Author
Hi, I'm Marisa — I'd been a professional trainer for five years when my own dog stopped being able to walk down the street.
I'm Marisa Cole, a CPDT-KA certified professional dog trainer in Portland, Maine. Seventeen years in this work, fourteen of them professionally, and I still take clients three days a week — deliberately, because the day I stop, this site becomes theory.
Let me tell you the story I lead with, because it's the honest one.
At thirty-four I adopted Bruno, a long-coat German Shepherd, at fourteen months old, from a family who couldn't manage him. At that point I had six years of veterinary practice behind me, five years of professional training, and a full client list. I knew what I was doing.
Within four months I could not walk my own dog past another dog without a scene. And for most of a year, everything I tried made it worse.
Working through that — badly first, then slowly, then properly — is my real education. It's why reactivity is the deepest content on this site, and it's why I'll tell you upfront: Bruno is not a success story. He's a managed one. He's twelve now, arthritic and mostly retired, and even at his best he was never a dog I'd have taken to a crowded festival. I say that because "trainer with a perfect dog" content makes people feel like failures, and I'd much rather you felt like someone with a normal dog and a normal problem. Which you almost certainly are.
How I got here: six years in veterinary practice in my early twenties, first on reception and then as an assistant. That job taught me to read a dog's body language properly, because a frightened dog in an exam room tells you everything if you're actually watching. It also meant I spent six years watching dogs get surrendered over behaviour problems that were solvable. That's a hard thing to watch, and it probably explains the rest of my career.
Then formal training from twenty-nine onwards: CPDT-KA certification, Fear Free certification, continuing education in behaviour, and coursework in aggression and reactivity casework. Several hundred private cases since, and more group classes than I could count.
How I train, and why: everything here is reward-based. I don't use or recommend prong collars, choke chains, shock or e-collars, alpha rolls, or anything else that works through pain, startle or fear — and I don't use dominance or "pack leader" framing, because it doesn't describe what's actually happening between you and your dog.
But I want to be careful here, because I grew up in Maine in the eighties with the family dogs of the era: chained in the yard, corrected with a rolled-up newspaper. I didn't start out knowing better. I learned better. If someone told you to alpha roll your puppy, you weren't foolish — you were told that by a person you had no reason to doubt. Nobody gets shamed on this site for what they were taught.
What you'll actually find in these posts:
Management before training, every time. Before you train anything, you stop your dog from practising the behaviour: more distance, a different route, a different time of day, a film on the window. It's unglamorous, it feels a bit like cheating, and it's the reason plans work.
Realistic timelines, stated up front. You will not find "fix reactivity in seven days" here. Behaviour work takes weeks to months, it plateaus, and it has setbacks. I'll tell you what week two looks like and what a bad day means — usually not what you fear it means.
What has to be true first. Every plan lists its prerequisites: your dog's stress level, sleep, exercise, the environment, and whether a vet visit needs to come before any training at all.
Body language, specifically. Not "watch for stress signals" but where to look and what you'll see — the mouth, the weight shift, the tail base, the breathing. Most problems are visible about ten seconds before they happen.
And the limits, which matter a great deal in this field: I'm a trainer, not a veterinarian and not a veterinary behaviourist. Any sudden behaviour change, aggression that appeared out of nowhere, a house-training regression, or anything pain-adjacent is a vet visit before it's a training plan. That goes double for older dogs — a great deal of what gets called stubbornness at eleven is actually arthritis, hearing loss or cognitive change. I've been living that one with Bruno.
I don't diagnose, and I don't advise on medication or supplements. And if your dog has bitten and broken skin, has shown aggression toward a child, or has a bite history around resources — please don't work from a blog post, mine or anyone else's. Get a certified professional in person and ask your vet about a veterinary behaviourist referral. I'll give you management and safety guidance to keep everyone safe in the meantime, but the plan itself needs eyes on your dog.
I work out of a small room in a converted mill building — rubber matting, a visual barrier, and a whiteboard of client dogs' names I keep meaning to clean and never do. Most of the actual work happens outside: empty parking lots, the harbour path, and a school field at seven in the morning because that's when it's empty.
At home there's my husband Owen, a physical therapist with strong and mostly correct opinions about how I brace to hold an eighty-pound dog; Bruno, in his semi-retirement; and Pickle, a small elderly terrier mix who serves as the neutral dog in my reactivity sessions and considers the job well beneath her.
If you've got a puppy who won't stop biting, a dog who drags you down the street, or one who loses it at the sight of a labrador across the road — you're in the right place, and you're doing better than you think.
