A trained dog can lower the volume of the world — anchoring a child who bolts, interrupting a spiral before it takes hold, and giving a family back the parts of the day they had given up on. We train these dogs, we teach families to train their own, and we certify both against a published standard.
We work with handlers living with autism, PTSD, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, and ADHD.
Having a service dog was associated with significantly better child sleep behaviours, including better sleep initiation and duration and less sleep anxiety and co-sleeping.Rodriguez et al., Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2024 · read the study
How the dog helps
Not companionship — trained, cued behaviours that do specific work.
Elopement is the fear that runs underneath everything. A dog trained to search and find, to anchor on cue, and to alert a caregiver turns a terrifying gap into seconds instead of minutes.
Deep pressure on cue, a trained interruption of a named repetitive or self-injurious behaviour, and a grounding response that re-orients — applied early, before escalation becomes a two-hour recovery.
A haircut. A grocery run. A flight to see family. The dog creates a buffer of personal space and a predictable point of focus, which is often the difference between going and not going.
Trained tasks
A task is a specific, cued or triggered behaviour that mitigates a documented need. Comfort from a dog’s presence is real and valuable — and it is not a task. Every credential we issue names the tasks on the card, so anyone can see exactly what the dog was trained to do.
Seventeen tasks are catalogued in full, with training criteria and restrictions, in our published standard. Tethering a child to a dog is a restricted technique with six mandatory conditions, and is never trained on request alone.
Three pathways
You can have us train the dog, train it yourself with us coaching you, or bring a dog you’ve already trained and put it through assessment. All three end at the same credential, assessed by the same independent assessors, against the same published standard.
For families who need the work done for them.
For families with the time and a suitable dog.
For handlers who have already done the work.
Our assessors are paid the same whether a team passes or fails, and they are never the people who trained the dog. That is the whole reason a pass means anything.
After assessment
A dog isn’t a certificate. It’s an animal that will work for eight years or so, change as it ages, and need someone paying attention the whole time.
Teams re-present for full re-assessment every two years — a real assessment, not a paper renewal, and there is no way to renew without one. In between, we stay in touch: refresher sessions when a task starts slipping, help when the dog’s health or your needs change, and an honest conversation about retirement when the time comes.
If a team stops meeting the standard, we say so and we withdraw the credential. That has to be true for any of this to be worth anything.
Success stories
In the families’ own words, with their permission.
The task families ask for first is almost never the one that changes the most. Parents come to us about supermarkets and meltdowns in public. What tends to shift first is sleep — a dog trained to a settle position at the foot of a bed, every night, without being asked.
A good share of the people who contact us asking for a public access dog do not need one. They need deep pressure on cue and a reliable interrupt at home. We say so, and issue the companion credential instead — it is faster, it is cheaper, and it is what actually helps.
The travel endorsement fails more teams than any other assessment we run, and it fails them on one item: a 120-minute continuous settle in a space the size of a footwell. Dogs that heel beautifully through a mall come apart on minute seventy. We would rather you learn that here.
Eligibility & how to apply
Ontario’s two charitable programmes are excellent, free, and currently oversubscribed — one operates a multi-year wait, the other is closed to new applicants. We are not a replacement for them and we are not free. We are available.
Common questions
Sometimes. That’s exactly what the candidate assessment is for. Roughly half to two-thirds of dogs wash out of service work, and finding that out at month two costs far less than finding out at month eighteen. If your dog isn’t suited, we’ll say so.
No credential from any private organisation can guarantee that, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Air Canada opened an assessment path for owner-trained dogs in 2026; our Travel Readiness module is built against it, including the 120-minute footwell settle most teams fail. We prepare you to pass. The carrier decides.
Yes — from any regulated health professional listed under AODA, which includes occupational therapists. We don’t diagnose and we don’t assess disability. We assess dogs and teams. We’ll give you a template for your clinician to complete.
Yes, and we’ll tell you how. Lions Foundation and National Service Dogs are both excellent and both place dogs at no cost. The problem is capacity — one runs a multi-year wait and the other isn’t taking applications. We’re here for the families who can’t wait three years, not to compete with organisations doing good work.
You get a written report naming exactly what didn’t meet the standard, a plan to work on it, and a retest after 90 days. Assessors are paid the same either way and never assess a dog they trained. If a pass were ever the default, the credential would be worth nothing to you.
Often, yes. Service animal expenses may qualify under the CRA medical expense tax credit, Jordan’s Principle funds service dogs for First Nations children, and some health spending accounts and benefit plans contribute. We’ll walk through what applies to your situation, and we work with families on timing. Confirm any tax treatment with your own accountant.
Thirty minutes, no charge. We’ll tell you whether a dog is the right tool, which pathway fits, and what it will realistically take.
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