NYT -- Trained by Inmates, New Best Friends for Disabled Veterans .............................
October 31, 2006
Trained by Inmates, New Best Friends for Disabled Veterans
By STEPHANIE STROM
CONCORD, Mass., Oct. 27 — Rainbow looks like any other Labrador retriever, but she is not a pet. Trained by a prison inmate, her mission is to help Roland Paquette, an injured veteran of the conflict in Afghanistan, stay on his new feet, the ones he got after an explosion destroyed his legs.
While veterans who lose their sight or hearing or must use a wheelchair have long had “service” dogs as companions, Rainbow is one of the first dogs in the country trained to work with someone who uses both a wheelchair and prosthetics to get around.
Mr. Paquette’s hope is that eventually Rainbow will allow him to abandon his canes altogether and rely only on the metal handle attached to the harness she wears around her torso.
“I’d much rather be able to walk with her at my side than with the canes,” said Mr. Paquette, who is 28. “It makes me less obvious.”
Rainbow is the first graduate of a new program, Canines for Combat Veterans, at a tiny nonprofit group here called Neads, or New England Assistance Dog Services. The organization has been training service dogs for the disabled since 1976.
“I think we’re going to have to double the number of dogs we train to meet the need,” said Sheila O’Brien, Neads’s executive director. “Because of advances in medicine, a lot more veterans are surviving their injuries than ever before, and we want to be able to help as many of them as we can.”
In late 2001, President Bush signed a law authorizing the Veterans Administration to underwrite programs like Canines for Combat Veterans. But the Veterans Administration is still studying the matter, so Neads must raise all the money for its program from private sources.
It sells naming rights for its dogs — Rainbow got her name after a group of Rainbow Girls from Rhode Island, an organization affiliated with the Masons, held pancake breakfasts and other events to raise $500 for the right.
That fund-raising has proved so successful that Ms. O’Brien has doubled the price to name a dog, but she said it cost up to $17,000 to buy and train a dog. Recipients of dogs are expected to raise about $9,500 for their animal with the help of the organization.
Ms. O’Brien also hopes to double the size of a program in which service dogs are trained by prison inmates. Puppies begin their training in the Neads “nursery,” where they are housebroken and introduced to basic skills. Then about 80 percent of the dogs go to live in a prison cell with an inmate who completes their training.
It takes about half the time to train dogs in prison as it does in foster homes, Ms. O’Brien said, because of the more intensive training they get from inmates.
Inmates are enthusiastic about the program. “It’s great to do something that really helps someone else, especially a guy like him,” said Thomas Davison, who trained Rainbow at the Northeast Correctional Center here. “I’ve never had a chance to do that, and I wasn’t sure I could handle the responsibility.”
Kathleen M. Dennehy, the state correction commissioner, said the program had profound effects on the culture of a prison.
“Officers stop by to pat the dogs, they smile, maybe they strike up a conversation with the inmate training the dog,” Ms. Dennehy said. “It establishes a basic human connection.”
James J. Saba, superintendent at Northeast, is unsure, however, whether the program, already in six prisons in Massachusetts, can be expanded.
“We have 268 inmates in this prison alone, which is already too many,” Mr. Saba said. “And for every puppy, we lose a bed because the dogs take the place of an inmate in the cell.”
Mr. Paquette and Rainbow visited Mr. Davison and the four other inmate trainers at the prison on Thursday. Mr. Davison gave him a few pointers and handed over the toys he had bought the dog with the $28 a week he received for training her.
“She was ready to do this at 9 months,” Mr. Davison said proudly. “She’s a good dog.”
Mr. Paquette promised, “I’ll take good care of her.”
Mr. Paquette joined the military several months after the Sept. 11 attacks, leaving a job he had recently taken. “I felt like a hypocrite sitting around on the couch in front of the TV and saying, ‘Go do it,’ when I wasn’t,” he explained.
He became a medical sergeant on a Special Forces team and headed for Afghanistan in the spring of 2004. He said he treated hundreds of soldiers and thousands of local residents for “everything from the common cold to gunshot wounds.”
On Dec. 28, 2004, an explosion went off under the vehicle in which he was riding, severely injuring his legs. Yet he considers himself lucky that the impact was muted by the engine block, that an orthopedic surgeon happened to be on hand to perform the initial amputation and that new medical techniques have calmed the irritated nerves in his legs that threatened to keep him from walking.
“At least I’m here, and I’ve got Rainey,” he said, using his nickname for Rainbow.
He said that he had been nervous about meeting her — “sometimes chemistry just doesn’t work” — and that the first day of their partnership had been difficult. He had expected to get a bigger dog, who could support his weight, and Rainbow accidentally pulled him over when he was walking with her. The next day, however, Rainbow and Mr. Paquette clicked, taking turns outdoors using just a cane and her harness. The dog appeared to respond well to Mr. Paquette’s commands and looked to him more and more for direction.
He stayed in his wheelchair during his visit to Mr. Davison the next day because the Neads trainers were worried that Rainbow would pull him down again in her excitement to see her prison trainer. She was indeed happy to see him but largely remained at Mr. Paquette’s side.
The next challenge will be introducing her to Mr. Big, the German shepherd-Great Dane mix that is the Paquettes’ pet. He has been sent to obedience school in preparation for her arrival.
In about 10 days, Mr. Paquette and Rainbow will take off for their new life together, first in Albuquerque and then in San Antonio, where Mr. Paquette and his wife, Jennifer, and their daughter, Kristen, 17, and son, T. J., 11, are moving for his new job with an intelligence and security firm.
The Army has recently completed a new center in San Antonio specializing in amputation, the Intrepid Center, and Mr. Paquette expects to be an advertisement for service dogs.
“I’ve got a feeling that lots of guys who see me with Rainbow are going to want a dog,” he said.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company. |
