Detective Ryan surmised what happened when a witness later came forward to say he’d seen both the victim and her stalker running but thought they were having some sort of race. The last thing Alexis could recall of that dreadful day was opening her mail at home after school and finding the videotape she’d ordered of Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet to use in class. Branagh was in a photo on the front, all in black, holding poor Yorick’s skull. Two days later, she’d wakened in the hospital to voices and sounds, because her eyes were bandaged. The first voice she’d heard was her mother’s, followed by the deep, sure tones of Detective Ryan. Alexis realized her world had gone dark, and ever since, she’d seen only sliding, shifting black-gray shapes.
How she longed to stride outside these narrow walls with confidence. To be her graceful, athletic self again, not to walk fearfully and bump into things and look like a drunk or a klutz. To get back some semblance of her once-independent life, and that included figuring out if
the attention Blair Ryan still paid her was professional or personal. The nightmare of the stalker had damaged more than her vision; she had terrible issues with trusting men now.
Yet just thinking about Blair made her stomach cartwheel. Kenneth Branagh and even Sean Connery couldn’t compete with Blair’s rich, resonant voice. Alexis had never seen his face and had no intention of asking him if she could touch it, so she always pictured him as Kenneth Branagh, all in black. She did know that Blair was about six inches taller than her five foot six, with a compact, strong build. She’d leaned on his arm more than once, and he’d hugged her the day she’d been released from the hospital. Her heart pounding, she’d hugged him in return, but she had to wonder now, why did he keep coming back?
She figured that if it wasn’t pity, it must be guilt that he hadn’t found Dortman, that the case wasn’t closed. And that’s why she’d turned down Blair’s invitation for dinner and dancing—dancing, no less!
“How much does a guide dog cost anyway?” her mother asked, startling Alexis from her thoughts.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars to raise and train, but,” she added hastily when she heard her mother gasp, “absolutely free to those who qualify and need them. I need one, Mother. I really do. And I’ve agreed to accept one raised in a prison, Eastern Correctional Facility. It’s not far from here.”
“What? That’s a maximum-security prison!” Jillian stepped forward to grasp her by both arms. “You won’t know who’s handled that dog, or what’s happened to it that might make it—well, snap.”
“I’ve been told these dogs are beautifully trained and gentle.” With the hand not holding the soup can, Alexis grasped her mother’s wrist. She hoped she was looking her straight in the eye. “The dogs are raised under a strictly supervised program called Puppies Behind Bars. The whole thing was the inspiration of a woman who’s had great success with it since she founded it in 1997.”
More Than Words: Stories of Strength Page 13
