Merle is a lanky fellow with hound in his heritage, ears drooping well below his chin and a tender black muzzle framing a broad pink tongue. His life once was in jeopardy, but he now lives happily in his adoptive home here in the Nutmeg State thanks to the Dawgs in Prison program and a Florida inmate who had nothing but time and the patience needed to teach Merle to trust humans and live peacefully with them.

Like the Red Dog Project operating in the York Correctional Institution in East Lyme, Dawgs is one of many programs that team abandoned, difficult-to-adopt dogs with inmates who often have experienced their own share of tough living. The dogs work with inmates until they are ready for permanent adoption. These programs have saved many a canine and human life.

If a regional animal shelter is built on state-owned land at the Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center in Montville, opportunities for more positive inmate-animal interactions could increase in southeastern Connecticut. While this fact alone makes the regional shelter that would serve the towns of East Lyme, Ledyard, Montville and Waterford worthy of support, plenty of other positives also make it a sensible proposal.

It's no secret that many towns' animal control facilities provide abandoned pets with little more than the basics in sometimes shabby buildings. This plan, however, will combine the financial wherewithal of four towns, making it less likely the shelter will endure annual budget cuts or perennially delay maintenance. Sharing resources and crossing municipal borders also provides a larger pool of potential volunteers dedicated to providing longer term care to the animals and extras such as playtime and walks.

With these positives to its credit, it's puzzling if not downright distressing that a group contending to be all about animal welfare has so strenuously opposed this regional shelter proposal. Now with some 400 followers on Facebook, members of the group "Say NO to the regionalization of the Ledyard, Waterford and East Lyme ACO," said they are worried a regional shelter would mean too much driving for their municipal animal control officers.

They also have repeatedly and publicly raised concerns about the shelter being near the prison. That concern appears particularly outrageous. Do critics really believe supervision would be so lax that the safety of visitors would be endangered? Or perhaps it is just the prioximity to those people that bothers the naysayers.

Members of the "say NO" group would benefit from discussions with the folks from the Red Dog Project, Dawgs in Prison or other such groups. A new perspective might enlighten them. If they are really in favor of doing what's best for the animals, perpetuating narrow stereotypes and gross generalizations about inmates works against that goal. A regional shelter makes sense.