Several weeks ago I had the good fortune of seeing "If Animals Could Talk," a movie made by Jane Goodall. A segment was about The McLaren Training School For Boys, near Portland, Oregon. The boys incarcerated there have committed serious criminal offences and some of them are given an opportunity to train dogs, develop relationships with “their” dog and in doing so learn responsibility, patience and respect. There is a zero recidivism rate among the juvenile inmates who spend time training dogs at McLaren. Joan Dalton, the founder and executive director of Project Pooch, a non-profit corporation linked with McLaren, and I visited by phone from her home near Portland, Oregon on February 15, 2010. She began by telling how Project Pooch came about and then about Project Pooch itself. The books that Joan Dalton recommends are “Children And Animals: Exploring The Roots Of Kindness And Cruelty” by Frank R. Ascione and “Rescue Ink: How Ten Guys Saved Countless Dogs and Cats, Twelve Horses, Five Pigs, One Duck,and a Few Turtles” by Rescue Ink and Denise Flaim. You may visit the Project Pooch website at www.pooch.org.
