Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Powell.
Hi Jessica, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born and raised in a small town in South Wales, in the UK. My childhood is filled with beautiful memories. We always played outside as kids – climbing trees, building dams, rolling down hills, sneaking to pick raspberries from the neighbor’s garden. I’ve always had a passion for animals and for nature. We consistently had cats as pets, with the odd bunny, budgie and hamster thrown in there, but I didn’t start out with a big interest in dogs. I was actually obsessed with apes growing up, particularly mountain gorillas and I spent a lot of my time watching wildlife documentaries. It all just felt so magical… it resonated with me very deeply. I don’t think I knew back then what an actual job with animals might look like, apart from the usual veterinary-type fields and I’ve followed so many different paths over the years. As a pre-teen for example, I loved to sing. My sister was already studying music and was in a band and I desperately wanted to be Mariah Carey’s protégé! So, I did Performing Arts right out of school, followed by a Diploma at the Paul McCartney School of Music (LIPA) and then moved to London to try my hand at the gig scene. But I wasn’t making any money and I had my dad’s practical voice in my head, so I did a Diploma in Child Care and Education since education was something that I also enjoyed and then got a job as a Nanny to put it into practice.
It was when I had the chance to go to Australia though at 21, that I felt truly inspired to go back to what I loved most and the wildlife and natural world out there is just breathtaking! The giant spiders, bats and birds… the dingos… nothing ever scared me, it just gave me a thrill! It was here that I decided to do a Bachelors Degree in Animal Science and Behavior. The plan was to stay in Australia but I just couldn’t afford the tuition fees – I went back to nannying, applied for all the highest profile and highest paying jobs (now that was a chapter that certainly deserves a whole book written!) then once I had saved enough money, finally settled on a little rural town in Kent, England for my studies and after three years graduated with first-class honors.
My behavior professor was amazing. He was one of those people whose brain you just want to crawl inside and walk around! His passion and support were everything. I spent a lot of time in Africa both during and following my degree, continuing to work toward behavioral research, conservation and human/animal conflict resolution. These were some of the most soul-fulfilling times of my life. It was actually meeting an American man that brought me to Los Angeles and my sister coincidentally had also just moved here with her songwriting career.
Of course, no elephants, no apes and eventually no American man, BUT plenty of dogs, like really… a lot. Coincidentally, that behavior professor of mine, in addition to being a university lecturer, was also a dog trainer, so he gave me a lot of insight into the field and what it was like to own a business.
I began by doing an internship in the dog behavior department of a local shelter and it was here that I gained an enormously valuable amount of experience, eventually being hired as a Dog Behavior Specialist, working all the way up to Behavior and Training Manager. We assessed and handled all kinds of different dogs from poodles to mastiffs, from chihuahuas to pit bulls. We trained staff and volunteers, we ran playgroups and enrichment programs, worked side by side with animal control, adoptions and community outreach. We conducted group dog training classes and private one on ones for the public and did public speaking for donors. It was definitely a job that got me wearing many different ‘hats’.
It was a truly exciting adventure over those six jam-packed years at the shelter. Improving the lives of the animals in our care, getting them into homes and providing public support in pet parenting was everything to me. Eventually though, compassion fatigue and the universe sent me in a different direction and that’s when I made the shift to developing my very own business as a private dog trainer. I’ve been living in L.A for almost ten years now! That time has been spent with my two now senior Pit Bull Terriers, Lola and Levi who have given me endless joy and inspiration throughout. Lola is even my little helper dog for many of my client cases. While I don’t get to work with and be a voice for homeless animals anymore, I now get to work with dogs and humans from an entirely different angle. We have lived side by side with these animals for thousands of years and yet we still have so much to learn from them. I get to keep going with that journey. I get to help people really connect with their pets, to help them find solutions for their relationship and lifestyle struggles and perhaps even prevent dogs from entering the shelter system in the first place. I adore seeing humans and dogs work together and am truly grateful for having a continuously growing career that gives me so much fulfillment.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, I wouldn’t say it’s been smooth. I don’t know anyone with a real passion for something in their life or career who can say that there weren’t any bumps along the way and the path never ends. You have to keep learning, growing and adapting. With that comes hard work, discovery, sometimes disappointment and often exhaustion, but you keep going because you love it and because you feel a sense of real purpose. Working with animals in general is always very emotional. You are dealing with lots of complex factors, plus the needs and personalities of the human element. As I’ve moved through different industries, I’ve also come across challenges with gender and race. For example, when I was in South Africa and considering a career in big game management, I met one of the grandfathers of the industry. This guy was literally at the forefront of creating safe and welfare-friendly ways of moving and re-locating large mammals like rhino and elephant, I was so excited to meet him. But one of the first things he said to me was “oh game management is no place for a woman”, deflating all of my respect and enthusiasm in one single second. In Kenya, studying elephants and poaching trends, there were simply places I couldn’t go with the rest of my team because I am white and a woman. Even in the dog training industry, for many years it was male-dominated and you only have to look at any show highlighting dog training on channels such as Nat Geo and Netflix and see that it is always men, despite all the talented female trainers out there. But it’s these experiences that have paved the way to where I am today and given me the tools for dealing with different types of situations. I’m also a very petite person to look at, but it doesn’t mean I can’t still pack a punch so to speak when it comes to handling your giant dog, lol!
