When Carol Kirkbride thinks of the dozens of puppies she has worked with over the past eight years, and the lives those puppies have changed, all she can say is “Wow.”

Through her involvement with the Lions Club, Kirkbride raises “leader dogs” in her home, finding it a great way to have a new puppy every year. In addition, she transports the dogs to homes, and the North Central Correctional Facility in Rockwell City, to spend the first year of their lives becoming socialized and obedience-trained before they enter leader-dog training.

“I can train a dog to sit, stay, go to the bathroom outside, and because of that, I can actually give somebody the gift of sight,” said Kirkbride, tobacco information coordinator for Casey’s General Stores Inc. in Ankeny.

The Lions Club founded the Lions Leader Dog Foundation in 1939, which later became Leader Dogs for the Blind, based in Rochester, Mich. The organization breeds German shepherds, golden retrievers and Labrador retrievers that are later trained to be leader dogs for the blind. The organization has provided dogs to more than 12,500 people.

“They know they’re meant for something more than being a house pet,” Kirkbride said of the dogs.

But from the time they are 6 weeks old until they reach their first birthday, the dogs live in temporary homes throughout the country, where they are obedience-trained and become accustomed to the sights, sounds and environments they will encounter as leader dogs.

The North Central Correctional Facility in Rockwell City was the first, and is still one of the few, penal institutions to join the puppy program, which has benefited the prisoners, the puppies and the program.

Kirkbride transports the puppies from Michigan to their temporary homes in Iowa, with about 10 typically housed at the correctional facility. She makes the 100-mile drive to Rockwell City every other week to provide mandatory obedience training for the puppies and the prisoners. Her flexible schedule at Casey’s gives her four 10-hour days every week, which makes her further involvement with the program possible.

“The only thing I haven’t talked them into is bringing my [leader] dog into work,” she said.

Though the inmates call her a slave driver for her determination in training the dogs, she often finds that she has to slow their progress because the dogs have learned everything they need to know within six months.

“If you’re thinking of a normal prison, it would not be [a good environment for the program] because the dogs would not get what they would need to be socialized,” she said. “But this facility is minimum security and they have an open-campus setting, so the folks can be outside at any time during daylight hours, so the dogs are around people and delivery trucks and other things. They take their dogs to work, and the dog is used to sitting under their work table.”

The prison’s physical environment, with plenty of stairs and several types of flooring, as well as the large number of people the dogs must encounter daily, allow the puppies to become accustomed to life as a leader dog.

Though the dogs leave the North Central Correctional Facility prepared for four months of training at Leader Dogs for the Blind, Kirkbride said the impact they have upon the prisoners can be profound. Before going through the program, one inmate rarely went outside and primarily kept to himself. But by the time he finished raising his puppy, which is now a successful leader dog, he was outside frequently and is now assisting in obedience classes.

The goodbyes are always heartbreaking for Kirkbride, though she finds the inmates bursting with pride at seeing what they have accomplished with their dogs, which over the course of a year have become their best friends and confidants. One inmate told Kirkbride that he “needed to buy a bigger hat” upon turning his dog over to her because he was so proud of what he and the dog had accomplished together.

“It’s chipping away at that exterior crust that a lot of these people have developed,” she said. “They’re finding out that people trust them to raise a life.”