Rebecca King, CPDT-KA

KingRebeccaClasses Taught : Basic Manners, Tricks, Rally

Biography: Rebecca’s love of animals began in early childhood growing up with a menagerie of pets including dogs, cats, chickens, guinea pigs, rats, and reptiles. She started her professional animal training and behavior career training seals, sea lions, and sea otters.

Rebecca began dog training in 2011. Her dogs, Splash & Wren, have titles in agility, rally, nosework, obedience, dock diving, and tricks. Wren was selected as an alternate for the 2020 USA WAO (World Agility Open) team.

Rebecca is a graduate of Trish King’s Canine Behavior Academy, attends seminars for continued education, and is an active member of the world-wide trainer community. Rebecca has also earned her Canine Professional Dog Trainer – Knowledge Assessed certification & Canine Massage Therapy certification.

 

Laura Tsuk

Classes Taught : Intermediate, Intermediate Plus, Beginning, Super Hooper Dog, Rally
Biography: Laura has owned dogs since 1996 and put titles on various dogs in Rally obedience, agility and Canine Good Citizen.

She taught puppy obedience classes for several years, including STAR puppy testing. She is a certified Canine Good Citizen evaluator.

Laura has also taught various agility classes (all levels) for almost a decade. She has also done some video and photography work for agility instructional videos.

Diana Rapa

Classes Taught : Beginning, Tricks, RallyFrEe, Beginning  Rally
Biography:  Diana Rapa is a CPDT-KA (Certified Professional Dog Trainer-Knowledge Assessed), a Professional Member of the APDT (Association of Professional Dog Trainers), and a CGC (Canine Good Citizen) Evaluator. She has also completed both levels of the Canine Behavior Academy with Trish King, and attended seminars by Dr. Ian Dunbar, Suzanne Clothier, Debbie Jacobs, and attended an online course by Karen Pryor. She continually researches and stays current on the most modern, science-based training methods.

In 2010, Diana founded The Perfect Dog rescue. Since then, her rescue has saved, rehabilitated, and re-homed an average of 100 dogs per year from local kill animal shelters. Diana specializes in special needs dogs, both behaviorally and medically. She’s worked with deaf, blind, feral, fear aggressive, leash reactive, “red zone” dogs, to name a few. Her rescue group saves dogs of ALL breeds, but with a focus on border collies, chihuahuas, and pit bulls. Diana is also involved in Agility training with three dogs, and competes with two them in USDAA.

Prior to teaching dog obedience classes, Diana worked at a doggy daycare for 3 years, where she handled up to 30 dogs on her own of all breeds, ages, and sizes.

Diana started teaching obedience dog training and puppy classes at Petco in Morgan Hill, CA in 2012. In 2017, she started her own business, Perfect Canine Plus Academy, LLC. Her passion is not only in rehabilitating shelter dogs, but also teaching pet parents the canine language, so that pet parents can better understand and communicate with their dogs and develop a great, compassionate, fun, and positive relationship with their dogs.

Leena Koivuniemi, ABCDT

Classes Taught: Beginning, Intermediate, Tricks

Leena Koivuniemi is an experienced dog trainer who graduated from Animal Behavior College. She did her externship at Humane Society of Silicon Valley, where she has participated in puppy to intermediate dog training classes. Prior to joining the Humane Society Leena was an agility class teacher at Fetch Sam! having taught 3 different agility classes at the centre. Leena is a positive reinforcement dog trainer and believes in life long learning as a dog- owner team.
Leena has been a dog-lover from a young age. She  started her dog training career 15 years ago with her Jack Russell Terrier, Masi, when they were still living in Finland. They started with puppy training, continued to basic and advanced obedience and beginner agility.
After moving to  California, Leena found a new agility training center for Masi. They trained agility for several years, mostly for fun and to foster their already great connection with each other. When Masi got older, he retired from agility and the pair started trick dog training. During his trick dog years Masi earned a novice, intermediate, advanced and expert trick dog titles. Later on they also participated in rat hunting classes that provided an instinctual outlet for the old terrier to use his nose and brains to search for the rat. Today Leena is a proud owner of a two year old Aussie-mix, Topi. Leena and Topi are currently participating in agility classes and Topi already has a CGC, beginner, intermediate and advanced trick dog titles. Their goal is to do competitions in agility.
Leena was born in Finland and moved to California in 2009. She has a masters degree of education and she taught at the Silicon Valley Finnish School teacher for 13 years.  Leena lives in the Bay Area with her husband, 11 year old son and their dog Topi.

