Inside Southeastern Correctional Institution in Lancaster, Ohio, four inmate handlers spent a year and a half raising Labrador retrievers named Kipper, Landel, Fritter and Garreth, teaching them the basic obedience and socialization skills that could eventually let the dogs serve people with disabilities. At a recent matriculation ceremony, those four dogs were handed back to Canine Companions, and two new yellow Labrador puppies, Judge and Manny, were placed with new inmate handlers to start the process over again, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
The handoff is part of the Canine Companions Prison Puppy Program, which pairs selected inmate handlers with puppies for training, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Puppies are flown from the organization's Santa Rosa, California headquarters to central Ohio, where volunteer puppy raisers care for them during their first few months of life before the dogs transfer to inmate handlers at around four to five months old. Canine Companions staff and volunteers then host regular handler training classes at the facility to prepare the dogs to eventually serve individuals with disabilities.
Southeastern Correctional Institution began participating in the program in November 2024, as reported by The Columbus Dispatch. Warden Norman Robinson said the incarcerated dog lovers and caregivers chosen for the program accepted its mission, according to the Dispatch's reporting. Christi Scott Bartman, a Canine Companions volunteer and Ohio State University lecturer who trains the inmate handlers, said the handlers are hand-selected and have earned the opportunity.
A Handler's Perspective on Caring for a Future Service Dog
Stephon Davis, who served as inmate handler for Landel, returned the dog to Canine Companions at the matriculation ceremony and then received Manny as his next trainee. Davis said caring for a dog in prison reaffirms inmates' humanity, per the Dispatch. Suzanne Sliclen, Canine Companions' puppy program manager, said the dogs see humanity in everyone.
Kipper, Landel, Fritter and Garreth will now spend the next few weeks with their raisers for socialization and exposure outside the prison, experiencing cars, elevators and shopping malls before heading to the Canine Companions North Central Training Center in New Albany, Ohio. There, professional training typically lasts six to nine months before a dog is ready to be paired with a recipient. The New Albany center serves 14 states and provides free service dogs to recipients across the Midwest, who visit the facility to work with a trainer before receiving a dog, according to the Dispatch.
Program Expanding to More Ohio and Kentucky Facilities
Emily Bell, Canine Companions' North Central region executive director, announced that three additional prison puppy programs will launch at Ohio and Kentucky institutions in the fall, as noted by The Columbus Dispatch. Kayleen Petrovia, the organization's public relations and marketing coordinator, said prison-raised service dogs graduate training at a 10% higher rate than traditionally raised dogs.
That figure echoes what a news release previously cited by the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette reported when the Southeastern Correctional Institution program launched in November 2024 with two puppies named Mojo and Lancaster: puppies raised in prison programs graduate at a 10% higher rate than those raised in traditional homes, and program participants nationwide had a recidivism rate below 5%, per the same release. That earlier Eagle-Gazette report also noted the Canine Companions Prison Puppy Raising Program began in 1995 at Coffee Creek Correctional Center in Oregon, and that the Southeastern program marked the first active prison puppy-raising effort in the organization's North Central Region in a number of years.
On its own website, Canine Companions describes the work of incarcerated handlers as providing loving, expert care and training to future service dogs, noting that the special job earns participants a small amount of pay. The organization pairs its trained dogs with individuals with disabilities once professional training is complete.
Part of a Much Larger National Movement
Ohio's program is one small piece of a much broader landscape of prison-based animal programs across the country. A 2026 thesis from Sam Houston State University identified 256 prison-based animal programs across 212 U.S. prison facilities, based on research conducted in 2025, finding at least one such program in every state except Washington, D.C. Roughly 83% of those programs were dog-focused, the thesis found, with researchers grouping program goals into six categories ranging from recidivism reduction and mental health benefits to vocational training and community benefit.
Other organizations have built similar models elsewhere. Canine Companions itself launched a prison puppy-raising program at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in Northern California in April 2023 with two puppies, Artemis and Wendel, and that effort has since expanded to twelve handlers and eight puppies, per a report from Canine Companions. Minnesota-based Can Do Canines says it partners with 10 prisons across Minnesota and Wisconsin, with participating facilities typically housing between five and 20 puppies at a time. In California, the nonprofit Paws for Life has operated since 2014 at the California State Prison in Lancaster, pairing dogs rescued from high-kill shelters in Los Angeles with incarcerated trainers who must go two years without disciplinary action and stay active in education and employment, according to Spectrum News.
For now, the next chapter belongs to Judge and Manny, the two yellow Labrador puppies who received new inmate handlers at the Southeastern Correctional Institution ceremony. If their predecessors are any indication, the dogs have a year and a half of training ahead of them before they, too, might stand in that same room, ready to be handed off to the next phase of their journey toward serving someone with a disability.
