(Christopher): I am a dog handler with 19 years of experience training dogs.
I’ve rehabilitated traumatized Pit bulls and breathed excitement and life into skittish Chihuahuas. I’ve trained aggressive Akita’s and brought order to high energy German Shepherds. And I learned how to do it all here in prison.
At Madison Correctional (MaCI) we have two dog programs, a ‘pound rescue’ program known as the Fresh Start Canine/Feline Program, and a Staff Dogs program.
I began my journey training dogs in 2007 in MaCI’s Fresh Start Canine/Feline program. The program has ties to London, Ohio’s animal shelter which sends dogs into the prison. Once here, and over the course of 3-6 months, I would train and rehabilitate them. It was common for dogs to arrive traumatized from their time at the shelter. I can’t help but notice similar parallels to life in prison. Incarcerated people endure incarceration borne traumas from the prison experience.
Once trained the dogs are put up for adoption.
At Ohio’s 3000 person women’s prison, the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW), there are dog programs similar to ours.
My friend Nicole Leslein is a dog handler at ORW. We share a love for the dogs and find peace and comfort interacting with them.
(Nicole): My name is Nicole Leslein and I am a dog handler with the Ohio Reformatory for Women’s Pawsabilities Dog Program. I have been a dog handler since November of 2021.
When I first got to the dog program housing unit, within minutes I wanted to move out. I felt out of place among the clickety-clicks for the women acted like they were better than everyone. The Sargent at the time talked me into staying and giving it a solid chance. I was a GED student struggling with school and it was a lot to cope with but I stayed.
(Christopher): There’s a lot of politicking that goes on in prison dog programs. The men can be self-serving adding a layer of potential frustration and stress if not actively guarded against. On more than one occasion over the years I too contemplated quitting.
Personalities notwithstanding, the pound program was the equivalent of an entry level job. Anyone with a clean institutional record was eligible, save for certain disqualifying charges.
Once I was part of the program I enrolled into the 2 year 4000 hour dog apprenticeship program to earn state recognized certification. My time in the pound program equipped me with valuable skills in training and caring for dogs. I also developed skills to interact constructively with the complex personalities of my working peers.
In 2019 my certification opened the door to the program I am currently in, the Staff Dog Program. Each dog is owned by a staffer. My certification will allow me the freedom to open my own dog related business upon release.
(Nicole): The Pawsabilities Dog Program had steps I had to take and pass to actually get an assigned dog. I took Group One and passed which took me four months. Afterward I decided to work on becoming a ‘reactive dog handler’ which deals with the more complex dogs. These are the dogs who struggle with the different stimuli they encounter in their day. I liked and looked up to my mentor. In this program we handled ‘staff’ owned dogs.
(Christopher): The Staff Dog program has been an enjoyable experience. I see a side of staff that most incarcerated people don’t see that is open and kind. Inmate, guard — we are all people. It is a hopeful feeling.
The dogs are wonderful and I have opportunity to train in addition to providing daycare and boarding services. I earn a small wage for the services I provide which amounts to pennies on the hour. Despite this my job is a privileged and coveted position. I’ve been in the Staff Dog program for 8 years. I was in the Fresh Start Canine/Feline program prior to Staff Dogs for 11 years and did the exact same work for free. The fact I earn anything is a bonus because I don’t do this for the money.
(Nicole): I eventually became a mentor in the program. The staff program at this time had 40-45 dog handlers and averaged about 28 dogs a day. It cost $5 a day to keep your dog in daycare or to board for 24 hours.
We offer a full-service groom room where your dog can get a bath (8.00-16.00 depending upon dog size); and even a haircut — anything from a simple trim to a breed cut for a poodle.
(Christopher): We don’t have a grooming service here like Nicole’s at this time. However, I bathe, groom, and clip the dog’s claws whenever needed without compensation. The dogs are like family members to those who own them, and I always try to give back more than I receive.
(Nicole): My job as a mentor was rough at times and not everyone always liked me. Some even called me “Lt. Leslein” to be funny. I am a huge animal lover and will always advocate for the animals. I can say this: I was fair and held everyone to the same standards. I created programs to help train the handlers, stayed a mentor, dog scheduler, and officer’s runner (where I was tasked with errands) for 2 1/2 years. In that time I learned a lot about being a leader, dog handler and person.
My five years in the pawsabilities Dog Program made me a better person and saved my life. It has given me purpose and is something I plan on continuing once I go home. I love the dogs and the unconditional love they give humans.
(Christopher): In prison we are faced with choices. Do we pursue values and goals that build the foundation for a new life outside where as law abiding citizens we thrive? Or do we pursue the values and ambitions of prison life where there is no future and where there is no possibility for growth nor change? I have faced push back from the men around me not in the program, for I choose a proper path.
