How Puppy Sphere is shaking off growing pains to fetch bigger goals

It’s a critical time for Canada’s economy and its business community. The country needs innovation and growth more than ever, yet businesses across a wide range of industries are facing trade disruptions, rising costs and technological change, among other challenges. This series profiles forward-thinking Canadian companies that are growing their markets by re-examining their business practices and trying new things.

Francesca Albo and Lea Burbidge Izquierdo learned firsthand that while hype can accelerate growth, it can be easy to lose control of that growth.

The co-founders of Puppy Sphere, which creates wellness experiences combining puppy therapy with yoga classes and social events, have experienced a stratospheric rise since launching in 2021.

The pair met at Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto while walking their dogs and felt an instant connection. They built their business together, starting with dog-friendly comedy nights, singles events and yoga classes. Now, they have around 250 full- and part-time employees and 13 yoga studios across North America – six in Canada, including Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg, and seven in the U.S., including New York, Miami and Chicago.

During classes, puppies from local breeders or shelters freely roam, offering cuddles to attendees. Ms. Albo, the company’s chief executive officer, remembers their quick rise in the early days. “These puppy yoga classes were selling out – no marketing spend, just a social media post, and we would completely sell out $10,000 worth of classes,” she says. “It was insane.”

The company hit US$6-million ($8.4-million) in revenue in 2025, but that was also the year their rapid growth finally caught up with them. “We got cocky,” says Ms. Albo. “We opened up too many studios and went through a cash flow crunch – it was really scary.”

The company had to do its first layoffs and close units it had recently opened. “Lea and I stopped paying ourselves for six months,” she says.

The pair, who’d left Toronto in 2023 with a Jeep and their dogs to move to New York City and build the business’s U.S. operations, had to move back into their parents’ houses in Canada. It was a humbling experience, says Ms. Albo.

“Being an entrepreneur, every six months you realize how dumb you were six months ago,” she says.

Restructuring and reinventing

After experiencing the cash-flow crunch, Ms. Albo and Ms. Burbidge Izquierdo realized they needed to restructure the business, moving from relying on their intuition to hiring an advisory board with members who have scaled within the wellness space. One of those advisors is David Humphrey, former chief executive officer of Massage Envy and vice-chair of Ignite Fitness Holdings, which operates more than 100 Planet Fitness franchises.

Mr. Humphrey, who also advises tech startups, says the Puppy Sphere co-founders have a tech startup style of thinking that allows them to pivot quickly. “They [had] accrued some expenses that they couldn’t afford yet,” he says. “They stepped back and they focused on what really mattered – and now they’re back in full-blown growth mode and they’re doing it right.”

One of the growth opportunities the company has identified is “puppy socials” – corporate events where Puppy Sphere brings dogs to a specially created space at a workplace for mental well-being. Research published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science in 2021 found that short-term, unstructured interactions with a therapy dog can significantly reduce self-reported anxiety and distress levels.

Puppy Sphere currently runs about 500 events a year for firms such as TikTok, Google, the NBA, Deloitte and McCarthy Tétrault. The co-founders recall a recent event where a high-profile partner at a law firm was snuggling with puppies in a pen for 45 minutes. “Suddenly you lose the hierarchy that exists in the corporate office,” says Ms. Burbidge Izquierdo, the company’s chief operating officer. “That’s such an important part of team bonding.”

Jennie Lwanyaga, assistant vice-president of global benefits and wellbeing at Manulife, says the firm has hosted multiple puppy socials across offices in Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal and Halifax. She notes that there is strong evidence for the physiological and psychological benefits of interacting with pets. “We were looking at it from the therapeutic and mood-boosting effects.”

Ms. Lwanyaga says the novelty of the puppy socials was well-received, and that these kinds of events are part of a wider shift in corporate culture across workplaces. Leaders are looking for a broader spectrum of team building and wellness events that promote social, emotional and financial wellbeing in addition to physical wellbeing.

“It’s such a new and untapped market,” Ms. Lwanyaga says. “I don’t think it’s anywhere close to maturity – there’s a lot of room that they can grow the business.”

Happy puppies, happy customers

Corporate events currently make up about 20 per cent of the company’s revenue, something Puppy Sphere is focused on growing. But like the cost of pursuing growth, there’s also a cost to pursuing new opportunities, says Mr. Humphrey. “For a business at their stage which needs to do so many things at once and needs to have so many skills at once, they need to have a larger staff all the time,” he says.

Then there’s the animal welfare conversation. Ms. Burbidge Izquierdo says the company has strict standards when it comes to the puppies’ welfare. “If it doesn’t work for the dogs, then it doesn’t work for Puppy Sphere,” she says.

The company has spent four and a half years building systems, protocols, playbooks and proprietary training to ensure the animals are safe. Sessions are short, and schedules are set up so the puppies have breaks to drink water, rest and recharge. No one works a shift with the company without training, says Ms. Burbidge Izquierdo.

“All of our supervisors are pet CPR certified, and there will always be one of them on site, no matter what the event type is.”

Mr. Humphrey says training and accreditation is vital, especially in a new industry like the one Puppy Sphere is building. “You need a very rigorous selection [process], training and supervision,” he says. “Make sure you hire the right people, they know the right things to do, and they do them.”

Ms. Albo and Ms. Burbidge Izquierdo say they are doing just that while growing at a pace that fits their ability to scale. In September, the company announced it had raised its first outside capital: US$1-million. The plan is to raise a larger round next year while still retaining control of the company.

“We’ve thrown ourselves into so many other areas of the business and figured it out,” Ms. Albo says. “It’s been a learning process, but that’s what being an entrepreneur is: learning every day and being humbled.”