who is Dakota?
Dakota is passionate about helping dogs and their people live their best lives together.
Initially trained as a nanny at the prestigious Norland College, with many years’ child-wrangling experience under her belt Dakota decided to further her education, achieving firstly a degree in Psychology and later a post-grad diploma in Human-Animal Interaction and Behaviour Change. Dakota’s unique wealth of professional and personal experience made her perfectly suited to create the Incredibly Clever Canine Circus.
Early in her dog-training journey, Dakota worked in the specialist behaviour-change department at Battersea Dogs Home in London, where the focus of her time was creating effective solutions for those dogs with more challenging behavioural issues.
Utilising her knowledge and understanding of how both dogs and humans think and behave, her days were filled with designing and delivering training programmes which helped ready these dogs to go out into the world to begin their new lives. Dakota has a particular talent for motivating people to modify their approach with their dog in order to achieve the change they need.
“Working at Battersea was a real baptism of fire and sparked a burning desire to change the world of dog training for the better.”
Dakota initially established her business working with dogs and their people to help resolve behaviour problems, but then had an epiphany that changed everything.
“After leaving Battersea Dogs’ Home and establishing my own behaviour resolution practice, it became quickly apparent that a lot of the problems which dogs and their people were experiencing stemmed from a lack of relevant training and, therefore, were potentially very preventable.
Every puppy should attend a well-run class but, just as you don’t send a fresh-out-of-nursery-school toddler off into the world alone without further education around how to become a fully functioning member of society, so dogs also need ongoing support to develop the skills required to live happily in our increasingly human-centric world.”
Dakota’s style as a trainer is, as you might expect, not EXACTLY run of the mill.
Her infectious energy, enthusiasm and love of education are obvious.
Far from the bossy sergeant major type you might encounter in your typical dog training forum, Dakota is creative, spontaneous and intuitive in her approach. Best described as a firecracker with substance, there’s a lot more to Dakota’s approach to training than meets the eye. Her philosophy of learning through play is underpinned by sound, in-depth psychology and, together with her extensive experience of working with both dogs and humans, means she is perfectly-placed to create flexible, personalised training that really works.
