Meet The Team
Rebekah Undersander
Head Trainer & Co-Founder
Rebekah was an animal fanatic from a young age, growing up with dogs, rabbits, frogs, hamsters, chickens and more. She dedicated many hours to volunteering her time toward animal causes, even spending two summers at a wolf and raptor sanctuary. During her time there she helped: nurse injured animals back to health, released many back to the wild, built new enclosures and helped raise the red wolf population. Her passion for animals quickly turned into a dream of becoming a veterinarian, specifically for exotic animals. In pursuit of this dream she shadowed many veterinarians and got hands on experience at an Emergency Veterinarian Hospital. She dedicated her high school senior capstone to helping a local petting zoo find the best medication for their miniature horse with Cushing’s Disease. Shortly into her college career she was diagnosed with three chronic illnesses and soon realized she would never become a veterinarian. She let her passion for animals guide her to a new dream as she trained her own rescue dog to become her multi-purpose service dog (seen left).
This experience lends her to understanding what clients go through on a daily basis and how desperately they need services dogs Since this she has dedicated her life to helping those in need obtain trained service dogs to assist them. She dedicated years to studying scent training, first when she raised hunting dogs as a child and now to adopt the methods to better train medical alert dogs. Additionally, she has taken classes such as grant writing so that Providing Pawsable can lower client's costs through this funding. When she began the journey of acquiring her service dog she faced many financial challenges, which is what inspired the organizational goal to make service animals for accessible and affordable. She has a Bachelors of Science in Biochemistry, which gives her a better understanding of each clients disabilities and how she can train their dog to assist them. In addition she has a certificate in “Dog Behavior & Socialization” and will complete another in “Animal Psychology”. In order to be prepared to work with every dog that comes through her doors, she has also worked alongside multiple dog trainers who specialize in different fields and utilize different training methods.
Rebekah continues to expand her knowledge of the dog world by exploring new challenges such as conformation, dock diving, shed hunting, duck hunting, barn hunting, rally and more!
Michael Undersander
Co-Founder and Assistant Trainer
Michael is a Type-1 Diabetic who was diagnosed late in high school and struggled to control his blood sugar. He tried many assistance devices before concluding that in addition to these a Diabetic Alert Dog was the right choice for him. Enter Bailey, a three month old German Shepherd. Bailey has been housing with Michael for his entire senior year of college, while undergoing training with our head trainer. This means Michael trains Bailey with assistance from Rebekah. At six months old Bailey began doing small Public Access outing with Michael as a Service Dog in Training. At eight months old she passed basic obedience with flying colors. Bailey and Michael’s greatest success was at nine months old Bailey began live alerting to Michael’s low blood sugar. After falling in love with the process of training service dogs Michael has decided to volunteer with us as an assistant trainer not only to continue his learning but to help others like himself.
Michael now continues to volunteer his time at Providing Pawsable outside of his full time job. He has grown into an amazing assistant trainer and often joins our head trainer out for sessions with clients. Since Rebekah and Michael married, he lives at the facility full time and helps with the care of every dog that stays with us. He is an amazing asset to our team and we could not do this without him.
Faith Karlen
Faith has had dogs all of her life and always loved to play and train with them even though she “had no idea what she was doing”. As time went on she began learning more and soon knew that one day she wanted to do dog training. While scrolling through Youtube she first heard about service dogs and for a few years she would watch all these channels featuring service dogs obsessively. These videos helped her realize that she wanted to train service dogs in the future. She not only train dogs but make someone’s life better and easier to manage.
Faith says service dogs have really impacted her life not only because of her personal one Truffle (pictured left) but also because she has seen how they change others lives for the better. Truffle has really helped her manage her disability and allowed her to really ensure and solidify that this was the career path she wanted to pursue. When asked about what inspires her during the job Faith said “Let me just tell you, even though it can be challenging the reward of the progress that occurs while your training them and seeing their happy little faces when they know they’ve done something right is truly such a reward. To me everyday I get to work with not only with my own dog but Providing Pawsable’s dogs as well is a true dream come true!”
We asked Faith why she decided to join the Providing Pawsable team and she replied with the following “I chose to work with Providing Pawsable because I truly love all of their methods and how much they treat you like a part of the family. They also are always willing to answer any question I have no matter what it may be! I truly love and cherish the time with this amazing team of people and truly couldn’t ask for a better job!”