From problem to pet

Project helps dogs, youths find new direction

By NANCY HILL

The Portland Tribune, Mar 13, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (5 Reader comments)

DeNISE FARWELL / P0RTLAND TRIBUNE

Zeus, a terrier-Lab mix, lies down at the command of his Project POOCH handler at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility.

Kevin (not his real name) knew trouble from the time he entered his North Portland elementary school until he quit high school in his sophomore year.

“I didn’t hate school,” he says. “You have to care about something to hate it, and school didn’t mean a thing to me. I didn’t like getting sent to the office because that meant I’d get a whopping at home, but that’s about the only thing about school that concerned me.”

The 21-year-old admits he lacked social skills: “The only way I knew how to relate to other kids was to act like the class clown so they’d laugh. It’s how I got attention.”

His attention-getting methods took a turn for the worse when he hit his teen years. “I hung out some with gangs, got in fights, broke the law,” he says. “I didn’t want anybody telling me what to do.”

At 17, Kevin was arrested for robbery and was sentenced under Measure 11, which called for a mandatory minimum sentence — in his case, this meant he’d be locked up until his mid-20s.

“Life was pretty bleak at that point,” he says, “but I tried to be tough about it.”

About a year after he was sentenced to MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility, Kevin heard about Project POOCH Inc., a program there that offers selected youths the opportunity to work with dogs.

“I always loved dogs,” he says. “My mom didn’t let me have one, but all my friends did. So I applied to get into POOCH. At least I’d be able to be around dogs. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.”

Located at a rear corner of MacLaren’s facility in Woodburn, POOCH is the brainchild of Portland-area resident Joan Dalton, who began the program in 1993 with one youth and one dog.

The goal of the program is to rescue dogs who are considered unadoptable. The youths groom the dogs, train them, nurture them, help them overcome the behavior that has kept them from being adopted, and then find loving homes for them.

The program has been so successful that it has received international attention. Recently, Dalton helped set up a modified version of the program in a Korean youth correctional facility, and she has traveled to Scotland as a consultant to help set up a program there as well.

Several Japanese film companies have produced television shows and documentaries about the program. “Dog Shelter,” a book about POOCH by Japanese author Noriko Imanishi, is required reading for middle school students in Japan.

In the U.S., Animal Planet has aired a segment about POOCH (the acronym stands for Positive Opportunities, Obvious Change With Hounds).

“I didn’t anticipate this level of interest,” Dalton says, “but I’m thrilled it’s something other youth correctional facilities are looking into. Over and over I see youths change through working with dogs, and I see dogs come back to life after they’ve been neglected and abused. The transformations on both sides are amazing.”

When Dalton began the program, she was vice principal of William P. Lord High School, on MacLaren’s campus. Many in the school had only a few high school credits, so Dalton continually sought nontraditional ways for the students to earn credits toward their high school diplomas.

“I knew without that degree, it’d be hard for the youths to get jobs and become productive citizens,” Dalton says. “I didn’t want to see the students become a permanent part of the corrections system, always going in and out a prison door.”

Inmate’s tip got ball rolling

A golden opportunity to help the youth earn high school credits came Dalton’s way when the Delta Society, an organization that promotes bonds between humans and animals, introduced her to an inmate who had read about a dog program in prison.

“He wanted me to start one in the institution where he was incarcerated, but I didn’t work in the adult system,” Dalton says. “However, I was in the perfect situation to create a program, like the one this inmate had read about, at MacLaren.”

She wrote up a lengthy proposal and took it to John Pendergrass, who was then MacLaren’s superintendent. “He understood my vision and was absolutely supportive,” Dalton says. “He saw how it could help the youth learn in nontraditional ways and saw the therapeutic value as well.”

The Oregon Youth Authority holds POOCH in such high regard that it is a regular part of a MacLaren tour when dignitaries or political figures visit the campus.

“POOCH has a lot to contribute to reformation,” Youth Authority Deputy Director Phil Lemman says. “Most kids who come to us have issues outside of the crime they committed, and POOCH addresses many of them. When the kids are trying to teach a dog how to do something, they have to model the behavior themselves. They learn a lot of social skills and deal with a lot of their issues just by working with their dogs.”

The first person in the program was serving time for murdering another young man who had killed his dog.

“This particular youth had been through a number of treatment programs MacLaren offered, and he loved dogs,” Dalton says. “He had a positive attitude, had worked hard to change, and I knew he was the right person to start the program.”

Soon after, a second participant and a second dog joined the project. At the time, POOCH consisted of two kennels near the school.

When Measure 11 went into effect and more space was needed for incarcerated youths, the administration moved the kennel to another location on campus so the dogs’ barking wouldn’t keep people awake.

By this time, Dalton had secured nonprofit status for POOCH so she could apply for foundation grants to run the program. This ensured that POOCH would use no state funds. In 1998, Dalton sold her Portland-area home because she was working full time at POOCH, but it wasn’t funded enough to pay her a salary.

Training also applies to self

Jazz, a black Lab mix, was one of the “unadoptable” dogs. She came to POOCH six months after Kevin passed POOCH’s rigorous interview process and was cleared to work in the program.

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