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Meet Our Staff
Home - Meet Our Staff
Team Members
Meet Our Staff
Our team is made up of dedicated individuals who share a common love for animals.
Pauline Hoegler
Pauline Hoegler RN, BSN, with over 30 years of experience with competitive obedience, agility, consulting clients, and group dog behavior. She is also a critical care nurse working in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab, which makes her a perfect candidate to lead our organization. Pauline is dedicated to founding and directing a service dog organization that impacts the lives of those with disabilities for the better.
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Meaghan Lynch CPDT (Manager of Training)
Meaghan Lynch is our training and kennel manager as well as one of our lead trainers here at GOFI. She graduated from UMass Dartmouth in 2019 with a bachelor's in Psychology and has her CPDT certification. She’s had hands-on experience with breeding, dog training, and animal behavior since she could first walk, by shadowing Pauline as much as possible. She has 2 dogs named Missy and Violet. Her favorite aspect to dog training is understanding animal behavior and ways to troubleshoot each aspect of dog training depending on the specific dog and situation. She loves being able to connect her two passions of psychology and animals to help people with disabilities, mental health disorders and bridging communities and police together with the help of Community Resource Dogs.
Dan Gruber CPDT (Assistant Manager of Training /CRD Coordinator)
Dan is our assistant training manager and CRD coordinator. Dan first got involved with GOFI in his sophomore year doing a journalism story for his Television Media class. He worked around the farm and helped create videos up until he graduated from Norwood high in 2020 and started training. Since then he has acquired his CPDT and does private lessons and some classes for GOFI. Dan has two dogs himself a breeder dog Lucky and one of her daughters Bailey. His favorite part of dog training is teaching puppies and watching the figurative “light bulb” go off when they first understand something.
Kayla Zuis (Trainer/ Breeding Coordinator)
Kayla has been at GOFI for over 4 years. Having recently graduated from high school, she’s hoping to get her CPDT soon. Kayla has always had a love for animals. Having been around working dogs her entire life, she truly understands how important Service Dog work is. She is most interested in animal behavior, and psychology. Recently, she has brought home her own GOFIDOG, Joy, who is currently in training to be Kayla’s Service Dog, and will some day be a breeder for the program.
Susan Murani (Trainer)
Susan Morani CPDT, has been with GOFI for over 3 years now. Susan has work in pharmacy for 23 years, absolutely loves dogs and has always had a passion to teach and help others. Susan has held many roles at GOFI throughout the years, from standing at tables to provide the public with cuddles, fundraising, social media, event coordinator and so much more. Susan has received her Canine Good Citizen Evaluator Certificate and offers classes on Tuesday & Wednesday Nights. You will often see her out and about on weekends with Rebel- Walpole’s Community Resource Dog or snapping pictures for her Facebook page.
Shannon Derry (Trainer)
Shannon has been trianing with GOFI for 3 years now. She started as a tester for our pilot T3 program with her dog Buddy. Once she finished the program she kept Buddy and became a trainer for GOFI. Shannon enjoys learning about the sceince of breeding and working with puppies.
Sophie D'Attilio (Trainer)
Sophie is a trainer at GOFI. She started as a volunteer trainer in 2021 while finishing up school. She recently became an official member of the staff. Along with training, she loves helping out with events, social media, and puppy sitting. She recently earned her Bachelor's Degree in Design and Communication. She filmed a short-length documentary about GOFI for her Design class, along with a series of trading cards. Sophie also recently adopted Lilly; a breeder dog for GOFI. Her favorite part of GOFI is playing with all the dogs and teaching them task work. She can often be seen helping out at public events promoting the GOFI brand with the owner’s dog Sunshine. In her spare time, she helps groom the dogs, helps with puppies, and runs Sunshine’s Instagram. She continues working with the head trainers towards her CPDT, while training her dog Lilly, working towards their CGC certification.
A.B. Hark CPDT/KA & AB-CSDT (Head Service Dog Trainer)
Upon graduating with a degree in forensic Psychology from Clark University she entered into a career in law enforcement, behavioral sciences and emergency medicine. In her pursuit to serve her community she became disabled. Knowing she would be unable to work again in this capacity was devastating to her. In fact, she could barely walk but through hard work, determination and use of her own service dog, Dioji, she is now walking without the aid of any medical devices.
Not knowing what to do she decided to attend Animal Behavioral College where she obtained her degree and certification (ABC-CDT) for training dogs. The school placed her at GOFI for the externship part of her degree. To her surprise she was training service dogs here. Her externship was finished but she never left GOFI. “I take so much pride in training service dogs so that they may help those with medical conditions, mobility issues and so much more, like myself. My life has truly come full circle for me. I’ve found my calling again, a way to serve my community in a different capacity, and my new home at GOFI.”
Deb Stamm (Therapy Dog program Coordinator)
Debra Stamm is a graduate of Cornell University, with a JD from Boston University School of Law. Retired from the practice of law to raise her children, Deb lives in Sharon and 30 years later, has molded her lifetime passion for dogs into a new career. In 1996, she started to explore the world of therapy dogs and has since self-trained three Labrador Retrievers, who have collectively worked as therapy dog teams at Boston area memory care facilities, hospitals, colleges and universities, and early childhood library reading programs. Deb has quickly warmed to the Goldens at GOFI and has become entrenched as a trainer, Therapy Dog Program Coordinator, and current Secretary of the GOFI Board. Deb is an AKC Evaluator, certified by two therapy dog organizations, and serves as a Tester/Observer for Alliance of Therapy Dogs (ATD). Through ATD, she evaluates and certifies therapy dog/handler teams to work in community volunteer opportunities. Deb teaches GOFI’s therapy dog course and educates our staff, facility dog handlers, and CRD teams on the benefits and requirements of the therapy world.
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