Janet (Jan) Ellis – Northwest Region

Janet (Jan) Ellis – Northwest Region

woman with Canine Companions breeder dog

In 1995, Jan Ellis walked into the original Canine Companions® facility on Sebastopol Road in Santa Rosa, California and never looked back.

Jan first started volunteering by bathing puppies and socializing litters. When the new Northwest Region campus on Dutton Avenue opened in 1996, Jan came along with us. She expanded her volunteer repertoire to include dog walking. After retiring from her career in 2003, she began helping with Team Training lunches and volunteering at outreach booths and fundraising events throughout Sonoma County. On graduation days, Jan both volunteers in the gift shop and for the graduation luncheon. In 2015, when the local Wine Country Chapter formed, Jan signed up to be one of the founding members. That year, she also became a breeder caretaker to male breeder Orent II.

Over the decades, Jan has given thousands of baths, walked dogs for hundreds of miles, fed scores of hungry students and their families, and introduced countless people to Canine Companions and our mission through outreach events. She is always a phone call away and happy to help stuff goodie bags for events, prep envelopes for mailing or sew new patches on puppy capes.

In 2019 alone, Jan volunteered over 300 hours for Canine Companions, more than three times the number of any other volunteer in the Northwest Region. In addition to her endless volunteerism, she had been an ardent financial supporter. Jan gave her first gift just two months after she started volunteering in 1995. Since then, Jan has donated over $114,000 total!

Jan Ellis truly is a Canine Companions superhero, the very definition of our core values, and a steady pillar of our volunteer community.