Kelvin Simmons was sitting in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta when a surprising offer came in: Would he be interested in training shelter dogs and taking life-skills classes instead of being in jail?
would be released from jail if they agreed to stay with the project for one year. And if they successfully trained a dog and finished the required self-help classes — including conflict resolution, parenting skills and time management — the charges against them would be dropped.“I’d been buffing floors and doing odd jobs in the jail to stay busy, so this came out of the blue and was a nice surprise,” said Simmons, 42.
“He was locked up, and I was locked up,” he said. “We’d both gone through some tough things in life. And now we were both getting a second chance.” “A dog doesn’t judge you — a dog just wants love,” she added. “And the dogs are completely reliant on these men succeeding.”