Not every dog thrives in a traditional daycare setting. Jesse San Miguel knew this better than most. As a dog trainer with more than 15 years of experience, he had spent years helping clients undo the behavioral problems their dogs picked up in facilities built more around convenience than canine wellbeing. In 2012, he launched Canine Perspective as a private in-home training business with a different philosophy: that dogs need exercise, structure, and discipline, and that a facility designed around those needs produces better outcomes for both pets and their owners.
In 2019, Jesse opened Canine Perspective’s first brick-and-mortar location in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. A year later, Elizabeth Herlihy came to him for help with Luna, her fearful, reactive rescue dog. The training worked, and so did the partnership: Elizabeth left her full-time job to help run the business alongside Jesse, and the two later married. As she describes it, he’s the brain and she’s the heart.
Together, they’ve built Canine Perspective into Chicago’s only structured, quiet kennel for dog daycare, boarding, and training, a deliberate departure from the all-day barking and chaos found at most facilities. The approach draws plenty of easygoing, friendly dogs, but it’s become best known for something harder to find in the city: a place for dogs that other daycares have turned away.
The Financing
As demand for his approach grew, Jesse and Elizabeth saw an opportunity to bring that philosophy to scale through a full-service daycare and boarding facility, but they had outgrown the leased Logan Square space. To buy a larger space of their own, they needed financing. As a small, family-owned business with only a few years of financial history, they weren’t a natural fit for traditional lenders, who wanted a longer operating history and more extensive financial reporting than Canine Perspective could offer at the time. Their search for the right financing eventually connected them with a Community Reinvestment Fund, USA (CRF) loan officer, and in 2022, CRF provided an SBA 7(a) loan to help Canine Perspective acquire a commercial property already outfitted for dog care operations in the West Town neighborhood, complete with the large, built-in wire kennel areas the business needed.
The financing gave Jesse and Elizabeth the ability to own the space where their business would continue to grow, reducing long-term costs and creating a stable platform for expanding their services. The new location’s proximity to the West Loop has also opened the business to new clientele, and the financing gave the business room to reinvest in the client experience, including a larger van that helps longtime clients continue making the trip to the new location.
Today, Canine Perspective is a destination for dog owners who have struggled to find the right fit elsewhere, including those whose dogs have been turned away from other facilities. The business retained 11 positions and added four more following the property acquisition, deepening its role as both a neighborhood employer and a trusted resource for responsible pet care in the community.
Community & What’s Next
Canine Perspective’s new home sits on Lake Street, a stretch of industrial businesses between the West Loop and Garfield Park. The business has grown close with its next-door neighbor, a canine security company, bonding over both the dog world and the shared experience of running a small business.
Looking ahead, Jesse and Elizabeth plan to keep Canine Perspective a place where dogs turned away from other daycares will always have a spot in the pack. They’ve also begun partnering with the USPS on dog bite safety seminars, with hopes of expanding that programming into schools and other interested businesses, work they see as a natural extension of their mission, helping the humans of a dog-friendly city stay safe alongside the animals they love.