About Us

Meet Our Team 

Founder- Jill Merida ABCDT

Jill is a 4H dog project superintedant for Ripley County, Indiana. She became involved with service dogs to help her step-son, Chris with autism, epilepsy, and Klippel-feil. After seeing the difference it made not only in his life, but in the lives of her entire family she knew she had found her life's work. She began helping others to train their own assistance dogs, and eventually started volunteering at Circle Tail. Now she rotates between her 4H students, training her current fosters, helping owner trainers, doing service dog education, and coordinating Therapy Dog events for the Tales To Tails literacy mentorship program. More recently she has been developing a new therapy dog program called "Gentle Touches" that focuses on helping victims and witnesses of abuse to learn how to touch appropriately. She is a CGC evaluator, and certified Therapy Dog handler with TDInc. Not to mention homeschools two of her four children, and takes every dog seminar, and class within driving distance to further her dog training education. She recently graduated Animal Behavior College with honors.

Groomer - Rebecca Merida

Rebecca is Jill's daughter and biggest assistant. She has shown dogs in Ripley County's 4H dog show for the past 5 years. You can find her on every outing and training session.  She is an experienced service dog handler and is often seen shadowing those learning their service dog commands and skills. She is a certified Therapy dog handler with TDInc and participates in ALL of the Tales To Tails literacy mentorship events. Rebecca also founded Pawsitive Suds a grooming shop, located in the Touch Of Healing Dogs Training Center. Pawsitive Suds uses positive methods to teach puppies and dogs how to stand and behave during routine grooming procedures. Rebecca uses positive training techniques to socialize and desensitize dogs to routine grooming procedures.