Danielle Lindquist

Danielle Lindquist of Cary, North Carolina has spent the past 23 years, falling in love with animals. During high school, she volunteered every weekend at our local animal shelter if she was not already working at the local pet store. This passion carried her on to college, where she chose veterinary medicine as her career. Lindquist has worked every weekend, holiday and break since she was sixteen at her job as a veterinary assistant, caring for patients overnight during emergency shifts, cleaning kennels and consoling grieving clients.

Lindquist has always had a heart bigger than her chest could carry, leading her to start C.A.R.E. NC (Canine Assisted Rehabilitation for the Elderly of North Carolina) during her senior year as a pre-veterinary student at North Carolina State University. The C.A.R.E. NC program is a non-profit that dedicates its mission to improving the adoptability of shelter dogs, and training them to become therapeutic visitors for local assisted living facilities.

Along with a veterinarian, an animal behaviorist and professional dog trainer, Lindquist set up a working partnership among them with a common goal to gives pre-veterinary students the opportunity to work with shelter dogs that are waiting for a new home, and bring them to local assisted living facilities every week to meet the residents. These residents, many of whom had to give up their own dog when moving in to an assisted living facility, get the opportunity to be loved by a dog again.

Lindquist has dedicated the past two years to transforming shelter dogs into therapeutic visitors for local seniors. In this way, she and the C.A.R.E. NC team are able to fulfill a two-fold mission of increasing the likelihood of adoption for shelter dogs while motivating senior citizens through the healing power of pets.