Her Story

Shalene started on her path to being a dog trainer with needing to train her own dog. Due to various circumstances in life, when her dog Romeo was 6 months old she sent him to a board and train program. Unfortunately, the happy, confident puppy she sent for training came home a terrified, insecure mess that quickly developed extreme separation anxiety once home. This drastic change was due to that Trainer's heavy aversive training methods.

This sent Shalene on a two year journey with Poitive Reinforcement methods in her efforts to help her dog, hating aversive tools (prongs, e-collars, etc) and methods. She dedicated those two years diligently training Romeo and working with four different Poisitive Reinforcement trainers 4 days a week most weeks learning a multitude of techniques, studying canine body language and communication. During this time she also began to work with clients under the guidance of several of these trainers as they mentored her.

After the two years, with little progress made in Romeo's rehabilitation, Shalene started expanding her search to learn more. After being accepted to a dog training academy she moved to North Carolina for 4 months to eat, sleep, breath and work dog training. She almost went home on day one when the academy explained their methods in more detail: e-collars and other tools were used. After a long conversation with her mentors, she opted to see how the training worked with Romeo, who was still straggling and gave them 3 weeks. 3 weeks later Romeo had made a full 180°. He was confident, secure, his relationship with Shalene was stronger than it had been even before sending him to the abusive dog trainer. He was no longer peeing in fear when approached by people (especially men in hats), his Separation Anxiety was almost completely gone, he could work under high distractions off leash and not only be confident and happy doing so but was excited to train.

Since then, Shalene has dedicated herself to learning as much as she could about different training methods, tools, and techniques. Even those she had no interest in using, and many she has still yet to use over a decade later. She mentored until several Police and Military K9 trainers, Protection Dog and Protection Sport trainers, a Service Dog trainer, and several pet trainers, behaviorist and behavior specialists. Learning to work with behavioral cases such as Separation Anxiety, Aggression and extreme fear cases as well as special cases such as deaf dogs. She now dedicates herself to helping dog owners find the perfect training program and methods for their individual dogs without bias toward methodology or tool use.

She dedicated her life to training dogs so that she can prevent anyone else's dog from experiencing what Romeo did, and to prevent owners and dogs from suffering for years trying to use a method that may not be a good fit for them as individuals.