MY STORY
Every dog has taught me something.
I’ve lived with, trained, and fostered many dogs over the years.
Different breeds.
Different personalities.
Different histories.
And dogs who came with very different challenges.
Some were easy. Others made me question what I thought I knew and pushed me to find a different way.
That’s one of the things I love most about dogs.
They keep me curious. They inspire me to keep learning.
There isn’t one dog, one trainer, one book, or one experience that shaped the way I work today. My approach has developed over years of living with dogs, competing with dogs, learning from them, studying training programs, working with other trainers, fostering rescue dogs, and continuing to ask:
What does this dog need from me?
The dogs changed. So I had to change, too.
My early years with dogs included German Shepherds, training, and Schutzhund competition. I learned a tremendous amount about structure, discipline, consistency, communication, and leadership.
Then rescue dogs entered my life.
Many came with histories I didn’t know, behaviors I hadn’t created, and challenges that couldn’t always be approached in the same way. They taught me to become more patient, more observant, and much more creative.
My first foster dog was Shelby, a three-legged Rottweiler who had spent part of her life on a chain and lost a leg after it became caught in a trap. Working with her meant letting go of some of my assumptions about what a dog should be able to do and figuring out what worked for the dog in front of me.
Fostering continued that education. Every new dog brought a different temperament, history, energy level, health challenge, set of needs, and way of responding.
Over time, I became less interested in having the answer and much more interested in finding the answer that made sense for this dog.
That’s still how I work today.
I didn’t set out to become a dog trainer.
I started by wanting to become better with my own dogs.
I read books, trained and competed in Schutzhund, and worked with different dog trainers to continually refine what I was doing with my German Shepherds.
When Cito retired from competition, I realized I had accumulated a lot of knowledge that could help other dog owners. So I began offering dog training workshops as fundraisers for local rescue organizations.
It brought together two things I already knew well: training dogs and facilitating groups of people. It also pulled me deeper into the rescue world.
From there, things grew organically. People who attended the workshops began asking me to help them with their own dogs. I started working privately with dog owners, continued studying, and eventually completed a professional dog behavior and psychology course.
What started as learning how to become better with my own dogs became another part of my professional life.
And I’ve never stopped learning since.
THE OTHER HALF
There is always a human on the other end of the leash.
Working with dogs is only part of what shaped me.
For more than two decades, I’ve also worked professionally as a coach, helping people become more aware of how they think, communicate, lead, and respond to the world around them.
That experience has become an important part of the way I work with dog owners.
I notice the little things.
A change in body language.
An emotional reaction.
An inconsistent message.
The moment someone unknowingly reinforces exactly what they don’t want. And I know how to point those things out without making someone feel that they’ve been doing something wrong.
Because most of the time, they haven’t.
They simply haven’t seen what I’ve learned to see.
My role is to help you see it, understand why it matters, and practice doing something differently while I’m there to guide you.
I’ve never felt the need to choose between these two worlds. Working with people has made me a better dog trainer, and working with dogs has made me a better coach.
In fact, the lessons I’ve learned from dogs have become part of my leadership work through Dog-Gone Leadership, where I use the human-dog relationship to help leaders see their own communication, behavior, consistency, and leadership from a different perspective.
Helping the dog is only half of my work. The other half is teaching you how to become a better partner and leader for your dog.
“Iris truly cares more about you and your dog than she does about money… She went above and beyond any expectation that I had. My wife and I could not be more satisfied.”
Curiosity keeps me learning.
My education with dogs has never stopped with dog training. Over the years, I’ve continued to expand my understanding of behavior, health, nutrition, and the many ways dogs communicate with us.
MY STUDIES INCLUDE:
I continue to study, learn from other trainers and experts, and, most importantly, learn from the dogs themselves.
LET’S CONNECT
Ready to talk about your dog?
If you’d like to explore how I may be able to help you and your dog, let’s start with a complimentary 20-minute phone conversation.