As a dog handler I have found purpose and inspiration to be the best version of self I can be. I’ve learned how to cope with different personalities, manage my time, and effectively work with others. All of which have helped me to build a solid foundation for a successful future.
*Christopher Monihan is a writer, author, journalist, and Stillwater Award recipient. His newest book is available on Amazon.
*Nicole Leslein recently was released and is now home where she plans to open her own dog business.
Category: Rehabilitation
Prison Dogs Changed Our Lives
Hope & Joy At Prison Fest
By Christopher Monihan
“What does the sunflower on your shirt represent to you?” Says the WBNS 10 TV anchor. I’ve watched her on television for years but never imagined I’d be at a women’s prison being interviewed by her.
“It represents hope to me,” I say. “It represents a new beginning.”
I’m a Harmony Project choir singer at Madison Correctional Institution (MaCI). Today is June 02, 2026 and I’m at the 4th annual Sunflower Arts & Music Festival at the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW).
The festival is sponsored by Harmony and brings together three Ohio prisons MaCI, ORW and Pickaway Correctional (PCI). Columbus, Ohio based Harmony works within prisons and the Columbus community spreading a message of hope and unity through contemporary music.
“Where you are does not define who you are,” David Brown tells us. Brown is founder and director of Harmony and this refrain underpins Harmony’s prison arts program.
I’ve been a Harmony choir singer four years running. Today is my fourth time attending the festival and fourth time I’ll have presented a spoken word to the thousands in attendance.
I am filled with feelings of hope, joy, and unselfish love. The crowd is like family to me. My message today is designed to lift others and offer hope to those who have forgotten what hope feels like.
Before the day is over I’ll have spoken to the outgoing Ohio Director of Prisons Ms. Annette Chambers-Smith; the founder of Papa John’s Pizza; the CEO of Papa John’s Pizza; and the wardens of ORW and MaCI.
In the morning we gather in the ORW gymnasium along with PCI and ORW choirs. In attendance are dozens of important guests –from ODRC correctional leadership, to Harmony donors — all of whom make the day possible.
“Do you think we’ll get to see the children of Sunflower House?” I say, to my friend Corey.
“I hope so,” he says as we take seats at chairs on the gym floor.
Harmony has a longstanding relationship with the children’s Sunflower Hospice in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Last year we sang to them by video link and the children sang to us. It’s a moment that’s joyful and heavy for many of us.
In the morning the men’s choirs sing ‘Good News’ by Shaboozey and ‘Amen’ by Shaboozey and Jelly Roll to the guests and ORW choir. The ORW women sing an amazing rendition of the 70’s disco classic ‘Dancing Queen’. By the time they finish many of us are wiping away tears from our eyes.
We watch a prerecorded video from the children of Sunflower House singing and dancing for us. I can’t help but think of how there’s so much light in our world of shadows.
In the afternoon we assemble on the prison yard for a lawn concert rocking the crowd. All three choirs together sing several songs for the massive crowd. When we’re not singing several Ohio bands perform for us, cover songs the crowd knows by heart.
It is time for me to present my spoken word.
I stand upon the huge concert stage, mic in hand, big screen at my back and I look out upon the crowd. Cheerful voices reach me and waiving hands draw my attention. I can’t help but know, as every incarcerated person does, that there is a lot of trauma, longing, and sadness beneath many faces in the crowd.
My spoken word is for the outside guests in attendance who know not our struggles as incarcerated people — and for the crowd. Except, for us my message is one of hope that says, no matter who you are or what you are going through you are going to be okay. WE are going to be okay.
Shortly afterward it is time to go. The day has come to an end and we depart.
I peer through the steel mesh of the prison bus window and take in the passing countryside. I feel peace and contentment. My thoughts are on the many people I leave behind today.
For four years I have experienced this return ride back to my prison. I grow a little inside each time, but I heal more than anything.
*Christopher Monihan is a writer, author, journalist and Stillwater Award recipient. He is incarcerated in Ohio.
Prison Trauma
There is something important to me that I want to share with you today. Within prison there is a lot of trauma. My prison isn’t unique in that regard, but I state it as an often overlooked statement of fact.
Over 31 years of uninterrupted incarceration, I’ve learned that the majority of incarcerated people have backgrounds steeped in traumas. Many were abused as children, grew up in broken homes, or experienced the foster care system (don’t get me started on the foster care system. Children in foster care are exposed to all manner of trauma). A high percentage of the men around me tick off more than just those three boxes.
All of this pales in comparison to what I first termed IBPTSD in my 2023 PJP op-ed (What Caused His PTSD? This Prison Right Here) which is Incarceration Borne Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder. Jails and prisons harm mental health by design; they are structured to maximize control and confinement. Little consideration is paid to how this impacts mental health. This is the second often overlooked statement of fact.
