Wild Spirit Dog Training CIC

11/06/2024

As many of you may already know,  the time has come to officially announce that Wild Spirit Dog Training CIC is permanently closed to new applications.

We are incredibly grateful to all the wonderful handlers we have had contact with over the years. During my time (Laura Wild) it has surpassed 5 years since starting this organisation in 2019, working for a period of time voluntarily and then setting up formally as a CIC a few years ago. It has been a wonderful journey with so much development in how we can best aid the community of handlers. Each of you has played a part in our organisation’s development and we could not be more grateful.

As you probably know, we started this CIC during COVID and this was the reason for our organisation being online only. As time has passed, and with working with handlers intensively in person for we have seen the difference comprehensive in-person support makes.

The main reason of many for the organisation’s closure is that we have noticed over the past year or two that many handlers we welcome onto the program need additional in-person support and assessment. Unfortunately, the scale of the organisation does not allow for a trainer in each county. Although online support is accessible for many handlers and it allows us to reach individuals all throughout the country, we feel that our services can be more functional by discontinuing online-only support. Some of our members have continued onto in-person ADI and independent organisations. We wish them all the best with their future goals. And some of our handlers are transferring over to the via the owner-trained route.

Currently, Wild Spirit Canines are prioritising the intake of Wild Spirit Dog Training CIC members over new applicants to allow availability for members who wishes to transfer.

The organisation will continue to operate as normal for current members and we will support each individual who requires our support and services. The closure only applies to discontinuing new applications, not discontinuing services for our current members.

19/12/2023

Wishing everyone a lovely holiday season and happy new year. The 5th of December 2023 marked 5 years of assistance dog training - We have expanded so much since then, grown into a small team and supported so many owner trained teams. We are starting this next year off with an improved formatting of our services. Thank you to Noah, Hannah and Ella for their outstanding and dedicated work - your incredible knowledge and empathy towards others will never go unnoticed.

Thank you all the hundreds of people who have given us continued support - we have loved building relationships, that span the working carer of your dog, with each and every one of you. We are so excited to announce the news of a highly prestigious award in the near future and have plans for year 6 to be the most celebratory and incredible year. For any questions, comments or concerns, please email [email protected]

Applications for this new membership format will open approximately end of January once those on our waiting list have been assigned to trainers.

18/10/2023

Introducing Ella! Our new member of the team - Assistance dog trainer.

Ella is one of the most skilled and knowledgeable young handlers and trainers that I know personally. She embodies every personable skill required to be an Assistance dog trainer - especially excelling in her kindness, understanding through lived experience and compassion for others. I have known Ella for approximately 6 years and over the past 6 months have been working to train her up for this career alongside her recently completed qualifications.

Hi there! I'm Ella Walker; a dog trainer for WS and owner of 4 dogs. I first fell into the world of dog training when training my own assistance dog, Goose in my early teen years, and have now been involved in the assistance dog community for over 6 years. Since then have spent time volunteering in veterinary practises, and gaining experience working with a variety of different breeds (with a particular interest in golden retrievers). I hold a LV 3 Diploma in Assistance Dog Training, a LV 3 Diploma in Canine Behaviour and Training and am currently completing my LV 3 Diploma in Canine Care, Behaviour and Welfare. I am also currently training my successor dog Ralph, an 18 month old golden retriever to be my multipurpose assistance dog; he loves his work and as a retriever particularly enjoys taskwork that involves retrievals, or picking items up off the floor for me!

Visual description : Ella, who has brunette hair and is wearing a black T-shirt and grey trousers is stood gesturing to her eyes. All four of her dogs are sat politely looking at her - a hunt away, two golden retriever and a Pomeranian.

15/08/2023

A very busy week assessing 4 in person public access tests!

06/06/2023

You may have noticed a new statement appearing before our business name this month and we would like to proudly announce that we are receivers of:

The MEN Business Princes Trust Award - Young Achiever

National Princes Trust Award 2023 - Nominee

Global Health and Pharma Awards - Best assistance dog organisation 2023

Animal Stars Awards - Nominee

Thank you to our wonderful team - Noah and Hannah, you make all the statements in this video possible

Thank you to the Prince’s trust for graciously hosting us

Thank you to Summer - for snoozing through the awards, tasking live for hundreds and being the wonderful dog you are

Thank you to our wonderful members - I hope you know that the messages said are aimed at you and all your wonderful successes, big and small, we share these with you

09/03/2023

Out and about with Summer doing talks on Assistance dogs, what tasks they can provide, how to get an Assistance dog and how to interact with a dog and handler.

