Prison Program

Our first training program, “Dogs Don’t Speak English”’ is now the Accredited Apprenticeship Service Dog Training Manual for The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. Today, in Grafton Correctional Institution, this training course completion and mastery is the core of W.A.G.S. 4 KIDS re-entry Workforce Development Initiative. Inmate Trainers have the opportunity through practice, written testing and actual skills performance to be certified trainers for W.A.G.S. for Kids in six levels of training expertise.

The component of developing programing in four prison institutions has been the hands on involvement of our superior staff trainers and our commitment to being involved each week with the instruction/practice/correction model we employ with the inmate trainers. Requests come to us weekly from individual families in need as well as prison institutions wanting similar programming outside of our geographical area. The need for an educational tool, duplicating the very detailed examination of each skill a Service Dog must learn and the finite steps in teaching, has been developed, co-written by Wendy Crann and Justin Schaeffer, an inmate trainer at GCI . We will publish in 2016.

For those with professional goals in developing programming in other prison institutions or training programs as a W.A.G.S. 4 Kids subsidiary will be the development of The Working Animals Giving Service Training Academy. This will be an independently run physical space with hands on W.A.G.S. training staff and special instruction in how to manage the business of an institutional training program, including additional programming for basic medical and grooming needs, supplies and controls. The Training Academy will be our avenue to put into practice the real life goal of our Workforce Development Initiative; a place focused on re-entry for a certified former inmate trainer to have a career. The key to affecting any real life rehabilitation is through job creation.