San Quentin puppy-training program graduates inaugural class

“It was incredibly rewarding, but also way more work and way more stress than I would have thought,” said Benoit.

Last week, Wendel and his fellow black lab Artemis became the first two puppies to graduate from the Canine Companions training program at San Quentin, which launched one year ago. A Friday ceremony marked the duo’s transition to the final stage of their training, as the dogs will spend the next six months with a professional trainer before they’re matched with clients in the U.S.

Canine Companions, a Santa Rosa-headquartered nonprofit, operates puppy training programs in 14 prisons across the country and outside of carceral settings. The organization trains around 200 dogs a year, James Dern, the director of puppy programs, told The Examiner.

Dern said the program was originally supposed to launch at San Quentin in 2017, but a lack of space and complications with the correctional officers union delayed it until after the pandemic.

“I’ve known about the programming that’s available here at San Quentin, and it just seemed like an ideal fit for what we do with the puppies,” Dern said. “Between the name recognition and everything else that this institution holds, I wanted to get in here for a long time.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has sought to fully discard the former state prison’s notorious reputation for mistreating the men incarcerated there, introducing a $380 million plan last year to turn it into what he tabbed a “model rehabilitation center.”

“I think that had we started the program back in 2017, it wouldn’t be as successful,” Dern said. “It would have been much more work and not quite the amount of buy-in from staff and administration that we have here.”

Dern said Canine Companions is also expanding a therapy-dog program into the psychiatric unit at San Quentin, he said, with therapy dogs also visiting the people currently incarcerated at the prison.

“I think dogs might be just what it takes to make life better than what it was,” he said. “That’s been incredible, both for our volunteers and for the people up there.”

The program’s dogs are bred in Sonoma County and placed with puppy-raising volunteers when they’re around eight weeks old. After four months, they’re introduced to the men chosen to be their trainers at San Quentin.

Each puppy gets two incarcerated handlers who share responsibilities. The puppies spend three months training at the prison, then are handed back to the puppy-raisers for a month to get different necessary experiences with socialization in public spaces — such as riding in cars or walking through a airports — that they can’t get at San Quentin. After a year, they’re ready to graduate.

Benoit and Jared Hansen demonstrated all Artemis and Wendel had learned during their year at the prison at Friday’s graduation.

From basic commands such as “fetch” to more complicated directions such as “dress” — at which the dog places its head inside its harness — the puppies demonstrated a range that impressed even Canine Companions CEO Paige Mazzoni.

“That was phenomenal,” she said. “Truly, truly amazing, I mean, [they] have a future as dog trainers someday, maybe.”

Not all the program’s puppies were ready to graduate Friday. Four are still training, including five-month-old Templeton. Lloyd Townsend, the dog’s handler, has been working with the lab for the last month.

“He’s good at everything,” said Townsend, a West Oakland native serving 50-to-life for murder. “Especially fetch.”

Townsend participated in another dog-training program called Paws for Life while serving time at California State Prison, Los Angeles County. When he heard a program was coming to San Quentin, he said, he applied and campaigned hard.

“They took a chance and let me in,” he said.

“I’ve done a lot of damage to the community,” Townsend said, adding that he hopes that Templeton might someday help a veteran with PTSD. “This is a way of giving back.”

Benoit’s connection to the program is far more personal than his fellow participants: His grandfather, Marv Tuttle, is a Canine Companions client. He said he recognized a flier for the program in February 2023 and, based on his grandfather’s experience, he knew he wanted to participate.

“I was hurt 25 years ago,” said Tuttle, who attended Friday’s graduation with his current service dog, Goose. “My occupational therapist suggested I get a canine companion, but I resisted for a long time.”

Tuttle, who is wheelchair-bound, said he initially felt he didn’t need a service dog. But he took the plunge 16 years ago when he received his first dog, Yara, who trained at Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, Montana.

“This dog was the most tried and true, focused, you couldn’t pull him off track if you wanted to,” Tuttle said of Yara. “I personally think he was as good as he was because he was prison-raised.”

Tuttle said Goose, who wasn’t trained inside of a prison, is plenty smart, able to push elevator buttons and turn light switches on and off. He said Yara’s successor is a great dog and, like his predecessor, helping Tuttle form fast connections with others.

“I know I have a chance to engage those people with whatever it is I’m doing and have a chance to be socially entwined with them,” Tuttle said, noting that people might not otherwise interact with him.

Benoit and Hansen are starting their work all over again with two new puppies, Margaret and Pippa. Margaret’s puppy-raiser attended the ceremony on Friday to hand her off to Benoit.

“It’s our first time co-raising with the prison,” said Kristin Cardenas, who has helped raise three puppies with her family so far. Cardenas said she got involved with the program during the pandemic as a way to give back.

With her husband working full time and her schedule as a high-school teacher in Mountain View, she said she felt that this was a good division of time and labor.

“I’m excited for Margaret to get all this attention and training,” she said. “Everything feels right.”

Benoit, a self-professed “longtime dog lover,” said he is going to miss Wendel, but that he’s looking forward to working with Margaret in the coming months. He said the program has already given him so much.

“This program came at an extremely difficult time in my life, and I wasn’t 100% sure if the responsibility of a puppy was the right idea,” Benoit said, reflecting upon when he first signed up in 2023. “But it turns out it’s exactly what I needed.”