Our family of trainers and kennel tech apprentice trainers has now grown to 17. It takes a lot of people to take proper care of your dogs! We have multiple shifts with multiple people on from 7 am to 9 pm when your dogs are brought indoors for the night. In addition we have 5 sub-contractors who take care of your dogs grooming, veterinary, and health care needs, as well as our landscaping and janitorial. This has become a complex, but very tightly run and organized operation.

2009 has been an excellent year for K-9 Companions despite the “Great Recession” we have actually been blessed with steady growth. We started 2009 is a similar fashion to the way we ended 2008 only this time instead of taking our son Troy to Washington D.C. to set him up in his apartment so he could work in The White House as a Speech Writer for then President George W. Bush, we were picking him up to bring him home to Southern California. Troy is now currently employed at The World Affairs Council in Los Angeles where he sets up speakers from all over the world to speak on current world affairs. While we were in Washington DC in January we had the pleasure of meeting the President with Troy in the Oval Office. He had many nice things to say about Troy and his writing abilities and as parents we really appreciated that.

On a personal level the President is a very nice man. He is surprisingly witty and easy to talk to. He also has a deep and abiding love for the military and the men and women who serve. When you speak with him there is no doubt in your mind that this is genuine and comes from the heart. It is a shame that more people have not had access to him to understand who he really is as a person. It was a great honor for us to have been able to meet him.

Our son Travis graduated from Woodcrest Christian High School in 2009 and we are proud to have him working in the business this year as a trainer. He is a natural with dogs and since he has grown up with the business he has learned every aspect of it over the years. He is a real asset to us!

We are very excited to announce that we are going to be expanding our facility in 2010. We are in escrow on the property next to ours and plan to double our facility this year. Our expansion will include the acquisition of a 2700 square foot house that will be utilized as our new office. Our current office will remain as a location for checking out dogs on the West side of the property. We will be doubling our capacity to house and train dogs. We will also be adding half a dozen doggy play areas. We are planning to put in a Dock Diving Pool, Endless Pool for Exercise and Therapy, Water Play area with waterfalls, Lagoon for swimming with your dog, Lure Course area, and Ball Pop for ball chasing fun. When we are done owners will be able to make appointments to come and play in our doggy amusement park! We are very excited about this and hope you will be too! The new property will ultimately look like our current one with grass and trees surrounded by split rail fence. We have included a couple of photos of what the property looks like now.

We all wish you a Happy and Prosperous 2010!

George and Karen Duet.