Our Partners

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If your lifestyle requires you to leave your pets home alone for 8+ hours per day, we strongly recommend hiring a dog sitter/walker to give them some time outside halfway through your workday to help your pets meet their mental and physical enrichment needs.

We cannot overstate our satisfaction with all of the services we have received from Ashley, the owner of Jackie & Joe’s Pet Care (Jackie and Joe were the names of her childhood pets, not the business owner).

We have used local teenagers, Rover, and other pet care services in the past, but nobody takes pet care as seriously as Jackie & Joe’s. All of their staff are trained in pet CPR and First Aid, they have experience with a wide variety of animal species and partake in Continuing Education via Pet Sitters International, and they can stop by your home up to 3x/day while you’re on vacation so you never need to board your pets in a facility full of barking dogs.

Jackie & Joe’s also offers wedding pet attendant services (we included 5 of our dogs in our wedding and they did an excellent job handling them) and dog daycare, and they are currently letting us use their facility for training classes while we work on establishing a place of our own!

If you need someone to take care of your pets while you are on vacation or at work, hire Jackie & Joe’s and your pets will be in good hands.

Marina and Nick are both certified through the CCPDT, meaning they are educated in the science behind dog behavior and training, and they are held to a high standard and strict ethical protocol regarding pet care and training. The CCPDT values Integrity, Education, Excellence, Scientific principles, and Transparency, and they require all certified trainers to follow their Standards of Practice and Code of Ethics, as well as the LIMA (Least Intrusive, Minimally Aversive) training protocol.

Marina is Fear Free certified, and Nick will be soon. This means that both of our trainers are educated in canine psychology in order to understand the foundations of animal behavior and minimize the level of fear and anxiety experienced by dogs under our care/supervision. 

Fear Free also certifies veterinarians and other pet professionals, so we encourage you to explore their website and find the most ethical pet professionals near you.

The Shelter Playgroup Alliance is a nonprofit that provides education to shelters to help them create effective and ethical enrichment plans for their adoptable animals. This organization follows the ethical guidelines set out by the CCPDT and IAABC to ensure that shelter animals are cared for ethically and appropriately. More specifically, they teach shelter staff how to supervise playgroups and intervene when necessary in ways that follow the LIMA protocol; this way, the dogs are able to fulfill their mental and physical stimulation needs without experiencing unnecessary fear or discomfort.

Nick is an AKC Canine Good Citizen Approved Evaluator, which means that he can train and evaluate CGC classes and award the CGC title to dogs who have earned it. This title is the behavioral benchmark used by most therapy dog organizations, and only Approved Evaluators can award it.

CGC Evaluators are also qualified to teach AKC S.T.A.R. Puppy classes. S.T.A.R. is not an official title, but it is a designation that is recorded by the AKC, and it is the first milestone on the way to the CGC title.

Any puppy can earn the S.T.A.R. Puppy designation, and any dog can earn the CGC title—they are not restricted to intact purebred dogs like conformation titles are—and this is a good way to prove that your dog is safe in public and behaviorally sound.

Compassion for Canines also unofficially supports the AKC by helping people find ethical breeders of registrable purebred dogs and by supporting ethical breeders ourselves. Two of our dogs are rescues, and the other five are ethically bred purebreds. Note: not all purebreds are ethically bred (hence the distinction “ethically bred purebreds”) and registration paperwork with a major kennel club like AKC does not signify ethical breeding practices either. If you are looking for a purebred dog, start by finding the national breed club’s website (for example, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi Club of America) and see if they have a breeder referral list. When in doubt, feel free to reach out!

ProPetHero is a training and certification organization for dog and cat First Aid and CPR. Nick is certified in both through this agency, meaning that if there is any kind of emergency at our group classes or during a private session, your dog will be in good hands (literally) en route to the nearest emergency vet. We hope this certification is never needed, but we have it just in case.

PetCare Insurance offers liability insurance specific to the needs of pet professionals, and they are our carrier. This means everything is thoroughly thought out and transparent rather than ambiguous. Of course, we do everything we can to avoid emergencies, but in the event of one, we have an insurance carrier who will act efficiently and responsibly.