About the Nonprofit
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Our mission is to acquire, raise, train, and place assistance dogs with persons with disabilities and professionals working with persons with emotional, psychological, developmental, or physical problems. Through our highly trained dogs, our goals are to provide independence when matched with people who have physical disabilities and to provide integrated therapeutic assistance when matched with caring professionals in settings like classrooms, hospitals, courthouses, physical/occupational therapy and mental health practices. Our ACTS of Compassion Therapy Dog program provides comfort and support to local hospitals, special needs centers, schools, nursing homes, and other facilities.
ACTS was founded in 2007 by Dorothy Hyde-Williams in memory of her son Nate who died tragically and unexpectedly in a bicycle accident. The organization still thrives today on the passion that comes from great loss and from believing in something good coming from tragedy. ACTS is proud to be founded in memory of Nate.
As a small organization headquartered in the Mount Washington Valley (North Conway), NH with training centers in Tuftonboro, NH and at the University of Vermont, ACTS can offer the personal services that is desirable in assistance dog training and placement. Our key volunteers each have many years of experience in dog training and in the service and facility dog fields. They are dedicated, caring, and professional and are committed to training dogs to help people.
Our dogs are raised by local volunteer puppy raisers who take the puppies into their homes at the age of eight weeks and keep them for up to two years. Puppy raisers dedicate a great deal of time and money to the effort, and they are our greatest resource, outside of our dogs. They can be seen taking our puppies out to be socialized and teaching them the many skills needed to be placed as working dogs.
We have working service dogs with individuals throughout New England and beyond. Our facility dog teams are in schools, counseling centers, day cares, group homes and hospitals. It is worth noting that, while our service dogs profoundly affect the life of one person, our facility dogs touch the lives of many.
All the costs associated with our dogs two-year training period are obtained through our fundraising efforts, grants, sponsorships, donations, and client fees. We try to keep client fees reasonable; therefore, making our other sources of funding critical.
