The mentally ill inmate has long been a recluse in his cell, refusing to utter a word to anyone or go anywhere near a therapy session. But lately, the man has been coming out of his cell — and his shell — with little or no prodding. It’s whenever he sees Lazy Daisy sauntering through the prison pod, wagging her tail. The black Labrador mix, once on “doggie death row,” has a calming, even therapeutic effect on the inmate and many others.
Lazy Daisy is the star of a new animal-therapy program started for severely mentally ill inmates at Centennial Correctional Facility in Cañon City. She has the ability but not the inclination to bark. She freely gives and receives love without fear among some of the most dangerous offenders in Colorado’s prison system.
“It’s a piece of the outside world that some of these guys haven’t had in a long time,” said Darce DeWitt, a mental health worker at Centennial. “She gives them lots of slobbery, wet kisses.”
The prisoners pet and walk Lazy Daisy. They teach her commands and toss a rubber ball for her to fetch. Some prisoners simply stare as Lazy Daisy frolics. Seldom-seen smiles form on their faces.
The program could soon be expanded to other prisons, including San Carlos Correctional Facility, the Pueblo prison that houses the Colorado prison system’s most severely mentally ill inmates.
DeWitt said having a dog in the cellblock relieves anxiety in a tense atmosphere and is a bright spot for inmates suffering from acute depression.
The Colorado Department of Corrections has long had programs in which inmates train rescue dogs to become pet or service dogs for someone outside prison. But this is the first time that dogs are being trained and used as therapy for the prisoners themselves.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, DeWitt brings Lazy Daisy or Romero — a Chihuahua — to prison to spend a few hours with the inmates. Romero loves to cuddle up in the laps of inmates and doze off.
Michael Bowen, a prison dog trainer serving a 70-year sentence for second-degree murder out of Colorado Springs, said having dogs in prison was a great idea.
“When you have a guy who is stressed out and Daisy puts her head in his lap, it has a calming effect,” Bowen said between giving commands to the eager-to-please Lazy Daisy. “They open up. It brightens their whole outlook. You have the hardest guys coming up and petting the dogs.”
Bowen might easily be considered one of those hardest guys. During a robbery of a video store in 2006, he beat a 39-year-old in the back of the head with a 2-by-4. On Thursday, though, Lazy Daisy obediently followed his gentle commands, even when he ordered her to stay after dropping a doggie treat on the floor.
“It’s changed me. I was a knucklehead who didn’t care,” said Bowen, who went from learning how to train dogs, to training men to train the animals. “It’s a dog in prison. Who wouldn’t be happy with that?”
Matthew Diggers, who is serving a life prison sentence for a second-degree murder conviction in 1988, is part of the program for severely mentally ill inmates. He wrote a message to The Denver Post describing how another program dog named Zipper affected him on a particularly bad prison day.
“I petted him, and when I shook his paw, it was like I was shaking hands with a true friend,” Diggers wrote. “The mood I was in before went away. I only had an hour with him, but that hour was the best hour I had in a very long while.”
In retrospect, he said he wishes a close prison friend of his, who often reminisced about dogs he had as a child, would have had the opportunity to spend time with a prison dog.
“Maybe my friend wouldn’t have killed hisself,” Diggers wrote. “If he could of petted Zipper, he would of had more to look forward to.”
Christopher Stehle, also in the program, said seeing the dogs always brings him peace of mind.
“I leave this place in my mind. … I can be having a bad day, and when I see the dog, it puts a big smile on my face,” he wrote. “My bad day gone just like that, and when they come up to show me love right then and there, that is all they want. They won’t hurt me. Just show love. They bring a kind of peace to the pod because other people want to hold, feed, pet, play with them.”
Tears welled up in the eyes of an inmate upon seeing Lazy Daisy, DeWitt said. They were tears of joy for an inmate who grew up on a farm with a lot of dogs but who hadn’t seen one in 26 years.
The dogs are having a tangible impact on the unit for mentally ill inmates, said Jennifer Castner, interim health services administrator at Centennial. Tension drops and inmates open up to one another, talking about their pets.
“If you can reduce violence in prison, you’ve got to find something to connect with inmates,” Castner said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, denverpost.com/coldcases or twitter.com/kirkmitchell
