If you try to get in touch with Daniel Rasnick on Mondays or Wednesdays of any given week, you’re likely not going to have a lot of luck. Those are the two days a week when he reports to a local correctional facility—not as an incarcerated individual making up for past transgressions, but as the coordinator for the Pixie’s Pen Pals program.
According to Rasnick, Pixie’s Pen Pals is the third oldest prison dog program in the country, where selected incarcerated people work with rescue dogs to provide them with basic training skills to make them more adoptable. It benefits the trainers, it benefits the dogs, it benefits animal shelters, and it’s a major benefit for individuals and families who are lucky enough to adopt the amazing dogs who come through the program.
We had an opportunity to speak with Daniel about Pixie’s Pen Pals and the incredible work they are doing as part of the FETCH a Cure program. Here’s what he had to tell us.
Tell us more about Pixie’s Pen Pals.
The program was started by a woman named Pixie—I want to say in the 90s—and she ran it herself for years. When Pixie passed away, her family gifted the program to FETCH a Cure to run. It now falls under the umbrella of FETCH, the nonprofit. So, the way it works, Pixie’s Pen Pals is now a program of FETCH a Cure.
Do we know why Pixie decided to do this in the first place?
I wish I did. I don’t know a ton about Pixie to be honest. We did just have one of her old friends reach out and say she wanted to meet up and talk about the program more, so maybe once I have an opportunity to speak with her I’ll have a little more insight on what prompted Pixie to start this program. I wish I knew more about her. She sounds like she was an incredible woman. To start a program like this, you’ve got to be a good person, right?
Absolutely, and it sounds like she was doing most of it by herself, so that’s even more impressive.
Exactly. I’ll tell you, she had her work cut out for her. I can’t imagine getting it started and getting the gears rolling with the Department of Corrections as a one-person show. It’s a lot of work. Thankfully, I have a great teams at FETCH supporting us.
Indeed. It’s hard just being an entrepreneur by yourself, but when you’re trying to deal with the Department of Corrections and a population of people that other people want to avoid for the most part, that’s pretty gutsy.
You are not kidding. And the DOC has been great through all this. But like you said, there’s so much red tape, it can make things difficult from time to time, and that’s not their fault. That’s just the way it is.
Tell us about your mission.
Basically, the way it works is, we rescue dogs from animal shelters and then place them in facilities where they live for about eight to ten weeks. During those eight to ten weeks, they live full time with the incarcerated individuals, and they get round-the-clock training and care.
These individuals are equipped to train them on the AKC (American Kennel Club) Good Citizen Test. When they graduate from the program, they are AKC-trained. But, if whoever adopts them wants to get them AKC-certified, the dogs are equipped to do everything they need to pass the test. There is a list of 10 items that they test them on. I can’t remember them all off the top of my head, but it’s more or less just some basic obedience stuff: sit, down, up. They work on recall training, leash training, being able to walk through a crowd without getting distracted, things like that. That’s the nuts and bolts of it. We rescue the dogs, they live with the handlers for eight to 10 weeks while they get trained, then we adopt them out to individuals and families.
Who trains the incarcerated individuals?
We have a contract trainer we employ. Right now, we only have one and we’ll probably be hiring a second a little further down the line, just because we’re going to continue to grow as a program. But we hold classes at each of the prisons we partner with once a week. So, the trainers and I go in to instruct the handlers on different techniques—what works, what doesn’t. And to be honest with you, most of the people who are in our program have been with us so long that they don’t need a lot of training. We come in and do some very specific things with them. They’re all very knowledgeable about dog training. That’s not to say that we don’t have new people coming into the program as others leave who might need a little extra help. But people who have been in this program for a long time, I would trust them with my dog in a heartbeat.
What’s the criteria on picking who gets to be one of the handlers?
