Prison Program Gives Dogs, Prisoners A Second Chance

You might be surprised to learn that abused and abandoned dogs are helping out in Oklahoma’s prisons, providing a way for hardened criminals to get a second chance.

Think of Unit 7 at Lexington Prison as a transfer station for thousands of inmates who enter the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. Among those who enter the gates and live beyond the razor wire are men convicted of sex crimes, drugs and even murder.

With sentences from several months to life, hope is sometimes difficult to see. That is until, in walks a lady.

“She’s brought all that out you just want to be a nice person anymore,” says Wade Adams. “So, Lady has taught you to be a gentleman? Ahh. I think she has.”

Wade is still a work in progress. He’s doing time for murder. He trains dogs for placement with senior citizens and the disabled. He’s one of ten men who help rehabilitate abused and abandoned animals.

“And most of them do come here with some issues,” says Lee Fairchild who runs the program called Friends For Folks.

The dogs are trained in basic obedience and also housebroken. The animals live with the inmates for weeks sometimes months. Without question, the program is life changing. For the trainer, the dog, and folks like 84-year-old Artie Nixon.

She makes her way to a 30-pound border collie whom she wants to share her home.

“She’s scared right now,” Artie says. “But we’ll bond together. It won’t take too long, a few days.”

“It’s a proven fact that when an elderly person or any person for that matter pets a dog, their blood pressure goes down. They start feeling a little bit better,” says Fairchild.

Artie’s health is changing and she needs companionship.

“Well with my problem of hard of hearing, I don’t always hear my door bell and I don’t always hear my telephone. So I know I’ll watch her expression and then I’ll find out what it is.”

But you say it’s just a dog? Well no, it isn’t. At times, it’s unclear who benefits most from the training, the dog or the inmate.

“It just makes them a lot more responsible and caring,” Fairchild says.

And better prepared for the outside world, and better equipped to handle their emotions — men like Larry Raffaell, who is already serving 33 years for murder and been denied parole more than a dozen times.

“I could watch TV and not get emotional at all, anymore anytime an emotional program comes on I’m finding I’m wiping tears, I got something in my eye,” he says.

Inmates like Larry learn to value another life and strangely it begins with an animal. Then they have to let it go.

“I hope I don’t cry. It’ll be alright. Hopefully, the next one comes in real soon.”

The Friends for Folks program costs four-thousand dollars a year to operate and the animals are free to qualifying applicants.

posted 10:51 am Wed November 25, 2009 – Lexington
reporter: Yvonne Harris
posted by: Kevin King from –
NewsChannel 8