Teaching Philosophy:

Cassandra’s favorite part of teaching is fostering relationship building between clients and their dogs. She cherishes the “lightbulb moments” when clients gain new insights and feel empowered to continue their training journey with enthusiasm and confidence. 

Expertise: Cassandra excels at adapting to client needs while maintaining positive training methods. She has a talent for making technical theories understandable and ensuring that training sessions are fun for both dogs and their owners. Her adaptable and engaging approach helps clients achieve their training goals efficiently.

Coaching Style: Cassandra loves to learn what a client’s goals are. She holds strongly to the belief that all good relationships start with clear communication, and she will do whatever she can to help the human-dog relationship be as strong as possible.

Cassandra is great for those teams looking for a diplomatic coach!

Although his interest in food fades quickly around more reinforcing things, Sprocket very much prefers working for his food. He will often graze or skip meals entirely when fed from a bowl however will train with Cassandra on tricks or new skills for the same kibble, and will finish every meal when fed from a puzzle ball or snuffle mat.

Eliza

Eliza (Ellie) is a long haired, tri-colored corgi who came to Cassandra at 7 months old. Currently Cassandra’s first, and only, purebred and female dog, Eliza loves zooming through life with endless energy, and tends to act first and think later.

Being that she was a little bit older when she came around, Ellie comes with some noise sensitivities and resource guarding tendencies that Cassandra is currently working through. 

One of Ellie’s favourite things to do is play fetch, and for the first number of weeks Cassandra used that as her primary reinforcer while working on training exercises. Though Eliza loves working for food rewards now, this was a great lesson for Cassandra in learning how to find and use alternative reinforcers when food isn’t as appealing. 

Eliza is proving herself to be a wonderful model and she is working hard on building up her tricks profile so she can use them in her photoshoots with Extraordinary Canines. 

Archer loved to train and show off his fancy tricks, almost as much as he loved to eat. The only thing he loved almost as much as food was cuddling and always wanted to be touching you. That would look like him sitting on your feet, or leaning against your legs, and Cassandra has many photos of him through the years laying next to her with his leg draped across her in a cuddle. Not an overly cuddly person herself, Archer taught Cassandra how to meet a dog’s needs even if they don’t align with yours and now his cuddles are one of the things she misses most. 

Cash

Mr Cash was the dog that started it all for Cassandra. While she always had pets growing up, Cash was her first dog as an adult, and traveled all over Western Canada and the United States with her. He was there for the start of her training journey, though wasn’t the cause of it, and could often be found pretending he didn’t know anything when other people were trying to train him. He was a pro at navigating dog-dog interactions, staying fully dog social until the end of his days, and would often help Cassandra out in her times working at dog daycares.

A mutt through and through, Mr Cash could always be relied on to find anything remotely edible whether it was loose leaf tea that was sent as a Christmas present, food locked in an airtight container that he would help himself to, or snacks on shelves you forgot were there. For a dog so motivated to find food, he was notorious for skipping meals, and Cassandra would often have to add tasty things to his meals in order to get him to eat.

Cash was a senior dog by the time Cassandra became a dog trainer, and he never stopped surprising her by his ability to learn new tricks and skills. He taught her that a dog is never too old to learn, but also how to be flexible with your criteria to account for the limits of training a senior dog.