Intervention before injury

FTK9 Facility Dogs are a practical support and theraputic medical device used in conjuntion with an organization's Peer Support, Employee Wellness, Mental Health Support and/or other directed theraputic programing. Facility Dogs provide intervention for Trauma Exposed Professionals before operational stress injuries become diagnosed disabilities.

Our certified Facility Dog program is offered to operational facilities throughout Ontario through partnership with Wounded Warriors Canada (WWC) and The Royal Canadian Legion – Ontario Provincial Command.

Facility Dog Benefits

A Facility Dog may help in reduce the impact of operational stress through improve health outcomes, reducing a body’s stress indicators, improve participation in mental health activities and create social connections. A FD is a theraputic option that is paired with a trained handler to integrate along side and in conjunction with your team's existing mental and physical health care professionals. We provide the trained Facility Dog, and the training for your organization's handler (s).

Recovery Assistance

Facility Dogs can improve patient participation and patient outcomes in palliative care facilities, rehabilitation programs, mental health therapies. Our Facility Dogs are capable of working in a variety of medical and professional settings with tasks to physically and emotionally support patients.

Learning Programs

Facility Dogs are used effectively in education programming, academic interventions, and in after school tutoring programs. Our dogs are trained to be active participants in activities that promote physical education, memory skills, numeric skills, social skills, as well as literacy and language development skills.

Workplace Wellness

Employee Assistance programs can make use of Facility Dogs in group settings, or one-on-one settings. Peer Support Groups, Human Resources, trauma reporting, incident debriefings and traumatic incident aftercare are all specific settings our dogs can support.

Placement or Deployment?

Businesses, facilities, and organizations have many goals for seeking a Facility Dog. Our team can help you determine if your needs are best served with a Facility Dog for delopyment, or for placement within your facility.

Renfrew County organizations in particular experience some unique challenges to accessing services; including our geographic location, population density, demographics and historically underserved medical and education services. To support these unique needs FTK9 has available Facility dogs for on-call Deployment and for Placement.

Eligible facilities that can not support a full-time leased Facility Dog Placement may be eligible for a Facility Dog deployment instead. Because of Renfrew County’s unique demographics, many of the organizations and facilities that would most benefit from the inclusion of a Facility Dog to their program may be unable to support the full time Placement of a Facility Dog due to their size, funding, business model or existing staffing. For this reason our in-house Facility Dogs are available for Deployment.

FTK9 Facility Dogs are also available for Placement to eligible facilities through our application process. Facility Dog Placement wait times are currently 12-18 months.

Application Process

Consider a Facility Dog Deployment if:

your facility has operational need for a Facility Dog for occassional use
your facility can not identify 2 handlers among your staff
your facility does not currently have the budget to support the routine care and feeding of a working dog
your facility is still developing it’s program that will include working dogs

Consider a Facility Dog Placement if:

your facility has operational need for a Facility Dog more often (weekly, daily)
your facility can identify 2 handlers among your staff (we can assist!)
your facility can idenitfy a small budget to support the routine care and feeding of a working dog
your facility has a mandate or service program that includes working dogs

Submit your Inquiry

When you meet the Eligibility Criteria, our Facility Dog Team will help walk you through creating the business case for your organization and to assist with the placement and matching of our dogs including training your staff. The demand for our services currently exceeds our capacity and we have a rigorous process to align the number of applicants we have to the number of dogs currently in the program.

Submit Your Inquiry Here

Qualifying criteria for a Facility Dog Placement includes:

Demonstrate the physical, social and/ or mental health improvement to the organization’s clients by the addition of a specially trained Facility Dog Team

Facilities must demonstrate that the workload requires the skills and training of a Facility Dog (they cannot utilize a therapy or pet dog at their facility to fulfill their purpose).

The Facility Support Dog must be utilized a minimum of 20 hours per week and a maximum of 30 hours per week.

Has a letter of support from senior management to obtain a Facility Support Dog

Has the means and ability to provide for all the dog’s needs, including food, shelter, veterinarian care, exercise, and continued training

The organization must be able to meet the emotional, physical and financial needs of the Facility Dog

Can commit to the training program and understands the need to follow the rules and guidelines to keep their dog up on all the training so that they continue to function as a Facility Dog

Dog must reside and work in a smoke-free environment that is deemed safe

Veterans Affairs PTSD

Operation Service Dog

Wounded Warriors Canada

Fire Team K-9’s Inc. is a proud Service Dog provider for Wounded Warriors Canada and the Royal Canadian Legion, Ontario Command.