Welcome to the Cooperative Conformation Coalition

We are so glad you’re here. You might be wondering what this is all about and won’t a group committed to positive reinforcement based training methods just create more division. We don’t think so. Over the years, as a professional dog trainer, in-home behavior consultant and conformation coach for the past 20 plus years, I have worked with many people who are committed to training with positive reinforcement methods, but constantly getting pushback from others about it.

We fully understand that there are different types of training methods and we also know that many of those methods and techniques work, but positive reinforcement works too. Many of us who train animals professionally have been exposed to many different training methodologies and some of us have trained a variety of species. I have confidence in the methods I use because I know that they work. They work across all species and certainly, all breeds of dogs. I have personally used positive reinforcement in my training with many animals including dogs, parrots, chickens, lemurs, giraffe, hawks, eagles, owls, goats, sheep, crows, hogs and yes, humans. These are just the animals that I have personally trained with these methods, but I have seen training by other trainers with many more species. If they weren’t effective animal trainers and zookeepers all over the world wouldn’t get away with using them. Professional trainers must get results. If we don’t, we have someone else to answer to whether it’s our clients or superiors, so we have to use methods that are effective. But, this isn’t about trying to convince anyone to use our methods, we just want people to respect our choices and our ability as trainers.