John Sanchez served 21 years in the Army. Fred Wilding has served 17 years at the ACI. Their two very different paths crossed in medium security yesterday when Sanchez showed up with a yellow Lab that headed straight for Wilding, who was in the middle of an interview with Channel 10.

Honeybun, that’s her name. She wears a vest that tells us she’s a hearing dog. She’s a new set of ears for Sanchez who, after 21 years in Army tank units and service in the first Gulf War, realized he was losing his hearing.

“I started missing things,” he said. “You don’t hear people coming into the house and you turn around and there they are. It’s scary.”

He found out about NEADS — National Education For Assistance Dog Services — on the Internet. He met Honeybun last Sunday at NEADS’ training facility in Princeton, Mass., as part of its Canines For Combat Veterans program. He will go home to Las Vegas with her tomorrow.

And she will nudge him. That’s what she’s been trained to do. She will nudge his hand with her nose at the sound of a telephone, doorbell, fire alarm…. Then she will run to the source of the sound. Then she will run back to Sanchez. She will keep at it until he responds to the sound that he can’t hear.

Honeybun is able to break through the silence for Sanchez, in part, because Wilding trained her at the ACI. He is serving a lot of years for second-degree murder and bail jumping, but he is among a group of inmates who have found a welcome break from prison’s spirit-sapping sameness in training a dog to make another life better.

“It keeps you busy,” he said as he waited with other trainers for Sanchez and Honeybun to appear. “And it’s not as easy as people think. We’re not training the dog to be a house pet. It’s tough. You’re working 24/7.”

There is a fenced-off exercise area for dogs in training in the yard of the John J. Moran Medium Security facility at the ACI. The dogs live with their inmate trainers, sleeping in crates in their cells at night and spending their days learning skills that will help a disabled person deal more easily with a disability. They might learn to open a door, turn on a light, pick up a dropped set of keys — or nudge a hand at the sound of a telephone.

Moran Medium is one of several prison sites in New England where NEADS has found a willing group of trainers with unlimited training time available.

“It mellows me out,” said Wilding. “I see things in a different way. I think I’m a kinder person. It’s changed me totally.”

Honeybun was the second dog he trained. They were together for six months. Then came the other side of the experience, the moment when a man and a dog who have grown incredibly close have to part. The dog has to move on to Princeton for more training and a meeting with its disabled person. The inmate has to stay right where he is.

“You can’t really prepare for it,” said Wilding. “You just go with it. It’s tough to say goodbye.”

So yesterday, when Sanchez showed up to thank the trainers for their work, Honeybun spotted her old friend. She ran to where Wilding was sitting, jumped in his lap, licked his face. He hugged her, scratched her, claimed one last dog loving moment with the animal he had trained.

The visit lasted less than an hour. Wilding had to go back to prison life, with a new dog and a new challenge. Honeybun had to prepare for life in Las Vegas.

The prisoner clearly did not want to let go. It was the bittersweet price of one of the best things in his life.

bkerr@projo.com