Our Story
Our story begins with people in two separate states. Megan (hey, that's me!! I am the one that will primarily handle the training) is a music teacher in Illinois. My knees began to deteriorate and a service dog was suggested by my doctor. I did not have enough money to purchase a service dog from a provider (nor the time to wait for one), so I decided to try and train my dog, Loki (the handsome devil in the picture behind this text), to become a mobility dog. Loki had some aggression issues and had no training on him when I adopted him from the shelter. After a ton of time spent training and researching different training styles, Loki passed his Canine Good Citizen Test and met the requirements to become a service dog! Through training Loki, I realized that my passion for helping people and training dogs could become a new career. Only one problem, where to start? That is where my mother, Kim, comes into the picture.
Kim is a licensed professional counselor-supervisor in the Houston, TX area and is working towards her PHD in Clinical Psychology. She works with kiddos who have many different types of mental disabilities. Through her resources and contacts, we are able to work with doctors and mental health professionals to assess if a service dog is right for a specific person to help mitigate their disabilities. In addition, we can provide clients with therapy, mental health professionals and other resources to help them. With Kim's expertise on the different difficulties that mental disabilities can present, we can truly tailor a dog's training to mitigate as many of the daily struggles that people face. Megan had trained Kim's dog, Belle (the Great Dane), to become a Therapy Dog. In the process, Kim had a brilliant idea: instead of just helping our family out, why not extend what we do to other families? And so, the journey towards our own company began!
Natasha (Kim's adopted daughter from Russia) is also going to be helping out with the training. Natasha has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and has some mental disabilities that are associated with this disorder. She has dealt with them up until recently, but it has certainly taken a tole on her and on our family. My mom and I discussed the option of training a service dog for Natasha to help her through her daily life and give her more freedom; and we decided to go for it. We did hours of research to see what tasks we could train the dog to do to give Natasha the most freedom that we possibly could. After many emails, texts and phone calls back and forth, we adopted Willow (German Shepherd shown with Natasha on the home page of our website) from a local rescue in Texas and drove her up to Illinois to begin her training with Megan. As of now, it is still a work in progress, but we are seeing wonderful steps towards a fully trained service dog that will allow Natasha to have the freedom that she craves.
Kim is a licensed professional counselor-supervisor in the Houston, TX area and is working towards her PHD in Clinical Psychology. She works with kiddos who have many different types of mental disabilities. Through her resources and contacts, we are able to work with doctors and mental health professionals to assess if a service dog is right for a specific person to help mitigate their disabilities. In addition, we can provide clients with therapy, mental health professionals and other resources to help them. With Kim's expertise on the different difficulties that mental disabilities can present, we can truly tailor a dog's training to mitigate as many of the daily struggles that people face. Megan had trained Kim's dog, Belle (the Great Dane), to become a Therapy Dog. In the process, Kim had a brilliant idea: instead of just helping our family out, why not extend what we do to other families? And so, the journey towards our own company began!
Natasha (Kim's adopted daughter from Russia) is also going to be helping out with the training. Natasha has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and has some mental disabilities that are associated with this disorder. She has dealt with them up until recently, but it has certainly taken a tole on her and on our family. My mom and I discussed the option of training a service dog for Natasha to help her through her daily life and give her more freedom; and we decided to go for it. We did hours of research to see what tasks we could train the dog to do to give Natasha the most freedom that we possibly could. After many emails, texts and phone calls back and forth, we adopted Willow (German Shepherd shown with Natasha on the home page of our website) from a local rescue in Texas and drove her up to Illinois to begin her training with Megan. As of now, it is still a work in progress, but we are seeing wonderful steps towards a fully trained service dog that will allow Natasha to have the freedom that she craves.