By Patrick Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA, Ga. — It was a good day for Roger Flowers despite his bleak surroundings.
On Wednesday, the 39-year-old man was one of several Gwinnett County Jail inmates who received a four-legged cellmate.
“I’m an animal lover, so it’s a good thing,” he said. “I had four German shepherds at home, but they all died of old age this past year.”
The new program implemented by the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office and the Society of Humane Friends allows inmates to train dogs in order to save the animals’ lives and find them permanent homes.
The idea came to Sheriff Butch Conway once he saw the unsettling amount of dogs euthanized in Gwinnett County due to the lack of resources to save them. The program called Operation Second Chance is designed to place an animal shelter canine with two inmates. The dog is trained in basic obedience, groomed and exercised.
The hope is inmates will make a doomed dog more adoptable and they also come away with vocational skills that can be used upon release.
“We will be the first jail in Georgia and possibly the country to do a program like this,” Conway said. “I believe in the end we will save many lives and the inmates who are part of the program will be dramatically changed for the better.”
The care, food, training and vet services are provided through volunteers and the Society of Humane Friends, which will work to place the dogs in homes.
Flowers’ male Australian shepherd mix seems a natural.
“I got lucky with this one,” he said. “He’s already potty trained and he sits when he’s told.”
Jonathan Glass, 21, named his male Lab mix “Scrappy” after a dog he once owned.
“Thinking about the previous dog I had, it turns out I get a dog the same mix,” he said. “It’s great. I feel it’s a blessing.”
Copyright 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution