I came to dogs the long way around. I trained as a lawyer, because for as long as I can remember I’ve carried a fierce sense of justice, a need for things to be fair and for people to be treated right. Law wasn’t where I found it, and letting law go was hard, but the sense of justice never left me; it only went looking for a truer home. I found it, of all places, here.

There’s a quiet kind of justice in showing up when you said you would, and in telling the truth about how someone’s dog is really doing. It means giving every animal and every person the care and respect they deserve. I never expected a small dog-walking business to become the thing that mattered most to me. But caring for the dogs of my community, and the people who love them, turned out to be exactly the kind of good I’d always wanted to do. Small. Daily. That’s what makes it real.

And this is what Paw de Janeiro is to me: not just a business, but a way to build a better world, one dog and one family at a time.

When I’m not working, you can usually find me on a trail with our dog, Ripley. We chose her breed for the hikes. Ripley takes her job of making every visiting dog feel at home very seriously. The rest of the time, I’m probably at the piano or singing karaoke at home, which I do almost every day. I wanted to be a singer when I was a kid, and I turned out to be a terrible one, but I’ve never once let that stop me.