About Me, Allison Foias

Hi everyone! I've been training dogs for 15 years. I originally specialized in behavior modification, but service dogs have always been a passion of mine. I started working with dogs through a high school program raising service dogs for Guide Dogs for the Blind.

I started with treat-only positive reinforcement for a year before moving to stricter discipline using corrections and treats, but I felt unsatisfied with how the dogs were learning and could still see holes in their education. Heather Beck picked me up to work at K9 Lifeline, where I spent the next six years learning everything I could about behavior modification and rehabilitating dogs with aggression issues. This is also when I joined the IACP, where I found that dogs who learned how to be patient and work through problems calmly were better than many service dogs I'd met. 

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I trained my first service dog for myself and began assisting owners who were training their own service dogs. I left K9 Lifeline to start my own business, Kung Fu Canine, where I still specialized in dogs with behavioral issues but also had programs for service dogs learning public access. 

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The hardship covid put on that business was an amazing opportunity to start over and do what I do now. I love working with service dogs and am very passionate about how they should behave in public. Many trainers don't follow my level of expectation, simply because their training style doesn't allow for it. I've found that my method of combining of behavioral modification for public access and positive reinforcement/operant conditioning for task training produces extremely well-behaved dogs who pick up on tasks at an amazing rate. 

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It's my mission to continue perfecting this method for training service dogs, and to make it more and more affordable for those experiencing disabilities to get the dogs they need.