Join us for an informative webinar on Training Service Dogs for Dysautonomia with Cat Gentile & Heather Mickelson!

Date: Wednesday, April 16th

Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm

Location: Zoom

**Submit your questions in advance on the registration form by Wednesday, April 9th!**

Description: We will discuss the important highlights when raising a dog to best prepare for a job in service work!

For 11 years, Cat has helped people around the world by training dogs to assist with all different symptoms ranging from scent training for rising heart rate or even retrieving water from the fridge on those days when we find ourselves unable to get out of bed. Service dogs have not only helped Cat in her own personal life through years of medical journeys that never seem to end but it led to a type of assistance that not even a human caretaker or home nurse could provide: a true sense of independence. Heather has been training dogs for over 20 years. Over the course of those years, she has been able to formulate a behavior based training approach focused on building balanced relationships centered around a healthy and happy lifestyle.

The two trainers met while working on a TV show for NatGeo, as Heather was the consulting behaviorist producer while Cat was taking undesirable behaviors and turning them into activities or “jobs,” and two of those cast members’ dogs became a service dog. With the combined specialties of service work and behaviorist, we discovered a whole new world when it comes to collaborating. Not only do we ensure the dog has our core training foundations before starting task work but we call ourselves “lifestyle based trainers.” We understand that most people, especially those with chronic illnesses, do not have the ability to carve time out of their day for training with their dog. In this case, we create individualized training plans for every person we work with to ensure that training can occur during times in your day that would not involve additional work/time (like during a POTS flare up or if you have a hectic work schedule). We make positive associations, creating new neruo-pathways in the dog’s brain, whenever we build a strong foundation that will make it simple when transitioning to more complex work and task training. Anyone who struggles with dysautonomia can relate to this zoom even if you are not looking into a task trained service dog because we constantly adapt to our symptoms on a moment-to-moment basis, just as dogs live in the present moment whether training or not.