Jail time for disorderly dogs

DENVER - Buddy has eaten lawn furniture. He has eaten the decorative lights set up in the backyard of the McGrigg's home.

So it was hardly a surprise when Kim McGrigg happened upon Buddy not too long ago and saw him helping himself to nearly a dozen freshly-baked cookies.

"He's just hard to handle," she told 9NEWS.

"Buddy's pretty much done everything destructive you can think of," added her son Charlie.

On Thursday, Kim and Charlie did the only thing they could think of when it came to Buddy's future - they opted for jail time.

We're hardly joking. A few minutes later she put Buddy in her car and wheeled him down to the Denver Women's Correctional Facility.

"C'mon Buddy let's go," she told him.

"(Buddy's) kind of figured out how to push their buttons, and by the time he goes home he will be a totally different animal," Debi Stevens said, shortly after Buddy arrived.

Stevens runs the K-9 Prison Trained Companion Program. Started in 2002, the program now sends dogs to prisons all over Colorado.

Most are sent from shelters where their fate is all but certain.

For $400, however, individual dog owners can send their misbehaving pooches into the program. Trained inmates will then oversee a discipline program for the next month that will, if all goes well, transform even the worst cookie eaters into models of restraint.

"We have dogs that when people come and pick them up say 'I can't believe my dog can do that,'" said Stevens.

There is often times a waiting list for the program. Stevens says they're looking into expanding it into additional prisons in the future because she says it's working so well.

"It teaches (inmates) life skills they might have missed out on," said Stevens.

For more information on the program head to http://www.coloradoci.com/ and look for the K-9 Companion button on the left-hand side of the page.