Welcome to the non-profit Pen Pals animal shelter, where prisoners do everything for the animals seven days a week – from scooping poop to training pups in a large outside yard to diagnosing ailments and assisting in operations performed by veterinarians from Louisiana State University.
"It's probably the best thing that could have happened to me," Wylie Vanscoter, 22, a lifelong animal lover and former drug addict convicted of armed robbery at 17 told PEOPLE. "I kinda have found what I was supposed to do in life here."
Pen Pals, at the medium security Dixon Correctional Institute, started in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina. Back then, the Humane Society of the United States desperately needed space to care for hundreds of homeless animals. They found the perfect fit at Dixon, with its empty barn, acres of open space and prison officials and inmates willing to help. "We had everything except a llama," DCI's Colonel John Smith, the program's director, shared with PEOPLE.
HSUS officials were so impressed with the care the inmates provided that the group granted $600,000 to the prison to build a permanent facility – constructed from top to bottom by inmates and opened in August, 2010.
As the only shelter serving all of East Feliciana parish, Pen Pals houses about 80 dogs and a dozen cats. It includes a medical clinic, an outdoor agility course, and an impressive record of placing 625 dogs and 451 cats in forever homes in the last four-and-a-half years.
Inmates work a full day, seven days a week, and assist with adoptions – even off prison grounds. The mutual connection forged between the men and their charges can be so transformative that Carmaleta Aufderheide, 51, a graduate student at the University of Oregon, is now at Dixon studying the impact of this human-animal bond.
"One of the things that an inmate said to me, that really struck me deep in my heart," she tells PEOPLE, "when the animals come in they are afraid, it's like they are in prison and they don't know where they are, they're in a new environment."
"It's like how [the human prisoners] feel when they come to prison," she continues. "They understand and they can offer an animal some compassion and love and understanding, and they can hold them and pet them and care for them, and give them a better life. They want the same chance they give to the animals."
Veterinarians and vet students from LSU teach the inmates invaluable animal-care lessons, with some, such as Vanscoter, earning a veterinary technician degree. Vanscoter and his colleagues give vaccinations, detect and treat animals for parasites and skin conditions and provide basic medical care. One former inmate, Matt Eldridge, became a member Animal Planet's Pit Bulls and Parolees.
"With different inmates you see the switch flip and they get it, they understand they are responsible for something else," says Smith, noting that inmates clamor for a spot at the shelter, which uses up to eight inmates at one time. "When they start communicating with a dog they realize, 'I get it, I have to be sympathetic.' "
"I don't hire sex offenders or guys with animal cruelty charges," says Smith. "Those are deal breakers right there," To those who question providing such extensive training to prisoners, Smith has a quick reply. "These guys are getting out and will be out in society," he says. "We are trying to make taxpayers, not tax users."
Vanscoter, who is close to six feet tall and weighs almost 200 pounds, loves nothing more than to cuddle with his favorite dog, a little chihuahua terrier mix. Upon his expected release in 2018, he hopes to continue working in veterinary medicine, perhaps even becoming a veterinarian. For Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the HSUS, the funds used for Dixon has been money well spent. "It's a good outcome for the pets," he tells PEOPLE, "and it's a wonderful opportunity for the inmates."
http://www.peoplepets.com/people/pets/article/0,,20914909,00.html
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