Companion Dog Instructors
Karen Beattie Massey
CPDT-KA
Karen Beattie Massey has been a dog training professional since 2012 and has worked with a wide variety of breeds and behavior issues. Karen is an active member of the dog training and dog sports community in the Pacific Northwest, and participates in ongoing professional training. She is active in the Pumi national breed club and competes in agility, rally, and conformation with her dogs. She teaches agility, manners, and sport manners classes at Argus Ranch.
Karen has competed successfully in Obedience and Rally competitions since 2004. She has titled with 7 different dogs in Rally, with 4 of them competing at the Excellent level. As well as teaching basic life skills and enjoying time hiking and hanging out with her pack of Pumis and Cavaliers, Karen enjoys trick training
and dabbles in freestyle when she is not training or competing in agility. Her Pumi Bella was on the European Open Agility team from 2012-15, the World Agility Open Team 2016, IFCS World Team 2016-18, and finalist in AKC, UKI, and USDAA national events. Her Pumi Aria and Cavalier Teddy were medalists at the Americas and Caribbean Agility Championships in 2017. Karen is currently training and competing in agility with Bella’s grandson Everett.
Karen a is a CPDT-KA (Certified Professional Dog Trainer-Knowledge Assessed) trainer and an AKC CGC/Tricks evaluator. Her university studies in psychology and work experience in staff training and creating instructional materials in the software industry made a career in training people and their dogs a natural fit.
Karen enjoys creating learning experiences that are goal oriented, fun, and rewarding for dogs and handlers.
Jennifer Schneider
Like many dog trainers, Jennifer started training dogs as a child. She found her career in dog training while pursuing her formal education, first in animal behavior and then in human psychology. She has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Washington. She has been training dogs professionally since since 1997. She has learned from some of the area's top dog trainers and provides professional mentorship to those who are looking to start a career in dog training. She loves to incorporate games into her training, shape dogs to learn new behaviors and create stable adult dogs using concept training. She specializes in dogs who some may deem difficult to train as well as dogs with reactivity and fear issues.
Charlene Hoch
Charlene Hoch first became interested in dog training when in college. The learning theories were especially intriguing to her. She has been working dogs for over 25 years. She fell in love with working breeds and began her love of dog training with her first Rottweiler. She has trained dogs in tracking, obedience, handler protection, rally, agility, nose work, and conformation. She has titles on several of her dogs in canine good citizen,
rally, agility, nose work, and tricks.
Charlene has had several Rottweilers, a Pumi, a rescued Formosan Mountain Dog (Taiwan Dog), and a Border Collie. She's learned lots from the different breeds from the most confident Rotty, to a terrified street dog. She describes some of her most rewarding dog training as her dog that would
take down a bad guy to protect her to her fearful rescue dog being able to compete in agility. She's excited to bring the love of training to her classes.
Brenna Peterson
Brenna held a strong interest in all animals from a very young age and started working with dogs at an animal shelter in junior high school. She adopted her first dog, Ozai, a chihuahua/rat terrier mix, and it soon became apparent that he had various behavior challenges, and this is what got her interested in dog training. She worked him through his sensitivities and aggression problems after spending countless hours studying learning theory and training methods. Ozai went on to earn titles in obedience, tricks, and rally, with rally being his sport of choice, making it to AKC Rally Nationals in 2021. As he is retiring from dog sports, Brenna got her second dog, a young border collie named Zuko. He was also a rescue dog and came with new challenges. He has been in training for his fear reactivity and other issues and is starting to be able to confidently participate in dog sport training. Brenna loves seeing the progress that can be made for the more challenging dogs with extra time and effort. She works to make training as fun as possible for human and dog alike by breaking up training into small, simple games that build a strong foundation and foster joy.
Brenna started teaching dog training professionally in 2018 and is working towards earning her bachelor's degree in Psychology as well as her CPDT-KA certification.
Dominique Hellmich
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