MISSION & HISTORY

Our Mission

Summit Assistance Dogs is a nonprofit organization that creates life-changing partnerships by providing highly-skilled mobility service dogs to people living with disabilities throughout the Pacific Northwest.

By assisting with tasks such as retrieving items, opening and closing doors, and turning switches on and off, our dogs help their partners live with greater independence and confidence. These partnerships can also help reduce depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

Our Vision

We believe all people and animals deserve the opportunity to reach their highest potential, and that this is often best achieved in partnership with one another. We envision a future in which every qualified applicant can receive a life-changing service dog from Summit Assistance Dogs within one year of applying to our organization.

Summit Assistance Dogs was founded in 2000 by Sue Meinzinger, a graduate of the Assistance Dog Institute in Santa Rosa, CA, to help meet the overwhelming demand for highly-skilled service dogs. While training at the Assistance Dog Institute, Sue worked with Eddy, a lovely Golden Retriever who would later become Summit’s beloved co-founder. Due to a minor health issue, Eddy was career-changed from the service dog program, adopted by Sue, and brought back to Skagit County, where she served as Summit’s chief ambassador and demonstration dog until 2013.

Sue initially started the program out of her home before expanding to facilities in Anacortes, WA. In 2014, Summit reached a major milestone by acquiring land on north Whidbey Island. Today, that property is home to Chris’s Canine Condo, the first completed phase of Summit’s service dog training campus and an operational facility supporting the care, training, and development of our service dogs in training.

Summit Assistance Dogs is now one of the leading providers of mobility assistance dogs in Washington State. As awareness of the impact of these partnerships continues to grow, so does the need for our services, and our vision for expanding training capacity and access continues to guide our work.

Our History

OUR VALUES

    • The well-being of our dogs is our number-one priority.

    • The handling and training of our dogs is humane and compassionate at all times.

    • We are committed to the excellent care of our dogs for life.

    • We value the contributions of others.

    • We recognize the importance of diversity and commit to individual and organizational efforts to build respect, dignity, fairness and equality for all.

    • We strive to affirm the worth of others with our words and actions.

    • We employ the highest ethical standards.

    • We strive to demonstrate transparency in every action we undertake.

    • We strive to be trustworthy stewards of our resources.

    • We are committed to excellence and professionalism in everything we do.

    • We prioritize quality over quantity.

    • We strive for continual improvement, so that we will rank among the world’s premier service dog organizations in client satisfaction.

    • We embrace change, new ideas and creative solutions.

    • We recognize that our service-dog partnerships, as well as our global community, benefit when we evaluate existing practices and encourage bold leadership.

    • We are a community, focused around our common passion for the human/animal bond.

    • We strive to work together cooperatively so that we can achieve great things that none of us could achieve alone.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Summit Assistance Dogs is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of our work. Service dogs, without question, facilitate greater accessibility and inclusion for our clients who are living with disabilities. All of our clients speak of greater social inclusion after being partnered with a dog, and many are also able to join the work force or pursue higher education as a result of the support their dog provides. Our prison program serves a vulnerable and diverse group of men, some for whom training a service dog is the only sense of inclusion they experience within the community outside of prison.

Summit strives to maintain a diverse community of staff, volunteers and clients because we recognize that equality across race, gender, identity, age, religion, ability, and experience, creates stronger communities. We provide employment opportunities for individuals who may have been historically overlooked, including people living with disabilities and people from BIPOC and LGBTQ communities. Our non-discrimination policy is rigorously adhered to.

In summary, we are guided by our organization’s values, which include recognizing the importance of diversity and committing to individual and organizational efforts to build respect, dignity, fairness, equality, and opportunity for all.