We’ve done many talks before, for scouts/guides, schools, hospitals, universities but this talk, at a specialist school in Manchester was one of our favourites. One of Summers favourites too! Summer demonstrated pressure therapy for over 30 autistic individuals who now know how this feels. She also got some wonderful time off in the hall during the meet and greet groups getting cuddles and many, many biscuits.

She demonstrated many tasks that the students had never seen before - retrieving a bank card, finding the exit, did two live cortisol alerts, crowd control, handing an item to Noah, assisting to take off a coat and many lesser talked about tasks.

24/01/2023

Out and about in the chilly January weather assessing PA tests and 1-1s with some brilliant breeds recently. Polly had such a waggy tail it couldn’t even be captured on a photo.

10/01/2023

It was lovely to spend the weekend with Ruby and Charlie out in Carmarthen town centre! We did some brilliant training out in public access, Ruby’s love for water bottles meant doing some very specific leave-it training. Her settle was so good that it took some convincing to get her to move off her mat!

04/11/2022

Hi All! Our admin team is currently on annual leave until the 21st of November.

02/11/2022

A gorgeous photo of and Ella his handler speaking at the House of Lords! What is the best event that you’ve ever attended with your Assistance dog?

25/10/2022

Out and about doing some training with lifts with ADIT Tonks who made wonderful progress!

With Assistance dogs we are always a firm believer in the dogs ability to choose - that is leads to an empowered, confidence dog that can make his/hers own choices. Instead of throwing some treats into a lift and getting Tonks to run in and out - we took our time free shaping behaviours carefully under her threshold. She offered to approach and show confidence towards the scary lift and of course, was allowed to retreat whenever she wanted. I thought this may be a nice example to write about choice!

11/10/2022

Just a few of our members and their Assistance dogs at University or College. It’s something we are so passionate about as many handlers have said, including myself, that we wouldn’t be able to attend education at all without these incredible dogs.

I picked some of the breeds photographed to showcase the number of breeds and also their incredible achievements.

20/09/2022

Some sweet photos of friends and members with wonderful Assistance dogs from this week! We love going out with Vera with Twiggy as a mini-me 🐩

*Fabric martingales in photos do not tighten to the point of aversion or correction but are for dogs who may slip collars*

14/09/2022

We are very excited to announce that and will be joining us as trainers within the Wild Spirit team alongside Noah and I. This is due to the incredible talent of both individuals who we have known for a significant period of time. As always with our team, we want to be inclusive with hiring trainers with disabilities and those that have a true understanding of Assistance dogs - hence choosing Hannah and Zack with the perfect lived experience. We never want to open waiting lists for services - Which we were quickly approaching having to consider! Thank you Hannah and Zack for being incredible professionals and allowing us to help more handlers.

To read about who they are, please visit our website under the ‘Assistance dog tab’. We have also updated the website for further information overall on our memberships, application and ‘matching with a trainer’ process and also made it clearer that we are a LGBTQ+ safe space and inclusive.

13/09/2022

Many dogs with many different goals joining for class once again! Socialisation, settle practice, confidence around bigger dogs, engagement around other dogs all in one square foot.

30/08/2022

.and.orla Orla attended the workplace for the first time with their handler! Many people think of Assistance dogs working in office environments only. However, here are a few of the most interesting careers our handlers have alongside the dozens who attend education:

- Primary school teacher
- Barista
- Chiropractor
- Personal trainer
- Autism specialist therapist and care-co

Assistance dogs enable freedom 🐕

23/08/2022

This weekend we met with , a fully trained assistance dog that we’ve been working with since the beginning of AD specific training. It’s lovely to see how far they’ve both come. It’s always so lovely meeting up with people that live hours away and be connected by a weekly video call!

Enjoy this photo of Summer and Ruby holding paws. I think they look like a great trio.

09/08/2022

Some brilliant messages being sent out this week to celebrate

Link in Instagram bio to read the full news report

09/08/2022

https://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2022/08/01/adorable-image-shows-assistance-dog-leaping-with-joy-during-graduation/

An adorable image shows an autism assistance dog leaping for joy with its owner during her graduation last week.

