Decatur Obedience Training Club

      I'm a former grade school teacher. I have worked with teachers as a reading resource specialist and taught classes at Richland and Millikin in both computers and teaching reading. I started training dogs in 1972 at DOTC in Obedience when I got my first Lhasa Apso, Seppi. I continued to train my own dogs until I got Tazi who also trained at DOTC. On the night I joined the Club in 2016, I became Editor of the Barkette. I found "trick training" very soon after that and trained Coco, a Lhasa
Apso, to the Champion Trick Dog level with Do More With Your Dog and to AKC's Trick Dog Elite level. I trained with DOTC in agility for a couple of years, but Coco wasn't enthused, so we stopped. When I got Gigi, a Lhasa Apso puppy, I trained him in Obedience and Tricks as well. They are still both training in Tricks, Canine Conditioning and Obedience.

      I started teaching by assisting teachers at the Club. I received my Canine Good Citizen Evaluator certification about four years ago. I taught Canine Manners classes and I started teaching AKC Star Puppy classes just after that. I love puppies. It is fun to see how much they develop and learn in just six weeks! I like teaching people how to respond to their dogs and give the puppies a good life. I believe in positive training methods that do not cause harm or fear in the dogs. I believe dogs and people learn more quickly and more deeply with positive comments and rewards. I think there are a myriad of ways to train responses. Like people, dogs are individuals and no one method works for all.