Every Tuesday we have dog training class as a group. All the dogs and trainers get together and our head trainer hold class to find out how the dogs are doing.

Its a time to show what your dog has learned or hasn’t learned for that matter.

Its a time where she can make assessments and or evaluate each dog. At this time she can either promote a dog to the next faze of bandana color or not.

They all start in red. As they get better at their commands and behavior, they get promoted.

Today Willy got promoted to green. Its just what he deserved. However not all the dogs deserve it. Let alone be promoted behond red.

Today was dog meeting day. Its where the dogs get to meet in class for the first time.

When doing this, you really have to have a good hold of your dog when another dog is comming up to it to sniff. Because you don’t want anything bad to happen.

We let the dogs sniff each others buts first, before we let them go face to face. It prevents dog bites and attacks.

We are doing this two at a time. when one of the dogs went to sniff he decided to bite the others tail right at the base.

Just what we were trying to avoid.

He latched on and started to shake. The handlers jumped to action and pulled the dog off. While the handlers were pulling them apart, the dog that was being bit was peeing from being scared. Who can blame him, his ass was being chewed.

That was the second dog that was attacked by this other dog and the third attack in total so far by him.

This is the animal that needs more work on behavior. It’s also lacking a lot in the over all training too. Doesn’t really listen at all either.

But guess what?! This dog got promoted to the final color. Graduation green! What the Hell!

There has been a totally of 4 training classes so far. And most of these handlers don’t know what there doing. In my opinion only 2 dogs deserve green. Both dogs can do all of there commands off leash and behave the right way.

This is exactly the type of thing I am talking about. Why should that dog be held on the same level as the others that deserve the promotion? All the dogs and handlers should not be treated as equals if there not.

To hell about peoples feelings. If you want something, then earn it! But no, apparently that’s not how this thing is being run.

I have gotten to the point of, ” If you can’t beat them join ’em “. I still take pride in training my dog to the best of my ability. That will never change. My dogs are always top of the class.

I just try and worry about me and what’s at the end of my leash. That’s it.

That doesn’t stop me from Thinking about it. Just acting on it. Sometimes I dwell on it because I get so mad and frustrated. Its so hard sometimes not to let these things rent space in my head.

Just this morning some random guy sitting at a table next to mine at breakfast ask me about the dog program.

He said that he came from another prison dog program. That its nothing like this one. That his was structured, followed a consistent curriculum and inmates were held accountable for their dogs.

I told him that this one used to be like that but somewhere along the line a crack was formed and those thing seem to have fallen through.

When a random person says things like that I know I am not alone in how I feel about what this program is.

It boils down to I hope this dog doesent hurt another dog or even another person.

Jesse Bailey
DOC #879476