Dina Bennett

Dina Bennett is the Vice President and Instructor for Mountain Shepherd Wilderness Survival School in Catawba, Virginia. After more than two decades in the corporate world training and coaching sales staffs, her life changed in 2006 when she attended her first survival course with now-husband Reggie Bennett, which pulled her out of her comfort zone and gave her the appetite for survival training leadership and adventure that drives her today.

1. Where are you from originally?

I moved around a lot growing up. I was born in California but spent most of my early childhood in the Chicago area, and junior and high school years in Roanoke, Virginia.

2. How did you decide to get into survival training education?

I have always loved the outdoors. My first and fondest memories are with my dad, playing sports, hiking, canoeing, biking and skiing. Sleeping in the wilderness, among other things, wasn’t on my list of favorite things.

Then I participated in my first Survival 101 course and was hooked. It became vividly clear early in Reggie’s course that the 7 survival priorities correlate to leadership, to life and to family. From that first course in the Winter of 2006, I began to formulate the business plan and develop the courses to bring the world of wilderness survival to everyday life.

3. What did you do before your current career?

I enjoyed many years in the corporate world consulting business owners; managing projects; and leading, coaching and training sales teams in the weight loss, printing and newspaper industries. It was a rewarding and eclectic 24-year career helping others succeed.

4. What motivates you to teach survival training?

Teaching people, especially women, how to do something they didn’t know they could do is the most rewarding experience.

Making a difference in the lives of other people has always been my motivation. Watching the expression on someone’s face as they take the skills I teach to start a fire or build shelter, something that they may have never done before, and succeed gives me an amazing sense of accomplishment.

Having a woman tell me she is confident and empowered to take care of herself in any situation is a reward like no other. I had coffee just last week with a woman who attended one of my first courses two years ago. She told me “not to sound like a cliché, but your course changed my life. I’m living the life I want both personally and professionally because of your training and the women who were there. Please coordinate a follow up course!” Who could ask for more?

5. Why is survival training important for everyone to know?

From the pure outdoor survival perspective, you never know when a wrong turn on the trail, a change in the weather or a natural disaster can turn an everyday occurrence into a survival situation. Knowing your priorities saves lives, your and those around you.

Hopefully, the skills we teach will never be necessary, but it’s important to be prepared to help yourself and also others. Can you imagine coming across someone who is hurt, cold and lost and not able to help them? We just had a student come to a course for just that reason. He came across a young girl, lost from her family, who was hurt, cold and scared. He didn’t know what to do. Now he does.

6. Why is it especially important for women?

Now, more than ever, it’s important for women to be prepared and confident to handle any crisis in any environment – whether they’re on a wilderness adventure, traveling or at home.
Not being dependent on others is empowering. Knowing what to do in a survival situation eliminates fears. The more knowledge you have, the less fear you have. The less fear you have, the better decisions you make.

Often, women tell me their fears are eliminated when they are out on hikes or just camping, because they know they can take care of themselves. Others are now ready to take on outdoor activities they were afraid to try before.

7. What are some of the most common myths and misconceptions about survival training?

Survival training is all about learning to prepare and to practice so that you prevail in a survival situation resulting from an outdoor adventure gone awry, a wrong turn, a change in the weather or even a natural disaster. It’s about being prepared to help others. It’s about improvising in our modern day world with modern day conveniences.

Our courses are about learning practical life-saving skills all while having fun outside!

8. What is your favorite quick & easy survival training tip/technique?

Think. Your mind is best survival tool, always!

9. If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

I feel like I found my calling, my place to make a long lasting difference in the lives of other people. There is nothing else I would rather be doing! I help women build confidence to be self-reliant; I’m living the dream!

10. What’s your secret to personal success?

Success is applying the 7 priorities everyday. It’s getting in the right mindset and staying in it.

Success is taking care of your body as well as your mind.

Success comes with finding some time for yourself, a “shelter” away from negativity and stresses from those things outside of your control.

Success comes from finding your passion in life, knowing how to spark its flame and keep it burning. Know who or what may try to douse the flame and have a back-up to fuel your fire and breathe oxygen into your life.

It’s communicating effectively with others to receive and give help.

