Dawn Scheu

Professional Service Dog Trainer

Owner of Willow Service Dogs LLC.
C.L.A.S.S. Evaluator/Instructor

(Canine Life & Social Skills)
O.D.O.R.  Evaluator

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Dawn has 20 years combined experience training dogs. She began with Therapy Dog's along with Search and Rescue Dogs in the areas of Urban, Tracking/Trailing, Articles, Cadaver, and Wilderness. Dawn began training Service Dogs in 2013 since that time she has trained more gluten detection dogs than any trainer to date. She  is a Canine Life and Social Skills Instructor and Elevator through APDT.
She wrote the Gluten and Allergen Standard's which have been adopted by other trainers working in the field. Dawn is a founding Member of O.D.O.R. Service Dogs Inc.. and continues her education.
She began training Service Dogs after her own illness of refractory celiac combined with other autoimmune diseases.

Dawn consulted with a total of 4 trainers from several areas of canine nose work and service dog trainers starting August of 2013 to train Willow, her first  gluten detection dog for her personal use.  Dawn is also one of the former co-owners of Nosey Dog Detection Partners Inc. established on November 12th of 2013 after Willow was working and I knew gluten detection could be trained.  Nosey Dog Detection Partners went dormant the following year and was not reestablished  until the summer of 2017 by Dawns ex partner. From March 5th 2015 Dawn ran her business training under a DBA by the name Willow Celiac & Allergen Service Dogs until she incorporated Willow Service Dogs L.L.C in the summer of 2017. 

 Dawn began updating her dog training education in 2014 while pursuing her transition to positive training methods and for free handling. Before Dawn started Willow Celiac and Allergen Service Dogs, Willows new training program had already begun. All compulsion training was pulled and replaced with positive reinforcement and scientifically proven methods. Confidence building exercises were added.  Since then Willow's confidence continues to thrive with positive reinforcement training and classical conditioning. 
In late 2015 Willows obedience training was finally completed with the additions of mobility assistance, item retrieval, and public access training.

As Willow is the first gluten detection dog trained in the US. Dawn wanted  her to be evaluated by an outside trainer. Her final testing was completed by Jillian Skaley at Creating New Tails.
As a trainer Dawn does not believe in training your own service dog without a second set of professional eyes, as emotional attachment can skew even a professional trainers judgment and in this case, she was training a dog on something that had not been trained before in the United States.
 

Dawn holds several professional memberships for continuing educational purposes, staying up to date with the most current scientifically proven methods on how dogs learn best. She is pictured with Willow and Aurita, her Personal Gluten Detection/Mobility Assistance Dogs. Dawn also competes to enrich her dogs in sport dog activities such as Hunting, Conformation, Agility and Obedience.

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-K-9 Search and Rescue

-Urban

-Building Search

-Wilderness

-Tracking/Trailing

-Articles

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Experience

- Gluten Detection Dogs

- Mobility Assistance Dogs

- Asthma Alert/Response dogs

- Diabetic Alert Dogs
-POTS ad Mast Cell Alert/Response

-PTSD

- Seizure Response

- Allergy Alert/Detection Dogs

  *Dairy

  *Cashew

  *Peanut

*Tree Nut's

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Professional Memberships

- Association of Professional Dog Trainers

-Animal Behavior Management Alliance
-International Association for Behavioral Consultants

-E-Training For Dogs

-Animal Building Blocks Academy
-Pet Professional Guild
-Association for Animal Behavior Professionals

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Education

-Behavior

-Assistance Dog Evaluation

-AAI Animal Assisted Intervention

-Aggression

-Social and Psychological Development

-Obedience

-PTSD in Dogs

-Psychiatric Service Dogs

-Pairing Pavlovian Conditioning with Operant Odor- Discrimination Training 

-Scent Processing In Dogs

-APDT Reality Bites series

First Aid

All Fit Dog
ABMA-Service Dog

ABBA- BAT Workshop

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Fenzi Dog Sport Academy

-Heeling Games

-Gun Dog Foundation

-Conformation

-Management for Reactive Dogs

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Puppy Culture