For as long as Kris can remember, she has spent her entire life with animals.  Growing up with as many as 20 dogs at a time, as well as cats, rabbits, rodents, birds and even a monkey, Kris's love for animals has grown into a life long passion.  Today, Kris currently shares her home with 10 dogs: 3 rescue Keeshonden 3 Border Collies, a rescue Pomeranian,  an Alaskan Malamute and two Hungarian Mudik. Kris also shares her home with her Mom and Dad's tiny Pomeranian named Melba and their Border Collie Flame which she trains and handles in agility. Kris has loads of experience raising puppies since her parents were German Shepherd Dog Breeders as well as working with rescue dogs and dogs with abused backgrounds.    Just recently Kris and her husband added a Kune Kune pig to their group of animals as well as having chickens, guinea foul and ducks. 

Kris also works with Keeshond and American Eskimo Rescue retraining dogs for their future homes.  Kris specializes in severely abused dogs and aggression cases and has been able to rehabilitate dogs that were hours away from euthanasia.  With her foster dogs, Kris is able to solve behavioral issues that made these dogs unadoptable and were surrendered by their owners.   So there are always 1 or 2 foster dogs that are going through a behavior rehabilitation program.

Always informally training animals as a kid, Kris seriously began training dogs 18 years ago, starting with competitive obedience and conformation.  After 8 years of successfully showing her keeshond, Randall and her Pomeranian Rushka, in competitive obedience, Kris's interest turned to the Performance sport of  Dog Agility and herding.

For the last 12 years, Kris has trained and competed in the Performance Sport of Dog Agility.  Kris is a National and International Level competitor and has appeared in the final events of the 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 World Games with her Border Collies Lochlan and War.  Lochlan, at age 9, made the Steeplechase Finals at the 2009 World Games in the 26" Division which is extremely difficult at this age. War at age 5 made the 2009 Team Finals and his team placed 8th overall out of over 200 teams.  War, Flame and Lochlan consistently post some of the fastest times of all 26" jumping dogs at major events.

 Working with her rescue dogs, Kris  builds confidence and motivation through relationship.  Kris sees each dog as an individual and therefore applies different training techniques for all dogs especially for dogs that are fearful, have been abused or have severe aggression issues.  These dogs need special attention and during their training sessions sometimes the tiniest improvements are the most important.  With innovative ideas and play based training sessions, dogs with behavioral issues can learn to love the sport of agility.

Kris trains over 150 students weekly in the NY and NYC area and helps her students develop great relationships with their dogs.  One of Kris's main goals is to inspire her students to love working with their dogs and to develop the confidence in their own training to not only build stronger bonds, but enable them to reach their individual goals within the sport. 

Kris clicker trains all foundation behaviors by free shaping and helps her students use these positive reinforcement based methods with their dogs.   Clicker training builds confidence and  confident dogs perform without hesitation.   Once a dog fears the learning process through correction, they will never learn as quickly and as freely as with stress free clicker training.  In any agility partnership between dog and handler, Kris stresses trust in each other which evolves into dynamic, fast agility teams. 

Kris has 10 Medals from the World Games and 18 Agility Championships on a variety of dogs.  Lochlan was awarded a Life Time Achievement Award at the 2009 World Games and has been listed as USDAA's top 10 Agility Dog in Tournaments for the last 3 years.  War has made USDAA's Top 10 Agility Dog list in the World in Tournaments and Standard for 2007 and 2008 in the 26" Division

 

KRIS & LOCHLAN - NOV 2007 - GRAND PRIX FINAL WORLD CYNOSPORT GAMES, SCOTTSDALE, AZ

Currently,  Kris has 6 dogs competing in agility.  All are at different levels and require different techniques in order to get the best possible performance from them.  She is showing 2 Rescue Keeshonden, Nadja and Hermione, both have had rough starts in life and are extremely noise sensitive, 2 Border Collies, Lochlan and his half brother War, 2 Pomeranians, one is a rescue named Rushka who is fearful of everything and one is her parents Pomeranian named Melba who is known throughout the East Coast as one of the smallest agility competitors.  Melba even has her own fan club.

Kris has appeared in several dog related Magazines with her dogs and has written various articles on training based themes.  Kris's dogs have also been featured on television and movie promotion work.

Kris has been serving as the Agility Training Director for Port Chester Obedience Club for the last 8 years.  Her program offers all levels of agility training from Beginner foundation to the Master's level.  Kris has 5 instructor's working under her program, one of which is her sister, Kim, who is an accomplished instructor/handler in her own right.

KRIS & WAR - NOV. 2007 - STEEPLECHASE SEMI-FINALS- WORLD CYNOSPORT GAMES SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA)