INFOCUS

PROVIDING SAFETY AND SERVICE

THROUGH A LOVE FOR DOGS

WRITTEN BY BRENNAN HALLOCK PHOTOS BY JAMI BOWMAN

Dogs can be essential to our lives, both as pets and as service dogs. And Vital K9 understands that. Vital K9’s mission is to help people feel safe and help them know they matter through dogs. And this has led owner Abigail Wilmoth to offer service dog training for mobility, allergies, and PTSD, in addition to training pets and companion dogs.

Wilmoth grew up in Arkansas, and she began her business in the Natural State (as Arkansas is known) during her senior year at the University of Arkansas. She majored in animal science, completing her bachelor’s degree along with a master dog trainer certification.

“I started Vital K9 because I’d trained a lot of dogs, and I wanted to help people through dogs,” explains Wilmoth. “There are not a lot of businesses that do it how I love to do it. Service dog work just fell right into place.”

Wilmoth’s business focuses on three types of service dogs: mobility, allergies, and PTSD. Every service dog is different for what they’re trained to do. Some service dogs help with mobility, such as helping someone stand up or get out of bed. Or it could be helping with simple tasks that many people don’t pay attention to but are difficult for others. This could be getting up off of a park bench, walking on an uneven surface, or standing for long periods of time. Dogs trained for mobility also retrieve items such as phones, keys, and wallets—things we drop or misplace on a daily basis.

Vital K9 also trains dogs for indi-

Abigail Wilmoth with her two personal working dogs, Nugget and Vita.

viduals who have food allergies. Many breeds of dogs have an incredible sense of smell, and they are able to sniff the environment around them to detect traces of specific foods—such as peanuts—and warn their owner. This warning will be a certain “alert” that the owner is taught to detect, such as a sit.

PTSD is another common issue that can be helped in powerful ways by a trained dog. PTSD can trigger all kinds of anxiety-based behavior in an individual, and a PTSD service dog is taught to help ground the individual during these incidents, possibly by guiding them home, retrieving medication, or using a skill taught to the dogs called compression therapy.

PTSD service dogs can use compression therapy to help the individual in public. “The dog can provide compression therapy, where they lay on the individual and release endorphins, helping them end an anxiety attack quicker. It’s really cool what all they can do,” Wilmoth explains.

After college, Wilmoth moved her business from Arkansas to Kansas City. “We moved to Kansas City because once I graduated college I wanted to leave northwest Arkansas but I still wanted to be close enough that I could visit my clients there.” She decided Kansas City was a good fit because she can still drive to northwest Arkansas in under four hours. “And it’s a really good location because it’s in the center of everything. I’ve traveled to St. Louis, and we even just had a dog come from Montana for service work,” she adds.

Wilmoth says that when she moved to Kansas City, she didn’t realize how big the community is. “It’s big enough to get the city experience, but we’re still able to have such a community. I love all the daily conversations I have with people I run into. I’ve been here for a little over a year and it just feels like home.”

Natasha Ramkissoon, one of Vital K9’s clients, said, “Abigail was such a pleasure to deal with. She has a true passion for training and she showed so much love to my pups.” Ramkissoon continued by saying that Wilmoth was patient and insightful during the training. “I loved how she equated our pups’ behavior to real-life human scenarios to help us better understand our fur babies. Her follow-ups were very impressive. Post-training, she continued to check in on our pups to see how we were doing.” Ramkissoon said she highly recommends Vital K9’s services and will be using them again. She added, “Thanks for being such an awesome person, Abigail!”

There are a couple of exciting parts of Wilmoth’s business that you can get involved with right away. She explains, “A couple big things we’re doing right now are that we are raising a group of three puppies that are going to be placed as service dogs. We post a lot on our social media about them growing. It’s really fun.”

Wilmoth adds that they are also starting an enrichment program for dogs with a day camp. “We have a lot of pet dogs and family dogs that we want to keep benefiting. I have a little day camp program where they come, socialize, play with other dogs, and we go on field trips to parks.”

“Abigail was such a pleasure to deal with. She has a true passion for training and she showed so much love to my pups.”

Vital K9 Training • vitalk9training.com • 816.339.8555 • vitalk9training@gmail.com instagram.com/vital_k9 • facebook.com/vitalk9training