Niki Tudge
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The DogSmith Founder - Niki Tudge
Throughout her travels and career, Niki Tudge has pursued her passion of animals. Wherever she worked, she always became active rehabilitating abandoned and abused animals. While working in Africa, Niki spearheaded a project, in cooperation with Fauna & Flora International - the world's longest-established international conservation charity working to save threatened species and ecosystems worldwide - to rescue endangered and protected species from poachers and transition them back to their natural environment. This project resulted in successfully saving numerous orphaned chimpanzees, and endangered drill monkeys and preuss monkeys.
It was also in Africa where Niki began developing her skills as a Family Pet Dog Trainer. Working with the local Police K9 unit, Niki took German Shepherd puppies, deemed "unsuitable" for police work, and trained them to become wonderful family pet dogs suitable for adoption. Her favorite ex-police dog was adopted by a family in Oregon USA, where she lived out a very happy life on a Christmas tree farm.
In South Africa, Niki's next career assignment, she became even more interested in animal behavior and their interaction with human society. Applying her previous expertise in hotel services, and business operations and recognizing the growing need for effective management of the animal-human relationship in our increasingly crowded society, Niki provided consultation services to several large and small animal enterprises on improving their operations and training techniques. She also volunteered and sponsored the Sundown Ranch Lion Research Park. She still carries a small scar from her work with an overly affectionate lion cub.
Though her work with Africa's wild animals was fulfilling, Niki's first love was always the family pet dog. Inspired by research on Cape Hunting Dogs at the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust, where Niki was a regular visitor and contributor, Niki established a personal goal of working with local communities and animal rescue centers to improve the relationship between families and their pets. By teaching families to communicate with dogs and dogs to understand humans, Niki believes we can significantly reduce the number of stray, abandoned, neglected, abused and unwanted pets. Niki committed herself to support, through training, rescue facilities and shelters to improve the adoptability of dogs and educate pet owners so that dogs remain a happy, contented, loved, and fully integrated member of the family. "A trained dog is a retained dog" says Niki. Niki believes that there is nothing more delightful than a pet who can participate in family activities and understand how to cohabitate with humans.
After leaving South Africa, Niki settled in Hawaii. Still a senior executive manager with a large prestigious hotel, but with a more stable lifestyle, Niki was ready for a pet of her own. It was also in Hawaii where Niki recognized that the US was emerging as a world leader in progressive Pet Dog Training. Niki began training her own pet Kelpie in obedience and agility with great success. Her elderly beloved Kelpie, now retired, remains ever anxious to please off and on the agility course. It was during this period that Niki earned her certification as a Dog Behavior Counselor , Pet Dog Trainer, Veterinarian assistant and Pet Groomer.
It was also in Hawaii that Niki decided to combine her passion for Dogs with her professional business skills. With a partner, Niki founded the Hawaii Dog Training Academy where they focused on training dogs for agility using all positive methods. The school thrived for two years but Niki was once again transferred with her job. Now in Florida Niki was able to purchase an ideal property to start a full time training center and boutique boarding facility. Her new facility also allowed her to rescue a variety of ducks, geese, peafowl, miniature horses and donkeys and she regularly fosters and trains homeless dogs and cats. Through numerous private consultations and group classes Niki has refined her training techniques and has combined her exceptional skills of teaching people how to teach with over a decade of dog training. This combination of expertise leaves Niki uniquely qualified in her field of positive Pet Dog Training.
How The DogSmith® Evolved
Niki Tudge is a leading proponent of empirically based positive animal training techniques and the DogSmith was always an organization destined to lead the pack. Niki Tudge was one of the first to recognize the disconnect between the needs of today's pet-loving American families and the confusing, sometimes overwhelming and often misguided options provided by many unregulated, dog training and pet care companies. Niki Tudge watched as, time and time again, dog lovers struggled to live comfortably with their pets.
The DogSmith was founded specifically to answer these questions for you, once and for all.
- Can I train my own dog to be a great pet dog?
- Do I have to use harsh and punishing methods?
- can my children have the same control over our pet dog as my 180 pound husband?
- Will I enjoy training and will it enhance the relationship we have with our pet dog?
- Will I have to carry food and treats around for the life of the dog to persuade them to work for me?
Niki Tudge used her unique combination of "people" teaching expertise and dog training skills to create a proprietary system of education known as ARRF© supported by an operational implementation process called MTR©
Recent Activity
There is always lots of discussion and debate about the use of clickers versus verbal markers such as ‘yes' when training dogs. I actually use and recommend both, not at the same time as this weakens the conditioning effect through either blocking or overshadowing, but for different applications they each have their place.
If putting a human, by nature a social being, in jail or solitary confinement is intended as punishment, then surely, isolating, chaining or tethering a dog will have the same effect on the canine soul. How simply and frequently pet dogs are relinquished and the reasons why
How has the pet industry landscape changed over the last twenty years and how easy is it for the pet owner to locate and identify quality pet care and dog training services.
When training a dog only use prompts if you have to. Capturing simple behavior is far more effective. You want a pet dog that is reliable with or without food in your hand or on your body.
Social behavior is how dogs interact and form relationships with other dogs, people and other beings. The relationships formed are shaped at each interaction as behavior dimensions are strengthened or weakened due to the situation specific contingencies. During these social interactions conditioned emotional responses are also elicited due to the history of conditioning.
Don't let your pet dog become just another statistic in a rescue group or animal control facility. The downward spiral of dog behavior can be subtle yet devastating for the future of the pet dog. What starts out as cute can soon be annoying or in some cases dangerous.
For many dog trainers and pet care providers in the pet industry their dream of financial independence and full time work is stilted by a lack of core business competencies. Being a great technical dog trainer or pet care provider is not enough to ensure a profitable and successful business and many small businesses have to work at other jobs to make ends meet.
First off, The DogSmith does not advocate punishment, not when there are so many other more pleasant ways to decrease the intensity, duration or frequency of a problematic behavior. Rather than punish for what not to do, teach for what they should be doing.
If you are punishing your dog and it is not reducing the likelihood of the behavior then you may be abusing them. Humans tend to escalate punishment when punishment does not work, thus making the punishment worse to the point of it becoming abusive. Abuse is physical or psychological injury caused by mistreatment or the misuse of power associated with authority. Learn why punishment does not eliminate behaviors and the alternatives you can use with your pet dog.
We all know that many of us set New Year's Resolutions and as the year progresses they begin to fade. This leaves us feeling frustrated, first we have not accomplished what we set out to do and then we feel like a 'loser' as we have failed our own expectations. So this year I am trying a new approach, setting goals in an area i never fail to achieve, the care of my pets.
