Natan Maimes & Travel Service Dog Scholarship Fund

The Natan Maimes & Travel Service Dog Scholarship Fund provides financial support to people training a service dog through At Your Service Dog Training.

A service dog is a dog that is trained to do work or perform tasks for a handler that has a mental and/or physical disability. A service dog must also have a rock-solid temperament, be in great health, and have flawless manners in all environments. A well-trained service dog can significantly improve the quality of life for its handler, increasing their freedom, independence, safety, and well-being. For a disabled person to train their own canine assistant can be tremendously empowering.

Training a service dog requires a special combination of ingredients:

1. Just the right dog (with an extremely sound and specific temperament)

2. An owner who is able to devote tremendous time and dedication to training

3. An experienced professional trainer

4. Significant financial resources

When a team has the first three ingredients, the Maimes Scholarship Fund can supply the financial support to make their dream a reality.

Lack of money shouldn’t keep an otherwise terrific team — a dog that loves to work and is eager to help and a handler with dedication and skill — from reaching their goal of increased independence, well-being, and greater integration into society.

Your support of the Natan Maimes & Travel Service Dog Scholarship Fund can help these teams that have all the right ingredients -- except financial -- to realize their dream of a better life.

The Maimes Scholarship Fund will provide funding for teams that are working with At Your Service Dog Training and are likely to graduate with enough financial support. 

The story behind the Fund’s name

Natan Maimes was a vibrant and social person who worked and traveled internationally and was passionate about photography, helping people, and the arts. At the age of 39, he developed a disabling medical condition left him isolated and in pain. Using GoFundMe, Natan’s friends and family set up a fundraiser for him to buy and train a dog as a service dog. For a year, Natan worked with At Your Service Dog Training to train Travel, his moyen Poodle, as his service dog. Travel is a great dog that had a very special connection with Natan. They were both full of personality and had similar senses of humor, too!

Sadly, Natan died in June 2019. In his memory and as a recognition of the life-saving impact Travel had on Natan's life for the three years they were together, Natan’s family and friends donated $5,000 to At Your Service Dog Training to launch its scholarship fund. You can read more about Natan and Travel on the At Your Service website.

What types of service dog training costs does the Maimes Scholarship Fund cover?

The Fund will help cover training expenses based on what the recipient’s dog needs at the time of the gift. This will vary with each team.

Funds may be used for…

- Public Access Training (which typically costs between $3,000 and $10,000)

- Task Training (which may cost between $1,000 and $10,000)

- Behavior Modification or Retraining for Established Teams (which may cost between $500 and $5,000)

For more details on the types of training the scholarship covers, please visit the At Your Service website .

Would you like to help service dog teams succeed?

The service dog scholarship fund relies on your donations. Any gift -- from $5 to $5,000 -- can help a disabled handler to reach their dream of a fully trained service dog. Owner-handlers are expected to contribute to funding with whatever funds are within their means as well as through funds they raise. The Maimes Scholarship Fund will provide as much funding as is available to help the team reach their training goals. 

As you consider what to donate, we hope you'll give an amount that is as generous as feels right for you:

$10,000 will cover most of the cost of training a service dog in under a year -- manners, public access, and possibly task work

$6,000 will train a dog in public access manners (the hardest hurdle) and lay the foundation for task training

$3,000 will cover private lessons to complete public access and task training for a highly motivated and able owner-trainer

$2,500 will cover task training for a psychiatric service dog that already has public access training

$1,000 will get a team started with manners and basic skills for a handler who isn't able to attend group classes due to their disabilities

$500 covers an initial behavior modification package for a trained service dog that requires retraining

$250 covers tuition for an advanced public access group class, offering camaraderie and group support as well as training skills

$100 is a private lesson with our head trainer for a client who has successfully been training on their own but now is stuck and just needs some troubleshooting to continue training their service dog successfully

To find out more about the Natan Maimes & Travel Service Dog Scholarship Fund, including details about how to apply for funding yourself, please visit the At Your Service website .

Thank you for supporting service dog owner-trainers!

NOTE: If you are contributing for a particular team, please email us at office at atyourservicedogtraining.com so we know which team's account to credit. Thank you!