In the last week of April 2024, Ruff Translating opened to a HUGE surprise - and not a good one. The main drain that connects to all of the businesses in our building row back flooded into our Muttessori Academy training space. It turns out that the main drain was clogged with grease from another tenant, and we were left to clean up the mess - literally. Despite this not being the result of our business' operations, or being the only business affected by the disaster of not keeping it in repair, we have been left holding the bag.

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We have been in a drawn out, insurance laden, lawyer involved, stalemate to get our space remediated from "category 3" water and replace the almost $20,000 worth of training materials we lost due to this damage and then to recoup our lost income. We have done our absolute best to pivot our daily services client experience to our original private-lesson training space at 152, handle all of the administrative headache, lower our capacity for what we have space for in just 152, and keep Ruff Translating open. As a really small business, this has thrown us for a giant loop and disrupted every aspect of our ability to provide the services we love. We have even had to cancel our planned summer classes.

There is a silver lining though - we were able to find and secure a NEW training space for our business, just up the street from our shop. We will be moving RT operations to 211 Belgrade Ave by October!

The new space is a stand alone building, all on one floor with more accessibility features, and will allow us to teach more types of classes because the space is much more versatile. It has a parking lot for easy drop off and pick up, and we are building an enclosed outdoor space for even more exciting programming. We are upgrading our kennel system with the move, and we'll be able to provide a more seamless RT experience.

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Frankly, it is also going to allow us to continue to train, period- and provide service dog training assistance that is desperately needed within the local disabled community. This is where we really need some help.

We have been challenged with the tightest of budgets and huge unresolved losses this year - including one planned and one unplanned surgery for the Eisens. In short, we need some help getting up and running in the new space. With help, we can keep training dogs and get out of this mess of a building that is preventing us from operating correctly or at capacity.

We are asking our community to consider supporting our efforts to get through our new space build out and replace our equipment. By utilizing all of our resources, we have already been able to begin the work on our new space and secure the location, but support would allow us to recover so much more of the lost equipment for daily operations. We hope that our friends, neighbors, and wider connections will consider giving us a monetary boost so that we can keep Ruff Translating recovering from the disaster of this year, and supporting our service dog program and wider community for years to come. Thank you for considering our request!

Help Ruff Translating finish our move!

We have big plans but need some help along the way.

Team Members