RISE with Dogs

The Program

Four parts, one practitioner.

The program is expressed as capabilities: what a graduate can do, and the evidence that proves it. The four parts are a curricular grouping, not a calendar sequence. The dog work and the intervention work are integrated from the first week, so a student begins forming as a practitioner while their dog is still a puppy.

How the training is built

Two teachers. One destination.

Khyzen Canine teaches humans to work with dogs. RISE with Dogs teaches humans to work with dogs and with the people in the room. Each brings its own half of the practitioner, and both are built to arrive at the same place.

Khyzen Canine

Our dog-training partner — Colorado.

Two teachers, one destinationTwo cards sit at the top. On the left, Khyzen Canine, the canine leg, teaches humans to work with dogs. On the right, RISE with Dogs, the intervention leg, teaches humans to work with dogs and with the people in the room. A line runs down from each: from Khyzen Canine to Dog training, and from RISE with Dogs to Handling. Two curves then converge from those two boxes into a single teal card at the bottom reading: what a graduate can do, holding space for dogs and people. A rising sun sits behind that card.THE CANINE LEGKhyzen CanineTeaches humans to work with dogs.THE INTERVENTION LEGRISE with DogsTeaches humans to work with dogs,and with the people in the room.Dog trainingHandlingWHAT A GRADUATE CAN DOHolding spacefor dogs and people.

Four parts

What a graduate can do, and the evidence that proves it.

Part One

Canine Training and Behavior

Learning theory, canine ethology and welfare, teaching and coaching people, professional practice and US law, and the training of the student's own dog to therapy-animal standard.

Assessed by

written training plans with data and revision rationale · live observation and annotation of a dog's signaling · a private lesson and a group class taught and observed · a multi-week curriculum with homework and progress measures · case triage · written examination · practical examination

Part Two

The Dog and Handler in SEL Work

Where a third person enters the room. The working frame, directing the dog toward a client, tricks and movement as therapeutic tools, individual and group sessions.

Assessed by

observed session openings and closings with an oral defense of the frame · send-and-return with a role-played client · a designed activity serving an assigned client goal · full individual and group sessions observed and assessed on both client process and dog welfare · a two-part practical certification examination

Part Three

Social-Emotional Learning Foundations

Developmental and relational psychology, recognizing presentations, working with specific populations, session design, ethics and scope, safety, and building a practice.

Part Four

Supervised Practicum

Twelve individual client sessions and twelve group sessions at a real placement, with twelve reflection meetings threaded between them.

12

Individual sessions

12

Group sessions

12

Reflection meetings

A student who delivers twenty-four sessions unsupervised has volunteered. A student whose every session is prepared, delivered, debriefed and reflected on has been trained.

Who takes it

Two kinds of student, one program.

Some arrive with no professional background at all, and leave with a profession they did not have.

Others already have one. Teachers and special-education teachers. Social workers. Speech-language pathologists. Occupational and physical therapists. Psychologists. Coaches. For them it is an addition to a practice they already run.

Delivery

Taught online. Practiced in person, all year.

The theory runs online across the year, with weekly filmed task submissions reviewed by an instructor and live group calls.

The dog work does not. It is done in person, in lab cohorts: intensive weekends at a working training facility, spread across the program rather than saved for the end.

Students choose where they do it. Fort Collins, with Khyzen Canine. Or Happy Dog Ranch, in Sedalia.

Weekly online commitment

Phase one

About 12 hours a week for the first nine months

Phase two

Tapering to about 8.5 hours a week thereafter

Where this work happens

In schools, and alongside the people already in them.

In Israel, graduates work in schools, with autistic children and with mainstream classes. A child taken out of class for a session. A small group worked with inside it, with goals set for the group and separately for each child in it.

They work with at-risk and troubled youth, where the dog reaches a teenager who has decided not to be reached by an adult.

And with ordinary children who are not in any difficulty at all: afternoon programs, summer camps, a class that simply gets better at working together.

What a graduate is prepared for

The dog and handler

Pet Partners therapy animal team registration

Evaluated locally, in the student's own state. AKC Canine Good Citizen is taken as a mid-program milestone.

The trainer

CPDT-KA, Certified Professional Dog Trainer

The program covers all four published exam domains. The certifying body's separate logged-hours requirement is met through a partner training organization.

The practitioner

C-AAIS, Animal-Assisted Intervention Specialist

The curriculum is mapped to the five published competency domains of the certifying association.

Standards and claims

What this program is, and what it does not claim.

Built to an external standard

In Israel, the therapeutic dog-work profession has a national association that prescribes required subject areas and minimum hours across four blocks of study. Offek's curriculum is built to that standard and exceeds it in every block. There is no equivalent body in the United States. No American association sets required hours for this work. That absence is precisely why a curriculum built to an external standard, rather than to its author's preference, is worth examining.

Assessment

Three written summative examinations across the theory sequence. Practical examinations in dog handling. A two-part practical certification examination in therapeutic work. Twenty-four supervised placement sessions with written case history, group analysis, reflective portfolio, documentation set and practice plan.

Scope of practice

Graduates are not therapists, counselors or psychologists. The curriculum states this explicitly and repeatedly, and assesses it. They are practitioners of animal-assisted social-emotional learning, working within an educational and developmental frame, alongside licensed professionals rather than in place of them.

Credentials

The program's own credential is conferred in two stages: the first on completion of the taught program and its practical examinations, the second to candidates who complete the supervised practicum and meet the published criteria. Certification is never promised at enrollment; it is awarded to those who meet the standard.

Curriculum documentation, the instructor qualification file, and the full capability framework for each part are available on request.

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.

omri@okoya-oci.com
Email the founder