08/22/2026
With a clear but heavy heart, we are announcing that Daack Pack is permanently closed. This is not because the work was not needed. It was needed, deeply.
Since Daack Pack was founded in 2016, our mission has been to provide innovative, humane, and evidence-based training that strengthens the relationship between animals and people, especially in cases involving fear, anxiety, aggressive behavior, atypical behavior, medical complications, and complex needs. Over the last couple of years, our team helped move thousands of pounds of pet food into the community, supported free vaccination clinics, ran mutual aid programs, advocated for animals and their people, engaged in local activism, and showed up for cases that many systems were not built to hold.
We are proud of what we built together. We are proud of the care we gave. We are proud of the animals who found a voice with us, the team who empowered them, the people who found support, and the community that formed around this work. While Daack Pack will cease to exist, our community will continue.
We are also going to tell the truth: the conditions surrounding this work have become unreasonable and unsustainable.
Daack Pack has always been guided by a core belief that all living things deserve agency. That belief has never applied only to dogs. It applies to clients. It applies to workers. It applies to disabled people, veterans, the unhoused, q***r people, trans people, nonbinary people, poor people, Black people, indigenous people, Palestinians, Congolese, immigrants, people of color, and every person who is asked to provide care while being denied care in return. Everyone.
All living organisms deserve to be happy and free. Full stop.
Our team includes many trans, nonbinary, q***r, disabled, Black, POC, and marginalized people. For some clients and community members, we may have been the first openly trans or nonbinary professionals they encountered in this field or just their whole lives. Sometimes that was beautiful. Sometimes it meant a young person seeing a future version of themselves for the first time. Sometimes it meant a client realizing that expertise, kindness, science, and transness could exist in the same room.
But too often, it meant harm.
Our team has experienced verbal assault, stalking, fetishization, hateful messages, harassment, hostility around pronouns, erasure, professional discrimination, property damage, and daily microaggressions that people excuse because they do not have to carry the cumulative weight of them. This is from Service Dog NPOs, Shelters, for profit businesses, rescues, clients, professional business groups, community members, chambers of commerce, dog trainers, veterinarians, animal professionals, etc.
No business can thrive when the people involved are expected to absorb harm as part of the job. No community can call itself compassionate while accepting the labor of trans people but staying silent when those same people are targeted and harassed. No industry can call itself humane while treating the humans doing the work as disposable.
This is bigger than Daack Pack. This is bigger than Sacramento.
The pet care and dog training industries have deep problems that cannot be solved by better branding, nicer language, or calling ourselves “positive” while leaving old Colonial hierarchies intact. Even spaces that describe themselves as progressive, force-free, science-based, or humane can still reproduce exclusion, exploitation, gate-keeping, ableism, racism, transphobia, classism, and colonial ideas about who gets to be seen as an expert or accepted into a space.
If a professional community does not reflect the diversity of the actual population it serves, that is not accidental. It means people are being kept out. It means the field is asking marginalized people to assimilate, endure harm, or perform gratitude for being allowed in the room.
Maintaining this status quo is not innovative, science-based, or humane.
Examining the history of modern Dog Training, it's origins can be traced back through huntsmen journals to the tenth century and has a lot of backbone from the English, Germans, and French (I know shocker). The french, specifically, had a lot of practically religious ceremonies around hunting and their hunting dog, including training, and yes, still used treats & leashes. Animal training in the USA became popularized and funded through the military and police forces in the 1900's. Hence all the super awful and unethical research we can find. Let alone the weaponiziation of dogs against, predominately, poor and Black communities. Which science shows, those communities are still dealing with today, let alone the trauma caused from generational violence by dogs. As civil rights made strides in the 1900's, we see Comparative Psychology becoming less endorsed academically and those practitioners pivot to Ethology and animal sciences. Bringing with them, very biased, colonized, hierarchical, and inaccurate perspectives that have long been dropped from actual Modern Psychology, since it is a deeply problematic science. In the 80's, with the roots of Comparative Psychology and the military/ police industrial complex, we really see "Modern Dog Training" and "R+ Training" take off. While modern and innovative at the time, 50 years later and an industry still clings to this as a modern framework. 50 years. Held together by Ego, greed, and cognitive bias. It's more or less self regulated with little funding and what funding for research does exist, is very influenced. Is something scientifically-based if it's referencing old, bad science, or lacks science to reference? Is it still modern? Now in late stage capitalism, the veterinarian industry is predominately, discretely owned by private equity (Over 50% of practices in general, over 75% of emergency clinics) while Big Tech and private equity moves in on the training industry with frameworks built on Chatgpt and taking inspiration from Uber's growth strategies. None of these things are really new or unique, they're just ways that deep systemic issues manifest within the pet industry. Despite intentions, real change won't happen for our pets until we tackle root societal problems that impact how our pets are perceived and cared for, along with how the pet owners or providers are perceived and cared for by society and their industries.
Community progress requires change, both personal and community accountability, and a willingness to give up the comfort of the status quo. It requires more than inclusive language. It requires people to intervene when harm happens. It requires knowing your industry's true history and roots. It requires people to compensate marginalized professionals fairly, trust their expertise, protect them from harassment, protect them in general, and stop confusing politeness with justice.
It is easy to perform ethics. It is much harder to live ethically when it costs convenience, access, reputation, self reflection, money, Ego, or proximity to power.
At Daack Pack, we have reached the point where continuing would require us to compromise ourselves further than we are willing to go. We have tried to survive inside systems shaped by capitalism, bigotry, ableism, social hierarchy, scarcity, and respectability politics. We have tried to do transformative work while navigating conditions that punished us for being visible, honest, accountable, and different.
We are no longer willing to be complicit in our own harm or the harm of others in order to keep a business open.
So we are closing.
We deserved better. Our team deserved better. The animals and people we served deserved a community capable of sustaining the work it says it values.
In an era of performance, volatility, hate, and convenience; we are choosing something else. We are choosing safety. We are choosing integrity. We are choosing joy. We are choosing not to keep sacrificing ourselves to survive systems that should never have required that sacrifice in the first place.
All living things deserve to be happy and free.
We still believe that.
And now, we are going to keep striving for it in ways that allow us to be free, too.
Sincerely,
Allison Daack
Next Steps and Asks for Our Clients and Community:
For current clients: we will finish services that have already been paid for. Our team has worked through client communication and transition planning, if for some reason you still have sessions or services left; please contact Taylan Shively at [email protected].
Clients or community members are welcome to stay in contact with their favorite service providers. If anyone’s information is missing from the referral list (See in comments) and you would like to stay in contact with them, feel free to reach out to me personally through social media or reach out to Taylan, one of us can help direct you.
Take a look at our referral list to continue working with your favorite practitioners where possible, or reach out to any of us for referrals. The best way to support our team long-term is to continue working with your favorite practitioners, refer people to them, share their work, respect their rates, and trust their expertise. It also means challenging the status quo, whether in daily life, in your community, in the pet industry, or in academia. If you need help finding the right fit, contact us, and we will do our best to point you in the right direction.
Daack Pack has always been more than a business entity. Our community, relationships, knowledge, beliefs, and care do not disappear because the company is closing. Our practitioners will continue to exist, grow, support animals, support people, support each other, and contribute to the community in new ways. That will look different for each person, and we ask that everyone respect each team member while we go through this transition. Different team members will have different needs.
To the people who cared for us, supported us, referred to us, trusted us with your animals, defended us, paid us fairly, respected our team, and understood what we were trying to build: thank you. We see you. You made this work possible and help give us confidence as we move to this next chapter. You helped us create moments of safety in a world that too often denies safety to both animals and people, especially marginalized people without power. If you want to stay in contact with anyone in particular, let us know, we probably do too!
To the broader community, we are asking you not to turn this into a sentimental goodbye that lets everyone avoid responsibility. Ask yourself what you tolerated. Ask yourself whose labor you benefited from. Ask yourself whether you defended marginalized people only when it was easy, quiet, low-risk, and socially rewarded. Ask yourself whether you value marginalized professionals only when they are providing care, education, emotional labor, or crisis support. Ask yourself what you will do differently the next time a trans-owned, disabled-owned, q***r-owned, or marginalized-led organization asks for real support instead of applause.
To those we lost along the way, both human and animal, rest in power. May we live lives that honor your memory. May we never forget you. May we enact change in our communities that would prevent similar loss. May we be brave.
