Valerie Pollard

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Valerie Pollard has been training dogs professionally since 1979, and specializes in working with behavior issues, including fear, anxiety and aggression. She has always had a keen interest in learning and has hosted seminars regularly with international trainers/behaviorists in that regard. Valerie has a degree in Art History from U.C.L.A. and has completed coursework for the Master’s thesis – but left the program to pursue working with dogs. Valerie believes that competing with your dog in any sort of venue can only enhance the relationship, whether it be AKC Obedience, Rally-O, Agility or Flyball. She has competed with her own dogs in the sport of Schutzhund, and attained the owner/handler Schutzhund III title with her GSD “Bodie”. She is also interested in British Working Trials as well as the Puppydog Allstar K9 Games as other challenging and fun ways to compete. Valerie is a charter member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers and a Clinical member of the International Association of Dog Behavior Counselors. Valerie prefers to think of animals in the following way, as described by Henry Beston in “The Outermost House”: "We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mythical concept of animals.....we patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."

Blog posts by Valerie Pollard

Help, We’ve Created a Monster!

“We need to you come over right away! Missy is trying to bite us!” The elderly woman’s voice was tight with distress on the other end of the telephone line. This was a totally unexpected call, because Missy was the friendliest, most submissive Golden Retriever you could ever meet; the type who came up to greet you with her rear end wiggling and tucked in, head sideways and licking the air, all aglow at the prospect of getting some attention and petting from everyone around her.

 

Help, My Puppy Is Attacking Me!

The woman on the other end of the telephone line was nearly in tears as she explained the terrible time she was having with her dog.  He was “attacking” her, she said, and wouldn’t let her put him outside.  She couldn’t get him out of the back seat of the car if she took him for a ride, her clothes were ripped and she had bite marks and bruises on her hands and arms.  He was also “attacking” her three –year- old daughter, and she was worried for her child’s safety.   Imagine my surprise when she then told me we were di

 

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