Live From New York, It's... Positive Reinforcement Dog Training! Saturday Night Live set designer Ken MacLeod on becoming a professional dog trainer

How To Train Your Dog With Love And Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman, School For The Dogs

In his work as a set designer, Saturday Night Life staffer Ken MacLeod had seen many well-trained dogs, and had even done commercial work with his own Jack Russell, Mac. But then he got a dog named Scooter and he realized that every dog has different needs. This realization led him to decide he wanted to become a certified dog trainer. Today, he splits his time: Part of every month, he can be found building sets for SNL, and the rest of the time, he is training out of his Hoboken, NJ-based studio, My Positive Pup. He talks to Annie about getting certified, the emotional nature of working with dog owners, behavior lessons learned learned on the ski slopes, and how the old saying "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" can be true for both people and dogs.

Learn more about My Positive Pup at https://mypositivepup.com/

Learn more about L.E.G.S.® Applied Ethology Family Dog Mediation® Professional Course (thinkific.com) https://kimbropheylegscourses.thinkific.com/courses/legs-applied-ethology-family-dog-mediation-professional-course

Learn more about the Karen Pryor Academy at https://karenpryoracademy.com/

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

Okay. Ken, why don't you just go ahead and introduce yourself and your business and we can, we can go from there.

Ken MacLeod:

Cool. My name is Ken MacLeod. I have a dog training company in Hoboken, New Jersey called My Positive Pup. You can find us on the web at mypositivepup.com. I am a positive reinforcement dog trainer, obviously with that name. And I also work in the film industry at Saturday Night Live. And, to say the least, both of them are pretty crazy businesses.

Annie:

So let's talk about your, what would you say, bifurcated career, which came first? Well, and actually also, are you originally from New Jersey? Where are you from originally?

Ken:

I'm originally from Massachusetts. I moved down to New Jersey when I was a sophomore in high school, became a huge Springsteen fan who couldn't. And then went to college to Penn State and came out and wanted to go into the film industry. I really didn't have a lot of interest in dogs until I met my wife, I guess, 14 years ago. And she had a dog named Mac who is a Parsons Jack Russell who I completely fell in love with. And everything kind of started from there. I had trained Mac to be in a couple commercials, ‘cause I worked in the commercial industry. And it all kind of, you know, snowballed from that.

Annie:

You were training him for commercials. Were you doing it with any guidance or just by feeling?

Ken:

Like, just like he'd have little parts in a commercial, like, pick a newspaper up and run to the door. Go to the couch and bark at somebody. And it wasn't like I was doing this for work. It's just that Mac was really, really good at it. And at that time Parsons Jack Russells were very, very popular. So in being in the film industry and around people, both my wife and I, we just knew producers and said, Hey, would Mac want to be in it? Would Mac, you know, would it be okay if you had Mac in this and it'd be like, sure, no problem at all. So it kind of started that way accidentally, I guess.

Full Transcript at SchoolForTheDogs.com/Podcast