People and dogs build confidence and skills together through nonprofit H.A.L.T.

• H.A.L.T. adopts dogs from a local shelter and holds classes where volunteers and teens living in residential treatment facilities train them together.
• Throughout each four-week session, the teens gain confidence, and the dogs gain skills that make them more likely to be adopted.
• Since the program began in 1987, over 1,500 young people have been through the program and over 500 dogs have been adopted.

This nonprofit helps both dogs and people become better versions of themselves. So its full name, Humans and Animals Learning Together, or H.A.L.T., is quite apt.

The organization hosts a four-week session each fall and spring at which young people living in residential treatment facilities gather with volunteers and dogs, and all teach each other new things.

H.A.L.T. adopts dogs from a local animal shelter ahead of each session and boards them for the duration. For four days out of each of those four weeks, the youths, usually between the ages 12 and 17, and the volunteers meet to teach the dogs basic obedience commands. With such training, the dogs are more likely to be adopted, and the teens build confidence while working with them.

Learning together in class

The dogs from this spring’s session − Sonny, Buffy, Rose and Harley − showed off their skills on the last day of class, demonstrating their ability to walk on a leash, sit, come and lie down.

Since the program began in 1987, over 1,500 kids have been through the program and over 500 dogs have been adopted, instructor and board secretary Jeannine Jones said.

Volunteers and students don’t discuss the details of the teens’ personal lives. H.A.L.T. classes are a time when the teens don’t have to focus directly on whatever challenges they might be facing, Jones told Knox News. Instead, they get to focus on the dogs.

Volunteers work either directly with a student and a dog on training or as instructors who lead the class.

“We don’t pry into their background at all,” said board member Julie Hart. “But because of where we know they’re coming from, we know that there’s some significant trauma or issues, right? And you would never know it watching them in class. They are sweet, they are responsive, they work.”

‘They can do lots of great things’

Although the teens aren’t able to adopt the dogs − it would be unfair considering multiple young people work with a dog over the course of each session, Hart said − they do each have the opportunity to write letters to the future owners and are kept up to date about the dogs’ status while they are at the treatment facility. As part of graduation, the teens receive keepsakes including photos of the dogs.

For this year’s spring session, each teen also got to take home a paw print of the dog they worked with, cast in a salt dough they made as part of the H.A.L.T. programming. After working with the dogs, the class participants go through a series of lessons that focus on topics such as careers with animals, pet ownership and the importance of spaying and neutering.

During spring classes this year, Celeste Longinotti, a graduate student at Lincoln Memorial University for occupational therapy, also incorporated new strategies to give the teens some extra support. These included teaching cooking skills, which she did through a lesson in making the salt dough, offering affirmations each clas, and discussing the seven Cs of resilience.

“I really do like to see and hope that they are making a connection that if they surround themselves with positive people who are interested in helping them that they can do lots of great things, the same way the dogs do,” Hart said. “That they go from maybe not being sure and not knowing what to do, to feeling really confident that ‘I took this dog, and I was able to teach her to do something.'”

H.A.L.T. is always looking for volunteers to help with sessions and to work adoption events. The nonprofit also seeks adopters for its dogs. To learn more about volunteer opportunities and available dogs, visit H.A.L.T.’s website at haltdogs.org.

Hayden Dunbar is the storyteller reporter. Email hayden.dunbar@knoxnews.com.

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