MiPAWS

 

On April 9th, six of our dogs from Operation Rescue were accepted into and entered the prison dog program (known as MiPAWS – Michigan Inmates Providing Assistance, Work and Service) at The Michigan Department of Corrections in Ionia.  Two weeks later, Mikey joined them as they had room for one more dog. This program operates by assigning a pair of prisoner dog trainers a single dog and their job is “dog handler” a 24hr/7day a week work assignment for the entire period the dog is inside the prison. They have a specially fenced area for the dogs to be exercised off-leash and get some play time.

 

This program has the ability to not only socialize the dog but teach the dog what appropriate behavior is, housetrain the dog, and teach it basic commands.  Their objective with every group of dogs is to graduate them at the end of 8-10 weeks with each dog capable of passing the AKC Canine Good Citizenship exam.

 

This program is in it's 6th year and is overseen by a certified dog trainer with over 20 years of experience in training and rescue work.

 

We received periodic updates on the 6 dogs in this program (Larry, Luther, Ziggy, Nicky, Asher, and Oliver) and they are very interesting to read.

 

Just click on any of the daily updates for the complete story.