My name is Elaine Cowling, I have always been passionate about dogs and training. As a child I was not allowed a dog so, aged thirteen, I volunteered at my local RSPCA centre, enabling me to gain lots of experience working with a wide variety of breeds and temperaments. As soon as I was eighteen, I bought my first pup, a bi-coloured German Shepherd, who I went on to compete very successfully with in open obedience competitions. I have owned and lived with many dogs, of different breeds – at one point I had 8 dogs, a mixture of GSDs and Border Collies, with the odd mix breed in there. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, I have recently lost 2 of my dogs, including the lovely Rio, who features in some of the videos on the online training course.
I first ran training classes 30 years ago, but trained very differently to how I do today. I started out with check chains and a mixture of force and reward, but was never very comfortortable with those methods. I was glad to be guided by various people over the years and steered towards more reward-based training, which I find creates a much better relationships with your dog, I am a positive, but not permissive trainer – I still have rules and boundaries, but they are not instilled using fear or pain.
A change of personal circumstances led to me completing a degree in Applied Animal Behaviour and Training, with honours. I was then asked to stay on at college and lecture in Animal Management, including behaviour, training and science. I also completed my Post Graduate Certificate of Education, making me a qualified lecturer, a career which I followed for 10 years,
I decided to set up Positive Dog Training Solutions in 2011 as a trainer specialising in Pet Dog Training, with the hope of helping more people to have a better relationship with their dogs and to show them that this can be achieved by the use of scientifically proven, positive, reward based techniques.