Host: I’m Lanissa Rozier, welcome to WMUB. Today we’ll be welcoming Deputy Brandi McClure from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office to tell us a little bit abut their bondable pups program. Can you start by telling us a little bit about the bondable pups program and its purpose.

Guest: The purpose of bondable pups is to get dogs out of our local shelter, bring them back to the jail. And we work with him and make them household ready.

Host: So who started this programming; when did it get started?

Guest: It got started in January of 2017 by Sheriff David Davis and our former ADA Elizabeth Bobbitt Presley. They came up with the idea, because we had such a high euthanasia rate at the shelter, to have the inmates work with the dogs, because it was already such a great program that was working out in the prisons and other jail facilities.

Host: Who all is involved?

Guest: The Department of Corrections up in Gwinnett and other surrounding prisons have their own jail dog programs, a lot of prisons send their inmates out to their local shelter to do just volunteer work and community service to get back. But when they’re in the jail, it’s kind of like in the prison, they’re incarcerated, but they get to come out on detail. And when they come out on data with me, since I’m the only one there, I do the majority of the training with the dogs. And the inmates will feed them, they’ll exercise them. And they learned the backup training so that they can keep working with the dogs as I’m working with new ones when we get them in.

Host: And how exactly does this program give back to the community? How do you guys use this program and take it back?

Guest: Well, the current inmates that we have, not only do they train the dogs, but they also build dog houses. We will go out when our animal enforcement or our shelter calls. And if our animal enforcement officers or our shelter staff can’t deliver hay or dog houses, then we will go out and deliver dog houses and hay to people in the community that can’t afford it. So they, we, also work with the youth detention center and the alternative school for at risk juveniles. And while we’re there, our juveniles get to do classes and learn about sympathy and empathy. Some of the things they may not be taught at home are growing up. And hopefully, it’ll keep them out of the system because I get to work with dogs. So patience is the main thing that they learn.

Host: My last question will be where do you see the future of this program going?

Guest: I see the future of the program going in a lot of direction, actually. One, it’s if we can get everybody on board and help out as much as we can in the community, we can reduce our strike population, which will greatly reduce the euthanasia rate at our shelter. We’ll be able to have more inmates, more people stepping up and helping to train the dogs and get them family ready.