Paws with Purpose Coaching
Program curriculum
Eight modules covering the full owner-trainer journey, from assessing your dog’s suitability through public access readiness and long-term team care. Mixed formats, flexible pacing, and designed for all experience levels. Click any module to expand it.
Lessons
Welcome & Getting Started Checklist
What to expect from each lesson, why the modules are built in order, and a practical checklist to get your dog, your training space, your records, and your schedule ready before you begin.
Lessons
The Honest Question
Whether the dog in front of you is a service dog candidate, and how to ask that question without flinching from the answer.
Breed, Size, and Personality
What actually matters in a candidate, what doesn’t, and how size and temperament interact with the work you need done.
Temperament Testing: The 12-Station Assessment
A structured twelve-station assessment you run yourself, with what to look for at each station and how to score honestly.
Health Requirements
The health screening a working prospect needs, what disqualifies a candidate, and what to gather from your veterinarian before you invest years of training.
The Wash-Out Question
How to recognize when a dog cannot do this work, how to make that decision with care, and what your next step looks like if it happens.
Lessons
How Dogs Learn
The training science in plain language: what reinforcement actually does, why timing matters more than technique, and how to stop teaching your dog the wrong thing by accident.
The Core Seven Commands
Sit, down, stay, come, heel, under, and leave it. How to build each one to service dog reliability rather than living-room reliability.
Loose-Leash Walking & Tethering
The skill everything else depends on, plus tethering as a management tool when your energy is limited.
Socialization
What socialization actually means, what it is not, and how to do it in a way that builds a neutral dog instead of an overstimulated one.
Training Session Structure
How long, how often, and how to end a session well, built around real energy levels rather than an ideal training day.
Foundation Skills Progress Tracker
An honest self-assessment across every foundation behavior, scored the way you would see it on an average day rather than your best one.
Foundation Video Review
Send me footage of your foundation work and get written feedback on your handling, your timing, and what to fix next.
Lessons
Public Access Law & the ADA
What the ADA actually says about service dogs, the two questions a business may ask, and where public access rights begin and end.
The Three Federal Laws
The ADA, the Fair Housing Act, and the Air Carrier Access Act, explained in plain language, including how they differ and which one applies where.
Access Challenges
What to say in the moment, how to de-escalate, when to walk away, and what to do afterward if your rights were violated.
The Public Access Progression
A staged progression from quiet environments to the hardest ones, so your dog is never asked for more than they are ready to give.
Public Access Readiness
The standards your team needs to meet before working in public, and an honest checklist to measure yourself against them.
Lessons
What Counts as a Task
The legal definition of task work, the difference between a task and a trained behavior, and why that distinction protects you.
Your Task Inventory
How to translate what your disability actually does to you into a specific, trainable list of tasks built for your body and your days.
Mobility Tasks: Set-Up Skills
The foundation behaviors underneath all mobility work, taught before any weight or pressure is ever involved.
Mobility Tasks: Brace & Applications
Counterbalance, momentum pull, and brace work, including the size and structure requirements that keep your dog sound.
Medical Alert Tasks
How scent and behavior alerts are built, what a reliable alert looks like, and why your medical team has to be part of this conversation.
Psychiatric and Non-Physical Tasks
Deep pressure, grounding interruption, blocking, room searches, and nightmare interruption. How each is trained and where handlers usually go wrong.
Hearing Assistance Tasks
Sound alerts, the persistent alert and lead-to-source chain, and how to proof alerts so they hold outside the house.
Proofing Tasks in Public
Getting task work to hold under distraction, fatigue, and pressure, which is the difference between a dog who can and a dog who will.
Lessons
The Diagnostic Framework
A repeatable way to work out what is actually going on before you change anything, so you stop treating symptoms.
Common Behavior Problems
The issues that derail most owner-trainers, what causes them, and how to work through each one.
Fear, Phobias, and Anxiety
How fear presents in a working dog, what helps, what makes it worse, and when a behavior problem is really a welfare problem.