For example, community areas in cellblocks and dorms utilize constant on security lighting. At night these lights illuminate sleeping areas and beam through cell windows. Jails and prisons also employ high intensity outside security lighting. These lights pour through outside facing windows compounding the issue.
When I was in the county jail a light in front of the row of cells remained on for the entire 130 days I was there. By the time I left the Stark County Jail I suffered from extreme anxiety and insomnia. It’s worth noting that the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on mental health are well documented.
Another example of how jails impact mental health comes by way of testimony from Erica Rowe. She recounts her experience with lice in jail:
“When the jail gets full the jail issues these plastic boats which are placed on the floor with a mat. I slept on the floor in one of these boats and it was freezing cold all the time. One night I felt something crawling over me. I hop out of the boat freaking out and calling for the officers…”
Erica is taken to the jail nurse:
“It was lice and I knew it was that because as a kid I’d had it. The nurse forces me into allowing her to cut my hair off…She grabs a pair of scissors and hacks my ponytail off ‘to make it easier’ for the NIX treatment.
“I was so attached to beauty and vanity I cried when she did this. I have few memories from the county jail 19 years ago, but this one still stands out.”
Another source of stress for incarcerated people is the loss of personal autonomy. Days are regimented and subdivided by numerous counts of the incarcerated population. Incarcerated people are told when they can eat, use restrooms, shower, visit with family, and recreate amongst a hundred other things. It is well established in studies that loss of personal autonomy negatively impacts mental health.
However, no one seems to meaningfully consider this next statement of fact: In prison thousands of individuals from all walks of life, shouldering all manner of trauma and addiction are thrown in together and expected to normalize. People with violent backgrounds, sexual predators, suffering drug addictions, and gang members who know nothing but life in the streets are all thrown into one place. I ask, What do you think happens? The violence and chaos marking a typical day in prison impacts mental and physical health.
Assaults, robberies, murder, mini riots–I’ve witnessed them all. I know what death and drug overdose looks like. I’ve witnessed suicides and rape. None of this shocks me anymore for the abnormal of the prison experience becomes the new normal.
I wonder sometimes, if when I am free again and alone with time to myself, if these traumas I’ve boxed away in my subconscious will come gibbering back to collect their due. If I were to dwell on what I witness I would end up like so many incarcerated people deeply traumatized. This isn’t to say I don’t cope with my own IBPTSD because I do. I’m luckier than most because I cope out of sheer will. Others aren’t as fortunate.
Being a father or mother in prison exacts a heavy mental toll. Felicia Sullivan, an incarcerated mother in Ohio, shares her experience:
“The arrival of 9PM count brings on the challenge of laying my head down on my pillow, with the hope of falling asleep. Wanting no time to recall the day.
“I struggle with excruciating pain knowing my children are growing up in this cold world without me. To fend for themselves now raised in separate households.
“Having lived a life of feeling only pain, I have to do things to remind myself that I’m still alive. That I still have a piece of my old self even if it’s not a healthy piece. That girl still exists.”
I focus on the impact of IBPTSD to draw awareness. Without recognition hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people will return to communities struggling to pick up their lives.
In the past several years numerous states have instituted the body worn camera (BWC) in prisons and jails without well thought out protocols on how BWCs would impact the mental health and civil rights of incarcerated people.
In Ohio BWCs were implemented without careful consideration for incarcerated people’s civil rights under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). At my facility an officer initially wore BWC while conducting strip searches. The practice ended only after the threat of civil rights lawsuit under the PREA act by the ACLU.
The same thing appears to be playing out in other States. Amber, a friend of mine in Michigan incarcerated at the Women’s Huron Valley (WHV) correctional facility, shared with me her experience with BWC prison borne trauma.
She related that it’s already bad enough that we’re removed from society and thrust into deplorable living conditions which she (and I can attest, that this is true for many others) says is mentally and physically hard as it is. Add to this, for women many of whom are survivors of sexual assault, to be recorded by BWC during a strip search is traumatizing.
Since writing me for this post her facility modified BWC policy during strip searches. Protocol now requires officers to turn off BWC video but continue to record audio. This is little comfort to the 900 WHV incarcerated women for compliance rests solely with the officer.
In Ohio, an officer removes a BWC before conducting a strip search. It leaves no room to bend or break policy. Michigan could take a play out of Ohio’s playbook.
There is no official recognition of IBPTSD in psychiatry’s authoritative reference manual the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). The closest recognition exists in what the psychiatric profession calls Post Incarceration Syndrome, where restored citizens struggle to reintegrate.
