Mike

The Doggy Dojo is not a fan of website bio’s and staff write-ups, especially in the Canine Training and Services Industry, they all fall short on authenticity. We feel that whether you’re selecting a trainer, walker, groomer or sitter that things like the persons integrity, ethics and experience matter more than a diploma or the string of letters after their name.

So, here’s our take on one.

Mike trained his families childhood German Shepherds in German in his early teens with a fella that rented his Dad’s old red barn. He watched the trainer and his apprentice do obedience and even protection work as often as possible and with the kind of enthusiasm only a teenage boy could have for a dog.

As an adult Mike found his way into the local Connecticut Rescue Community as a volunteer. He had a blast. Lifelong friendships with other rescuers and professional trainers were forged. When a life event struck, it spoke to him to leave the corporate world and “Go Dogging” full time.

Almost thirty years later Mike found that German Shepherd trainer and learned a lot from him in the year or two he worked for him, but barking at Shepherds in German just wasn’t his forte. He wanted to make families happen with the abused and abandoned, the dogs that others had written off.  

The Doggy Dojo was born.

Mike, his canine cohorts Liberty and Henry, and a cast of human characters he’s assembled and accumulated along the way spent the next three years crossing the state with an agility tunnel and an A-frame climbing wall in the back of a pickup truck. Learning from every dog and every family that they trained, met, helped or rescued along the way, they developed a system and a style to turning behaviorally challenged canines into competent housedogs and lifelong companions. Mike knew about training dogs to walk on a leash and puppy training, but immersing himself into canine dysfunction in the rescue community is where he truly learned to modify a dogs behavior. To change the way they think and perceive themselves so they can live in harmony with their human packs lifestyle. This where Mike learned to develop the character of the dog rather than their level of compliance. The rest of the stories and friendships they made along the way are simply too numerous and grand to tell in one lifetime.

One of the stories Mike is fondest of is of rescuing a Pitbull named Chico and developing a friendship and working mentorship with Jerry Acevedo of Specter K9. Everything Mike learns on his weekly trip to Germantown New York to work with him in a near clinical setting, sometimes on cases the general public cant perceive, comes back to Connecticut and is applied to making The Dojo’s Dawgs more psychologically stable and well rounded pets, household pals and lifelong adventure companions.