Our trainers meet often to discuss, review and implement the most successful training methods in to our programs.

Left: A trainers meeting in progress.

Carla Marie Kowalchuk

My involvement in dogs began when I was just 3 years old. My parents bred CKC registered Standard Smooth Dachshunds in the mid 1940's (I know, this dates me!). When I was 10, I had a Shetland Pony, and then graduated to the larger version acquiring a Paint (Pinto) *Skipper* and was involved in showing both my pony & horse in the 50's and 60's. In 1967 I was introduced to the Doberman Breed & the rest is history. They have owned me for over 35 years.

Most of my Dobermans have been shown in the Conformation ring and completed their Championships, but my passion lies in the performance ring. Flyball, Agility, and Obedience have been a large part of my life with my Dobes. I have had many High in Classes and High In Trials with my 'dobie girls' and became involved with instructing approximately 20 years ago. I have attended many workshops ~ Pat Hastings, Judie Howard, Turid Rugaas, Sheryl Smith, Karen Pryor and Terri Arnold camps/workshops/seminars just to mention a few.

I have been dubbed 'anal retentive' when it comes to instructing the competitive classes as I pay attention to 'details' and like perfection in the performance ring.

Over the years I have been involved in many capacities with The Doberman Pinscher Club of Canada, Thunder Bay Kennel & Training Club, Lakehead Club, North Western Ontario Working Dog Association, Twin Ports Training Club (Duluth) and the Twin Cities Doberman Pinscher Club. Having held many positions with most of these clubs has enlightened my horizons and knowledge in many, many ways.

Some of my other hobbies include gardening and cooking. I have a passion for both & often have been affiliated with a few magazines for submitting my favourite recipes. In the past I was a columnist for Canine Review for 18 years and presently am the Area Rep. columnist for our Doberman Pinscher Club of Canada newsletter.

I am so proud to have been chosen as training director for Canine Development Club, as well as being associated with such a great staff who are so well versed in tracking, herding, agility, conformation, performance and basically a well rounded group with such passion, love & dedication for their canine 'partners'.

Katie Jaremey

When I was 12, my family got our first dog, an American Cocker Spaniel named "Taylor". I tagged along with my sisters to Puppy Kindergarten classes, and it wasn't long before I was the one doing the training and teaching her every trick I could possibly imagine. We went to training class after training class - I was hooked! The next year, by chance, we acquired a Golden Retriever who was in need of a home. "Barclay" stole my heart and I have been owned by Goldens ever since.

I started competing in Junior Handling and then went on to learn and compete in several different canine activities from there. I currently compete in conformation, obedience, rally and my biggest passion of all - tracking! I have also dabbled a bit in field training and agility.

I am currently owned by two young Golden boys, "Henley" and "Gisbon", both of whom I am training in multiple venues.

I am a member of the Canadian Kennel Club, Golden Retriever Club of Canada, Lakehead Kennel Club and Thunder Bay Kennel and Training Club.

John & Mary Lou Hautala

John Hautala has been involved with the Thunder Bay Cocker Spaniel Club since 1990 and currently holds the position of President. Early on he realized he had an interest in obedience and was the catalyst for the Club hosting Obedience Trials.

As a Service Advisor at Lakehead Motors, John works with people all day, so he easily transfers his skills into being a Rally instructor.

John has a genuine interest in helping people learn new things and takes great pleasure when they achieve their goal.

Rally Obedience offers three levels; Novice, Advance and Excellent. John likes to challenge students with very interesting course designs for his classes, sometimes intermingling the various levels, so students can get a feel for “what’s next”.

Dogs entering Rally classes must have an understanding of the three life issues. Stay with me, Stay where I put you and Come when called.

Mary Lou Hautala was introduced to the dog community in 1990 and has been involved with the Thunder Bay Cocker Spaniel Club since that time. She has held the position of Secretary/Treasurer for many years and thoroughly enjoys being on the “other” side of the ring. Her career as a handler, was short lived when she realized she preferred to use her organizing and planning talents and continues to undertake the many tasks associated with putting on Trials, both Rally and Obedience.

In her other life (the one that pays the bills), Mary Lou works as a Manager for YES Employment Services. She has been with the organization for 20 years, and continues to love the challenges associated with the position.

When asked if interested in instructing Rally classes, Mary Lou knew it would be a good fit, not because she excels in Rally, but because she excels as a coach with a desire to help people understand and adapt to challenges when faced with new concepts.

Rally Obedience is a fun way to work with your dog as a team as you learn to manoeuvre around a series of signs from Start to Finish. Dogs entering Rally classes must know and understand the basic commands (three life issues, stay where I put you, stay with me and come when called).

Rally Obedience offers three levels, Novice, Advance and Excellent. As you move through, the level of difficulty increases and include jumps.