There needs to be focused studies on how the prison experience itself causes trauma. Once recognized incarcerated people can receive IBPTSD psychiatric help while incarcerated, which at this time does not exist.
*Christopher Monihan is a writer, author, journalist and Stillwater Award recipient. He is incarcerated in Ohio.
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December 03, 2025
Here we are December 2025 and my 31st year of incarceration. Had you asked me when I began my sentence how I’d feel come the year 2025, I might have passed out. Just the thought I could still be incarcerated 31 years later might have sent me seeking a high ledge.
Yet, here I am. You want to know something? I feel optimism and gratitude in this moment. I am grateful because time sanded away all the rough edges of my ignorance and immaturity, leaving a man with direction, understanding, and purpose. My time on the inside has opened my eyes.
I know many of you know this about me having followed my journey for years. I am grateful to all of you, knowing that my life is worthy of interest and inquiry. Because of you I thrive and find meaning and purpose.
To the many new readers who have discovered me, thank you for taking time out of your lives to follow mine and those of other writers here.
2025 has been an amazing year. The universe reflects back upon us that which we send out into it, and I want to share a little with you that has come back to me.
In May and for the third time in as many years, I spoke in front of hundreds of people at Harmony’s annual Sunflower Arts and Music Festival held at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. The festival brings together three prisons — two men’s, one women’s — for a day long event celebrating our shared humanity and common bond. On YouTube visit the channel: HarmonyProjectOnline. There you will find the incarcerated men and women of Harmony, along with the amazing people of Harmony and supporters (free world and within Ohio Corrections). You will also see me in several videos!
The Harmony Project visits my prison once a week and for an hour we sing and share in community. For that hour I literally forget that I am in prison. Harmony’s volunteers are heaven sent and although Harmony is nondenominational I can’t help but think of these words from the Bible:
“Be sure to welcome strangers, for in so doing you may have welcomed Angels unaware.”
If there are Angels among us, I know who some of them are.
This summer I was accepted into Kindway Embark’s highly coveted and respected faith based reentry program (Google: Kindway Embark of Columbus, Ohio). We meet twice a week for fellowship and discipleship. Kindway Embark’s volunteers are amazing, caring human beings that I am grateful are a key part of my life. I look forward to coming back into Ohio’s prisons with Kindway Embark someday as a volunteer. I want to spread the same hope to Ohio’s incarcerated men and women that I receive when these volunteers are here. If you are with Kindway Embark thank you from the bottom of my heart.
My voice continues to thrive and as a writer 2025 was a good year. I saw my work in numerous publications most notable Prison Journalism Project; Inside; Exchange; and publications at Columbia and Cornell universities.
My personal mission to draw awareness to incarceration borne PTSD (ibPTSD) continues to gain traction with new contacts in academia and nonprofits; and I discovered and joined an amazing writers group consisting of some of the most accomplished incarcerated writers in the country. It’s no secret I live to write and write to live.
I have only begun. Upon release I shall go from incarcerated writer to founder and editor of my own organization dedicated to magnifying the journalism, writings, and lives of America’s marginalized incarcerated people. Nobody knows the hidden truths of incarceration — and can shed light on them, for we have lived it first hand — better than current and formerly incarcerated people.
Most importantly an organization founded and staffed by formerly incarcerated people know the Unknowables that free world editors can only dream of knowing. Everyone else is on the outside of the birdcage looking in.
When I read the works of history’s most notable incarcerated people, such as Oscar Wilde or Nelson Mandela to name a couple, I feel a shared bond and understanding for our experience transcends distance and time. I truly know and that is why every incarcerated writer has ever put pen to paper.
I am happy to announce the publication of my newest book, “Reflections From Behind the Wall” (ISBN 979-8262373062). It is now available on Amazon. It contains hundreds of selected essays and posts from May 01, 2021 thru September 2025 written by myself and men and women incarcerated across the country. My first book, “Behind the Wall: A Prisoner’s Journal” (ISBN 9798514441983) is also available on Amazon, first published in 2021. Both books are priced very low so readers may be able to afford more than one copy. Please share them with others and thank you in advance for your support. I am grateful.
I guess you can say I’m feeling empowered. My time on the inside has challenged me to be the best version of self I can be. I begin each day with my head held high and each night I rest knowing that I have lived.
There’s meaning and purpose in all that we do, but only if we choose to allow it to be. No one can take that from us.
Christopher
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Christopher Monihan is a writer, journalist, and Stillwater award recipient. He is incarcerated in Ohio.
The Three Horsemen by Christopher
Six years ago, I started this blog.
If I could experience the outside world, where through my pen I break free from the bondage of prison, it would all be worth it, I had thought.
For decades, I have trekked through the desert known as American corrections, where justice is mirage and corruption the only oasis.