Service Dog Training Facility
The Challenge
Most service dog training facilities are designed for human needs first, then retrofitted for animals. Paws for Purple Hearts wanted to reverse this, creating a facility where dogs were treated as legitimate users and stakeholders from the start.
The Outcome
A canine-centered design toolkit that allowed PPH to envision and plan a facility tailored to both species’ needs. The toolkit helped revaluate spaces through both human and canine stakeholder needs & visualize and test facility layouts before construction began.
Key contributions
Canine-centered design toolkit, including:
Interaction maps for human–dog–staff workflows
Environment guidelines for sensory factors (sound, light, smell)
Modular layout system for planning future spaces
Blueprint recommendations integrating canine needs into the training facility’s design
Staff-facing playbook for applying canine-centered methods to ongoing improvements.
At a Glance
Client: Paws for Purple Hearts
Duration: Pre-construction design consultancy
Focus: Facility design for service dog training & therapy
Methods: Multi-species interaction mapping, stakeholder assessments, co-design toolkit
Deliverables: Canine centric design toolkit + facility blueprint framework
Our Approach
We worked closely with the PPH team to bring canine experience into the design process before construction began:
Multi-species mapping of all interactions the facility would need to support.
Stakeholder analysis identifying where human and canine needs overlapped or diverged.
Gameboard exercise treating the building plan as a flexible layout of cards representing spaces (training areas, kennels, admin, therapy rooms) — color-coded for canine vs. human focus.
Workshops with staff to prioritize requirements based on training tasks and welfare insights.
This co-design process allowed both dogs and humans to be considered as active users from the start.
Client Reflection
“The toolkit was a big assistance for us to understand how we might fulfill not only our demands and those of the people, but also those of the dogs, and allow ourselves to picture a state-of-the-art facility, whose design may genuinely affect and perhaps reduce training periods.” — Paws for Purple Hearts