Get to Know the Pack!

Welcome to my first blog post on Exceed the Lead! My name is Brittney and I am 22 years old. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Animal Science with an emphasis in Pre-Veterinary Medicine. I have been professionally training for about 5 years, but there is always so much to learn!

My love for dog training began in 8th grade when my family purchased a German Shepherd whose lines were imported from Germany. We began working on protection training and basic obedience. While I was not the handler for the training, I was always watching, going to practices, and being as involved as possible. When we bred her, I kept one of the puppies for myself and began training him with another trainer in similar skills. When I moved away for college, I bought my Australian Shepherd and began researching ways to train different basic commands and tricks. While doing all of this research, I learned that there were many different methods for training dogs and began to develop my own style by taking bits of all methods and figuring out what worked for me and what worked for each individual dog. About a year later, I finally got a job at Petco as a professional trainer. This was a great opportunity to learn more and work with a variety of dogs (and their owners) to find ways to go through even more challenges. Since then, I have become a personal trainer and a service dog trainer which has continued to expand my knowledge.

At the moment, I have four dogs in my home. Two are personal pets and two are service dogs I am training. Wyatt is our 75lb mixed breed rescue who is about 2.5 years old. He aids my personal and service dog training by helping to positively socialize the dogs, including those that have fear or aggression towards other dogs. He has an amazing disposition for this type of work.

My other personal dog is Ellie, a 5 month old Aussie/Border collie who I plan to teach agility, flyball, and other competition training to gain more knowledge. She is very hyper, loves to talk, incredibly intelligent, a daredevil, hates being alone and in her kennel because of separation anxiety and wants to be running around and right next to you, but she is teaching me so much.

My first service dog (EVER!) is Dakota. She is a 1 year old yellow Labrador who will be matched this week with her family. I will have her for about another 6 months before she graduates. In this time, I will be focusing on training her for specific needs for the family. She has completed a TON of obedience, task training, and public access. We even took her on rides at Disneyland! I think another trip is in store soon.

And last but not least, the newest member is 9 week old Zeke who I will have for the next 18 months to train to be a service dog as well. He is also a yellow Labrador, pretty mellow puppy, loves to chew on pretty much anything and everything (what puppy doesn’t?), has an insane food drive, loves to play with the big dogs, and is in the process of learning all the basics.

You will see these four in LOTS of my posts. They all have such unique personalities so I am able to share a wide array of behaviors with you. They will be the reviewers of products (although the service dogs have some restrictions such as no animal chews).

For now, I will be posting training posts on Tuesday (#TuesdayTreats) and reviews on Thursdays (#ThursdayThoughts). For training posts, I will try to go in the direction of puppy to adult, so basics for puppy training and manners, and then move on to more advanced commands and tricks. I am very excited for the next few reviews I have! I have had some trouble with the videos uploading to my computer so I can edit them, so I may just post the blog post with pictures, and then add the videos later if you’d like videos. If there is anything you want to see specifically (a certain product or command) leave it in the comments or message me!

If you have any questions for me, leave them in the comments below! Thank you guys for reading, don't forget to subscribe to my blog and YouTube, and follow all my social media (Instagram, Facebook page, Snapchat, Twitter) for updates on blog posts, local training sessions and discounts!