Canine Culture VT

Hi, I'm Kristen, the owner, operator, and educator at Canine Culture VT. 

 

I am a  former VT Educator, with Bachelor's degrees in both Education and Psychology and my last job was a Preschool Executive Director. After over ten years working with Elementary and Middle School age children, primarily with some type of behavioral challenge, I decided to take the plunge to open my Dog School. Before my move to Early Childhood Ed., I began my Animal Behavior College Dog Certification Program, and while in EED was able to see the striking parallels between dogs and young children.   The result of all my work and education is Canine Culture; Highly Qualified Education and Enrichment, an in-home preschool classroom comprised of dogs.

 

The goals at Canine Culture VT are to have fun, build relationships with each individual dog, teach basic obedience for the average family's activities of daily life in their home, as well as provide all of your dogs' needs in one setting: Mental, Social, Physical and Emotional. Every dog is considered individually and I try very hard to take steps to individualize for each the best that I can. I do some brief one-on-one work, but focus more on the whole, varied small groups, and how the dogs can help each other learn. For timid dogs, we build confidence first, for boisterous dogs we wean energy, etc., for all dogs we teach/support communication and basic skills.

 

I am primarily a positive dog trainer, though I refer to my position as Canine Educator. I believe I am balanced. Maybe not in the way you may have heard "balanced" used in dog training, but rather that for optimum wellness, for any being, the whole picture must always be addressed. Everything in life needs balance. When people ask about my methods, at school or in an in-home setting, mt response is 95-5. 95% of the time I am proactive, 5% reactive. For me, every dog is a different student that I have a unique relationship with, and we will figure out together the best way to reach the goals. I do not use shock or prong collars, and do not like them to be used outside of school either. I believe that these tools interrupt the natural communication process, and can therefore alter or inhibit relationship building, either dog-dog or human-dog. I do use some Aversion ("no", bitter apple spray, timeouts) when necessary, but nothing that will damage my relationship with the dog, or instill pain or fear. This is my classroom and your dogs are my students. Any good teacher I ever had or was blessed to teach with was most certainly "balanced", but always kept safety and success at the forefront.