❤️ MY STORY
❤️ MY STORY
I never planned on becoming a dog trainer. But looking back now, I can see that God had this path written for me long before I understood it.
When I was 19, I met a man named Dick Lovelady, a lifelong dog lover with a small training facility. One day he looked at me and said with absolute certainty:
“You’re going to be a dog trainer.”
I laughed and asked him why. I didn’t see anything special — I just loved my dog.
He told me, “You have a rare gift. You can read dogs… and more importantly, they can read you.”
At the time, I didn’t know what he meant, but he said he had met only two people in his whole life that he knew were born to train dogs — me and Joe Simmons, who today owns a training facility of his own.
I started volunteering at Dick’s kennel — cleaning runs, feeding dogs, sweeping floors, doing whatever I could just to learn. I didn’t get paid a dime, but what I gained was priceless.
I was learning how to speak the language of dogs.
Somewhere in those long days — covered in dirt, fur, and love — something inside me awakened. I realized dogs are not “just pets.” They’re souls. They have emotions, fears, and hopes. They speak without words, and all you have to do is pay attention.
That’s when I understood what Dick saw in me long before I saw it in myself.
Training dogs isn’t a job — it’s a calling.
You need patience.
You need compassion.
You need a heart that doesn’t give up when a dog is scared, stubborn, or misunderstood.
You have to love them the way you love your own children.
God gave me that heart.
For decades now, I’ve worked with every kind of dog — fearful, reactive, high-drive, family pets, police dogs, detection dogs, obedience dogs, and everything in between.
And through it all, I’ve learned this:
A dog will give you their whole heart if you just give them your time.
They don’t ask for much — just love, patience, and someone who believes in them.
That’s what I give them. Every single day.
This is more than my career.
This is my purpose.
This is my heart.