The youth offenders have been confined for various reasons but, no matter what, they all seem to appreciate their time with Cubby and the rest of the therapy dogs. It’s nice to think that happiness is just a wagging tail away.
“Oh man, I love it,” says Wright, who has been incarcerated at Long Creek for 18 months. “This is a pretty stressful place a lot of the time. But when the dogs come in, I can sit down and relax. They make me laugh. They make me smile. They’re there for you.”
Long Creek houses about 90 juvenile offenders – males and females – from all over the state.
“We say we have 90 of the state’s toughest kids,” says the chief of volunteer services, Stephanie Netto. “We’re sort of the last stop.”The facility offers a myriad of rehabilitation programs – counseling, education, job readiness, life skills – all in the hope of turning those young lives around. Netto says in an environment where an undercurrent of tension is the norm, the pet therapy program offers invaluable moments of calm and comfort.
“When the dogs go into a unit, you can feel sort of the temperature and the tension in the unit decrease,” she says. “It’s tangible.”
That sets the stage for conversations that might not otherwise happen.
“I’ll be with some of the kids for a while just sitting there,” Sirois says, “and they’ll be petting the dogs and they won’t be saying anything and then after a little while they’ll just start to open up.”
Sirois, who rarely misses a visit, takes a keen interest in the young people – and they know it.
“We can rely on her,” Wright says.And that sends a powerful message.
“Hopefully, what they extrapolate from that is, ‘Maybe I’m not such a loser, after all,'” Netto says. ” ‘If this person is willing to commit their Friday nights to me, then maybe I have more going on for myself than I thought I did.’ ”
The “Pugdashians,” as they are called, have 15,000 followers on Instagram. Lori says she posted a single picture about two years ago and suddenly they were a sensation.
But what is really lovely is how they are reaching out to others. Not only are the Pugs taken to the Youth facility but Lori also has them going to a Portland nursing home and a hospice center.
To read more on these remarkable dogs go to the Press Herald.