One of the things Mary Lou likes the most about Rally is that you are expected to have FUN, encouraging your canine companion all the way through.

You should try it…it’s a good time!

Barbara Bond

Barb retired from teaching after 34 years in Ignace. A lifelong dog owner, she has bred and shown Golden Retrievers and currently has Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. During the “Golden” years she played at obedience and did some trialing but work, kids etc kept obedience training to just the basics. She taught beginning obedience course for four years as time permitted in Ignace. Barb became interested in obedience training with her Cavalier so that she would have an entry in obedience at the National Specialty in 2005.

She has taken workshops with Bob Self and Kathy Patregnani, completed Rally Novice with her 9 year old Cavalier to gain his Gr. Ch. title, and is currently training her Cavalier "Chevy" in Open having completed his CD in two weekends with a HIC, 1 second placement and three fourth placements.

Barb has been teaching Perfect Puppy classes for CDC since its opening in 2007.

"My main interest is breeding Cavaliers but I love the opportunity and the fun of watching owners teach their new puppies to become good canine citizens. Personally, I enjoy the camaraderie and fun of working with my own dogs in obedience. Cavaliers are not known as a performance breed as they have very soft temperaments but the techniques and methods used at CDC have fitted well with their happy personality."

Kris Brown

As a youngster, I was raised on a farm in the Slate River Valley where my parents had horses & other animals. My first love was horses, then of course all other animals.

In the early years, my parents always had many Heinz 57 dogs and every once in awhile we would end up with the odd purebred. The owners were looking for a good country home; they would end up leaving these dogs with us, mainly because they couldn’t cope with the problems that they created with these dogs.

I was in my glory whenever a new arrival would come. Along with our many Heinz 57’s we had a Sheltie, American Cocker, a Standard smooth Dachshund as well as a Weimaraner. One thing I wanted most was a ‘pet skunk’ and often tried to catch baby skunks & wanted to turn them into pets. I’m sure my parents were elated that I was never successful with this endeavour.

My daughter Megan, was instrumental with my getting involved with Siberian Huskies and her interest in having a show dog introduced me to the sport of Show and it just grew into other aspects of Dogdom in the performance world as well.

Presently I am Vice President of the Siberian Husky Club of Canada, and am a director with N.O.W.D.A. (Northwestern Ontario Working Dog Association), a Canadian Kennel Club member and a member of Lakehead Kennel Club.

Since my involvement with Siberians, I have learned dog sledding and was instrumental in the organization of the Silver Sled Dogsled Race at Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, assisted in hosting and organizing three National Specialties for the Siberian Huskies and presently am working on a fourth for September 2009. To date I am trialing a Siberian husky in Rally and Agility and getting a Rally Novice title as well as 3 different legs in CKC Novice Agility and 1 leg in NAADAC jumpers.

As well has being a breeder of Siberian Husky’s, we also own a Shiba Inu.

Presently I head up the Rally drop in classes each Saturday with my husband Gary and share the show handling classes on Saturday with my daughter Megan. I am proud to be part of the team that has organized CDC’s first introduction of Agility classes and am very motivated to do other performance activities with some of our dogs as well. Actually, my husband Gary loves the obedience ring, so we are hoping for a new prospect to train in 2009. We are a very involved canine family both at home and at CDC.

Jessica Dubinsky

My story began five years ago when my husband and I brought home a sweet little freckle faced furball named Jersey. Little did we know how much exercise and mental stimulation this seemingly sweet little border collie would need! We quickly found out that agility was "her thing" when she was already jumping the neighbours 6 foot fence at just eight weeks of age. Jersey loved everything about agility from day one and she was a natural athlete...me, not so much. While Jersey turned on a dime and glided over jumps effortlessly, I stumbled over my 2 left feet time and time again. Luckily we had the expertise of Nancy and Breeze to help us work out many many kinks and become the great team we are today! Agility to me is a passion, no an obsession! No matter how many times we fall, we brush ourselves off and get back up. I feel that the great partnership we have is because of the trust we have built as a team from day one. I have always been a huge believer in positive reinforcement. When something goes wrong in agility training, I don't correct, I look at the big picture and think "what could I have done differently to give her information sooner or more accurately". Because of this philosophy, she gives me 100% all the time.

The past 2 years we competed in the AAC ON agility Regionals and qualified both years for Nationals. Last year Nationals was held in Sussex,NB and this year it was in Otttawa,ON. This year we took home 2nd place in Canada in jumpers in the 22" division. We were up against about 150 dogs and some of the top ones were on the Canadian team!

