The Service Dog Training Foundations course is a pre-requisite to applying to the Academy.

The Academy application period opens four times a year, exclusively for Foundations students.

The application process is a simple questionnaire (about ten questions) and two short video submissions of you and your dog practicing a few of the skills you’ll learn inside the foundations course.

The Academy is an online, $42 per month membership site, you'll have access to it for as long as you're a member. Here's how the academy's content will be delivered to you.

Every month, you'll receive one new level every other week, giving you two weeks to work through each new level.

The content inside the resource vault and task training library will become available to you as it relates to the information inside the core curriculum. Because you and your dog will need to know certain pieces of the core curriculum in order to be successful with exercises and behaviors in the Task Training Library and Resource Vault.

While we do welcome students training therapy dogs, emotional support dogs, or looking to train a pet dog, this course is designed for service dogs and so it will guide students through the process of public access training. If you are not training a service dog, you will need to limit your training to pet friendly locations only.

The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a service animal is as a dog "that has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability."  This task or tasks must directly relate to their handler's disabilities.

Because the sole function of a therapy dog or an emotional support dog is to provide comfort, they are not considered service dog's under federal law in the United States.

At this time only service dogs are legally allowed to accompany their owners into public places. 

Completing this course does not automatically grant a therapy dog, emotional support dog, or pet dog service dog status under the law. Misrepresenting a service dog is illegal and it is your responsibility to understand and follow the laws in your area. 

You may find more information on the federal laws here:

https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.ht

Because this is a self-study program that does not require an application process, we do not offer certification at this time.  Instead, the Academy is designed to do is to be an educational program providing students with the dog training skills, training plans, and knowledge to train their dogs to a high level.

*At this time, certification is not required in the United States. Click here to learn more about the ADA and how it governs the use of service dogs.

You can join the Academy for $42 per month or $420 per year.

If your application to the Academy is denied, we’ll give you ideas on how you and your dog can improve before the next application period. Then you can spend that time taking advantage of the ongoing Q&As and quarterly workshops/challenges to get ready for the next application period.

One level in the Academy will be released to you every other week. It will take a little less than a year to work through the entire curriculum.

While there are lots of downloadable resources inside the academy (that you’ll be able to download and keep forever), the videos and lessons are not downloadable. This means you only have access to them while you are a member. Once you cancel, you’ll lose access to these lessons.

Training a service dog is a long, challenging journey and learning via an online format is not a good fit for everyone. This short application process allows us to make sure you and your dog have gained the skills necessary to be successful in the Academy.

If you and/or your dog are more advanced, you’ll still need to start with the Foundations Course. This is for a few reasons. 

• First, foundation training is always the most important type of training to revisit and return to, even if you’re a professional dog trainer and this is your fifth service dog.
  
  
• Second, as you probably know, there is a lot of variation in how different trainers teach different skills, even among positive reinforcement trainers. But, the thing about our programs is that they are designed to be used as a system, each lesson building off the last the entire way through.  The way we teach each behavior or skill has been chosen specifically to teach not just that behavior but to teach a variety of specific skills simultaneously.

  For example, we know that one way to teach eye contact is with a lure. We purposely teach eye contact without a lure so that we are setting you, and your dog, up for success in upcoming lessons. If you haven't taught eye contact the way we teach it, you'll be more likely to struggle in upcoming lessons.
  
  

  In order for us to teach effectively using this format, we need to know that everyone has learned the same set of foundation skills, behaviors, and physical mechanics.

• Third, if you’re struggling in any area of your dog’s training, there’s a very high chance that it is due to a hole in your dog’s foundation. Patch the hole and you're on the way to solving the problem.
• Fourth, it is simply unethical for us to provide service dog training to students and dogs without any kind of prerequisite or application process. The Foundations Course prerequisite and application process allows us to make sure you and your dog are ready for service dog training (just as we would if we were working with you in person).

Short answer is yes, the course is suitable for dogs aof all ages and training levels.

However, if you do have a puppy under 16 weeks, you may find the Foundations Course + Puppy Library bundle useful as the foundations course does not cover puppy-specific topics like play biting and crate training.

In order to take advantage of this course, you'll need to be comfortable learning through written text and video examples, comfortable posting videos to our course community, and fluent enough with your computer (or mobile devices) to use the online course and community.

Once you purchase the course, you get to keep access to it forever. You also get to stay in the community, which means you can ask questions about the course and take advantage of the live quarterly pieces of training for as long as we have a foundations course and community.

You'll get access to one new level each week for six weeks. But don't worry about falling behind because you won't lose access to the course or its community.

To access the course content, you'll need to be connected to the internet as none of the course lessons are downloadable at this time.

Our courses are designed to work as a system, meaning each lesson is built on the lessons before it. Even if you or your dog is more advanced, you must complete each lesson in order. Otherwise, you'll miss important concepts and skills, setting you and your dog up for extra challenges.

If you work through the course in order and ask any questions in the community as challenges pop up, the lessons will build on themselves.

Yes, however, as a professional trainer, you already know there are as many ways to train a sit as there are trainers to teach it. The thing about our programs is that they are designed to be used as a system, each lesson building off the last the entire way through.  The way we teach each behavior or skill has been chosen specifically to teach not just that behavior but to teach a variety of specific skills simultaneously.

For example, we know that one way to teach eye contact is with a lure. We purposely teach eye contact without a lure so that we are setting the student, and their dog, up for success in upcoming lessons. If a lure is suggested, and used, the student will be more likely to struggle in upcoming lessons.

For this reason, we ask that professional trainers who join refrain from offering alternative ways to teach things, leaving this up to the coaches (who are familiar with the entire curriculum). This way students who are new to training are not accidentally overwhelmed with a variety of options.