Happy Wednesday!
This is my first post as a blogger! First, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Bobbie Bhambree and I am the Founder & Director of DogCentric Training. I am a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT) and member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT) as a trainer and behavior consultant. I have been training dogs professionally for over a decade.
I plan on using this blog to stay connected with fellow dog enthusiasts—everyone from dog owners to dog professionals—discussing training and behavior experiences with my own dogs and others. Now here is a little bit about my company:
A BETTER WAY OF LIVING WITH YOUR DOG…
DogCentric is about Connection & Understanding, thereby creating a Relationship between you and your canine companion. We take into account how dogs perceive the world and provide a gentle, easier way to teach them. We understand dogs and what motivates them. We can help you better understand them to address behavior issues. If you really get them, you will get the relationship you want. By relating to your dog through his perspective, it can help to prevent and address so many behavior issues. DogCentric provides services to Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Please feel free to visit DogCentricTraining.com to learn more about me and my company.
DogCentric is in the midst of several changes around its services and mission. All is well! The girls, Charlotte and Tricky, and I just celebrated one year as New York City residents! In addition, DogCentric is officially a year and half old.
And it’s been quite a year of changes, growing, and evolving, both personally and professionally. These changes are allowing me to focus more on the behavior side of things and offer even more support to my private clients. Some of this is coming from expanding my network of trainer friends where we support one another as a community, sharing resources and referrals. Some of this is coming from furthering my education—I will be attending a dog training seminar in August with Kathy Sdao, a well-known certified professional with a graduate degree in an animal behavior field. And some of it is coming from the continual training and improvement of behavior with my own dogs. Tricky and I will be returning to the world of agility instruction as STUDENTS. The game of agility is continuing to evolve and become more challenging so we will be spending the next few months expanding our toolbox and returning to the competition ring. Charlotte, initially, had some difficulty adjusting to city living. Some old behaviors of reactivity (barking and lunging at dogs) returned.
Living in an urban environment can be challenging for a number of reasons between the congestion of people, the noise level, and the smaller living space. Now add a dog to the picture. Now add a dog that barks and lunges at other dogs to that picture. Charlotte went from living in the suburbs for the first year of her life to living in the country for the following seven years. Then we moved into Manhattan. Poor girl—it was a significant change in her lifestyle. On top of that, Charlotte is a type of herding dog. According to Wikipedia, the term “herding dog” is sometimes erroneously used to describe livestock guardian dogs, whose primary function is to guard flocks and herds from predation and theft, and they lack the herding instinct. Although herding dogs may guard flocks their primary purpose is to move them; both herding dogs and livestock guardian dogs may be called “sheep dogs”. All herding behavior is modified predatory behavior. Through selective breeding, humans have been able to minimize the dog’s natural inclination to treat cattle and sheep as prey while simultaneously maintaining the dog’s hunting skills, thereby creating an effective herding dog. One modern-day example of the use of herding instinct is controlling wild geese at airports and golf courses. The dogs doing this job are often Border Collies, who eagerly perform the task without harm to geese or humans. Living with a herding dog, when you don’t own sheep on a farm, is a very unique experience. Imagine living with a Type A personality who really appreciates order in the home and makes a big display of things when order is not present. That’s my Charlotte. 🙂 Walking through a street full of dogs, people, children running and scooting by…it can be a lot for a dog like this. In the next couple of blog posts, I will share a bit about our journey, including some tools we used to support Charlotte.
Welcome! 🙂
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