Jean Donaldson

Founder, The Academy for Dog Trainers

The Academy for Dog Trainers was founded in 1999 by Jean Donaldson. She ran it for ten years as a residential program at The San Francisco SPCA before spending a year and a half re-inventing the curriculum as a two-year e-learning course. The goal of the new format is to broaden the scope and content of the program, include the latest research on behavior and training, as well as allow students a much longer enrollment time so that they may study, train and integrate - marinate in - the material, as well as fit their study around other life commitments.

Jean is one of the top dog trainers in the world and has lectured extensively in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Before transitioning full-time to pet dog training, Jean competed in dog sports with dogs of various breeds, earning numerous titles and wins including OTCh, HIT, TDX, and FDCh, as well as a CGC. She ran a successful training school for fifteen years, and spent six years doing primarily referral aggression cases. She holds a degree in comparative psychology and is a keen student of evolutionary biology.

Jean is a four-time winner of The Dog Writers' Association of America's Maxwell Award, and her seminal book The Culture Clash was named number one training and behavior book by The Association of Pet Dog Trainers. Her other titles are Mine! A Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs, Fight! A Guide to Dog-Dog Aggression, Dogs Are From Neptune, and Oh Behave! Dogs From Pavlov to Premack to Pinker. Her latest book, Train Like a Pro, was her first written for a lay audience.