Part oneThe dog
Trained by the student, from puppy to therapy-animal team evaluation.
The program →A dog is not the intervention. A trained practitioner is.
A professional formation program in dog-assisted social-emotional learning. The curriculum, the standards, and what a graduate can do.
The profession
A nine-year-old has not spoken voluntarily in her classroom for four months.
A practitioner brings a dog. Within twenty minutes she is talking, to the dog, then about the dog, then to the practitioner about the dog.
Almost anyone with a friendly, well-trained dog can produce that first moment. It is not rare, and it is not a profession.
Everything that has to happen next is.
How it works
The exercise is not the point.
A student trains their own dog. Obedience, tricks, retrieving, a repertoire the dog can be asked for.
Then the practitioner, the dog and a child do something together. An obstacle course. A task. A trick the child has to teach the dog themselves.
What the practitioner is working on is not the course, and not the trick. It is how the child handles it. How they plan it. How they judge how it went. Whether they can read what the dog needs before the dog has to insist.
And above all: what does the child do when the dog does not do what they asked?
That moment is not the session going wrong. That moment is the session.
Those are the social-emotional competencies, practiced rather than discussed.
The gap this fills
Two worlds, already doing the same thing.
Dog training
A trainer holds the space between a dog and its owner. Reads both, and teaches one to work with the other.
RISE with Dogs
Both are already holding space for a dog and a person at once. They just do it in separate worlds, and nobody trains one person to do both. That is what this program forms.
Animal-assisted therapy
A therapist holds the space between a client and an animal, inside a practice they already run.
Who we are
This program already ran. For seventeen years.
- 3,500+
- Professionals trainedAll programs
- 70+
- Cohorts deliveredWith dogs
- 20
- Courses designed
- 3,000+
- Patients served
One practitioner
The dog, the person, the practicum.
Part one
Part twoThe person
Developmental psychology, session design, ethics and scope of practice.
The program →
Part threeThe practicum
Twelve individual sessions, twelve group sessions, twelve reflection meetings.
The program →Delivery
Delivered in Colorado by OKOYA OCI and Khyzen Canine.
Khyzen Canine leads the canine-training instruction. Their work centers on helping dogs regulate their emotions through species-typical behaviors, the same co-regulation principle this program teaches. OKOYA directs the intervention work and the assessment.
Start the conversation
You will be answered by the founder — not a funnel.
Curriculum documentation, the instructor qualification file, and the full capability framework are available on request.