The sky is gray over California’s most notorious prison. Rain threatens. In the West Block Yard of San Quentin, a dozen inmates focus on their dogs.
Chase Benoit and Travis Fendley are working with Wendel, a black Labrador.
Benoit, who has put in seven years at “The Q,” part of his 16 years to life sentence, walks forward about 25 paces, turns and calls out: “Wendel, here, here.”
By now, Benoit has trained and lived with Wendel for a year, in a prison puppy raising program that has changed the 28-year-old’s life behind bars. So it seems automatic when Wendel promptly lopes over from Fendley to Benoit’s side, where he is rewarded with a biscuit.
“Very nice, right on,” says James Dern, the national director of puppy programs for Santa Rosa-based Canine Companions, which provides free service dogs to people with disabilities.
Dern, who is overseeing the training on this Friday, started talking with officials in 2017 to bring the Canine Companions prison program to San Quentin. Administrative turnover and then the COVID-19 pandemic stalled that effort. But it was revived by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California Model initiative to transform the state’s prison system into one focused on rehabilitation rather than solely punishment.
The prison is now named San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, and its puppy raising program is in full swing.
Fendley, who has spent four years at San Quentin, takes Wendel off to a box the inmates built where the dogs can relieve themselves. Benoit says of his four-legged charge: “He's helped me with being more responsible and just making me feel, you know, less incarcerated, like I'm not in prison when I'm working with him. It's humanizing.”
These inmates are defined not by the crimes that sent them to prison but by what they bring to the prison puppy raising program, and what it’s done for them.
The yard is bordered on two sides by cell blocks that, oddly, evoke cathedrals, with high, inward-sloping beige walls that contain tall, narrow windows. On another side is a dining hall. Behind where the men are lined up with their dogs is a cluster of low white and tan buildings fronted by a chain-link fence and razor wire, beyond which green hills are visible.
Higher success rate
Canine Companions, a $45 million nonprofit, started its first prison program in 1995 in what is now Coffee Creek Correctional Center in Wilsonville, Oregon. The organization now has 15 such programs in operation, including San Quentin’s.
Dogs trained in prison, Dern says, have a 10% greater success rate at becoming full-fledged service dogs than other candidates. (Many Canine Companions dogs that don’t make it to that level go on to work as therapy, search and rescue or medical alert dogs.)
“It has a lot to do with the amount of time and care that our incarcerated puppy raisers take with the project,” Dern says. “They take it really seriously. And, you know, they tend to be really competitive, which is great. And they tend to be really highly skilled.”
Puppy raisers — in and out of prisons — go through canine behavior and canine learning theory classes, focusing on subjects including body language, a dog’s emotional state and how to ensure they are engaged with the handler.
Says Dern: “I see our puppy raisers at San Quentin really making good decisions for the dogs so the dog doesn't end up practicing behaviors that can be problematic for service dogs. Not being overstimulated when they meet people, practicing greetings that are calm and maintaining responsiveness to the handler is really important.
“A lot of these skills and behaviors are things that dogs don't just know. They need to learn it and they learn it by being provided experiences that are enjoyable for them, that they are successful in. And that takes foresight and it takes patience, and those are the skills” that the incarcerated trainers possess, Dern says.
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