Miracle Paws trains pets to have better manners and diabetic alert service dogs for people with type one diabetes. 

The decision to become a non-profit came after Founder Zakk Wrabiutza, was diagnosed with type one diabetes in 2008 and trained his own diabetic alert dog to recognize and alert to his own blood sugar fluctuations, obedience and public access. With the help of his family they have trained over 50 working teams. It made sense to start a nonprofit to help others.

We strive for client satisfaction and to set up realistic expectations for pets or service dogs. We build programs around owners and pets and come up with positive solutions to help the team be their best.

And as a family that lives with a chronic life threatening disability,  we are committed to supporting your team throughout the entire lifetime of your dog. We stay in constant contact, we set up training sessions at our facility before, during and after placement of your assistance dog or we can make arrangements to come to you. We also host annual workshops allowing for your family to have fun while you fellowship and learn in a group setting. You will also have access to log in to our library of tutorials and our private Facebook group. We will work with you to answer all of your questions and assure that you are happy throughout your service dog’s entire life.

Miracle Paws Org’s mission is to help people and dogs. We work with selected dogs that come from rescue facilities and shelters. We also work with experienced trainers that are within a two hour drive of our facility who are constantly seeking out candidates for our programs.  Or, if the families are up to puppy raising under our guidance, and when they are ready the dog comes to Miracles Paws facility and goes through our board and training program where we train the dog to become a service dog. All our hopefuls in training are put through an extensive evaluation period before and during the training process.

Not all dogs make it through our training program and many times we re-home dogs as pets that have had some obedience training but have not met our standards.

Friendly pets are allowed to go to pet friendly places like Lowes, Home Depot, Tractor Supply and a few other places that you can check out-

The service dogs that we place have been proofed for months to go into multiple of highly stimulating public access areas. Once the handler that we are working with is able to show that they are confident with their handling abilities in multiples of high stimulating situations,  we will sign off on a public access release form.

Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.

This definition does not affect or limit the broader definition of “assistance animal” under the Fair Housing Act or the broader definition of “service animal” under the Air Carrier Access Act.

Some State and local laws also define service animal more broadly than the ADA does. Information about such laws can be obtained from the State attorney general’s office.
For more information on U.S. service dog laws, you can visit www.ADA.gov.

We offer various programs for our pet services that includes daycare, boarding and training. You can check out all of our program options under the Pet Services tab.

Miracle Paws offer several service dog program options. And every family is different so we try to build a program around each family’s needs. Miracle Paws expenses are directly proportionate to the disability, tasks to be trained, the location of the person with the disability and the supplies required to set the service dog team up for success. Costs vary and can range from 500.00-30,000.00. Most are 3500.00-18,000.00.

Yes, if approved, your bank or other financing institutions like Springleaf can help with the financing you need.

The rescues that we use are typically 1½ to 3 years of age.

Once your fundraising goals are met, the time frame for home placement varies. We have dogs that are in various stages of training at all times and we train a maximum of five dogs at a time to assure quality training over quantity and to assure that the families that we have already placed service dogs with have the best follow up life time support that we can offer to assure their continued success- However, we do our absolute best to ensure these furry heroes are ready for home placement as quickly as possible, but each dog and family differs, so times will vary. Some may be ready in as little as 3 months and others may take as long as 12 months.

What breeds of dogs are available and what do you look for in a candidate dog? Most any breed can be trained to alert. We look for rescue hopefuls that will fit best into the applicants  lifestyle, that are not going to cause issues with your homeowners insurance company and each recruit goes through a regimented program, and the dogs must be stable, willing to please, have a long nose, be publicly acceptable, non-aggressive and friendly.

In some cases, yes. We understand that there are some great pet dogs that are capable of becoming a service dog. We are happy to discuss some options, set up realistic expectations and will give you some good points to ponder.

Our dogs come with a training guarantee for the entire working life of the dog. We are confident that you will be satisfied with on-going training support.

We are assist families that live within a few hours drive of our facility and in Florida. You can come to our facility, or we can deliver a Miracle Paws dog to you.

We can help children and adults of all ages.