Today we’d like to introduce you to Susan Jacobs-Meadows.
Susan, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was a business owner, with a widely varied professional background – military, health club management, marketing, insurance, accounting – with no intention of doing anything different when I first heard about programs that involved incarcerated persons and animals. I started learning about them and was becoming more interested when someone I knew who worked at Fulton County Jail asked if I would help him find small businesses that would be open to the idea of hiring inmates who were part of a work-release program. I said sure, but asked for a favor in return — I asked that he get me in the door to talk about starting a jail dogs program in Fulton County Jail. I had no idea my life was about to take a very drastic turn! The first meeting happened, and then the 2nd, and 18 long hard months of coming back with new ideas, new concepts, and new solutions to potential problems ensued. A program like this was a new concept for Fulton County Jail and a very big leap for them. They didn’t see how this could possibly work.
On June 3 of 2013, Canine CellMates launched. It was tough – really tough! But we kept going. We came to understand the stories behind these men, and how they got there, and I knew that this was exactly where we – and these dogs – needed to be. We tell these men that while they are with us, we are their family, and for as long as they want us to be after they leave Fulton County Jail, we are their family. The dogs are obedience trained and adopted into carefully screened adoptive homes after they graduate. We provide educational programming, classes, and speakers while they are in the program, and assist them to the best of our ability after they are released. The dogs are an integral part of the change we see in these men while they are with us – their acceptance and unconditional love creates a crack in the hard exterior that most of these men have around them, and then the classes, ideas, concepts can start to be absorbed. Our mission statement – Utilizing Shelter Dogs to Change the Lives of Incarcerated Men – really is the essence of Canine CellMates.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There has not been much that was smooth about this. Starting a program inside the walls of the largest jail by population in the Southeast, fraught with many, many issues was an enormous challenge. It was so far outside the culture of anything that had been done there before that many did not believe it could ever work. Lt. Col Adger is an outside the box thinker and had it not been for his ability to try something new, this could not have happened.
There were challenges with officers who did not think the program should be there, struggles with volunteers learning and understanding what is permissible inside a jail, learning what specific temperaments of dogs would work inside this stressful environment, learning what mentality of inmates would be receptive to, and an asset to, the program, along with the sheer struggle of enough time to make this all happen in any given day. After 4 1/2 years of running a business, along with Canine CellMates, I made the tough decision to close my business to focus on this mission. I love fashion, and helping women feel beautiful, but when I compared that to saving dogs and helping men to start down a path of positive change, there really was no decision.
Please tell us about Canine CellMates.
We are a jail dogs program that runs inside Fulton County Jail. We pull dogs from Fulton County Animal Services and move them into the building on the FCJ campus that our program operates out of. They reside there 24 hours a day during this ten-week program. It is a ten-week training program. We train these dogs in basic obedience. We hold training classes five days a week, led by our certified trainer Jeanette Holloway, and training assistants. The dogs are all expected to pass an obedience test by the time they graduate. We have a volunteer role called Program Coordinators that spend a three-hour block of time once a week inside the jail. These people hold group sessions that include team building, personal growth, finding your inner creativity, current events and debating skills, resume writing and interviewing skills, job networking, anger management, and conflict resolution.
We also bring speakers in weekly to talk to these men about a wide variety of topics that are meant to motivate, educate and inspire these men to see the world a little differently than they did before. For highly invested handlers in the program, we do court advocacy work and speak to the judges and the district attorneys on their behalf – we have had many amazing outcomes from this work. Post-release, we assist these men in the ways that we can – basic clothing, toiletries and food for those that leave with nothing, Marta cards so they can get around, assistance in housing placement, and job leads. Most importantly, if they reach out to us – as our aftercare is a program of attraction, not promotion – we support them, care for them, and love them as a family would. Based on our research, we are the most comprehensive program of our kind in the country.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memories center around family. Time on the farm with my grandparents in Nebraska centered me and kept me grounded – my grandparents were hardworking, practical people. Holidays are also favorite memories for me. My mother and grandmother loved holidays of all kinds – there were always decorations and food – lots of food. Christmas mornings were spent opening gifts one at a time, oohing and aahing over everyone, followed by a delicious meal of more food than we could possibly eat.
Contact Info:
- Address: Canine CellMates
7742 Spalding Drive, Suite 393
Norcross, GA 30092 - Website: www.caninecellmates.org
- Phone: 404-399-9392
- Email: info@caninecellmates.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caninecellmates/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CanineCellMates/
Image Credit:
Kelly Kline, Treehouse Photo Studio, Amy Jackson
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