Teaching is a fairly new endevour for me. I hope I can bring my enthusiasm and positive outlook to my students. Whether you're in it to get to Nationals one day, or just as exercise for you and your dog, agility is a sport for anyone who wants to have fun and form a stronger, lasting bond with your best 4 legged friend!

Marne Birch

Growing up, my family always had dogs. When I moved out of home, I couldn’t wait to get my own dog, but wasn’t able to until after I was married and we owned our own house. Our first dog was a lab and Australian cattle dog mix named Blue. Unfortunately he died young after getting hit by a car. It was then that I decided my next dog would have obedience training. Along came Sam. Like all of our previous pets (we also had cats), we got her from the SPCA as a young dog. However, Sam came with some issues…mainly severe separation anxiety and a fear of men. She destroyed a lot of our stuff in that first year and many times the only thing keeping her with us was that sweet little face. We worked with a trainer and managed to get the anxiety under control. It was that first trainer that introduced me to positive training and after seeing its effect on Sam, I have used it ever since. I love that my dogs are always eager and excited to be working with me. Sam introduced me to most of the dog activities I’m now involved in. After all of the issues we had to deal with in Sam, I decided that our next dog would be a pure bred and we would get it as a puppy…that way any issues would have been caused by us and I would know how to deal with them. After some research, I decided upon the flat-coated retriever. To my surprise and delight, there was a breeder in town. After contacting the breeder and meeting her dogs, we decided to get a puppy. She talked us into getting the pick male and asked me to try conformation. To make a long story short…I was hooked. We now have another flat-coat (a female) and I compete in agility, rally obedience, obedience and conformation with my dogs. I am now dabbling in field work and hope to have a dog ready to trial in that as well.

My family camps, hikes and backpacks and we love to have our dogs along with us. I also enjoy gardening.

I am a member of the CKC, the Flat-coated Retriever Society of Canada and the Canadian Association of Rally Obedience. I am the recording secretary for the FCRSC.

I helped teach a positive based training class in Brandon, MB when I lived there, and I was instrumental in bringing the sport of rally obedience to Manitoba. Agility is a wonderful sport and although teaching agility is new to me, I look forward to seeing the dog and handler teams grow together.

Michelle Arpin
Assistant Puppy Excellent, Headstart, Rally, Agility
&
Monique Arpin
Show Handling, Assistant for Rally, Agility

Like most twins we do almost everything together. We are often referred to as 'M & M' to all our friends. In real life Monique, aside from the canine world, works as an Optometrist Assistant, and myself, Michelle work in child care.

We grew up in a household of 7 children and as many pets, if not more. We had large dogs, a variety of cats and over the years had a total of 17 budgies, all named Peter, now how original is that!!

Growing up we both volunteered at the animal shelter on weekends cleaning cages, feeding the animals and every saturday we would bring home a new puppy thinking this time mom will let us keep the pup.

Every sunday morning was the day we had to return the pup. Personnel at the shelter knew we would be back. A passionate bond between dogs and cats were instilled in us at a very young age.

For over 2.5 decades we have been owned by Rough Collies. Like almost all youngsters in our era LASSIE had quite a lasting impression on us. Let's face it who didn't love Lassie? Our obsession was followed by reading all the Albert Payson Terhume books.

Over the years, there has been Randi, Chad, Breezy, Keeper and River. Each of these collies introduced us to different facets of the canine world. Obedience, herding, agility, show and a variety of other titles, temperament tested, Canine good Citizen (now neighbour) were all titles that most of our dogs sported either before or after their names. All of our dogs achievements were memorable & very special in their own way. To Monique and I they all had to leave us all to soon.

Our lives have taken quite a journey over the years. So when our next sable collie arrived we knew he would be called "Jurnee" and soon after that our tri girl "Faith" followed. We are all ruled by a beautiful ragdoll cat named 'Tyme'.

We have had so much success in both Rally, Agility & Performance with our collies starting off their program at Canine Development Club. We are all a family at CDC and love the fact that our staff and training director are always progressing with new ideas.

Jurnee has earned his C.D., C.G.N., H.I.C. R.N, and is presently working in agility, open work & Rally. He was in the rosettes for his CD (2 seconds & a 4th place) also in the rosettes for his RN (3 first & a 4th place). Faith has earned her R.N., H.I.C., C.G.N., also placing 2nd & 3rd in the rosettes for her Rally title and is presently working on her novice/open work. More herding is planned for our dogs in the future.

We have both been members of T.B.K.&T.C. the C.K.C., Collie Club of Canada serving as area director and were part of the Collie Club of BC, and Glasgowhil collie Group.

We both have attended many workshops and seminars over the years including Obedience/Agility workshop with Kathy Patregnani, Obedience workshop with Terri Arnold (Steppin Up to Success) Clicker obedience/show workshop, & a Judges workshop held in Kelowna BC.