Clayton Saunders and Paige Mackelprang with their daughter — and pups.

Clayton Saunders rescued his dog, Spot, when he was just a 5-week-old puppy. When Saunders suffered a traumatic brain injury and began having seizures a few years back, he decided to train Spot into a service dog.

The experience led Saunders to develop a dog training business.

Saunders, his wife, Paige Mackelprang, and their 7-month-old daughter, Peyton, moved to the Oregon Coast in July from Las Vegas and established Peyton Rose K9 Services in Astoria.

“I’m not really good with a lot of the business and stuff. I’m a really good dog trainer,” Saunders said. “But that’s where my wife has come in. She’s really good at running all the communication and everything that I just unfortunately have a lot of medical handicaps with.”

For now, Saunders does most of the training in open areas with the dogs. He and Mackelprang hope to buy land and open a physical location in the future.

The pair envision a community space with hayrides and events during the holidays to bring people together. They used to hold dog parties with their customers back in Las Vegas and they hope to do the same thing here.

“Our business is more focused on being involved with the community, being a positive impact to it, instead of being a bigger commercialized business that is just more concerned with bringing business in and out,” Saunders said. “That’s just our biggest business motto — just keep it simple, keep it good, and then, the work speaks for itself.”

Saunders said the community has been welcoming to his family and his service dog.

“For us being here, having a very calm environment, great weather — obviously, we can work the dogs a lot better out here than a different type of environment. And the town is just so great,” he said. “We fell in love with Astoria. It’s just like my small-town home back in Arkansas, but then (Mackelprang) gets the ocean, also.”