One of my biggest struggles in my dog training career though was the shelter euthanasia. This particular shelter came a LONG way in this area during my time there, resulting in changes I worked endlessly to be a part of. The shelter world in general has really started moving in a much more compassionate, educated and sophisticated direction for the most part. Shelters get full though, there’s lots of reasons why people relinquish dogs, some very legitimate and unfortunately sad and many quite frankly, really crappy. Sometimes the dogs were very sick or very aggressive and other times it was because we just didn’t have any space left. Early in my career, there would be behavioral issues that would have been very easy to remedy in the private training world but were things in the shelter that resulted in dogs being unfairly labeled as ‘unadoptable’. I can’t count the number of arguments I had with my supervisors, the number of times I cried all the way home or in the shower at the end of the day. Those things changed dramatically as the years went by but the shelter can be a very difficult place for a dog to exist and that was an ongoing struggle to watch. One of the biggest things you have to manage in training is environment and that’s just not possible in a shelter most of the time.
I also struggled with training methodology for a while. The first group of people I learned from in my early dog training career were what we call ‘balance’ trainers, so they used a combination of reward-based methods and punishers to correct inappropriate behavior. They were a little old school. It never sat right with me. Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity of working with some really great and knowledgeable force-free, reward and game-based trainers since then and I am always striving toward the most science-based and up to date methods of communicating with the dogs that I work with.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Proud Paws Dog Training is a small, intimate and female-owned business. I am a certified reward and game-based trainer that provides private coaching services to pet parents in the comfort of their homes. This means that my clients receive a tailored set of tools and insights on not only how to specifically address their dog’s behavioral challenges but also to empower them with the knowledge and confidence to continue effective communication and maintain a great relationship with their companion in the long-term.
My mission is to strengthen the bond between human and canine. In an unregulated industry where there are still many trainers using forceful and outdated techniques that result in damage to that bond, I am dedicated to teaching people how to motivate their dogs to learn and engage with them in a way that clearly addresses the needs of both sides, in a scientific, humane and respectful manner. My clients receive an enormous amount of detailed support and a holistic, optimistic approach to relieving their worries and achieving results that are relevant to real life and their day to day routines.
I specialize in foundation training for puppies, assist the frustrated parents of dogs in their ‘terrible teens’, provide services for dogs with confidence issues or leash reactivity, support for child/dog interactions and multi-dog homes, as well as service people who simply want a well-mannered canine family member to share their social life with. I can also provide public speaking services for educational events in regard to dog handling, enrichment and welfare.
What were you like growing up?
I was bubbly and mischievous! I think I gave my parents a run for their money as a small child, I was always wandering off to explore and make friends. We had a very happy family life and my parents, older sister and I have always been very close. There were a ton of us kids in the neighborhood, we were always playing outside. I got a little surly as a teenager, but I think the interests I had back then are still the interests I have now – travel, nature, animals, music. Ok, I don’t want to be Mariah Carey anymore but thinking big and having the desire to make a difference somewhere in life has always been a part of my personality.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.proudpawsdogtraining.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/proudpawsdogtraining/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/proudpawsdogtraining/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/proud-paws-dog-training-tujunga-2
