Photo courtesy of Maddie Meglich
For 2012 Pickerington High School North alumna Maddie Meglich, the day begins like most 22-year-olds’: She wakes up and goes to class.
She works part-time as a host at a local restaurant (Crab Shack Caribba) and, in her limited free time, she enjoys hanging out with friends and watching Netflix.
But another part a day in the life of Meglich – who is working toward her master’s degree in occupational therapy at West Virginia University – is apt to turn a few heads. She works face to face with inmates at Federal Correctional Institution Morgantown, a minimum-security federal prison.
The program she works on teaches inmates to train service dogs that will be given to military veterans. The program is one of three through Hearts of Gold, a service dog training and research organization.
The first Hearts of Gold program teaches college students at WVU to train service dogs. The second program, Project ROVER, is more research-based, and aims to find the tangible impact that service dogs have on veterans who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Meglich’s program is veteran-to-veteran; the inmates who are approved for the program, as well as those who receive the trained dogs, are military veterans. Meglich discovered the program when she took a class through Hearts of Gold two years ago during her junior year of undergrad at WVU. She loved it so much that she became a teaching assistant in a more advanced Hearts of Gold class. When Meglich excelled at the program, she was offered the job at the prison, which she excitedly accepted, though not all of her friends and family were as excited as she was.
Photos courtesy of Hearts of Gold
“A lot of people think that it would be scary, but it’s really not. … It’s not very intimidating at all,” says Meglich. “Everybody that I talk to, they’re always very intrigued by it and ask lots of questions.”
Meglich’s job entails teaching the classes, supplying them with food and other materials for the dogs, and bringing the dogs to the veterinarian for check-ups and emergencies. Meglich sees the impression the dogs have on the inmates each time she goes to teach.
“It really makes an impact,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of them tell me they’ve gotten so much out of it, and they want to do something once they get out with dogs.”
The biggest difference-maker for the inmates, Meglich says, is during the dogs’ placements, when inmates can see how much they’ve helped somebody else.
In order to make giving up the dogs easier for the inmates after training completes, each dog is rotated among the inmates in the program every three months.
“It’s really tough to give up a dog,” says Meglich, who is fostering a Hearts of Gold dog herself. “Knowing that the dog is going to be for somebody else to help them out, I think, helps ease that (pain).”
Meglich’s class is made up of 17 inmates who are tasked with teaching the dog very basic commands, such as “sit” and “heel.” They’re also required to train the dogs to behave and to be comfortable in situations such as a busy street or a fireworks display. The program at the Morgantown institution is only two years old, so Hearts of Gold is still nailing down the best amount of time for training for both dogs and inmates, but Meglich estimates the dogs need two years’ training time, on average.
Inmates must apply for the job and are vetted in order to make sure they don’t have a history of violence, especially abuse against animals or children. Only military veterans are accepted. The program is only able to take so many inmates at once, and Meglich says some inmates who are not accepted do reapply.
“It’s really unfortunate, because there are a lot of non-veterans who want to get involved,” says Meglich, though she notes that the program accepts non-veteran inmates to work with the dogs in other ways, such as taking them for walks or runs.
The experience with Hearts of Gold will benefit Meglich in the long run, she says, and has helped her realize her desire to work with animal-assisted therapies.
“I’ve learned so much about training dogs with the program,” says Meglich. “I just love working with Hearts of Gold. It’s an awesome program to be involved in.”
Amanda DePerro is an assistant editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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