Huntingdon Valley resident turns “Throwaway” dogs into a national mission

Twelve years ago, a single abandoned dog and a single Huntingdon Valley resident set in motion a movement that would change the lives of police officers, shelters, and misunderstood dogs across the country. Today, Carol Skaziak’s Throw Away Dogs Project™, founded from her Huntingdon Valley home, is internationally recognized for repurposing high-drive “throwaway” dogs into fully trained, donated law-enforcement canines.

“I absolutely believe this was a calling,” Skaziak said. “If you had asked me 15 years ago if I thought I’d be doing this, I would've never in a million years thought it. But the drive and the passion pour out of my pores. I want to save misunderstood dogs, and help police departments. It’s in my blood.”

The project began with one article Skaziak wrote in 2013 for the boarding facility where she worked in public relations. She noticed dogs being dropped off and never picked up; dogs “thrown away” not because they were bad, but because their owners were unprepared for their energy and needs.

“I decided to do an article called The Throwaway Dogs,” she recalled. “The article just took off. Newspapers, TV, the media loved the story.”

While creating a calendar highlighting clients’ rescue dogs, one submission caught her eye: a SEPTA K9 handler with a rescue dog named Winchester. Winchester had been a day away from euthanasia but was now a certified dual-purpose police dog. His transformation struck Skaziak deeply.

“I was so intrigued by Winchester’s journey that the whole article took a new turn,” she said. “Here was a dog on death row now serving a community. I promoted his story everywhere.”

The story went national. And when the dust settled, Skaziak felt something bigger calling her.

“It was at that moment I realized I needed to continue this mission,” she said. “My life was about to change.”

In 2014, Skaziak and SEPTA K9 handler Jason Walters officially launched the Throw Away Dogs Project. But being a woman, a civilian, and a newcomer in the working-dog world made the early stages extraordinarily difficult.

“Trying to promote a shelter dog to a police department was almost impossible,” she said. “We had no reputation. No references. Nothing.”

The first year, she trained the dogs in her Huntingdon Valley home. The first few placements, one to Maine, one to New Jersey, one to Delaware’s Department of Corrections, were slow, hard-earned victories.

But Skaziak, with her PR background, refused to give up.

“I promoted the organization so hard and so well that things eventually started to change,” she said.

And then came a breakthrough: Cesar Millan, the world-famous “Dog Whisperer,” contacted her in 2016.

“He heard about my organization and was interested in doing a show with me,” she said. “Once we were televised, the nonprofit took off. Emails poured in from all over the world.”

Her reputation exploded even further when she evaluated and successfully placed five pit bulls saved from a Canadian dog-fighting ring—three of which entered law enforcement, one became a service dog, and one she adopted herself.

“It’s not common to place pit bulls in law enforcement,” she said. “NBC Nightly News featured us. It put me on the map again.”

A “throwaway dog,” Skaziak explained, is almost never an aggressive or dangerous animal.

“We don’t take aggressive dogs; that’s a misconception,” she said. “These are dogs with high drive and high energy. They need to be physically and emotionally engaged, or people think they’re ‘bad.’ They’re not. They just need jobs.”

Many of her dogs come from shelters; others are donated by reputable breeders and brokers who support her mission.

“If a dog can do the job, I’ll take it,” she said. “We are not breed-discriminative at all.”

A key trait shared by successful K9s is single-minded toy obsession.

“We train police work through play,” she explained. “These dogs would jump off the Empire State Building to get that ball. That’s the drive we look for.”

That drive later becomes the foundation for drug, explosive, or weapons detection.

“The ball is imprinted with an odor like narcotics or explosives; not by putting the substance on the ball, but by storing it together,” Skaziak said. “The dog learns: find the odor, get the reward.”

Training, housing, and donating a police dog normally costs a department $10,000 to $15,000. But Skaziak donates every dog free of charge. To date, nearly 80 dogs have been placed nationwide.

Her placements include local SEPTA K9s; five in total, with three still working Philadelphia’s streets, buses, and subways.

The process is rigorous. When a dog leaves the Throw Away Dogs program, it is already 80–90 percent trained. Then, the dog and handler complete a state-certified handler school.

“They have to be certified as a team,” she said. “If they’re working the road or in a court of law, the certification proves both know what they’re doing.”

Her two most recent donations include a pitbull mix placed with Crisfield Police in Maryland as a narcotics dog and a highly regarded K9 who was donated to the Bristol Township Police Department, now finishing handler school with the Philadelphia Police K9 Unit, and due to graduate this month. Justin O’Brien, also a Huntingdon Valley resident, is the K9 head trainer with the Philadelphia Police Department, who is directly training Kenzo and his handler.

“I’m so excited,” she said. “These dogs are living their best lives.”

When COVID slowed adoptions and police dog placements, Skaziak innovated again by creating her K9 Law & Order seminar series, a three-day maintenance-training program for officers and their dogs, offered at zero cost to law enforcement.

What began with 30 K9 teams now hosts 100 teams per seminar, attracting officers from across the country and trainers from as far as Germany.

“I created it to help departments who didn’t have funding for continued training,” she said. “We help officers polish their dogs so they can serve their communities better.”

The seminars also serve as the organization’s major annual fundraiser, supported by businesses, sponsors, and community donations. The 2026 seminar will be held in Ulster County, New York.

Despite international recognition, all of the program’s coordination still happens at Skaziak’s home in Huntingdon Valley.

“I’m still doing this from my home,” she said. “This is my full-time job now. I left PR and marketing because this mission consumed me.”

With eight trainers along the East Coast and a nationwide reputation, the work shows no signs of slowing down. Her goals for the coming year, depending on funding, include placing at least five more dogs and hosting two major seminars.

“It is beyond rewarding,” Skaziak said. “To know that a dog who was going to lose its life now has a job, a handler, a purpose; it makes my heart burst.”

From one “throwaway” dog to nearly 80 working K9s across America, Skaziak’s mission has become a powerful message of second chances, community service, and the extraordinary potential in dogs others have given up on.

“Your trash is my treasure,” she said with a smile. “Watch what I can do with a dog you threw away.”

For more information on the Throw Away Dogs Project, visit throwawaydogsproject.com/.