Welcome to Project POOCH! Due to the ongoing COVID Pandemic, we are doing dog adoptions a little bit differently. Instead of home visits, meet & greets will take place in the parking lot at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility. For full details on adoptions, go here.
Project POOCH, Inc.® has successfully paired youths incarcerated at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn, Oregon, with homeless shelter dogs since 1993.
Youths (guided by professionals) learn to train the dogs, groom them, and help them get adopted. The dogs leave the program ready to be great pets, while their trainers re-enter the community with new job and personal skills and increased compassion and respect for all life. Both youth and dogs experience unconditional love, often for the first time.
What Drives Us
Project POOCH provides opportunities for youth in corrections to learn responsibility, patience, and compassion for all life by working with shelter dogs.