Henry, a 23-year-old Virginia native, was 12 years old when she founded Paws4people. For years, the company has been enlisting federal prisoners to train dogs that assist disabled children and war veterans.
What inspired you to start Paws4people at age 12?
I was one of those kids that had to do some arm-twisting to get my first puppy, and I’m an only child, so my parents really followed through with assigning me the training and caretaking responsibilities. When I was 12 I took my dog to a local nursing home and I saw how he made the people there so happy. I could appreciate that he was lighting up their lives in a way that was different than what any person could do.
How did prisoners become involved?
I went off to college in West Virginia where I was introduced to staff of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. They asked me if I could start a program where inmates would train the dogs within the prison. I realized it would greatly increase the number of dogs we could train. We now have programs in five federal prisons. That’s where the dogs are trained from puppyhood, and then they come to us for final training.
How do the dogs help disabled children and war veterans?
We train and place service dogs so they are customized to a person who has a specific disability. We aim to place dogs with disabled war veterans and we also specialize in children under the age of 14 who have physical and neurological disabilities. … We’ve gotten really good at training our dogs so special education teachers can utilize them in the classroom.
Do you charge for your services?
Right now we have operations in nine states and we have over 175 dogs certified. We don’t charge anyone for dogs or services so we rely on donations
What’s the hardest part of the training process?
Training the person [to work with the dog] is the hardest part. The dogs are pretty predictable.
Hayley Peterson
