About

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I spent years with my own dogs as a young adult, varying breeds, and learning as much as I could about communication, body language, and that relationships were normal. Why did I do this? I thought it was super interesting, and for no other reason. I traveled and lived in four different countries with my dogs along side me. Honestly, I am so grateful that there was no internet or tv show at the time telling me how and what my relationships with my dogs should look like. I believe with my first professional experience, and then boots on the ground learning by doing, I was continuing to build solid skills, love my dogs honestly, and have some amazing adventures together. During this time I hiked through four mountain ranges with one of my dogs, and too many miles to count.

And then as if I needed a deeper or richer experience with communication and what the heart was capable of, I got married, found a dog on a beach in Mexico, and had my first child all within a year. We adventured and worked from coast to coast, learned about each other, and built the foundation for Paws & People, without knowing that was happening, it was such and innocent and natural process. 

Paws & People was established in 2003. My focus at that time was competition and professional handler training. I learned super quickly that that niche group of Teams was super small. So I expanded my business while continuing to compete with my now four dogs.

I was invited to be a spokesperson for dog sports in the USA, through my freestyle dog sport, and had the experience to be on national tv with Martha Stewart, that was super special. I declined future offers as it would take me away from family and my new business, and my dogs, which is how this all started to begin with. I wanted to be honest with myself and with my new business, and especially my growing family.

In a matter of three years I started family pet training classes, competition classes, mountain adventure programs, and entered the world of consulting on serious behavioral problems. With each step of teaching, coaching, and competing, I was also a student, and on a wild steep learning curve. I poured through books, attended every conference I could afford, and volunteered at AZA accredited zoo's for training opportunities.

I became a certified professional trainer with CCPDT at this time, a member of the Animal Behavior Society, and started to write about the relationships we have with animals and how training fits into this.

As my business matured and grew so did my desire to make my business an integral part of my farm. I love the changes I am seeing, the opportunities for my Teams to work around farm animals and people doing chores, and to be in the great outdoors in all seasons. It's super real all of the time. It is what it should be as I enter the 20th year of Paws & People.

Outside of my teaching schedule, I am raising goats, border collies, quail, and ducks. I am a natural rearing breeder, and spend my time helping and assisting in births, raising my animals, learning about their species appropriate nutritional needs, and forming more relationships.

Our farm now produces - produce, herbs, dairy, eggs, and meat in a chemical free biodynamic way, that we started practicing in the late 1990's. We now give farm tours that are educational, and hopefully inspirational, and host farm pop-ups with other farms to support local agriculture. The learning and teaching never stop for me.

So you see it is a full circle kind of life. Everything that was important to me took me in directions that were unknown to me at the time that brought me back to the life I love so much. And this is my life's work I love to share with others.