There is a specific set of restrictions we follow within the Department of Corrections. We have a liaison at each prison, and say we have an opening for a handler position in one of the prisons. What happens is, the liaison within the DOC will bring us five applicants that meet that criteria. They have a bulleted list of certain restrictions as far as infractions, things of that nature. So, they bring us those five individuals, we interview the five and then whoever we feel is the best fit, we bring into the program. Also, all of the incarcerated individuals who are working in the program live together in the same building and the same wing of the correctional facilities. It is always the honor wing, so everybody who lives in that wing is infraction-free for two years before they can move in. As the DOC describes it, they’re considered “model prisoners.”
That sounds like a good gig for them then so they can get out of the general population.
Yes, it certainly is. It’s a highly coveted position within the DOC, so we get the best of the best when it comes to that. We partner with three different facilities right now. One is just getting started up, so we don’t have any dogs in there yet. The other two we partner with, we’ve been there for years, and we boast the lowest recidivism rate (the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense) of any of the programs that operate within those two facilities. It’s obviously great for the dogs because it gives them a better chance of getting adopted. If you can get a dog who is already potty trained and knows how to walk on a leash versus one that doesn’t, I think nine times out of ten, people are going to adopt the one who knows how to do those things.
But, just as good as it is for the dogs, it is even better for the individuals who train them. I mean, we have a long list of people who have worked for us as handlers then get released who continue to work as dog trainers on the outside. It sets them up with a lifelong skill they will always have and fortunately, many of them have found a way to make money off of it after they are released. It’s just as good for them as it is for the dogs.
The three facilities you work with are all in Virginia?
Yes, they’re all in Virginia. We’re contracted with the Department of Corrections to operate within Virginia. We don’t operate outside of Virginia with Pixie’s Pen Pals, specifically. Now, FETCH a Cure does operate outside of Virginia to a small extent. I think we’ve expanded our territory to include D.C. and Maryland. But Pen Pals specifically is only in Virginia.
When you adopt dogs out, do they only go to Virginia homes?
No. Actually, we just adopted a dog out a few months ago to a gentleman who lives in Kentucky. We don’t have any restrictions on who can adopt our dogs. Obviously, you can’t have any history of animal cruelty or anything like that. We’re pretty thorough in our adoption process.
One of the coolest parts is that we like the incarcerated people who train these dogs to be as involved in the adoption process as possible. So, if you want to adopt one of our dogs, you have to come to one of those Department of Corrections facilities. We take you inside, you get to meet the handlers, they tell you about the dog, they instruct you on the cues, then we move forward with the adoption process. After that, I’ll do a home visit, then when they come to pick up the dog the handlers will talk to them about what they need to be prepared for when adopting the dog.
The dogs are not service dogs, right? They’re just trained on the basics.
That’s exactly correct. I know there are a few programs that operate within the DOC that train service dogs specifically. I know there is one out of Bland that trains seeing-eye dogs. But we just do basic obedience and potty training. Really, we’re just trying to give these dogs the best chance to succeed in getting adopted. That’s our main goal.
Do you want to mention the facilities you work with?
We currently work with Fluvanna Women’s Correctional Center, Beaumont Men’s Correctional Facility, and Lawrenceville Correctional Center.
Tell us about FETCH a Cure.
It’s a nonprofit that focuses on cancer education and treatment for dogs. FETCH a Cure has been instrumental in furthering cancer treatment for dogs. I feel like 10 or 20 years ago, if your dog had cancer, euthanasia was the only option. Now, we’re trying to educate people that there are other options than euthanasia. We were able to bring Oncology Service into Richmond (Virginia), and it is a full-scale, radiology, chemotherapy treatment center for dogs. The main goal of FETCH a Cure throughout all of this is their Companions in Crisis program, that helps people pay for cancer treatment for their dogs. There’s a certain set of criteria you have to meet for that though.
How do people find out about your dogs. Do you advertise them or is it mostly through word of mouth?
It is mainly word-of-mouth. And to be honest with you, we’ve never really had a problem with finding people to adopt the dogs. People who work in these correctional centers—officers, nurse aides, etc.—anybody who works in these facilities and gets to know these dogs immediately wants to adopt them. That’s not to say we don’t adopt to other people as well…we’re adopting next week to a family that has never set foot in a correctional facility before. But mainly it’s word-of-mouth.
