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Updated: June 7, 2024 @ 11:10 am
A south Tulsa dog grooming shop is giving women a second chance.
TULSA, Okla. — A south Tulsa dog grooming shop is giving women a second chance.
Muddy Paws gives women the training they need to land good jobs after prison.
Ten years after I put together a FOX23 investigation on the female incarceration rate, I’m finding out how things have changed and how programs like Muddy Paws are providing that second chance.
Kristen Suarez is the director of training at Muddy Paws. She found out about the program while serving a 15-year drug sentence.
“I was probably about 8 or 9 years old when I started smoking cigarettes and about 10 years old when I started smoking weed,” Kristen said. “By the time I was 13, I was a full-on meth user.”
Debbie Davis, executive director of Muddy Paws, also had a troubled past.
“I was involved with embezzlement and forgery and got a 28-year sentence, but I was released after seven years,” Debbie said.
Both Kristen and Debby give women going through the program hope to see what a second chance looks like.
“How hard is it to find a good job when you’re released? It’s very hard because not everyone is trusting of people,” Debbie said. “It’s very important to me to lead by example and offer hope and encourage the ladies and help them know anything can change.”
“If I can do it, they can do it, there’s no difference between me and them,” Kristen said.
It’s a four-month training program. Kristen and an assistant trainer oversee all students grooming the dogs.
Thanks to grants, donations and revenue from grooming, Muddy Paws provides women rent stipends, covers the cost of training, equipment, uniforms and anything else to bridge the gap and help women get their lives started outside of prison.
“There’s a lot of freedom in this career, there’s a lot of money to be made in this career, if you’re good at it,” Kristen said. “Everybody has dogs, there’s enough dogs to go around, and dogs are like our children, and if you’re good at taking care of them, and making them look fabulous, you can have a great career doing this.”
Debbie agrees.
“The grooming industry is just busting out, our ladies make upward of $25 an hour,” she said.
While Oklahoma no longer leads the nation, the latest numbers show our state’s female incarceration rate is still 226 percent higher than the national average, with 106 per 100,000 women behind bars.
Back in 2013, Oklahoma was locking up 127 out of every 100,000 women.
Debbie and Kristen said prison gave them an opportunity to learn more about themselves.
“If you take advantage of all the programs the doctor offers, you can come out on the other side and even be a better person, learn more about yourself so you can learn more about other people,” Debbie said.
“I got my GED in prison, I went to college in prison, I took lots of classes in prison and I became a teacher of many things in prison, I realized then that anything that I can do that I’m good at, I’m good at teaching it also, so it just kind of fell into place for me,” Kristen said.
The nonprofit ‘Pets Helping People’ started in 2009 and opened Muddy Paws Training Facility in 2010. Since then, 314 women have graduated.
“We’ve placed ladies in employment, Petco, PetSmart, all the local grooming shops here,” Debbie said.
She says 95 percent of graduates are working in the industry, not just here, but from Las Vegas to Branson and even Oregon. Thirty-three have even opened their own grooming shops.
Eight trainees are in the four-month program right now, and Muddy Paws can take a few more.
They have six full-time groomers. The work they do helps fund the program.
Trainees also use rescue and shelter dogs to learn techniques and make those dogs look their best, to increase the odds they’ll find homes. Muddy Paws grooms between 1,000 to 1,200 dogs a month.
“I drive home sometimes, and I just cry,” Kristen said. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this life but I’m here living it.”
Kristen’s been at Muddy Paws for eight years and said last year she was able to buy her first house.
On Her Mind is a weekly segment focused on issues that impact women every day. Make sure your voice is heard by sending any story ideas or comments to onhermind@fox23.com .
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