Sasha with service dog Ronnie

In October, I received an email from my dogs’ old obedience school, looking for someone to train a service puppy on the weekends. I had been interested in dog training since fourth grade, when I first helped my teacher train a service dog. Since then, I had worked with my puppies, but when I received this email, I wrote back immediately, volunteering to take the puppy. Little did I know that raising this puppy would be one of the most rewarding—and heart-wrenchingly upsetting—things I’d ever do.

Ronnie and I spent our first weekend together in the end of October when she was 10 months old and I had just turned 17. We developed a bond, and I was crushed when we said goodbye on Sunday night. But of course I had the next weekend to look forward to, and as we headed into the dark winter months, Ronnie became the light at the end of my weeks.

Ronnie was owned by NEADS (National Education for Assistance Dog Services), which is based in Princeton, Mass. Ronnie was part of a NEADS program called “Prisoner Pup Partnership,” which enables inmates at various prisons around New England to raise puppies. The inmates work on obedience with the puppies during the week and live with weekend puppy raisers on the weekends in order for them to be exposed to the tumultuous and distracting world outside of prison.

As Ronnie’s weekend puppy raiser, it was my job to introduce her to as many new sounds, sights, smells and situations as possible each weekend. The goal for the dogs is that, as puppies, they will have been exposed to everything they could possibly encounter later on in life, and therefore won’t be scared or shocked by anything when they’re eventually certified service dogs.

At NEADS, the dogs are sent out to their foster families or to the prisons at around three months old and come back to NEADS when they’re about 16 months old. They then remain at NEADS and undergo intensive training for one to three months, until they’re paired with someone. NEADS raises many different types of service dogs. The organization trains dogs that are paired with veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or who may have a physical disability as a result of war. Dogs are also paired with physically and mentally disabled adults, and very often with children too through the “Dogs for Disabled Kids” program.

When I got Ronnie, I realized we would only be together for about six months, until she was ready to go back to NEADS for the next stage of her training. And yet somehow, I never thought the day would come when we’d have to say goodbye. But it did.

On Sunday, April 12, Ronnie and I said goodbye. As I drove her back to prison for the last time, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I thought about all of the adventures we had, the restaurants we had gone to, the movies we had seen, shopping trips she had accompanied me on, the day I convinced my principal to let her come to school with me, the Nordic ski races when she cheered me on and, best of all, the day she visited Brandeis and Tufts with me while doing college visits. Ronnie had become one of my best friends; we spent every weekend together, and with one look at each other, we could convey all of our feelings.

I walked into jail with her on that last night, feebly attempting to contain my tears in front of the guard. And as he led me and Ronnie down the hallway to the trap, where I gave her one last kiss before she met her prisoner on the other side, I couldn’t hold my tears back any longer. The heavy reinforced door on my side of the trap closed, and the door of the other side opened to expose Ronnie’s prisoner. She turned around, imploring me with her soulful brown eyes, and that was when I knew she’d succeed as a service dog.

Many nights when I dropped her back off at the jail, we would say a quick goodbye and then she would happily trot down the hallway to her prisoner. But on that night, she understood I was upset, and she wanted to stay with me to comfort me. My crying had unsettled her, and she had recognized her duty and had known that it was her job to stay with me.  

Sasha Lansky is a high school senior who enjoys running, kayaking, biking, reading, leading her STAND chapter, being the longest-serving board member of her local B’nai Tzedek Youth Foundation and doing all she can for Hazon. She’s also a member of the JVibe Teen Advisory Board.