28/07/2022

Thank you to everyone who has said congratulations, we have received so much kindness! Seven thousand likes is a lot of awareness!

26/07/2022

We graduated this morning! BSc Biology (Animal Behaviour) with a mark of 76% in the dissertation ‘The cognitive affective states of Assistance dogs+’ I’m hoping one day to publish this but will put the paper on the website soon.

Here’s a fun few photos to enjoy and please feel free to watch the short video I edited of us crossing the stage linked in our bio (she did some very big tail wags and I’m hoping she understood how much she was being praised too.) I felt especially proud to call her my dog today.

I’m awaiting the final grade Lv5 Canine Behaviour with IMDT after which I’ll gain the title of canine behaviourist.

For those wondering, the structure of 3rd and 4th year at university undertook the syllabus of Animal Behaviour. Thank you to the staff for allowing me to take these units rather than the traditional program. I can’t thank enough people in this post, but I’m eternally grateful for all the support.

21/07/2022

We hope everyone has been safe in the heat! Here are two photos of the lovely pups we’ve been away caring for over the past two weeks. We’ll be putting up a YouTube video of our progress with Chico - a gorgeous Spanish water dog who is struggling with intense separation anxiety, sharing resources with other dogs +. Both dogs required some further socialisation with appropriate behaviour running after other dogs (chase drive!)

12/07/2022

You can now find us on the national autistic society website under directories!

12/07/2022

I joined the assistance dog community 8 years ago as someone who was in awe of the incredible things that assistance dogs can do and dreamed that one day I’d be able to finish education, even enter a shop by myself, never mind be able to share my experience to aid others.

Eight years later I am truly speechless, humbled and in awe of the dogs I am blessed to work with. 100 teams is a milestone and a half and I am truly grateful for every person who Noah and I get to see on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. We hope that we have helped, and will get to help, as many people as we possibly can through these remarkable dogs.

Here are a few photos of a handful of our ever growing number of active and fully trained members.

05/07/2022

Look at those Labrador smiles! In last weeks class we were working on recall away and release during play. Luna was quietly performing some pressure therapy during this like an angel! Plus an extra funny photo from Marlows 1-1 today. This is what happens whilst you try to do paperwork around a Labrador puppy 🦈

05/07/2022

Pricing and qualification updates

28/06/2022

After deciding a Labrador was the right dog breed for them via the prospect consultation, we went through the process of finding them a suitable assistance dog prospect.

We had many considerations to take into account such as being cat friendly, having some basic training and already knowing lead manners.

We aided David and Kirsty in asking the right questions and providing behavioural assessment before bringing Peggy home a few weeks ago. Due to her age and previous training she’ll be beginning public access training in the near future.

We are incredibly supportive of dogs from such a variety of backgrounds and Peggy is a beautiful demonstration.

07/06/2022

Thank you to my stooge human Noah for helping with filming the new video footage for the members area! Are you curious about what’s in the members area - we’ll be posting a sneak peek tour soon

31/05/2022

These past few weeks I asked a few assistance dog members that are close to the end of their training if there was anything they would like to share. Anna, handler of .of.loki_ and owner of wrote below about training a Rottweiler and her experience;

I started training him for assistance dog work at 10 months old, definitely the best decision I made was to contact you guys, I think working along side a trainer just makes it all a lot less daunting and just helped me make sure I was going along the right lines. I was always afraid of getting things wrong but Noah has always been very good at reassuring me that things don’t have to be perfect all the time!

The general public are probably one of the hardest things to learn how to deal with. I think that is the case regardless of breed, people tend to see a dog and forget how to behave sometimes, with Loki being a Rottweiler, I get a lot of questions because I think people just assume ADs are goldens or labs. I also have people scared of him just because of his breed, I don’t mind that because it means people stay away, but it can be a bit disheartening, I just try to make light of those situations, I’ll tell Loki that clearly he is far too terrifying to be in Tesco’s!

Loki has helped me so much. I wouldn’t leave the house before him, I couldn’t go to the shops and now he has given me so much independence. He’s made things such as university an option for me, something that I previously thought I would never be able to do because of my disabilities!

23/05/2022

Our incredible members Millie and Reggie, their assistance dog, speaking at 1:50 on accessing university with an assistance dog

Nicky Campbell takes your calls on the day's talking points.