K-9 Companions National Headquarters

05/11/2026

Do you aspire to start your own dog training business? We provide the training you need to thrive.

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05/10/2026

05/10/2026

Service dogs are vital for children with disabilities. They can greatly enhance social interactions, educational experiences, and emotional well-being. Significant academic improvements have been noted in children who previously struggled in school. Moreover, service dogs have helped children navigate medical appointments with minimal distress.

05/01/2026

Charlie Arnett wants to send mom and dad a message!

Charlie had a great lesson today!! He enjoyed working on his obedience commands and loved playing with the ball afterwards! Way to go, Charlie!!

05/01/2026

We collaborate with like-minded partners to create vibrant community spaces where people and dogs thrive together, driven by our expertise in empowering service dogs for children and veterans.

04/29/2026

Moe is a Service Dog in training for a child who often runs off and hides. Moe is learning to follow his nose and find Gus.

04/26/2026

After teaching the hearing assistance, dog, the basic task, he learns to run to alert the handler in another room. Bringing her back to the source of the sound.

04/26/2026

Training a dog for hearing impairment. He is taught to react to the doorbell. Get the handlers attention and show her where the sound is coming from.

04/25/2026

So proud of our latest Service Dogs in Training! They went to a Public Access outing today to The Mall at Greenhills in Nashville. They practiced on elevators and escalators and then had lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. 😊

04/21/2026

This is sadly what happens when people take untrained dogs into places where only service dogs are legally allowed. It ends up, hurting people who legitimately need Service Dogs and have spent the time and money to have them trained properly. dogs

10/30/2025

*Preventing unwanted litters is a goal we all share—but it's time to rethink the surgical approach. Hysterectomies and vasectomies, which preserve hormonal balance, can safely be performed as early as 8 weeks of age, making dogs sterile without disrupting their natural hormones.

New peer-reviewed study published in Nature:

How a dog’s lifetime exposure to his own hormones (before being neutered) affects how well he handles aging and frailty later in life.

Study Background

• Frailty = when older dogs (and people) become weaker, less resilient, and more prone to illness and death.
• Most research looks at how to prevent frailty — this study looked at what makes some dogs bounce back better after frailty sets in.
• The focus was on the HPG axis — the hormonal system that produces testosterone and controls reproduction.

Key Findings

• Dogs neutered very young (before 2 years old) had:

o A much higher risk of death once they became frail.
o About 16% higher mortality for every small increase in frailty.

• Dogs kept intact longer (more than ~10 years) showed:
o No increase in mortality linked to frailty.
o Their hormones seemed to “buffer” the negative effects of aging.

• Each extra year of natural hormone exposure reduced frailty-related death risk by ~1%.

What It Means

• Hormones from the te**es may protect against the worst effects of aging later in life.
• Removing them too early could make dogs less resilient to age-related decline.
• Frailty isn’t just about getting old — it’s also shaped by early-life events like the timing of neutering.
• This supports a “life course” view: what happens early in life affects health decades later.

Why It Matters

• The study suggests timing of neutering might influence how well dogs age.