Pat Rohde

Training dogs has been a passion of Pat’s since she was a young girl with her first rescue puppy. She learned early on that the way to a dog’s heart and mind was through his or her taste buds.

Pat has trained her own dogs throughout her life… rescues and purebreds of various breeds and diverse backgrounds each with her or his own unique personality. Those dogs helped her understand how behaviors form, how to read a dog’s demeanor and how to create a plan that will offer the best solutions. Through seminars, professional journals and her native understanding, Pat followed evolving training techniques using positive methods putting her at the forefront of newer, positive behavior training when she branched out on her own in 1992 to start her Pets In Need Canine College.

While she currently shares her home with Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers and Flatcoated Retrievers, she has had poodles, terriers, bully-breed, and terrier mixes, providing her with opportunities for many various dog sport Titles at top levels of Obedience, Agility, Field, Rally, Barnhunt and Tricks.

Pat fills her time between group classes with private behavior consultations helping families teach their dogs good in home manners in positive and fun ways. Through the years she has also taught for the City of Cupertino, the City of Menlo Park and Palo Alto Humane Society. She is currently a certified mentor for students of the Animal Behavior College Dog Trainer program and through the years has been mentor to many less experienced trainers.

Cathy Lynch

Cathy’s training career originated in 1993 with a need for rehabilitation from back surgery that included walking as a compliment to her physical therapy exercises. She had cats for years but they’re just not very happy as walking companions so she headed for a local shelter and got Willow, a black lab.

Not knowing Willow’s background at 2-1/2 years old and feeling that she’d have to strengthen their bond, Cathy searched for dog training classes. Many classes at the time still used mostly correction-based methods and Cathy didn’t feel comfortable with those methods. But in Pat Rohde’s classes she saw happy dogs and happy people enjoying themselves using a much more positive approach. She signed up.

Cathy really enjoyed the human-dog bond so she got another dog, a mixed breed, Kira, (and more cats) and continued training two dogs. She so enjoyed training her dogs and did such a great job she graduated quickly from beginning to advanced classes and as a continuing, advanced class student Pat enlisted her to assist with her growing Canine College classes.

Since then Cathy has had many dogs (especially Flat Coated Retrievers) and gone on to train and earn titles in obedience, agility, field, trick dog and conformation. She is now our CGC Evaluator and Trick Dog Tester. She continues her training education by reading books and attending seminars on training and behavior. She especially values the ongoing learning and positive evolution that Pat’s team imbues.

In her spare time Cathy trains and competes in field sports and obedience with her own dogs and enjoys RV’ing with her husband.

Pat and all of her trainers appreciate the intrinsic rewards of teaching humans and their dogs. Cathy puts it into words: “What I love hearing the most from our students is how much fun they’re having, and how their relationships have improved so much since starting our classes!”

Arlene Nichols

In 1992, Arlene began her dog training career with her Border Collie, Ansel. She relished the positive methods being used and quickly advanced through to competition levels of obedience. Arlene was then invited to work with Pat and Rav'n Dog Training from whom she learned the novel-at-the-time, positive approach to dog training. She has been teaching people to train their dogs in a positive and fun way ever since.

All with rescued dogs: In the '90s Arlene competed in obedience with her dogs Ansel and Augie and dabbled in agility for fun. More recently she and her Border Collie, Apache, earned their third Master Agility Championship (MACH3) title. She is currently training her younger Australian Cattle Dog, Ajax, in obedience and Nosework and is competing in agility with him.

She teaches the Pet Class, developed to give students a stronger bond with their dog using fun exercises like companion dog obedience, tricks, games, and agility-type-obstacle courses. She also teaches Nosework, and Intermediate Obedience (and Agility locally when time allows). Arlene also has a career as an engineer in the software industry, working for a major high tech company.

Kitty Norwood