If you go on our website, you’ll see a list of the dogs that are adoptable, and you can learn about the adoption process and submit an application that way. That being said, we do still partner with a lot of other institutions around Richmond, and we regularly go to adoption events. There’s a local winery in Richmond that we go to one Sunday a month where we will bring one of the dogs from the program and let people meet the dog, see the training it has had, and hear the full story of the dog. Generally, every dog that goes to one of those events gets adopted within a month.
Tell us a little more about where the dogs come from. Is there a set of criteria on what dogs you’ll work with and what dogs you won’t?
We partner with a few various shelters and we are currently pulling dogs from Southside SPCA. They pull dogs from all across the state, and they have just been great in helping us find the right fits for the program. Because it takes a very specific kind of dog to succeed in an environment like that.
As far as criteria for dogs that come into the program, space is a big thing in there—the cells aren’t very big and you need to have a dog crate set up in a cell that’s designed for two people. Because of that, we keep it at 50 pounds or under for any dog that comes into the program. It stinks because obviously big dogs are the ones that don’t get adopted from shelters more often, so we would love to find a way to incorporate that further down the line if we could, but it’s really just a matter of size and space restrictions.
Personally, I love Great Danes. If we could have 20 Great Danes in the program I would. But that’s just not the reality of the situation.
Do you normally work with adult dogs, or do you put puppies in the program, too?
We don’t do any puppies, but we’ll do younger dogs. We just brought two dogs into the program about two weeks ago: one was 10-months old, and one was six-years old. We really don’t discriminate as far as age goes, just as long as they’re not a “puppy” puppy. As long as they are fully grown, size-wise, we can bring them in.
You’re not going to be able to tell how big a shelter puppy is going to get because you often don’t know the parents’ history or what they look like.
Exactly right.
Do you have any breed restrictions or is that just not an issue with the training?
No, we don’t have any breed restrictions. There are dogs that we found work better than others in the facility. Just to give you a little more background, when we reach out to a shelter to pull a dog we’ll say, “Hey, we want to pull two dogs on this date.” Then they’ll run the available dogs through a series of tests to see which might be a good fit.
As you can imagine with the DOC, there are a lot of loud noises, the intercom goes off every five minutes, a lot of door slamming, a lot of keys jangling. So, the shelter will test prospects by blowing an air horn that emulates the intercom that goes off, so we can see if they react negatively to that. They’ll slam doors around them to make sure that doesn’t set them off. They’ll jangle keys when they get close to them. They have someone dressed in all black that will walk by them just to emulate a security officer. That’s really the biggest criteria. If they don’t react negatively to any of that, and as long as they are under 50 pounds, we’ll take whatever dog they send us.
As far as breeds go, it’s kind of funny because I wouldn’t have thought this before I started, but the only breed that we have found that doesn’t really do well in the facilities are Working Dogs. So, Shepherds, Australian Cattle Dogs, any kind of herding dog we found does not do well in the program. And I think that’s just because they have all that pent up energy and they want to be worked constantly, so being in a confined space isn’t natural. That’s not to say if the shelter came to us with a herding dog and they were like, “Look, this is the perfect fit,” we would probably try it just because we trust our shelters so much to give us the right fit for the program. Just historically, that’s the one type of breed that doesn’t work well in there.
Do you train dogs from families or individuals, or do you always go with shelter dogs?
Always, always shelter dogs. We only bring in dogs that are from our approved shelter partners. We’re focused on homeless dogs. That’s our priority.
Anything else?
I just really can’t stress enough how great the men and women we work with in the DOC are. I’m not just talking about the staff there, although they are equally great. I’m talking about the incarcerated individuals. Working with them these past five months has fundamentally changed the way I view the world. I’ve always been very open-minded about giving people second chances, not judging somebody based on a mistake they’ve made in the past. Even having those feelings before working this job, these five months have fundamentally changed me as a person. It has taught me more about empathy and understanding and situational awareness than I ever could have hoped to learn any other way.