I began The Grateful Dog in 1992. At the time, I was training my first Gordon Setter for competitive obedience and apprenticing with Laurie Hine. Laurie was teaching obedience classes in Newton Massachusetts and was lucky to have access to top competitive trainers, such as Terri Arnold and Lisa Rockland.

The intensity and passion of my fellow dog trainers was contagious and I spent the next seven years and thousands of hours with my setters, perfecting the art of precision competitive dog training.

Boarding dogs at my house gave me insight and first-hand experience with many different breeds and temperaments. It was hard for me to live with dogs who did not come when called in from my yard, who jumped or counter surfed. Many dogs went home early on in my career with free training.

My passion is not just in teaching dogs, it is in showing owners how to teach their dogs and helping those owners make sense of behaviors that are so normal for dogs, but make no sense to us as humans.

One common mistake that I've seen in working with dogs and their owners is the disappointment and frustration owners feel when their dogs don''t respond to commands the first time. Because I started training with dogs not known for obedience, but for their ability to find birds, attention became my specialty. I find that 75% of what goes wrong in training a dog is lack of attention between handler and dog. Even though dogs are smart, they just don't all learn in the same way.

Finding a motivator is key in training and you must be open to trying different methods. I guess you could say I love a challenge and that working with dogs and their owners as individuals is fascinating and rewarding, as well as fun!

I have been clicker training for the past five years and have found it extremely useful not just in training dogs, but in helping owners understand how quickly a dog's behavior changes and how natural and wonderful it can be training behaviors with intelligence.

I am committed when training a dog. My goal is to see that both owner and dog are successful.

- Elaine Stern

"Finding a motivator is key in training and you must be open to trying different methods"

"I guess you could say I love a challenge and I think of working with dogs and their owners as individuals as both fascinating and rewarding, as well as fun!"