Leena’s website : https://www.leenasdogtraining.com/

Lillian Fukuda, CTBC, CBCC-KA

Classes Assisted: Beginning, Intermediate

Lilian is a is a Certified Behavior Consultant Canine (CBCC) and a professional member of the PPG.
She has been involved in animal assisted activities (therapy work) as a dog handler and as a team
evaluator through Pet Partners (former Delta Society), volunteering with her dogs at Lucile Packard
Children’s Hospital and the California School for the Deaf classrooms. She has also volunteered
extensively at shelters and rescue organizations instructing adopters and working with dogs directly.
Her continuing education includes study courses in animal behavior and welfare, dog behavior and
enrichment, and canine science, learning from Ken Ramirez, Susan Friedman, Clive Wynne and Chirag
Patel and many other prominent behavior pros.

Lilian owns and operates In Good Company Training & Behavior. She loves helping her private clients
build an enjoyable, cooperative relationship with their dogs.

 

Dieuwke van der Velde

Classes Assisted: Beginning, Intermediate

Dieuwke van der Velde is currently teaching puppy agility and agility for fun classes at Fetch Sam, assisting at Sirius Puppy since beginning of 2019 and going through the externship at the humane society of silicon valley for ABC Animal Behavioral College.

She has 4 dogs of her own, one senior Aussie; Draco who she did 3 years of Search and Rescue with through CARDA, one Catahoula named Ofi , a heeler named Dallas and the youngest a 9 month old Aussie mix who she has taken through several obedience classes and agility classes. With the new pup in the house Dieuwke got inspired to teach the other dogs and her two cats, new tricks and even started doing beginning agility with them at home. It is never too late to teach old dogs, new tricks or to get a better relationship with them.

Dieuwke has been fostering dogs since 2009 for Catahoula Rescue, Pound Puppy Rescue, The Perfect Dog Rescue and the Morgan Hill Animal Shelter.

Dieuwke got her masters in Microbiology in the Netherlands and after 6 years working in biotech and 6 years at Stanford she decided to make and has been hiking dogs professionally for over 12 years now.

Connie Ko

Classes Assisted: Beginning, Intermediate

Biography: Connie Ko has always been fascinated with dogs, and specifically with training them. She grew up setting up agility courses at home for her Australian Shepherd/Cattle Dog mix, Kuma, to run through and thrived on teaching him tricks she read about in books. She has experience with many breeds and temperaments of pet dogs, but has a special place in her heart for reactive dogs, like Kuma, and hopes to work with them more intensively in the future.

In 2016, Connie started at the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA as a volunteer trainers’ assistant before joining the behavior staff in May 2018. She now leads basic obedience classes and runs puppy playgroup for members of the public. There have been, on average, 6-8 dogs in her classes and up to 15 puppies in playgroup.

Facilitating better communication between dogs and their families is among her top priorities as a trainer at PHS/SPCA. She is currently studying to take her CCPDT (Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers) certification and loves that the field is ever-changing and that there is always something more to learn.

Aside from her work at PHS, she also boards, walks, and trains with private clients’ dogs, and is assisting with Sirius Dog Training puppy classes on Saturday mornings.

Connie shares her home with her two cats, Tuna and Oatis and enjoys the company of all the different dogs that she walks and boards in her home.