Premier Program · Fully trained, start to placement
A finished partner, raised for your life.
We find the right dog and raise and train it to your lifestyle, personality, and needs — then travel to you to put it all together. What comes home is a working partner you already know.
The fully guided path
You shouldn’t have to become a dog trainer to get a service dog.
Premier is for families without the bandwidth to train — a new diagnosis, a demanding job, a household already stretched thin. We take on the years of work, and hand you a dog that’s ready for the life you actually live.
Every dog earns full medical clearances before it ever carries you — hips, elbows, eyes, heart — where most of the industry clears only hips, or nothing at all.
“We don’t just train the dog — we train the handler.”
How we build your dog
Four stages, about a year and a half, all on us.
Match the right dog
A puppy or a suitable adult dog, chosen for the temperament your disability and your household need.
Raise & train
12–16 months and 1,200+ hours — obedience, public access, and the specific tasks that answer your disability.
Full medical clearances
Cleared to International Service Dog Alliance standards before placement — a partner built to last.
In-home bootcamp
We travel to you and build the handoff around your schedule, your home, and your real routine.
Raised for you from day one
Not pulled from a shelf at the end.
Your dog is raised and trained for you from the start — so its temperament, its habits, and the tasks it knows are shaped around your life, not retrofitted to it.
We come to you
The bootcamp happens in your living room.
A dog that only works for its trainer isn’t finished. We travel to your home and coach you and the dog together until the partnership is genuinely yours.
Plan on roughly 100–150 hours of your own time, plus six to nine months of daily practice after placement before things truly click. In-Home Interview required.
The handoff, done right
Most programs hand you a leash and a two-hour lesson. We move in for ten days.
A finished dog is only half of a working team — you’re the other half. The Premier in-home bootcamp is where the partnership actually becomes yours, in the exact places you’ll live and work.
The typical transition
A leash, a quick demo, and a good-luck handshake. You learn the dog on your own after the van pulls away.
The Premier bootcamp
35–40 coached hours over 3–4 hours a day, in your home, your workplace, and the real places you go — until you and the dog can pass a formal Public Access Test together.
A two-month placement warranty.
We stand behind every placement. In the two months after the bootcamp, if something isn’t working the way it should, we come back and make it right — because a partnership this important shouldn’t rest on a single goodbye.
Public access certification
Working in public means clearing the bar for it.
Before any team works in public, the dog has to prove it’s safe and unobtrusive out in the world. That standard is the Public Access Test (PAT), built on recognized industry criteria — a calm, controlled team that’s welcome anywhere.
- Calm, controlled loading and unloading from a vehicle.
- A clean heel through a busy store — no pulling, no sniffing.
- Ignoring dropped food, friendly strangers, and other dogs.
- Settling quietly under a table or at your side.
- Recovering from a dropped leash without a fuss.
We prepare your dog to this standard and run the Public Access Test with you at the end of your in-home bootcamp — so you leave certified-ready to work.
Under the ADA there’s no legal certification required to have a service dog — but the PAT is the real-world bar we train every team to clear, because it’s what safe, confident public work actually looks like.
There isn’t a best program
There’s a best one for you.
Premier sits at the fully-guided end of the spectrum. If you want a professional base but plan to finish the training yourself, look at Foundations. If you want to train your own from day one, that’s the Service Dog School.
| Compare the Paths | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Who finds the dog | We do — we source and select the right puppy or suitable adult dog for you. | We help you find one — a puppy or an older candidate from our breeder network and ISDA partners, temperament-, drive-, and health-tested. | We help you find one — a puppy, an older candidate, a dog you already have, or one from a rescue. |
| Who does the training | We fully train the dog from start to placement. Add bootcamps and support periods afterward if you like. | We build the foundation and basic skills up to the point your budget and experience are comfortable transitioning the dog to you. Private lessons, board-and-train, and bootcamps available à la carte. | Total do-it-yourself — you do the sourcing, training, and care with our curriculum and Mentorship support. À la carte options like private workshop weekends, bootcamps, and public-access testing are available. |
| Public-access work | Fully trained by us before placement across the common environments a working team faces. We can't prepare for every situation, but we give the dog a strong base to adapt from. | We start it — basic environmental exposure and generalizing the base skills to everyday situations, enough to get you started safely and confidently; you expand it in the Service Dog School. | You do all the training and environmental exposure, step by step, with our modules and guidance. |
| Your time investment | ~100–150 hrs of study, training meetings, and the optional bootcamp/PAT at placement — plus daily practice (30–45 min) after. | ~450–600 hrs over 8–10 months. | 1,000–1,200 hrs over 14–16 months. |
| Average timeline | Typically 12–16 months to placement-ready. | 4–6 months of foundation, then 8–10 months for your finishing. | 16–18 months at your pace, depending on the effort you put in. |
| Where it happens | Our home, facility, and the real world. Ideally your dog visits your home at stages (1–4 nights) to build the bond; then we come to you for a one-on-one bootcamp in your home, work, and therapeutic settings. | Same as Premier, minus the bootcamp — though the transition itself happens in your own home. | Your own home and real public settings wherever you go. The program and support are online unless you add services. |
| Cost range | Each dog is custom-selected and trained, so it varies. By consultation and proposal — typically $46,000–$50,000 base with all components, options, and equipment. | $12,000–$20,000, plus the puppy, travel, vet, and food costs. By consultation. | $699 + tax, plus the $1,800 Mentorship program (built to work together), plus any à la carte options. |
| Best for | Families without the bandwidth or experience to train, who value a customized approach, hands-on assistance, and individualized support. | Hands-on families on a budget who want a professional training base and the support to carry it across the finish line. | Self-directed trainers on a tighter budget, or those with dog-training experience who like learning new skills. |
Let’s talk about the right dog for your family.
A free 20-minute consultation with a real coach — no pressure, no sales pitch, no obligation. We’d rather educate you than sell you.