Growing up, dogs were always in my life. I would play dress up with them, tell them all my secrets and complete with them in obedience competitions. Even at a young age, I knew that someday I would train dogs for a special purpose.
During my senior of high school, I was trying to find out how I can train service dogs. I looked into a couple of schools. Some of the schools wanted you to be a puppy raiser and the other school wanted you to have a few years of dog training skills before you apply. Here I was 19 years old…….I have only trained my dogs and I didn’t want to be a puppy raiser, I wanted to train dogs from start to finish.
After graduation, I moved to Roswell Georgia to be a nanny. It is there I found my dream job! A service dog school that was fairly new and needed volunteer trainers. While the children I cared for were at school, I would go to the school and train the dogs during the day. I found myself there at night too, training other volunteers how to train service dogs. In 1996, after my two year contract was complete, I started working as a full time trainer for this organization.
When I started at that school, there were only 12 dogs and they were house in the basement. By the time I left that school, 10 years later, they had over 150 dogs on sight and 2 buildings that housed the dogs. I will never forget the people I worked with, the dogs I got to train and all the lives that I changed with my dogs.
When I first started working full time, I wrote the founder a letter. Thanking her for this wonderful opportunity and also letting her know that it was my dream to one day to train service dogs in Indiana. In 2005, it was time. If I was ever going to start my own business, now was the time to do it. February 16, 2005, Northern Indiana Service Dogs, LLC was up and going.
Here you go Alex….why I got started training dogs….A little about me.
I also sent you a note about NISD and the Nevada badge