We recently connected with Jan Perkins and have shared our conversation below.
Jan, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?
I am able to work with dogs with many behavior problems. Many times these problems are aggression, shyness, barking or nuisance behaviors like pulling on the leash, digging or chewing, etc. These are problems I see everyday. It is always so gratifying to see changes made and happy clients and dogs. An example of this is I had a client that asked me to come to their home to evaluate their new Rottweiler puppy. I immediately saw fear aggression in this new puppy which was especially aggressive to little children. They had thought that this was just a shy and quiet puppy. Since this family had many young grandchildren that would be visiting I asked them if they would like me to tell them the truth or what they would like to hear. They said the truth and I told them what I was seeing fear aggression. I knew they were disappointed but I continued to tell them that I could help them with this, but if they didn’t get started they would have problems later. I immediately started them in Agility to build the puppy’s confidence in a positive way and then also in Puppy Obedience Classes. I also started him slowly with positive experiences with children. Within a few weeks we had a happy and well adjusted puppy who is excited about being with all ages of people and dogs. This is an experience that I work with quite often.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As a child I was quite shy and my best friends were my pets. I had wonderful parents who basically let me have many different animals such as dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, raccoons, snakes, ducks, horses, owls, crows, etc. I loved watching them and observing their behavior. As I grew older I learned to communicate and train many of them to do different behaviors. I went to BYU and graduated in Animal Science and worked in a Veterinarian Hospital for about 3 years. I trained with another trainer for about a year but found their were some methods I didn’t agree with, being too aggressive and not using the dog’s brain to train with so I started my own business. I opened my business in California and in 1995 moved my business up to Utah, where I am training currently. I specialize in behavior modification and manners and of course obedience, but I find many times today’s dogs don’t have manners so I focus a lot on this behavior. Included in my training we also train for Agility, Rally, Scent work, and Walk and Train classes which don’t only train for obedience, but also give your dog a job, which is many times the root reason for behavior problems.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
On the registration forms that my clients fill out I always ask “Where did you hear about Live Oak Dog Obedience”. About 99% of the answers are word of mouth, other clients. This is very important to me, since I want my clients to be happy with the service they receive and see progress in their dogs. I always tell my clients that I never pay for advertisement, that they are my advertisement and when their dogs are polite and well mannered it shows and other people see it and will ask “how do you do that, to have your dogs so well behaved”. I do my best to train people to teach respect from their dogs and obedience so they set precedence to other owners of dogs to be an example to them. There are so many ill behaved dogs now and that is why leash laws are so prevalent. If I can better the world each day with helping others have happier dogs and thus happier owners I feel I have done my job. I do use some social media also, twitter, facebook and my weekly emails and I just recently did a podcast with Freerange Dogs to help spread the word and let people know what I do in my training.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
I have always tried to be totally honest with people and not always tell them what they want to hear, but sometimes tell them hard things where in the long run I am able to fix a problem. I think some trainers are more interested in making the money so they tell clients what they want to hear, but not always does that work. By being honest about the behavior of their dogs I am am able to fix problem rather than mask the problem and to be honest with you I have had very good response from doing this. Today’s world has sometimes difficulty doing this. They are more interested in bringing in the clients and making the money. Being successful financially is important, but being honest, in my opinion is more important. Eventually people will see through it and it will get you in the end.
Contact Info:
- Website: liveoakdogobedienceutah.com
- Instagram: Jan Ellsworth Perkins / live oak dog obedience
- Facebook: Live Oak Dog Obedience
- Yelp: live oak dog obedience
Image Credits
Jan Perkins Kelsey Larsen (Agility Trainer)