Success comes when we look for and take in those things that nourish us and don’t waste time on things that don’t matter. It’s about surrounding ourselves with positive people who nourish us.

Success comes from knowing what works and doing those things the same way every time until it becomes a habit, as well as knowing that sometimes improvising to get you through is OK, too. Save time, energy and resources where you can so you have it when you need and want it.

It’s a joint endeavor between Mountain Shepherd and ICE PACK® Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC, a top-notch disaster-response solutions firm.

Together, we’re creating the EXODUS™ Personal Crisis Incident Response and Communications System to give anyone the tools and skills needed to survive a crisis situation.

To find out more about these new hands-on programs, check out our press release.

“So, what if the future really was now, and the zombies and vampires attacked, or the aliens invaded, or worse yet — the apes finally took over the planet?” asks the show’s host, Marc Istook.

Istook wonders how technology would help us survive our worst comic-book nightmares.

To find out, Istook visited Reggie at Mountain Shepherd’s Catawba, Va. school to learn some classic low-tech survival techniques and get the scoop on the latest high-tech gadgets.

In the video, Reggie talks about the basics like food, first aid kits and tarps for shelter.

He also shows some cutting-edge tools that come in handy in particularly tough situations, like a tinder that starts fire in the rain and a tracking device that helps emergency personnel find you via satellites and cell phone towers.

As always, Reggie stresses Mountain Shepherd’s seven priorities of survival, including the most important of all: keeping a positive mental attitude.

“Low tech or high tech, Reggie has found a way to make the idea of surviving fun,” Istook writes in a Yahoo! News article accompanying the video.

Check out the video here to find out more — and learn about the extra-cool gadget that will keep you entertained, even when outrunning the zombies.

These are just a few of the survival skills that take center stage in the best-selling novel ‘The Hunger Games.’ The Washington Post Express asked Mountain Shepherd Wilderness Survival School instructor Reggie Bennett to weigh in on the importance of evasion — keeping out of sight when your enemies are tracking you down.

From the article:

In the book, Katniss’ mentor advises her to run from the “Cornucopia” because heading toward the cache of supplies will make her an easier target. That’s sage advice, says Reggie Bennett, a former U.S. Air Force survival instructor. “We call it, ‘Get off the X.’ The more distance you can put between you and the enemy, the better,” he says.

‘The Hunger Games’ may be fiction, but the importance of good survival skills is very real.

And because you never know when you’ll find yourself in a matter of life and death, you need to have that knowledge with you at all times.

Mountain Shepherd Wilderness Survival School offers a variety of courses to teach evasion, shelter-building, fire craft and other abilities necessary to make it in the wild.

Find out more about our courses here.

Rioting in Uganda

A trip overseas can quickly and unexpectedly turn into a risky situation, thanks to today’s volatile political climate worldwide.

Just ask Sandi Bird.

Bird, a Salem, Va. resident who recently came back from a mission trip in Uganda, kept her cool despite running into rioting that could have turned deadly.

She credits Mountain Shepherd Wilderness Survival School’s training for helping her stay calm and confident.

Bird wrote on Facebook:

On our last Wednesday there we’d heard that there was rioting along the main highway that we would normally take to the village of Itukulu. We had a seasoned driver and he took some back roads in hopes of avoiding the trouble.

When we hit the main road again the rioting had spread up farther than we’d realized. There were already large rocks blocking the road in places and piles of brush and tires were being lit … At one point the bus had to push through a pile of brush that was being stacked in the road and at another place a man had some broken pieces of lumber that he held up as if to swing it at our vehicle.

“I don’t think any of us were really scared, but I felt especially at peace, because I was mentally prepared thanks to you and the things I’d learned from your course. It was more than having a survival kit and a map to know what direction to go to get to safety (both of which I did have), but I had a confidence that I had learned skills that would help me and the rest of my team if things got out of hand.”

If you had been in Bird’s shoes, would you have felt prepared?

Do you know how to find water, shelter and medical care when disaster strikes suddenly in an unfamiliar place?

Mountain Shepherd can give you the skills to keep you, your family and your associates safe — no matter where you are.

Find out more about the specialized training we offer.