Hi, Can Do Canines family.
I want to thank those of you who were able to join us on Monday night for our most recent Virtual Conversation. For those of you not in attendance, I’ve linked to the recorded conversation below. Since many of you have schedules that won’t allow you to watch it, I’d love to give you a quick update.
There is much to celebrate here at Can Do Canines.
- We’re forming wonderful new relationships with organizations like Best Buy, Affinity Plus, the Minnesota Twins, and many others.
- The Woofaroo was the most successful we’ve ever had.
- Our quarterly Open Houses continue to see over 100 attendees every time. (Our next one is November 12 from 12 - 2 p.m.)
- We’re placing both facility dogs and skilled home companions as part of new programs.
- And we’re hopeful to end the year with 50 or more new teams!
Thank you all for the roles you are playing in making 2022 such a tremendous year for us!
I also want to address an issue that I know is on the minds of some of you: Breeding and the number of dogs in our kennel.
Dogs in Kennel: For the past year, we’ve sometimes had more dogs in kennel than we’d ideally like and we’ve been matching some of our dogs later than we’d prefer. That’s not by design and it’s not intentional—it’s simply the reality as we continue to climb out of COVID.
About a year ago, our greatest challenge was a shortage of clients who were ready to train in public for an assistance dog. We had more dogs ready to match than clients ready to be matched. That has improved, partly because COVID is further behind us and partly because we’ve been very aggressive about recruiting new clients. It should continue to get better over time.
Our greatest challenge now is a shortage of volunteers to raise, foster, or puppy-sit the dogs currently in our program. This is not unique to Can Do Canines. Assistance Dogs International (ADI) recently described a shortage of puppy-raising volunteers as an “international ADI crisis.” We’ll continue to be aggressive and creative in recruiting new volunteers, and this difficulty too shall pass, but in the short-term, we’re truly thankful that so many of you have taken on even more responsibility to help us through this challenge.
Breeding: I’ve recently heard a few volunteers suggest that the reason we’re asking for more help from puppy-raising volunteers is because we’re breeding too many dogs.
That’s definitely not the case. In fact, we’ve cut back considerably on breeding and accepting puppy donations from breeders and our international breeding cooperative due to a shortage of volunteers to take those puppies right now.
That is not ideal because the puppies we’d whelp now or accept as donations now would be assistance dogs in a little over two years. It’s likely that we’ll be short of dogs to match with clients in 2024/2025 because of our decision today to decrease the number of dogs entering the program. Right now, however, we just don’t have enough volunteer homes, so we’ve been making decisions on whether to breed litters based on available volunteers and prison programs. And again, as we move further past COVID, it will get better.
I want to thank you all for your grace and understanding as we work through new challenges. We know it can create frustration for some volunteers, but know that our staff here always make decisions based on what we believe is best for everyone involved—our clients, our volunteers and our dogs.
VIDEO: Conversation with Jeff & Katie
If you can’t watch the entire Virtual Conversation, I’d encourage you to watch five minutes of this video starting at 7:53 to hear from Katie Rickert, our Kennel Manager, about what a typical day in the kennel is like for our dogs. We have an amazing staff here and our kennel team is no different. They love these dogs like their own and work very hard to keep them safe, healthy and happy.
Jeff Johnson
Executive Director, Can Do Canines
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