Our Story
A long time ago, a pit bull stole my heart. Years later I was working in an animal hospital and the local ACO brought in a pit bull type dog. His name was Rusty and after being locked in a house alone, for a month, he had broken through a window in an effort to save his own life. Unfortunately we were unable to save him, heartbroken and angry I swore that I would do everything in my power to make sure that would never happen to another dog again. Thus began my foray into rescue. Fast forward several more years.. We had become familiar with a few rescues and had taken on several fosters. Then one day, a local kid asked if we could take his dog because he just didn’t know what he was getting into when he got the dog and no longer had the time or means to take care of him. Sure, what’s one more? Enter “Zarek” or “Z” for short, a deep red roan pit with ridiculously over sized ears. Shortly after “Z” came home, I realized that he had some serious behavioral issues and that we couldn’t really ever adopt him out. As far as training, I really had no idea what I was doing so I started to read, A LOT. The more I read, the more I learned that the issue that most of these dogs had was not because of their breed, but because of a certain lack of training. In fact, most of the dogs that we ended up taking on, had some pretty serious issues that could have been avoided had they received proper training in the first place!
My roots will forever lie in rescue, I still help when and where I can but my passion, dare I say obsession, is training. I studied and received my CDT from Penn Foster, I am an AKC Certified CGC Evaluator and AKC Certified Trick Dog Instructor. I opened Recurve K9 Training and Behavior Modification in hopes that I could help keep dogs from ever going into the shelter. Bully breeds in general, hold a special place in my heart but I do work with dogs of every breed, size and age. My goal as a trainer is to help improve communication between dogs and their humans to ensure a long and happy relationship.
