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"Around $1.8 million in taxpayer dollars is being spent on giving Bernalillo County inmates animals to care for.The pet therapy is supposed to help the animals, as well as the incarcerated adults and troubled teens.\"(An)\u00A0equine center will be at the grounds of M.D.C.,\" Matt Pepper, Director of Animal Care Services for Bernalillo County, told KOAT Action 7 News.The roughly $380,000 plan is to have inmates work with horses in need of a home.\"Some of them might be wild, spme will be cruelty cases, and some might be strays,\" he said.The men and women at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center chosen for the program will not only learn how to manage horses, Pepper said they will benefit from taking care of the animals.\"To reduce the chances that they come back to the jail,\" he said.The equine center won't be constructed until 2014, around the same time of a groundbreaking for an animal adoption center at Bernalillo County Juvenile Services.Pepper said it would be a facility housing between 20 to 25 dogs.$1.5 million has already been allocated for this pet project, which Pepper hopes will help the troubled teens \"learn some compassion by working with these animals.\"\u00A0He added that the dogs, on the receiving end of this compassion, will love the kids right back."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.koat.com/article/inmates-troubled-teens-to-receive-pet-therapy/5050846>