[MUSIC] I can't live without animals.

As you see, I have two.

I feel like I lose a part of myself when I don't have them, and I felt like I was missing a part before I got a dog.

Even like now, when I hold my puppy's head and I just touch her nose or her face, the moment that you have with the animal is almost like a moment you would have with a child, in my opinion, right?

It's pure.

[MUSIC] They're so therapeutic, and for people who are suffering, having that safety net on top of everything else, where else are you going to get that?

An animal, there's nothing safer (upbeat music) My name is Jamie Jenkins, and I have a daughter named Avery that we adopted when she was one We brought her home from the hospital at five weeks old, and she was addicted to heroin, cocaine, and alcohol.

Now she's living with ADHD, autism, and a couple other diagnoses that make keeping friendships and those kind of things really difficult for her.

I used to have anxiety attacks every other day.

I used to not want to get up and go to school because I already knew in the hallways I would have a panic attack.

But knowing that I wake up to a dog and going to school for that motivation to come back home to see him.

If he sees me struggling he'll go onto my bed and cuddle with me or watch TV with me.

Really brought me up.

My son Owen, he was born without an eye.

He's born with something called microthalmia, which is an underdeveloped eye.

So his left eye, he's totally blind in.

And in his right, he has optic nerve dysplasia and colobomas.

The first five years of Owen's life was a lot of hospitals and a lot of doctors.

And I don't think you realize how much stress builds on the family.

And Trapper is so loving and just brings joy that you didn't realize you really needed to let out.

With my vision teacher, I used to write Braille letters to another student.

The other kid would write questions about Trapper.

And I'd answer them.

Trapper is one.

Trapper is, he likes to play ball.

He likes to have his belly scratched.

I learned once that if you take the genome of a dog and lay it over the top of the genome of a human, they're almost identical.

So it's really in our DNA to have a really strong relationship with a dog.

You can't beat their companionsh and their love.

And they definitely enrich people's lives.

A Colorado nonprofit celebrating a major milestone, matching their 150th dog with a young girl with special needs.

In prison, where kindness is considered weakness, dogs make tough men tender.

Inside nine Colorado prisons-- Finding hope where you least expect it.

It gives them new life skills.

Skills Cynthia Gonzalez had never learned.

She's doing life for murder.

Deb Stevens started the program and officially began in October of 2002.

Our organization partnered with Freedom Service Dogs of America, I believe when they first formed And they started in the Colorado down in Canyon City.

And that was just the seed of the program that we have today.

And then we put those first eight weeks of critical basic obedience training on their puppies that then develop with further training into service dogs.

It could be someone with PTSD, a veteran, someone who's in a wheelchair.

The dog picks up things, opens doors, opens a refrigerator, picks up their keys, picks up a credit card, a cell phone.

There's so many things that they're tasked to do.

And we get to be the initial part of those puppies' lives.

I met somebody, and they informed us about the Stink Bug Project.

The Stink Bug Project is a program through the Rocky Mountain Children's Health Foundation that specifically trains companion dogs to be matched with children with a medical diagnosis.

They source all of their dogs through us.

We're very proud of that partnership.

When we found out that it was going to be at the prison, I was a little bit hesitant to take not only myself, but my children to the prison to meet inmates and be in that environment.

I was nervous.

I didn't want to go into a prison because I didn't know how it was going to be like.

There was a lot of gates and guards and-- locking up all of our stuff.

It was pretty serious at first.

But then it's almost like the intimidation just went away.

You meet the inmate that has trained your dog and you talk to them.

Two or three of them, They do mini training sessions and they do the whole process of check out and questions They make sure your paperwork is good.

You just had this warm feeling.

It was exciting.

French fry was well trained.

He wasn't barking.

He wasn't carrying on.

And it felt good.

When they come through those doors and they go through the razor wire and then they spend five minutes working with one of my dog handlers, they can't believe where they are.

And the people they're talking to are just people that train their dogs.

And they trust that.

It's amazing, isn't it?

They trust that.

But I didn't realize what I was going to walk into.

I did not.

I wanted the dog program because I wanted to be able to tell my daughter about things, like when I would call her on the phone.

What do you tell a child when you're talking to them on the phone, but when you talk about a dog, you become something so great, you know?

They're like, "Oh, tell me about the dog you have."

And so it was always this connection point.

In these little moments, I could share my life with my child.

This program is in six different facilities throughout the state currently.

110 incarcerated individuals participate in it.

They come to us in different stages of brokenness.

And this program helps them attain goals to be better human beings, if they are open to it.

I've been with the Department of Corrections and Correctional Industries doing the dog program for just over 17 years now.

I have met many men and women that came to interview with me.

So many of them have never or had very little love in their lives.

I find them to be a little bit, like, empty sometimes inside when I first meet them and have never cared for something, loved something.

A big thing I talk about is unconditional love that they get from these dogs, and I think it changes them in ways that's unmeasurable.

I committed a crime when I was 18 years old, and I went to prison for three years.

I got out, and I had a two-year-old daughter that I was trying to figure out how to raise because her father had OD'd.

And so I did not deal with the grief of that very well.

Drugs were always in and out of my life, and I reused.

And through all of that, there was a murder, and I was on the other side of that murder.

I came from a very dysfunctional family.

There was a federal case against my father.

He was convicted, and he committed suicide the day before he was sentenced.

I didn't go to counseling after the trial, didn't go to counseling after his suicide.

You know, dealt with it through alcohol and drugs.

I went from misdemeanor, traffic and domestics to felony, motor vehicle theft, possession of Schedule IIs, distribution of Schedule IIs, and then straight up to the murder.

I hate myself so much for what I did.

I want to be able to right the wrongs that I did.

I know that my victim will never come back, and I can never give that back to his family.

But at least I have to try to be a really good person to be everything that I wasn't.

A lot of times when I first meet an inmate / dog handler, they either are reluctant to talk about their crime or they're going to say that it wasn't all their fault or blame somebody else or...

I've seen them go from not owning what they did to not only owning what they did, but moving forward into a positive place.

It's part of their journey.

Many of these folks, when they do get out, if they don't have a strong support system on the outside, where does that support come from?

It has to come from inside themselves.

So to have a program that teaches them their own value and their own abilities to overcome any past bad decisions that they've made and make better decisions is really important.

This is me when I first came to the dog team all those years ago with my very first dog I trained was Rusty.

I don't even know who that woman is.

I look like this young child there.

So I was coming to prison for life.

I had a life without when I first got here.

And...

I was angry and I was still very sick.

And...

I did two and a half years in Ad SIG when I first got here.

So solitary confinement back in 2009 with 23-hour lockdown.

And I was angry.

I just fought with everyone.

But the twisted thing is that sometimes you're so hungry for human attention and human touch is that I would...

I would close the window on my cell because you know that's when the cops will come in, they'll force cell you.

And that was the way I could get interaction with somebody.

So I'd cover my window, I'd flood my cell and I knew that the rockets would be on.

I knew that I'd have eight, ten guards in there trying to force me out of my cell.

And so I probably did that once every couple of months when I first went in to Ad SIG just because you get angry but then you get starved for that attention of something because you're just robbed of all of it.

You keep up the guard of protecting yourself emotionally, physically.

Every part of communication for me was difficult except for anger.

And anger was readily available and it was easily accessible for me until I got into the dog program I would have fallen into the chaos and all the negative sides that are just waiting for you if you want them.

They're there and you can be a part of it if you choose.

Or you can choose this part of your life that you've been missing and here was an opportunity to heal to some extent, to a safe extent I wanted to talk about one gentleman in particular.

He was so walled off when I met and I could just tell that he had passion for animals but there wasn't a lot left to him at that point.

And so I think he worked with me a total of seven years and he went from this, "I have to be tough" "I," you know, "No one's going to tell me what to do" to this big guy who will lay on the floor and roll around with the dog and talk in girly voices and jump up and down.

All his walls went down.

The reason I came back to prison and I think a lot of people that come back to prison and are part of the recidivism problem, it's because we're living an inauthentic life to our values.

And I don't know if I had never been to prison would I have become a dog trainer?

I never knew what I really wanted to do in my life.

I knew I wanted to work with animals, but I didn't know what it was.

And I found through these last, this last decade of my life that that's what I want to give back.

I want to give that to kids.

I want to give it to customers with their dogs.

I want to give it to my own child.

Yeah, I want to take everything that I've learned with the dog program and take it with me.

Put it in my little training pouch.

I was in so deep.

I don't think Drug Court would've helped me.

I think what saved me was being locked up for the extended amount of time that I was locked up.

I see so many handlers, myself included, that through these skills that we teach the dogs, we get them.

I teach you to patiently wait for the street.

I learn patience.

I teach you to sit politely to be greeted.

I know how to interact with somebody now.

You're teaching yourself and whether you know it or not, through this repetition, through consistent application of this basic training program.

When Deb Stevens created this program, I don't think she had in mind that she would be doing this.

I think she really just wanted to save some dogs.

And instead she started saving all these people that have gone out into the community.

We still get to touch the community in ways that we don't even know, just through these dogs.

The other type of dog that we train is what we call the Correctional Industries dog, which is a dog that we've rescued from a shelter.

Sometimes they're surrenders, but mostly it's shelter dogs that we rescue It's a situation where we've gotten a call and said, "This dog could be euthanized tomorrow.

Can you take this dog?

Can you give him a try?

Can you give this dog some balance in his life and do some training with this dog and see if you can rehabilitate him?"

Rehabilitation, what a great word, in this situation, in this environment.

And rehome him.

It feels good when you know you're getting a dog that either is from a harsh past or even the owner's just, for some reason, abandoned it.

I feel like it's making a difference in the world by taking it off the street, giving it a loving home.

Since 2002, we have trained over 5,000 dogs that we place up for adoption through our shelter partners and dogs that are surrendered to our program.

And we've trained over 11,000 dogs for private individuals through our boarding and training program.

So I could say with great confidence that we've trained probably close to 19,000 to 20,000 dogs since 2002.

You see changes in people, like I said, that you can hardly hear them speak to now they're standing in front of 15 people teaching a class and talking about how they trained their dog.

