Our Founding Story
In 2001 Mara Windstar was gifted with a golden retriever dog named Freely. As Mara's world was growing through this relationship, at the recommendation of a physician, she set on the journey to train Freely as her service dog, mitigating multiple health conditions. Soon after their journey began, Mara came across a quote by Mother Theresa: "As we receive freely, we give freely. This is a wonderful gift." Mara continued her journey constantly aware that in some way, they would be sharing the gift of their partnership. (Click here for more on Mara's training.)
And here is the rest of the story.
Paws to Freedom
2004 - Mara founded Paws to Freedom, training pet dogs to help support the start of teaching people with disabilities to train their own service dog.
2005 - 95% of people taught were service dog handlers with the following program plan: foundation behavior, intermediate behaviors, Canine Good Citizen training & testing, public access training and task training.
2006 - Together with committed community members, Paws to Freedom applied for non-profit status so that more people could be served, funding could open up for support.
2007 - Paws to Freedom received 501c3 non-profit status and moved full-steam ahead to improve the quality of life for many individuals
2008 - Continued offering private training and classes for service dog teams in training. Started to offer private consults for people outside of the Paws to Freedom Program. Private consults for people considering owner-training a service dog & training consults
2009 - Start offering puppy evaluations. Realize the need for supporting more people training their service dog, with affordable training and activities. Go to phase of minimal services to build a community teamwork approach for building bridges with the larger community for understanding and supporting the service dog partnership. Build Community Partnerships.
Fall of 2009 - The process starts to build community involvement in the workshops and activities for purpose of greater understanding and interactions between people partnered with service dogs and those without service dogs. Opening events to the larger community can provide training assistance with people educated about the service dog partnership allowing a positive experience for training, an opportunity for those without service dogs to learn positive training methods that can be used with their pet dogs, while partaking in community events.