Canine Companions for Independence

Canine Companions for Independence® is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization headquartered in Santa Rosa, California with five additional training centers and four advancement offices nationwide. Our work is driven by an important mission: to help enhance the lives of people with disabilities by providing highly trained assistance dogs and ongoing support to ensure quality partnerships, all free of charge to the recipient.

Thousands of volunteers and supporters across the country make this mission possible.

Since Canine Companions’ founding in Santa Rosa in 1975, we have carefully bred, raised, and trained over 4,700 dogs in order to match them with children and adults with a wide variety of disabilities. The powerful relationship between our graduates and their dogs is at the heart of everything we do. We call these partnerships “teams”.

The dogs assist their human partners with practical tasks like picking up dropped items, tugging open doors, turning light switches on and off, and alerting people who are deaf or hard of hearing to sounds. Each dog might assist his or her partner with different tasks, but they all have one thing in common: a bottomless capacity for unconditional love and acceptance.

Please visit our website to learn more! www.cci.org