Karen M. Davis, PhD. started her interest in animal behavior as an undergraduate at Purdue University by studying and working with socialized wolves at Wolf Park in Battleground, IN. She learned about ethology and wolf behavior from Dr. Klinghammer and eventually hand raised her first set of wolf pups.  She continued to learn about training and animal behavior as a zookeeper and later studied crayfish aggression for her Master’s with Dr. Robert Huber in Bowling Green, OH. Then she moved on to study cognition and behavior of turtles with Dr. Gordon Burghardt at the University of Tennessee. Her PhD work included training for turtles to visual discrimination tasks in order to study their learning and memory capabilities. Presently she is teaching Comparative Animal Behavior and is conducting post-doctoral research on the comparative development of canine play with Julie Albright DMV and Dr. Gordon Burghardt at the University of Tennessee. Karen’s applied experience includes training a variety of species including sea lions, lynx, wolves, dogs, bears and turtles.  Furthermore, she worked for Clever Critters for a few years as a behaviorist and currently works as a behaviorist for Adopt-a Golden of Knoxville dog rescue in her spare time.

Ethology and Canine Behavior lecture, April, 2013:  The Ethology of Play and What Canines Can Teach Us

Dr. Dodds received the D.V.M. degree with honors in 1964 from the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Toronto.  In 1965 she accepted a position with the New York State Health Department in Albany and began comparative studies of animals with inherited and acquired bleeding diseases.  Her position there began as a Research Scientist and culminated as Chief, Laboratory of Hematology, Wadsworth Center.In 1980 she also became Executive Director, New York State Council on Human Blood and Transfusion Services. This work continued full-time until 1986 when she moved to Southern California to establish Hemopet, the first nonprofit national blood bank program for animals.
From 1965-1986, she was a member of many national and international committees on hematology, animal models of human disease, veterinary medicine, and laboratory animal science.  Dr. Dodds was a grantee of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NIH) and has over 150 research publications.
She was formerly President of the Scientist’s Center for Animal Welfare; and Chairman of the Committee on Veterinary Medical Sciences and Vice-Chairman of the Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, National Academy of Sciences.  In 1974 Dr. Dodds was selected as Outstanding Woman Veterinarian of the Year, AVMA Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado; in 1977 received the Region I Award for Outstanding Service to the Veterinary Profession from the American Animal Hospital Association, Cherry Hill, New Jersey; in 1978 and 1990 received the Gaines Fido Award as Dogdom’s Woman of the Year; and the Award of Merit in 1978 in Recognition of Special Contributions to the Veterinary Profession from the American Animal Hospital Association, Salt Lake City, Utah.
In 1984 she was awarded the Centennial Medal from the University of  Pennsylvania  School of Veterinary Medicine.  In 1987 she was elected a distinguished Practitioner of the National Academy of Practice in Veterinary Medicine.  In 1994 she was given the Holistic Veterinarian of the Year Award from the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association. She was the Editor of Advances in Veterinary Science and Comparative Medicine for Academic Press, and is an active member of numerous professional societies.  She was recently a member of the National Research Council/BANR Committee on National Needs for Research in Veterinary Science, which released its report in July 2005.  She is an inventor on numerous patents.

Recorded OnDemand Lecture: Canine Vaccine Issues: Should I Vaccinate My Dog?

As a graduate student at the University of North Texas, Nicole became interested in animal training and specifically decreasing problem behavior in animals. One of her first endeavors was an olive baboon that was engaging in self injurious behavior which caused huge lacerations on its arms and legs. With Nicole’s knowledge of behavior analysis, her first thought was to see what was maintaining the baboon’s problem behavior and to conduct a functional analysis. From the data collected with this method, she was able to eliminate the self injurious behavior and found that the cause of the problem was the keepers telling the baboon to “stop doing that” that was acting as attention and increasing the self injurious behavior. This was the first time this method had been used with an animal and has since been used to determine the maintaining variable of self injurious behavior in other captive primate species. After this project, Nicole was hooked. Although her Ph.D. at the University of Exeter was focused on investigating social learning in a variety of zoo animals and dogs, in her spare time she consulted on training and decreasing problem behavior at the Paignton Zoo and successfully co-organized a zoo training workshop.

After her Ph.D. she moved to Florida and began working as a postdoctoral fellow, where she has published a number of papers and book chapters on canine social cognition and behavior. Her recent research focuses on developing a line of research that will serve the dog training community and seek to find a deeper understanding of the factors that underlie problem behavior.

In addition to conducting her research, Nicole is also a board member for the Animal Behavior Management Alliance (ABMA) and is a lecturer at the University of Florida teaching a variety of courses including Animal Cognition and Research Methods. She has also been an invited speaker to a number of national and international conferences and workshops, including Karen Pryor’s Clicker Expo and APDT. Her work has been featured in the media including Discovery News among others. In addition to her research and teaching, Nicole is also one of the directors of the BARC group (www.barcgroup.org). She believes that her research will provide dog trainers with a more informed way of choosing training methods by providing research based information on which methods work best for certain behaviors.

Recorded OnDemand Lecture: Research in Dog Training: Current Projects and Future Directions (Recorded Live: January 12, 2012)

Beth is both a wolf specialist and focused dog trainer. She has done wolf education programs in Michigan since 1972 and has been the Michigan representative for Wolf Park since 1974. She has lectured to over 1,000 groups, including the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Timber Wolf Alliance, the Michigan Association of Animal Control Officers, The Nordjyllands Dyreadfaerdsklinik, the Association for Pet Dog Trainers and the International Wolf Center and Wolf Park.

Beth has been doing positive dog training for over 20 years. She is a core staff trainer for Dogs Scouts of America and has helped hundreds of Dog Scout Camp Participants learn to effectively communicate with their dogs. Beth is the author of two books: Differentiating Native Great Lakes Area Wild Wolves from Dogs and Wolf-Dog Hybrids and The Evolution of Charlie Darwin: Partner with Your Dog Using Positive Training.
Beth is committed to helping pet dog owners understand and work with their dogs using empathy and sound positive teaching methods. Her experience working with wolves, dogs, and wolf hybrids, and her association with both captive and wild wolf researchers, allows her a broad overview of both wolf and dog behavior.

Beth lives in Michigan, USA with her husband Bob and five very talented but eccentric dogs.

Recorded OnDemand Lecture:  Your Dog is a Wolf, but it’s Not!! ….a Day without Pee is a Day without Sunshine!

Julie is the owner of Wonder Dogs, in Philomath, OR. Julie has been working professionally with dogs and their owners since 1995, focusing on the needs of the dog and forming a stronger relationship through clear communication and positive reinforcement training methods. She has placed Obedience, Musical Freestyle, Rally-Obedience, Rally-FrEe and Agility titles on her dogs. She began competing in Musical Freestyle in 1999 and was the first to earn a Heelwork-to-Music Championship on the west coast.  She has since placed many freestyle titles with her dogs, earning both High Technical Merit and High Artistic Merit several times over, including the prestige’s “Attila Challenge Award”.   In 2001 she was named “Trainer of the Year” by the World Canine Freestyle Organization and has been a competition freestyle judge since 2003. In 2012 she developed the sport of Rally-FrEe to help freestylers increase the quality and precision of their performances. It has since however become a stand-alone sport enjoyed by dog sport enthusiast all over the world. Julie has been an invited workshop and seminar presenter both nationally and internationally.

Recorded OnDemand lecture: Advanced Clicker Training for Dogs and Back Chaining in Dog Training: Your Ticket to Stronger Behavior and Delayed Reinforcement