PDTE Newsletter July 2020

Katie
Guastapaglia
• United
Kingdom
Hi, I’m Katie, a dog trainer and Canine Enrichment
Specialist living in the North East of England. I run
Dogwood Adventure Play, an outdoor enriched
environment, with the focus on sensory experiences
and choice. I designed Scentventure, my signature
training system, to help my own nervous and reactive
rescue dog Lao, when I couldn’t find any suitable
classes. I now help other dogs find confidence through
scentwork and adventure. In my previous role as
Campaigns Officer at Dogs Trust I travelled across
the North of England offering training, behaviour,
enrichment, health and legal advice to hundreds of dog
owners every week and developing new campaigns for
responsible dog ownership.
I was introduced to the wonderful world of PDTE
when I discovered Kirsty’s Grant and her inspirational
work at The Dog Nose. I then enrolled on Dr Amber
Batson’s course in Durham where I met many other
PDTE members. Everyone was so nice and their work
so progressive – it was everything I had been trying
to achieve, without realising there was a bunch of
amazing people who had been doing it for years! I felt
I’d found my spiritual home and applied for Associate
membership, not really believing I would be accepted
but delighted when I was.
A strong advocate of rescue dogs, I volunteered at
Battersea Dogs Home before joining the Dogs Trust
team. I work hard to improve the lives of dogs in my
community and believe that reward-based training
and enrichment are key to a strong and long-lasting
relationship.
Marga
Cladera Socias
• Spain
Hi! My name is Marga and I work as a dog trainer after
studying with professionals like Turid Rugaas, Anne Lill
Kvam, Anders Hallgren, Amber Batson, Ken Ramírez,
Grisha Stewart, Jesús Rosales-Ruíz, Carlos Bueren or
Nicolás Planterose. Caring for dogs and training them
to the best of my abilities has always been my calling.
I started attending seminars after adopting a very fearful
dog and have not stopped since then. I am proud to
say that I have shared my life with five small dogs, with
some of them surpassing the 18 years of age (which
still felt way too short!). Together with Luis Souto we
own Talkan, a school where we offer our services to
dog guardians and continued education to dog professionals
with some of the best speakers in the world.
Last January we organized a program with Anne Lill
and we are rescheduling a seminar with Karen Webb
which was originally announced for the coming month
of June. Our family is composed of four kids, five dogs
and a cat. Queen is a 9-year-old Border Collie, Floren
is a Boxer Lab mix, Tadeo (who is 6) is a Papillon mix,
Neska is beautiful 1-year-old Leonberger and the
small Leya just 7-month-old a Yorkshire. As caretaker
and trainer I always pay great attention to dogs’ needs
since most “annoying” behaviors are the result of our
negligence in that regard. During walks I put the emphasis
in ensuring that dogs are comfortable, feel safe
and have plenty of opportunities to explore and make
choices. I advocate in favor of kind and cooperative
methodologies because I am positive of their contribution
to restore and strengthen the bond between dogs
and their caretakers. I feel honored to be back at PDTE.
Thank you all and keep up the good job!
Santos
Salcines
Nazabal
• Spain
I was born in the wonderful year 1973 in Laredo, a
small town on the northern coast of Spain. I have had
dogs since I was a child and felt a strong interest in
wildlife since the first time I saw the TV documentary
series by the Spanish naturalist Félix Rodriguez De La
Fuente at a very young age. ANJANA, a beautiful female
Border Collie who has been accompanying me for
the last 12 years, marked the start of my professional
career with dogs sharing our human environment. The
rest of our life partners today are Lúa, an energetic
8-year-old female Australian Shepherd, Hope a mix
Boxer ,perhaps the most keen on mouth grabbing
in the world! , Deva a small 8-Kg Podenco who is 18
months old and an avid mantrailer, and Whopper a
1-year-old male Labrador whose philosophy of life is
“as unique as difficult to put into human words”.
At the beginning, in 2008, we practiced agility, discdog
and dog tricks in an almost completely self-taught way.
Three years later we founded the AGILITY Laredo Club
aimed at training dogs and their handlers in different
sport disciplines. This step forward was motivated by
the fact that the education prevailing at that time in
Spain was not the most friendly with dogs and, hence,
was at odds with our beliefs. Together with this project
came an evergreen eagerness to train and learn from
those who really cared about the welfare of sport dogs,
what led us to walk ethically sounder educational
pathways. During that time we became also a foster
home for abandoned Border Collies, most of them
originating from shepherds who had discarded them
after labelling them as useless for the assigned job.
I was thus one of the founders of an animal welfare
association called Moonlight Animal Rescue specializing
in saving sheepdogs all over Spain.
Finally, in 2016 we created Sanjana & Dogs, more than
a company, a philosophy of work, relationship and
education aimed at promoting the well-being of dogs
and their human families. Today, together with two colleagues,
we manage DogStar, a dog center located in
Cantabria (Northern Spain) and devoted to work with
abandoned animals in order to rehabilitate them for
future adoption. We also run the Mantrailing Cantabria
School and coordinate the solidarity project Trails for
Hope, dedicated to the rehabilitation of shelter dogs
through scent work and mantrailing.
During all these years I have read tons of relevant
books and attended all the educational programs I
could, either taught by Spanish or foreign trainers,
subject only to the condition that they are respectful
vis-à-vis dogs. My interests include animal welfare,
different therapeutic approaches, alternative therapies
and natural nutrition. I describe myself in a nutshell as
an insatiable student of the dog/human relationship.
July 2020
PDTE Newsletter
33