About Us - The Humans

Krista is a subject matter expert on Crisis K9’s and has several years’ experience as a professional dog handler,  therapy and service dog trainer. She is a CLASS evaluator through the Association for Professional Dog Trainers, a certified Therapy Dog Trainer through the International College of Canine Studies, a Certified Trick Dog Instructor through Do More With Your Dog! and a guest speaker across Canada on various topics including Therapy Dog Program Implementation and Utilizing Dogs in Child Interviews. 

She was the policy creator for the RCMP’s Victim Services Therapy Dog Program in Prince George and has provided consultation to several other victim serving agencies, school districts and community programs. In 2017 Krista was awarded the BC Community Achievement Award for her work with dogs by the Lieutenant Governor of BC.

Allesha has always had a heart for animals and animal rescue. She is a Therapy Dog, Trick, Obedience and Puppy trainer as well as a Dog Bite Prevention Educator and a Be a Tree Presenter as a member of Doggone Safe. She has helped at various shelters and community groups to give back. In 2015, Allesha, along with her family rescued Piper (German shepherd, husky X) from a rural northern Manitoba community. With Piper’s love of life and children and Allesha’s love of animals this brought them to therapy dog training. “I have always known that dogs have a calming, healing ability. In being able to train and encourage the dogs and their owners to showcase this ability. It helps teach others that dogs and all animals are not possessions but lives that should be cherished." 

Birgit works out of the Robson Valley (McBride/Valemount area). Birgit has been studying with Krista Levar for the past 3 years, completing the therapy dog program with her loyal sidekick Skidboot. With the support of Krista, Birgit has trained Skidboot to become her service dog and together Birgit and Skidboot successfully passed the BC Guide Dog and Service Dog Assessment in 2021 and again in 2023 and are now certified as a service dog team by the Province of British Columbia. Birgit is a member of the Canadian Association of Professional Dog Trainers (CAPDT) and is the chair of the CAPDT Service Dog Committee.

In addition to her love for dogs, Birgit has also been a long-time horse lover and a professional horse trainer since 2006. She is an Irwin Insights Level 6 Master Certified Trainer. Birgit owns her own equine facility Falling Star Ranch in Dunster where she now also offers private dog training sessions as well as group classes and service dog training. Upon request, Birgit also travels to various locations around the Robson Valley as well as Jasper for dog training sessions.

  Tyler is our new apprentice trainer working out of Prince George. Tyler has spent the majority of his life in Prince George, obtaining his degree in Biochemistry and Molecular

Biology from UNBC. Along with this degree, Tyler manages Victoria Sports Physiotherapy, where he utilizes his personal training and nutritional coach certifications. Tyler has a lifelong love of dogs; which is what led him and Veeko to pursue caring k9’s therapy program. Tyler hopes to one day integrate pet therapy into physiotherapy, and/or the healthcare system in general.

Gail began taking classes with Caring K9 5 years ago when she started training her then 3 year old Tibetan Spaniel rescue to be a visiting Therapy Dog.  Since then she has completed multiple courses through Caring K9 with her two other dogs as well.

She loved teaching her own dogs and building a relationship with them so much that it just made sense to become a trainer herself and be able to assist others in building the same type of relationships with their own dogs as well as helping puppies towards living their best lives. 

We are very lucky to have many volunteers but two of our regular humans (due to their Mom being one of our trainers) are these two. They pet dogs, provide distractions, walk on crutches, make lots of noise and really, just have a great time. 

Two of our other main volunteers are Daniel and Abby (not pictured here) who provide a similar assistance (due to their Mom also being one of our trainers). 

And of course, we wouldn't be dog trainers at all if we didn't all love our beautiful, sweet, playful and loveable dogs! Between the 5 of us, these are our gorgeous and brilliant dogs:

Piper, Laska, Daisy, Lily, Major, Mika, Molly, Timber, Henry, Yogi, Poppy, Lola and Pedro.