PAT FELTON
Knowledge, experience, patience, compassion, persistence , understanding, versatility, humility and curiosity.. "Often a teacher...always a student"
A return to the Bluegrass.....
Growing up in small Pennsylvania town, I gained exposure to trainers and breeders of working, sporting and show dogs with diverse training methods. Here is where I initially learned and worked with my favorite
breed, the Hungarian Vizsla owned by my uncle and used mainly for hunting.
Soon after I began working in the Thoroughbred industry in KY. In hindsight, this was of great benefit as I worked with, learned and enjoyed the challenge of training horses with difficult behaviors. This is where I developed a strong foundation helping animals work through fears and phobias resulting in safer, self confident desirable behavior.
Soon after I began working in the Thoroughbred industry in KY. In hindsight, this was of great benefit as I worked with, learned and enjoyed the challenge of training horses with difficult behaviors. This is where I developed a strong foundation helping animals work through fears and phobias resulting in safer, self confident desirable behavior.
Moving to Southern California, I really focused on this rewarding hobby and began to train dogs of friends and acquaintances. Several were problem or highly disturbed dogs. These training challenges took time, in fact some many months, but with focused attention and logical progression, the end result was a "collected" or wonderfully behaved, happy, confident and secure dog. As well, I fostered many dogs including those abandoned or left to veterinarians to be euthanized due to behavior issues. This experience later developed into a much beloved board and train program I offer today in Kentucky.
When the mountains and desert called me to reside in Nevada and Colorado, this hobby became a serious side business as I invested time and money attending varied mentor seminars and gaining expertise. Again, I gravitated toward challenge K9 behaviors, learning diverse methods with intent to have many tools to bring to present and future clients. This background serves to keep methodology bias in check and to use what works for each dog and circumstance. So often in today's canine world the brand names or particular method gurus have rigid blindly loyal followers and as many that disregard them. Its the way of the times. I deploy learned skills from a variety of sources solely based on what will work for a particular dog and owner. I distance myself from biased organizations that force member trainers to use specific methods and market them. To each their own...I only want what is best for my clients and their dogs.
During these years, I found great reward and satisfaction participating in dog shows and hunt tests.
Simultaneously, due
to the geography of the Nevada desert and Colorado mountains, several undesirable encounters with snakes occurred while training. Therefore I took my dogs to rattlesnake avoidance training. This skill-set of providing venomous snake avoidance training is now part of my portfolio which interestingly includes also Alpaca training in venomous snake avoidance (ask me about this).
It became clear this hobby and love was an occupation calling for my full attention. I am fortunate to live the lifestyle of an experienced dog trainer operating in multiple states.
It became clear this hobby and love was an occupation calling for my full attention. I am fortunate to live the lifestyle of an experienced dog trainer operating in multiple states.
