A local dog trainer is working to give second chances to both shelter dogs and women incarcerated at the Western Correctional Center for Women in Swannanoa.
Tessa Sternbach owns Ruff Life Dog Training Services in Asheville and, for the past two and a half years, has also been running the New Leash on Life program in Western North Carolina.
The program pairs two dogs from Charlie’s Angels Animal Rescue with four incarcerated women at the correctional center. Sternbach said the program can last from eight to 12 weeks and the dogs live with the women during that time. Each dog is paired with two women.
During the weeks the dogs are living with the women, the dogs learn general obedience, and Sternbach said she is able to learn more about the dogs themselves, what their personalities are and what they like.
Around Week 5, Sternbach said she will take the dogs out of the correctional facility and out in public to get them used to being around other people and dogs.
“We’ll go venture around Lake Tomahawk and go to Tractor Supply to also gauge how they do out in public and meeting new people, which is a great opportunity,” Sternbach said.
She said the dogs that come into the program can range from puppies that have just come to the animal rescue or older dogs that have been in shelters for a while.
“It’s a lot of fun and really wonderful for the inmates and the dogs,” Sternbach said. “Really, simplest way to put it is just giving everybody a second chance. It’s very rewarding for everybody.”
Sternbach described the program as “wonderful” and her “favorite thing to do.”
To be in the program, the women must apply and be near the end of their sentence. Sternbach said while the women do get paid something, “it’s not much.”
Once selected, the women will go through two rounds of dogs and training before new women are selected.
Sternbach said the goal of the program is to benefit both the women and the dogs.
“The ultimate goal I would say is to enrich both the inmates lives and the dogs lives and then build real-world skills for both the inmates and the dogs and then make the dogs highly adoptable,” Sternbach said.
She said while “about 70%” of the dogs that have been through the program get adopted “pretty immediately,” there are some that don’t. Sternbach said this is “unfortunate” because the dogs don’t get to practice the skills they had learned while in the New Leash on Life program.
“I think park of that is the climate at this point,” Sternbach said. “There’s just too many dogs out there that are needing homes and not enough people.”
The program paused briefly during Tropical Storm Helene as Sternbach lost Ruff Life Dog Training Services to the storm and the Western Correctional Center for Women was evacuated. The dogs that were in the correctional center when Helene hit were taken back to the shelter.
Sternbach said it took around two months for the women to return to the correctional center and for the New Leash on Life program to get started again, but they are now “up and fully running again,” as Ruff Life Dog Training Services.
The next “graduation” for the dogs in the program will be Aug. 16. Updates can be found on Charlie’s Angels Animal Rescue social media.
Sternbach said she is “grateful” to be part of the program.
“It’s fun to grow with the ladies, grow with the dogs and see them evolve,” Sternbach said. “Many of the women I’ve worked with start off very quiet and unsure of themselves and then, several weeks in, as the dogs are progressing and they’re building that relationship with them, they really blossom. … The relationships they build with the dogs are beautiful.”
Karrigan Monk is the Swannanoa Valley communities reporter for Black Mountain News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kmonk@blackmountainnews.com.
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