Canines 4 Comfort

Feb 10, 2022

Lisa Wernli, Cofounder & Executive Director

Canines 4 Comfort

Providing hope & comfort for veterans, children, and our community through companionship with psychiatric service dogs & emotional support animals.

Paws with purpose! Canines 4 Comfort is a 501(c)3 organization established to satisfy the growing need for Psychiatric Service Dogs and Emotional Support Animals among veterans, children, and others afflicted with emotional and trauma syndromes.

Canines 4 Comfort trains and places psychiatric service dogs for emotionally disabled individuals with PTSD, anxiety, depression, and other mental health diagnoses. The majority of these recipients are veterans and children.

Canines 4 Comfort trains and places therapeutic facility dogs for schools and first responder teams in our communities. These specially trained dogs work with social services to defuse highly emotional situations and provide a calm and nurturing environment. With our first responder teams, these dogs bring goodwill to neighborhoods and provide relief and decompression to department staff upon returning to the station after handling traumatic and tense calls.

Canines 4 Comfort provides resources, training, education, care, and support to our clients and the communities we serve. We also offer a professional program for our trained and in-training canines to visit and provide therapeutic value to others.

Our efforts focus on training our existing dogs and fulfilling the needs of those on our waitlist. At this time, we cannot assist with training dogs that have not been sourced or evaluated by Canines 4 Comfort staff.

Services provided by Canines 4 Comfort are free; however, as a nonprofit organization, we rely solely on the generosity of community donations to help us achieve our mission.

Canines 4 Comfort serves areas within a 90-mile radius of Round Lake, Illinois. We currently train in Ingleside, Illinois.

Lisa is one of the cofounders of Canines 4 Comfort. A retired management consultant and former strategic sourcing manager, she serves as Executive Director of Marketing and Communications for C4C.

Lisa is no stranger to philanthropic endeavors. She served two years as president of an employee resource group for foster and adoptive parents, chaired an annual gala for a local school for twelve years, and coordinated and hosted a golf outing for suicide prevention for sixteen years.

Lisa received her degree in business management from Illinois State University, achieved her lifetime certifications for Applied Purchasing Practitioner (A.P.P.) and Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.) as well as her Six Sigma Black Belt designation. She resides in northern Lake County with her husband Keith, their two daughters, her mother, and several family pets.