How Jenny became a dog trainer:
Jenny Ruth Yasi, BFA, CPDT-KA, FFCP, CTDI is certified through the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, and she is also a Fear-Free Certified Professional animal trainer. She’s certified as a Trick Dog Instructor through Do More With Your Dogs, an AKC CGC evaluator, member candidate of International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants and Control Unleashed Instructor Training. Jenny is a member of the Association of Professional Dog Trainers. Her dogs are titled in and they train in a variety of dog sports. Jenny enjoys training “practical” dog behaviors, such as skijoring, retrieve and deliver, find, alert, and backyard games that don’t take a whole lot of training equipment, and that offer fun exercise, and practice of useful skills.
Jenny grew up on a small farm, milking goats, riding horses, caring for meat rabbits, keeping a wide variety of small to large pets (especially birds!), and graduated from Vermont College of Norwich University in 1998 with a self-designed major in Behavior Science. Jenny LOVES behavior science, and has traveled to study with chicken, monkey, horse and marine mammal trainers, as well as with world renowned dog trainers. She has especially followed Leslie McDevitt (Control Unleashed programs ) and Susan Garrett’s Recallers, H360, Agility Nation, Puppy nation programs, and Sylvia Trkman have had profound impacts on Jenny’s animal training style, which is centered on the power of choice, and removing “adversarial” components to the human/dog partnership.
Locally, Leslie Whitney from Happy Tails was Jenny’s first dog training teacher, and introduced Jenny to Karen Pryor clicker training. Jenny got tired of buying clickers and so she started clicking with her tongue, and now sometimes if she dreams of a dog, she might “click” the dog in her sleep!
Jenny approaches behavior and training as a science as well as an art, weaving operant and classical conditioning into the way we arrange our environments. Control of the environment (Jenny is also an organic gardener, with a special love of flowers and natural medicine) helps shape default behaviors as dogs respond to environmental cues, aka “context cues,” and learn to think independently and do what works best.
Jenny has had 8 dogs of her own over her adult life, Sampson, Lady, Lassie, Dandelion, Tigerlily, Charlie, Honey Bee, M’Ocean, two or three dogs at a time, and besides Susan Garrett and Leslie McDevitt, Jenny has sponged from some of the greatest animal trainers in the world: Chicken Camp with Terry Ryan, ClickerExpo, Freestyle workshops and seminars with Carolyn Scott, Atilla Suzukalek, Mary Ray. Jenny especially loves training “freestyle” (dog tricks to music), and she provided pet assisted therapy to in the pediatric psychiatric unit of Spring Harbor Hospital for a few years with her barbet, Tigerlily.
At one time, Jenny had a career as a singer/songwriter/storyteller, and she loves to combine music with animal training. She is also hard of hearing now (but don’t blame the drummer, blame genetics!) and has trained four of her dogs to perform hearing alerts, and she also has trained SAR alerts! Jenny loves to continue her education and regularly attends seminars, workshops, and competes in rally, agility, trick dog and other events to challenge and test her growth as a trainer!
After raising her family on an island off the coast of Maine, Jenny and her husband moved to Freeport in 2015. In 2016-2017 they sailed 2800 miles with two dogs aboard Magus, from Maine through the Bahamas. Along the way, Jenny visited over a dozen schools with her reassuring animal training and humane education program “How to make big problems smaller!”
Even if you aren’t a local, if visiting us calls to you, we invite you “Stay and Train” with us at our homestead, Bliss Woods Farm in Freeport Maine! https://airbnb.com/h/wholedogcamp
Or Find us on facebook! https://www.facebook.com/wholedogcamp
Find Jenny’s training videos on youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/yasijenny
August 5, 2021
Dear Jenny and Albert, Thank you for the best week in the wonderful state of Maine! Everyday we learned something new with Reece. We have tried to soak up every nugget of knowledge you have imparted on us for dog training. We can’t wait to continue training and hope to show you what we’ve learned! This was the best place to become engaged! ❤ Rebecca and Max
June 24, 2021
Jenny, I think we have found our dog’s (Pacha) natural habitat. He came to life like we’ve never seen as he galloped around the fields at Whole Dog Camp. Your gardens were goals for us, thank you for giving us free access to all the amazing herbs and vegetables. We had a wonderful stay! Cheers, Joe and Jess
June 21 2021 Adopting an “old” rescue dog during the pandemic was a decision we were beginning to question. I have renewed faith that Bitsy can be a member of our family. Jenny we kind of feel Bitsy has a god mother in your and all the suggestions you had will help us move forward with her… take care and thank you! Karen, Rick and Bitsy
June 9, 2021 We loved our stay and watching our Annie come few steps on becoming her full joyful self! You have restored hope and optimism that our Puerto Rican sato can bond and move forward… we’ll be back for more training and discussion! Linda and Ray
Jenny, Our little city girl had so much fun running on your farm. She has never had so much room to run in her young life! We had lunch at two dog-friendly restaurants, both places brought water bowls for Sera. We explored the local “secret” beach and Sera had a great time playing with Bingo!
Jenny & Albert,
Thanks as always for a wonderful time, and for all the expert advice w/Josie. We promise to practice with her faithfully! One tip to share: Cook’s on Baily’s Island was the same great lobster we remember and observing all Covid19 guidelines.
Best wishes, Keven, Carol, Josie
Hi Jenny,
Max and I had a great time on the farm. I learned a lot about Max! We’ll come again soon to show you all we’ve worked on! He enjoyed the big crate; I think he asked for a crate at home (^; … exactly what we were looking for in a weekend getaway! Kindly, Kara
Jenny & Albert,
Dog camp was SO fun! We learned a lot and had such a lovely vacation. We can’t wait to return… Thank you! Leah, Anthony, Julie and Tigrou
at Bliss Woods Farm in Freeport, Maine 