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Andrea Harrison is passionate about all species, including dogs and humans! Having lived with dogs her whole life, Andrea was an early convert to positive training for people and dogs. She has taken this message to the media many times, including appearances on many TV shows and news programs, as well as print and radio.

Active as a foster home since 1994, Andrea has had many opportunities to work with dogs of all breeds, sizes, and temperament types. She has experience working with a wide variety of people as an educator and counsellor for over 20 years! She has worked with people of all ages on being successful and reducing anxiety and stress using her training in counselling, personality typing, and experiences. Differentiating learning experiences for her students has always been a priority for her.

Her competitive canine addiction is agility though she enjoys training and teaching nosework as well. Andrea and her dogs have many titles between them, with placements in Regional and National competitions with her rock star Brody (pictured with Andrea). Her super star dog Sally is the canine lead in the feature film “Saving Dinah" and Andrea was the animal talent coordinator for the film. She also has experience animal wrangling for television.

Andrea's personal site: andreaharrison.ca

Hannah Branigan has been training dogs and teaching people for more than 10 years. She is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT-KA) and a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner (KPA-CTP). Hannah is the owner of Wonderpups, LLC, and teaches workshops nationwide, as well as conducting behavior consultations, teaching private lessons, and conducting group classes on pet manners, rally, and competition obedience. She has titled her own dogs in conformation, obedience, rally, schutzhund, and agility.

Nancy Gagliardi Little  has been training dogs since the early 1980's when she put an OTCH on her Novice A dog, a Labrador Retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, including 4 AKC OTCH titles, 6 UD titles, 3 UDX titles, and multiple championships in herding and agility.

Nancy is a retired obedience judge, having judged all obedience classes from 1986-2008. She enjoyed judging around the country and had the honor of judging 3 National obedience tournaments in Florida, Kentucky, and North Carolina. She retired from judging to spend more time training her own dogs and competing in obedience, herding, and agility.

Nancy draws from her experience training and competing in multiple sports, which has given her insight into innovative and creative ways of training and handling dogs. She finds that most trainers have no issues training the "big picture," but they tend to lose sight of some of the little details that are the building blocks to the communication and the relationship between them and their dogs. She loves working with very different challenges and trying to help people find a way to improve their communication with their partners.

Over the years, she has moved from a more traditional obedience training background towards reward based/positive methods in training dogs in all areas. As a result she understands the challenges faced by "crossover" trainers and dogs, and can help handlers find their way to newer and more positive training techniques.

Nancy's website is http://www.endzonedogsports.com.

Amy Cook, Ph.D. has been training dogs for over 25 years, and through Full Circle Dog Training and Play Way Dogs in Oakland, CA, has been specializing in the rehabilitation of shy and fearful dogs for almost 20 years. She is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant through the IAABC, a longstanding professional member of the APDT, and was one of the first trainers nationally to become a Certified Professional Dog Trainer through independent evaluation. She is a graduate of the SFSPCA academy for dog trainers and has attended all 4 "chicken camps" in Hot Springs, Arkansas, taught by Bob Bailey. Amy also owns the "shy-k9s" list on yahoo, a 4000-member group dedicated to the rehabilitation of fearful dogs, and has moderated there since 2001.

Amy has worked for the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, the San Francisco Animal Care and Control, and has provided behavioral evaluations for shelters and rescues throughout the Bay Area of California. She currently works with the Anti-Cruelty team at the ASPCA doing behavioral evaluations and psychological enrichment of the dogs seized in dog fighting, puppy mill, and hoarding cases. 

Amy returned to school in 2006 to get her PhD in Psychology from UC Berkeley. Her research focused on the dog-human relationship and its effect on the problem solving strategies dogs employ. She has also studied causal inference in dogs and toddlers with Anna Waismeyer and Alison Gopnik, and currently works with Lucia Jacobs on dog olfaction. She has extensive experience as a graduate student instructor, having taught sections of Introductory Psychology (both in person and online), Human Emotion, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology, Stigma and Prejudice, Statistics, Animal Cognition, and has taught Fundamentals of Psychology and Developmental Psychology as a full instructor.

Her dogs have trained, participated, and titled in Rally, Competition Obedience, Agility, Flyball, Nosework and Barn Hunt, and her young whippet loves agility best!

Deborah Jones, Ph.D. is a psychologist who specializes in learning theory and social behavior. She taught a variety of psychology courses at Kent State University for the past 20 years. Deb has been training dogs for performance events for the past 25 years and was an early innovator in the use of clicker training techniques in dog training. She has owned and worked with a variety of breeds and has earned top level titles in agility (MACH), rally (RAE), and obedience (UD) competitions. Her focus is on developing training methods that are enjoyable and effective for both the dog and the trainer. Her mission is to help others develop strong positive relationships with their dogs. Her favorite saying is “it’s all tricks!”

In 2004 Deb developed the FOCUS training system, along with agility trainer and World Team member Judy Keller. FOCUS stands for Fun, Obedience & Consistency lead to Unbelievable Success. They first applied FOCUS training to agility dogs but quickly realized its usefulness for all dog sports. Their latest work is “The Focused Puppy,” which lays out a strong and systematic foundation for all future training. Deb has written a series of 4 books with Denise Fenzi titled “Dog Sport Skills.”  She also recently finished a book on cooperative care.

Deb has taught a variety of dog training classes, workshops, and seminars. She loves teaching in an online format!  

Deb's website is www.k9infocus.com.

Denise Fenzi has titled dogs in obedience (AKC and UKC), tracking (AKC and schutzhund), schutzhund (USA), mondioring (MRSA), herding (AKC), conformation (AKC), and agility (AKC). She has two AKC obedience champions, perfect scores in both schutzhund and Mondio ringsport obedience, and is well known for her flashy and precise obedience work.

While a successful competitor, Denise's real passion lies in training dogs and solving the problems that her own dogs and her student’s dogs present. She is a recognized expert in developing drive, motivation, and focus in competition dogs, and is known internationally as an engaging speaker and an expert in no force training for sport dogs. She has consistently demonstrated the ability to train and compete with dogs using motivational methods in sports where compulsion is the norm.

In addition to training and speaking, Denise is a prolific writer.  You can find her at www.denisefenzi.com where she maintains an active blog on all things related to dog training.  She is also an active writer on facebook; follow her there to learn more about her range of interests in addition to dog training. Denise and Deb Jones have recently finished a four book series, "Dog Sports Skills" which has recieved widespread acclain in the dog sports community.  In addition, she has written additional books on her own, including "Train the Dog in Front of You", "Beyond the Back Yard; Train Your Dog to Listen Anytime, Anywhere!" and, for the younger audience, "Blogger Dog, Brito!"  Several of these books have won Maxwell awards for Best Training and Behavior book from the Dog Writers of America.

Denise thoughtfully and persistently works to break down the barriers that prevent people from obtaining a truly interactive and mutually enjoyable sport relationship with their dogs.  Fenzi Academy is the culmination of her efforts as a forward step in providing progressive information to any trainer who wishes to learn.