About the Dog Trainer

I’ve always had an affinity for animals, especially dogs, but I didn’t bring home my first puppy, Thurber, until I was in my late twenties. I didn’t have an interest in dog training until we enrolled in our first puppy class. Thurber and I had so much fun, and he was such a good boy! A few years later, his brother, Baxter, developed some serious behavioral problems that couldn’t be resolved in a class. I worked with a private dog trainer, and it was a life-changing experience.

At the time, I was thinking of leaving my career in academia, and I remembered those early dog training experiences. I knew immediately that I wanted to help dogs and owners the way those trainers helped me and my dogs, so I enrolled in one of the best dog training schools in the country, Animal Behavior College, and graduated with honors. After graduation, I worked at a dog daycare and at an animal shelter, where I not only taught the adoptable dogs basic obedience cues to increase their chances of adoption but also rehabilitated the dogs who were not yet ready to be adopted. Although my work at the shelter was rewarding, it was limiting. Instead of helping dogs find homes, I wanted to do preventative work so that they could stay in their homes.

I started Pedogogy Dog Training in 2013 to achieve that goal and to offer more than what was available. Throughout the Triangle, I noticed a lack of positive training and a lack of options. Dog training was synonymous with group classes, agility, tricks, corrections, and rote cues—not about teaching responsible ownership or addressing problem behavior. As I discovered at the shelter, unresolved behavioral problems are one of the top reasons people give up their dogs. Therefore, I work one on one with owners and their dogs to improve the dog-human relationship, so you and your dog can coexist peacefully and not resort to abuse, relinquishment, rehoming, or euthanasia.