What a year!!!

It's been almost a year since I last posted on this blog.  In that year my career has taken a turn and I think I'm a much better trainer for it.  I left Atlanta, Ga and moved to Rochester NY, started my own business, and met a wonder mentor there.  Sherri Romig owner of  http://www.tailsofsuccessny.com/ really made a huge impact on me both as a person and as a trainer.  She taught me so much about positive reinforcement dog training that I will forever be grateful to her.  

I thought I was a positive reinforcement trainer in Atlanta, but after working with Sherri for a few weeks, I realized that I had so much more to learn.  I had used luring before, but Sherri taught me how to train so many behaviors without even having to touch the dog.  That kind of knowledge is a gem when working with fearful dogs, so that you can work with them without causing them more stress.  

I learned so much more about my own dog as well.  Sherri has a very holistic and natural approach to things.  Working with her made me wish I had paid more attention to my mother and grandmother when they tried to teach me about herbs and the "home remedy" way of doing things.  She sent me to a vet just outside of Rochester that leaned more towards the homeopathic ways than normal vets do.  

On our first visit Dr. Mathas was able to tell me what had been wrong with Tazie for the last few years.  His aggression had been getting worse, none of the training I did with him seemed to help much, and we even tried drugs that didn't work.  Dr. Mathas however said that he had Rabies Miasm.  Which sent me on a whole new search for knowledge and answers to my questions about Tazie and mindset about vaccines.  (more on that later)  After taking some homeopathic treatment and some time to work though our symptoms again, we seem to be making a lot of progress.  My dog is like a different dog!!  I am very happy about that!!!

I met a lot of wonderful people in Rochester and I hated to leave them, I had some good friends and clients there and some dogs that I fell in love with.  Tazie and I found some amazing hiking trails to go on and the best thing about New York....  no poisonous snakes!!! I am really going to miss that.  

I've been back home in Alabama for a little over a month now, and I'm training again.  I feel that passion for training that I had lost with so much drama in my life.  I'm glad for the drama to be gone and things to be settling back down.  Since the company that I am now training for requires a non-compete, I can't write my professional blog anymore so I thought I might pick up this one again.  I'll be adding some posts from my other blog but might water them down a bit for people that don't really want to read all about dog training, but that will still be my primary focus.  At least by working with this blog again, I am writing which sadly I had gotten away from with so much going on in my personal life.