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  • The Marshall Project

    My Dog Didn't Forget Me When I Went to Prison

    Charlotte was there for the worst moments of my life. And she was there as I picked up the pieces.
    by Keri Blakinger Nov 09, 2018 5 minutes

    Back before I went to prison, I had a dog. Her name was Charlotte. She was a black lab/greyhound mix, with white around her nose. Getting her was one of the few things I do not regret from my years of drug use.

    I brought her home in 2007, just a few days after I'd jumped off a bridge in Ithaca, New York, in a very earnest suicide attempt. It was a 98-foot fall, police later told me. But I hit a mossy flat rock and slid, fracturing a number of vertebrae and ending up in the ICU.

    Life Inside Perspectives from those who work and live in the criminal justice system. Related Stories

    Afterward, the person I was dating made probably the only good suggestion they ever made the entire time we to care for I wouldn’t try to kill myself again.

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