By Cynthia Billhartz Gregorian
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
VANDALIA, Mo. — Imagine living in a crowd but feeling lonely.
Imagine living in a place where an innocent look can lead to a brutal fight.
Imagine living through the worst day of your life in a place where hugs are against the rules.
That is the life inside a maximum security prison: the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia.
But among the alienation, loneliness and pain, an oddly contrasting scene plays out.
A group of inmates stands in a circle with J.C., a frisky Labrador retriever; Higgins, an elegant “labradoodle"; Jasper, an earnest Corgi with comically large ears; and Donner and Blitzen, two young golden retriever brothers with sleepy, old-man eyes.
For the past five years, the inmates have been training dogs for C.H.A.M.P. Assistance Dogs Inc., a local organization founded in 1997 by Janet Cole of Brentwood to help people with disabilities.
Since then, life at the prison hasn’t been the same.
“It’s hard to wake up everyday with the sentence I have,” Stacey Lannert said. Lannert, 35, has served 18 years of a life-without-parole sentence for killing her father, who she claims molested her.
“But having a goal that’s loftier than waking up, brushing my teeth and going to chow, that fills me. It gives me something larger than myself.”
TRAINING DAY
Lannert offered a presentation to explain how the program works.
“We start training the dogs at 4 months of age until they’re 18 months, when they get final clearance,” she said, gesturing toward the other inmates in the C.H.A.M.P. program. (C.H.A.M.P. stands for Canine Helpers Allow More Possibilities.)
Joi Rush, 49, emerges from the circle with Jasper and puts a dog treat on the floor. Rush walks away from the morsel, then walks back toward it, then past it. Jasper ignores the treat and follows Rush, his eyes never leaving her face.
“Jasper will ignore the food on the floor and go with his handler,” Lannert said. “He pays strict attention to the handler. Our dogs always choose work over food.”
Inmates at other prisons, in Greenville, Ill., and Gig Harbor, N.Y., for instance, also train service dogs. But the program at Vandalia is the only one like it in Missouri.
When the dogs are finished with the training program, they will perform numerous tasks, including carrying backpacks; opening and closing doors, drawers and cabinets; turning switches off and on; retrieving items from the refrigerator; and helping people who have fallen to get up.
Cole, the founder, said each dog’s training costs $15,000. None of the cost is passed on to the disabled clients the dogs eventually serve.
Rescue dogs stay at the prison off and on for several weeks and learn basic obedience and commands; service dogs stay off and on for 16 weeks and learn advanced skills. Cole and a volunteer, usually Julie Briney of St. Charles, drive to the prison once a week to deliver supplies, answer questions and solve problems.
The dogs sleep in crates inside the inmates’ rooms, which are shared by four or five women. One of the inmates is the trainer; the others help out with the dogs.
Cole picks all of them from a list of inmates who already have been carefully screened by prison administrators. She prefers inmates who have other activities on their prison plates.
“The dogs can’t be their end-all and be-all,” Cole said. “These girls get emotionally attached, and it can cause huge upheaval when the dog leaves.”
Cole informs prospective trainers what they’re up against. The inmates counter that it’s no big deal to say goodbye to a dog; they say goodbye to people all the time.
“And I tell them that this will be different,” Cole said. “This is a creature who will love you and pay attention to you and respect you, no matter what you did.”
LESS MONEY, MORE REWARD
Four years ago, Shelley Fossell, 37, had one of the best-paying jobs in the prison.
She was a computer programmer working 40 hours a week and making $160 a month. But she decided C.H.A.M.P. had more to offer, even though the starting pay is only $8.50 a month, and new trainers work round-the-clock. Fossell has worked her way up to $60 a month.
Some inmates say they have worked other, better-paying jobs to save enough money so they could afford to work for C.H.A.M.P.
Cole has tried to persuade corrections officials to pay more for the C.H.A.M.P. job but to no avail. Even in prison, money is an issue. The prison provides meals, toilet paper and feminine hygiene products, but inmates must buy their own soap, shampoo, toothpaste and pretty much anything else they want or need.
Fossell said the financial sacrifice is worth it.
“It has brought out my character,” she said. “Before I was locked up, it was all about me, me, me. Now, being able to help another person and help a dog, it’s overwhelming.”
Training animals has helped the women communicate more effectively. By using positive reinforcement instead of negative confrontation, Cole said, inmates learn to better cope with other people and conflicts.
Fossell grew up with dogs and remembers punishing them for urinating on the floor by rubbing their noses in it.
“Now I realize that, wow, that was so stupid,” she said.
Fossell, who fatally stabbed her grandfather 15 years ago because of her craving for crack cocaine, will go before the parole board soon. She plans to take her current dog-in-training, Wally, with her.
“They kind of get upset if you don’t bring a dog to the hearing,” she said, explaining that even parole board members love dogs.
Cole has been most surprised to discover that C.H.A.M.P. has improved relations between inmates and staff.
“The dogs de-escalate everything,” she said. “I knew it would be great for the women and the dogs. But I didn’t count on the high percentage of staff coming over and bonding with the inmate-trainers.”
Some of the guards have adopted rescue dogs that also go through C.H.A.M.P.'s prison program, and they look to the inmate-trainers for guidance.
Lannert says the dogs bring a touch of humanity to the corrections center.
“We can’t communicate on an emotional level, we can’t touch each other,” she said. “For some people here, the greatest joy of their day is to see and touch those dogs.”
LIFE INSIDE
Inmates at Vandalia live in buildings divided into wings that house about 80 women each. Most wings average about 70 rule infractions a month — except the C.H.A.M.P. wing, which has fewer than 10 usually minor violations.
Nancy Johnson, 51, is paroled from Vandalia, lives in St. Louis and works for C.H.A.M.P. as a puppy coordinator. She remembers prison life before the dogs.
“It was a very lonely existence,” she said. “You feel like a robot.”
Johnson, a former methamphetamine user who served time for involuntary manslaughter and robbery, worked in the prison’s sewing factory, cutting a couple of thousand T-shirts a day. She’d go to lunch, go back to sew, then back to her unit.
Her general population unit was even worse than the factory. The noise level was outrageous, she said, and inmates smoked in the halls and rooms even though it was against the rules. Her few measly belongings had to be locked up. And when she got a new roommate, she couldn’t sleep for the first few nights because she didn’t know what sinister deeds they might have had in mind.
“You didn’t know who to trust or hang out with,” Johnson said. “I was trying to stay out of trouble and change my life.”
And there was the violence.
“You could be walking down the hall and, if you looked at someone funny, you’d get cussed out,” she said. “Girls were always getting in fights.”
The first day Johnson moved from general population to the C.H.A.M.P. wing, it was like going from night into day.
“The wing was clean, really clean, and no one locked their doors or their lockers,” she said. “To most women living on that wing, it was an honor and a privilege to live with the dogs. And they didn’t want to upset or stress the dogs, so it was quieter.
“I saw respect among the women. I saw them talking out disagreements. I don’t recall a single fight on the wing while I was there. And I slept 100 percent better.”
The trainers constantly talk about the high standard they want to project for the C.H.A.M.P. program, which has given them hope, respect and a shot at redemption. They don’t want to disappoint or embarrass Cole and her volunteers.
But it’s Lannert’s prayer that says it all:
“Lord, help me be the kind of person that my dog thinks I am.”
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch