Stephanie Shepherd Ezzo

Stephanie is a certified Dog Trainer, who has worked in the industry for 15 years. She has a deep routed history when it comes to dogs, growing up around animals, Stephanie knew from a young age that she always wanted to work with dogs. Stephanie has been helping out families, business and individuals with training their dogs to meet the individual needs of everyone she works with.

Stephanie’s story behind starting Shepherds K9 Services:

My motivation to start Shepherds K9 services is my genuine passion for helping others change their relationships between themselves and their dogs. Educating the owners on bad dog behaviors is just the result of losing focus on the basics. In all of my experience, I have seen consistently that if we focus on the daily routine, structure, balance, accountability along with corrections for behaviors we don’t like and rewards for things we do; bad behaviors become a thing of the past. Owners need to know why things went wrong, how to prevent them from going wrong in the future, and then what to do about it. Without making the owners feel guilty and overwhelmed, this is not information that everyone is born with; this is not inherited information it's simply okay not to know where to begin. It is my job to educate the owner and train the dog to understand each other. If we are not speaking the same language, we are bound for a disconnect in our relationship and therefore not have a successful end goal. I work with dogs of all ages, breeds, with a magnitude of behavioral concerns from fear aggression, anxiety, resource guarding, regardless of past experiences we are equipped to properly evaluate the dog and offer a specific training regimen for the dog and owner to be successful together. When I’m not training dogs you can find me riding my horse, Archibold we used to compete together at the International level for the USA in the sport called Eventing. I traveled all over the US competing and hauling a truck and trailer by myself with my protection dog at my side. I gained firsthand experience with how life with protection dogs needed to be to be successful. How bomb proof the obedience needed to be, how owners needed to prepare their dogs for social situations and how to handle a "loaded gun" in public environments. One of the highly underestimated points to this lifestyle was how to handle the public, their questions about this type of dog, and how to handle other animals around my own working companion. This has shaped my training structure and education to be passed down to my clients and their dogs that I train to instill in them the best tools and education to be successful in any environment.