About me – Ann Walko

The first animal I trained was my pet goldfish. I was around 10 years old and ended up teaching that fish to swim through a bubble wand hoop…using food flakes as a reward – because…how can you physically get a goldfish to swim through something?? At that point I wanted to have a career training marine mammals when I grew up – I was a HUGE SeaWorld and Marineland fan (I grew up in Northeast Florida). Well, life happens….and those thoughts faded into the background.

As I attended university classes, I also started taking flying lessons, obtaining my private pilot license in 1989 and my flight instructor certification in 1992.

More years pass, there’s more flying, businesses to run – along with a move to Maine. Then an article appears in our local newspaper – a guide dog school in New York is looking for puppy raisers. At the time, I wasn’t ready – so I saved that clipping…and a few years later got hooked up with a different guide dog school and started raising puppies.

I got asked to teach the local classes. Training methods then were compulsion based, but quickly morphed into positive reinforcement/reward (food) based techniques. (yay!)

I move out of state to work at a corporate flight department for a few years, then get my “dream job” – working at the guide dog school. Working with 6-8 week old puppies, performing evaluations and temperament testing, along with teaching group classes and coaching individual puppy raisers. After a short time I return to Maine to work for an aviation company, along with helping with the local puppy raiser group and working towards my professional dog trainer certification (CPDT-KA), which is completed in 2016.

My canine assistant – Willy

Willy was medically released from the guide dog program at Guiding Eyes for the Blind. Due to an eye infection during his first week of life, his left eye did not develop properly. He has only light perception in that eye. However, it doesn’t slow him down at all!

Willy plays in agility, scentwork, and rally. He passed the  National Association of Canine Scent Work (NACSW) Odor Recognition Test (ORT) for the for all three odors (birch, anise, clove) when he was 10 months old.

We currently compete in NACSW and AKC scentwork. We have completed novice AKC agility titles. He also has his AKC Rally Advanced (RA) title. I love how we have grown as a team and watching Willy totally enjoy these activities!

Willy also helps out as a calm dog distraction. He’s completed all levels of the AKC Canine Good Citizen program and achieved the second highest level in the AKC Trick Dog program. We are also a registered Therapy Dog team through Alliance of Therapy Dogs.