Women in particular that are missing their children and their families.

And they do have a hard time getting out of bed But guess what?

I just gave them a reason to get out of bed.

Something that's going to lick their face or maybe their tears.

My daughter had just bought a new house and I went over to help her and I was walking my dog.

I saw this woman and she said, "That's a beautiful Airedale."

And she goes, "Is her name Minnie?"

And I said, "What?

Is her name Minnie?"

I said, "Yeah, her name is Minnie."

So here Bre was living less than a block away from my daughter in a beautiful neighborhood, looking great.

You know, I'd never seen her in anything other than her green uniform before.

And so she dropped her leash, she hugged me and about eight years, I think was how long she'd been out.

So I wondered for years what ever happened to Bre.

So knew she was working really hard to develop the skills she needed to succeed on the outside.

She's paid her price and she's paid her dues and nothing will change what happened in the past.

But I just really wanted to make sure that Bre succeeded.

And I didn't know anything about Dianne.

I didn't know that she was a state representative.

I didn't know that she was who she was.

I had no idea.

She respected the boundaries that an inmate to have with an inmate, but she talked to me like I was just a normal person.

I always had her in my mind.

I've always inspired to be a better human because I wanted to be like her.

Inside I wanted to be just like I think it's quite a shock when somebody leaves prison.

You know, when someone's in prison, they're told what to wear every They're told what time they're going to eat.

They're told what classes they're going to go to.

Literally walking out the door of the prison was the hardest.

My niece actually is what picked out my clothes for me because I couldn't do it.

I was just, I was like, I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe because I just, the sounds, the smells, they were so strong.

I tried eating and I got sick because my body wasn't used to it.

So I lived off of frozen grapes for about a week, week and a half.

I didn't have social security card, identification, birth certificate.

If it wasn't for my family, my rent woudn't have been paid because I was considered high risk for halfway houses they didn't want me.

She had told me a story about when she went out of state and so she was driving back to Colorado and realized she needed to get gas and she had a credit card.

She didn't know how to use the pump, how to put the credit card in, how to get the gas started.

And she said she just sat down on the curb and cried and the owner or the manager of the gas station came out actually and she was honest with and told him what her story had been and she said he was just the nicest person.

I remember my sister sent me my first phone and I just held it and cried.

I didn't know how to plug it in or how to turn it on.

I didn't know how to answer it.

I didn't know how to do anything You know those little anxieties can add up to the point where maybe some people might decide it's much easier to be in prison where I don't have to think and I don't have to make choices and I don't have to be responsible and I don't really have to support myself and put a roof over my head and food on my table and you know I just think it's really difficult when somebody gets out and they need all the support they can get in order to succeed.

Cause the last thing we want is somebody to go back into prison.

So I had two girls that I was in prison with who were dog training and they would have overflow clients and they would send them to me and that's how it started.

We all work full-time jobs and then we train dogs in our spare time, all three of us.

The company I work for, they have been so loyal to me and so good to me and so supportive of me that I would probably still stay working part time just as a backup financial, righ So if vet's needed or food is needed for the animals that would be there, but also because I'm a workaholic now instead of a drug addict.

So, I'm okay with that though.

This is some of the go home.

We get like puppy mail, is what it's called.

And the kids wrote me this thank you letter.

How are you?

Groot is great.

I'm sorry you had to say goodbye to him.

He is doing really well.

He has lots of dog friends.

Like the fact that these children took the time to write me this letter That's like amazing parts of this program is that we get to touch these people's lives.

Yeah.

I remember writing a letter to the inmate who trained Trapper just saying like thank you for training him and giving us him.

I came to prison when I was 18 the first time.

19.

I have a 20 year old roommate.

One of my best colleagues and coworkers she came to prison when she was 18.

When we're young we're not ready for all of the adult things that are handed.

And I want to really go into juvenile facilities and tell these kids like you have a choice.

Maybe I can develop skills with them through the skills that I learned.

I really think that that's the impact I want to make on the world is so they don't have to come to at 18 or 19 or 20.

Our next doggy mail is for Pullie.

from Poppy There's some great pictures in there.

Poppy That's a big one Oh my God!

Poppy That's adorable.

I'm not sure if you got to see Poppy in the snow, but she loves to... she loves to make snow angels.

She loves the snow and would bury her face in it and run headfirst into her snow house.

And the training journal is very clear and helpful.

We will study it carefully and take your recommendations to heart.

Thank you again.

Our best wishes for your future health and happiness.

Aww.

It's the value that it gives their lives, and it's the opportunity to help them see their value and their worth.

Maybe that's what led them to be here, to be incarcerated, to make those bad decisions.

They didn't know what else to do They didn't feel like they had value.

And I think that's really the most important thing, that they feel like they have worth.

And for the ones that are never leaving here, you know, the reason to get out of bed every day, the caring for and the unconditional love and everything that they do together.

Well, the governor and I have a goal of making it a Colorado for all.

And all means all.

It's whether you live in Denver, whether you're young, whether you're old, whether you've been in prison, or whether you haven't.

We want everybody to be able to thrive in the state of Colorado.

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