Emotional Health
Your dog’s emotional health and your own. Burnout, discouragement, and how to keep going without breaking either of you.
When Training Stalls
Plateaus, regression, and the stretches where nothing seems to move. Why they happen and how to get traction again.
When to Seek Professional Support
How to tell the difference between a training problem, a medical problem, and a behavior problem that needs a veterinary behaviorist.
Lessons
Marker Timing
The single skill that changes results fastest, and how to practice it until it is automatic.
Reinforcement Delivery
Where and how you deliver reinforcement, and how it quietly shapes position, posture, and speed.
Body Language and Posture
What your body is telling your dog while your mouth says something else, including how to train from a seated position.
Criteria Setting
How to decide what earns reinforcement, how to raise the bar without losing the behavior, and how to stop moving the goalposts.
Session Structure
Building a session that fits your energy, ends on a win, and leaves your dog wanting more.
Environmental Setup & Distraction Management
Arranging the environment so your dog can succeed, then adding difficulty on purpose rather than by accident.
Lessons
The Canine Good Citizen Test
What the CGC is, why it is a useful milestone for a service dog team, and how to prepare for it.
The 10 CGC Stations
Every station, what the evaluator is looking for, and how to practice each one before test day.
The CGC Urban Test
The urban version of the test, what changes, and why it maps well onto real public access work.
The Public Access Test
The PAT standards, how to prepare for each element, and how to assess your team honestly against them.
Program Graduation
What graduation from this program means, what your graduation documentation includes, and what it does and does not represent legally.
What Comes Next
Life after graduation: maintaining skills, re-evaluating over time, and where your team goes from here.
Lessons
Daily Care
Feeding, grooming, conditioning, and rest for a dog whose body is doing a job every day.
Working Equipment
Vests, harnesses, leashes, and mobility equipment. What each is for, what fits, and what to skip.
Home Setup and Daily Routines
Building a home and a routine that supports a working dog and a handler with limited energy.
Daily Working Life
What a working day actually looks like, including decompression, downtime, and knowing when to leave your dog home.
Travel with Your Service Dog
Air travel, road trips, hotels, and what to prepare before you go.
The Lifetime of Your Team
Aging, retirement, and successor dogs. How to plan for the end of a working career before you are in the middle of it.
Delivery by tier
How each program delivers the curriculum
All three tiers cover the same eight modules. What differs is the pacing, the level of personalization, and the amount of direct access to Brenda.
| Feature | Foundation | Guided | Intensive |
|---|---|---|---|
| All 8 modules, 49 lessons | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| All downloadable resources | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Monthly live group Q&A call | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Private community access | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Pacing | Self-paced (all unlocked) | Guided (module per milestone) | Structured (biweekly with Brenda) |
| Group coaching calls with Brenda | — | 2× per month | 2× per month |
| Private 1:1 calls with Brenda | — | — | Six, scheduled biweekly or as your journey needs |
| Video review & feedback | — | ✔ 1 per month | ✔ up to 3 per month |
| Personalized training plan | — | ✔ | ✔ (updated throughout) |
| Async messaging support | — | Standard response (3–5 business days) | Priority (within 48 hrs, business hours Mon–Fri) |
| Dog suitability assessment | — | ✔ | ✔ |
| Custom task training protocol | — | — | ✔ |
| Formal Public Access Readiness Review | — | — | ✔ |
| Graduation pathway | Self-directed (you assemble your milestone packet) | Formally evaluated through accumulated evidence (video reviews, logs, recorded PA outing) | Full evaluation: live PAT, 1:1 coaching, five months of direct assessment |
| Written evaluation in your graduation packet | — | ✔ | ✔ |
| Final graduation coaching call | — | — | ✔ |
| Live Public Access Test with Brenda | — | — | ✔ |
| Enrollment cap | Open | Open | 10 clients at a time |
Ready to choose your tier? Full pricing, what’s included, and enrollment are all on the coaching page.
See pricing & enroll →Not sure which tier fits? Book a free 15-minute consult.