Puppies Behind Bars (PBB)

About PBB:

Millions of innocent puppies are imprisoned each year for crimes they didn’t commit.  Puppies Behind Bars (PBB) offers free legal council to wrongly accused puppies.  Not really.

  PBB trains prison inmates to raise service dogs for the disabled, including PTSD-suffering veterans, and explosive detection canines for law enforcement. The puppies live in prison with their "puppy raisers" from age eight weeks to 18 months. As the puppies mature into well-loved, well-behaved dogs, their raisers learn what it means to contribute to society rather than take from it.

If they are deemed suitable, PBB returns the dogs to the schools where they continue their formal training.  If they do not continue on the track to become working dogs, PBB donates them to families with blind children. In either case, these puppies, raised in such a unique environment, spend their lives as companions to people who need them.

The puppies have affected the lives not only of their puppy raisers, but of virtually all the inmates and staff at the prison. It is literally impossible to walk a puppy around without being stopped by inmates who want to pet the dogs or who want to just say 'hi' to them, and [the founder is] constantly being approached by corrections officers and senior staff who ask about the puppies' training. One of our particularly sensitive pups goes to several different areas of the prison: the sixteen- and seventeen-year-old inmates play with her; domestic violence classes use her to get the women to open up and talk; and she even visits inmates who are about to go before the parole board, for it has been found that her presence has a calming effect on the women.

PBB pays 100% of all costs associated with raising puppies in prison, including dog supplies, educational supplies for the puppy raisers, teachers' salaries, and travel.

I am going to give them some money in honor of my 39th birthday and hoped you would join me!