Dana Falsetta kept showing up.
She liked her day job, working in project management for P’unk Ave in 2011. “They’re an amazing, thoughtful design company,” Dana shared.
She enjoyed the work, and it utilized her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree with a shift in subject. But she didn’t want to make art anymore and she wanted to get away from a desk. Dana started thinking about working with animals, and one of P’unk Ave’s clients was a history museum, with a board member who also served on the board of New Leash on Life, a prison dog training program. “I didn’t know the options besides veterinarian or zoo keeper,” Dana shared.
She found Nicole Skeehan, who worked as the program’s trainer and had just started Philly Unleashed. They met for coffee.
Dana then starting working at a veterinarian’s office, driving in rush hour traffic at the end of a long work day to watch Nicole’s dog training classes. “I would go after work and go observe her classes, and I did a couple rounds where I just sat like a little mouse in the corner watching,” Dana shared. “Then I got to do a little co-teaching, and then I would drive out in rush hour traffic to the suburbs of Philadelphia, which in Maine miles is not crazy but in Philadelphia miles would take over an hour after a ten to twelve hour work day. .. She was like, ‘Huh, you keep showing up.’ And I kept showing up so she kept teaching.”
After six months, Dana started teaching her own classes, then she earned her certification as a dog trainer through the Certification Council of Professional Dog Trainers within a year. “Once I commit to something, it’s there, and I just worked really hard at it,” Dana explained. “I spent a double life as a trainer and receptionist slash behavior consult slash whatever needed to get done at the vet’s office for several years before diving into only doing training.”
Dana was able to become full-time with Philly Unleashed. Then Nicole bought a farm. “We started expanding the business into boarding and needed people to help with training and cleaning, because before we had no ‘stay with us’ program,” Dana said. “Having to add that care element on top of it meant we needed a lot more help. That was also cool because Nicole had this opportunity to help people who said, ‘I want to be a dog trainer,’ and be able to pay them.”
It was an unusual setup. “What Nicole is doing by hiring people who seem like they’re going to fit the bill, they might not have a ton of knowledge, but bring them up through training a bunch of animals [with] ‘Put your hands on as many dogs as you can’ as her philosophy of how to learn training basics,” Dana explained. “It totally make sense. it’s a perfect model. .. We’ve had people who have stayed for a long time and people who have stayed for six months or a year and moved on. By ‘we’, I mean Nicole, and Nicole now. It’s just a brilliant opportunity. It’s kind of dog training gold right here. I honestly don’t know anywhere else. Mostly you would pay for that privilege of being able to put your hands on as many animals as possible with access to other certified trainers to teach you.”
It isn’t easy work. “Philly Unleashed and Nicole has a really special model there of how to bring up trainers,” Dana said. “And that’s something too that she helped teach me how to teach other trainers, how to bring up people. The ones who stick it out, when they realize, ‘Oh, this is a little bit harder than I thought it was going to be.’ We don’t just play with puppies all day. Some of these things are real issues. Sometimes it’s cleaning up poop. … Shelter work, too and definitely zoo work. A lot of poop. Poop first and then you get to do the fun stuff. That was, again, just being in the right place at the right time and surrounded by cool people who you could help grow their business. And through that, I just kept learning and picking what I found interesting.”
Dana also became a Certified Behavior Consultant Canine-Knowledge Assessed (CBCC-KA). Then, after nearly nine years with Philly Unleashed, she moved to Maine with her husband, Mario. She found good timing with the move, and was able to join the staff of the Animal Welfare Society (AWS) as the Behavior and Training Program Coordinator. “It is an animal shelter, but there’s so much more to it than that,” Dana said. “It really is a place that focuses on community services and has a pretty robust dog training department.”
She joined the team as the leader of the department was retiring, right before COVID-19 shut everything down.
They adjusted when the pandemic hit, offering online classes that anyone across the country can take via Zoom. Then, on Tuesdays, there’s a free Ask the Trainer session on the AWS Teacher’s Pet Facebook page. Previous sessions can be accessed on Youtube.
While the majority of her responsibilities still include dogs, she also works with a variety of animals and provides educational opportunities, along with free or discounted training that helps dogs remain with their families. “We loosely call this our ‘stay at home’ or ‘keep at home’ programming,” Dana explained. “And it’s not just my department, and we are lucky to have two full-time certified trainers on staff, as well as others who are contracted with us to teach classes and other things. .. And this ‘keep at home’ or ‘stay at home’ is two-fold. For our department, it means if someone is calling and they cannot handle their dog or their animal, because actually we get plenty of cats with this too, that due to behavioral reasons, they cannot manage it, it’s dangerous or it’s not working, or sometimes it’s even something that’s a very manageable problem but someone doesn’t know how to, we get to offer them support free of charge or at a reduced rate or at whatever seems necessary to keep that animal with their family.”
Then, if the dogs or animals were adopted from AWS, the team is able to offer support if needed in the same way, with free or reduced rate services. “Keeping the animal with their family and giving everybody support is really part of our mission,” Dana said. “It’s been a pretty great opportunity. And that comes from our executive director. It’s part of our mission, and she is all about services and being a community resource. So that’s part of it. We do also get to have people who just want to train their dogs and need dog training advice or private lessons and other things who are not in immediate danger of being returned or surrendered to the shelter. And that functions more like a regular dog training business. A lot of counseling goes in. We do tons of follow up.”
As always, there’s so much more in the podcast episode. Take a listen to the podcast to hear Dana’s advice on becoming a dog trainer. Plus, click here to download a PDF for Dana’s suggestions for puppies.
