Buddy, Rex and Storm are all fine-looking dogs, worthy of good homes with loving families.
All they need is some polishing of their rough edges, drilling on how to behave well in polite company.
And that is what they are getting at the Forsyth Correctional Center in Winston-Salem.
Four inmates -- Dorsey Lemon Jr., 21; DeWarren Carter, 32; Bobby Driver, 38; and Ricky Hall, 50 -- are the first local participants in "A New Leash on Life," a dog-training program for inmates in minimal- and medium-security custody at state prisons. Prisons partner with animal shelters and animal-welfare agencies to train dogs in order to prepare them to be adopted.
Statewide, 735 dogs had completed the program by March 1, and 683 of those had been adopted.
Here, the inmates are working with dogs from the Forsyth Humane Society, with instruction from trainers with the Winston-Salem Dog Training Club. Lemon, Carter and Hall each have a dog assigned to them. Driver works with all three.
The dogs live in a small building, the Loving Buddies Training Center, and also train outside in a fenced area. The inmates spend most of their waking hours with their dogs -- training them, grooming them and just loving them.
Last week, barely a week after the inmates had first met their dogs, they talked about them with the pride and affection of new parents bragging about their offspring.
"I tell him something two or three times, and he learns it," said Lemon, who is teamed with Storm, a German shepherd.
Carter joked that other inmates told him and the other trainers, "Y'all are starting to look like your dogs." He isn't surprised.
"We're around them so much," he said. "We take them everywhere we go. We never leave them alone."
Although Carter and the others spend hours each day teaching the dogs, they also spend plenty of time playing with them and helping them burn off energy. Carter likes to take off his shoes and run barefoot in the grass with Rex, a hound mix.
Before he entered prison, Carter said, he owned a Rottweiler, who died in 2006.
"I was hurt by it," he said. "Rex might help me with losing my dog."
Hall, whose dog, Buddy, is an Airedale-shepherd mix, worked in the program before at another prison. Being a trainer "makes you a pack leader," he said. "You have to stay calm and assertive and hold your temper."
Lemon calls Storm his best friend.
"I'm not just teaching him; he's teaching me," Lemon said. He takes his cues from how Storm acts and said he is learning to do the same with people, looking beyond their words and judging them more by their actions.
Last week, the inmates drilled the dogs on such basic commands as "sit" and "come," led them on serpentine walks around pylons and coaxed them to jump hurdles.
As he watched the inmates work, David Boswell, the prison's assistant superintendent, talked about how the program teaches the prisoners respect and responsibility and gives them tools that could help them find work when they are released.
"I think the recidivism rate of this program is really, really low," he said. "Ninety-five percent of guys in prison are getting out. We've got to have something for them to do. The biggest cost savings for the state is to not have them return."
Melissa Ball, the humane society's adoption-center manager, and others are evaluating the next group of dogs to be trained. Those dogs will move to the prison within 48 hours of the graduations of Rex, Buddy and Storm. Ball and the inmate trainers know how hard it will be for the men to say goodbye to their constant companions.
"I don't even want to think about it," Lemon said.
Hall is accustomed to bonding with dogs, then letting them go. But he lists specific things that he wants Buddy to have in his new home: two kids to play with, a fenced yard, a doggie door and, preferably, a pool to splash in.
The pool is optional, Hall said. The kids aren't.
"Buddy needs kids to keep him busy," Hall said. "One might not do it. Two would."
■ Janice Gaston can be reached at 727-7364 or at jgaston@wsjournal.com.
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