About The DEV Dog Pack 

Hello again and welcome to our “Meet Out Pack" page! Our little pack consists of myself, Corey, our three doggos (Bella, Bear, & Ogun) and our cat (Cali).

First up, a bit more about Corey and his background. Corey grew up in California but his family moved to Arizona when he was about 8 years old. He has forever been obsessed with animals, even as a wee kiddo, insisting that he have his "zoo" with him at all times. This "zoo" being a tissue box filled with little plastic animals. As time went on, he grew out of needing his "zoo" but he never stopped loving animals. Initially, like most animal loving tiny humans, he decided he should become a veterinarian, but quickly realized while working at Cornerstone Animal Hospital (shout out to the Burke's and their crew!) that he was much more interested in the behavior side of things over medical. And so his dog training journey began. 

He has dedicated his life to learning as much as he can about canine behavior so he can further improve our training program. He spent about a year learning from a mentor in Los Angeles who specialized in intense behavior modification. After that, he moved back to Arizona and worked for a local dog training company there for 7 years. During that time, he was given the chance to refine his skills, practice a solid method for creating stronger canine communication, and fine tune his abilities, particularly with pups with the most severe behavioral challenges. 

In 2018, Corey and I started Dog’s Eye View, and now we are working together towards building the biz and helping as many people as humanly possible with their dogs. We recognize the struggle that folks have been through and we want to help them through those struggles so they too can have a peaceful, fun, and amazing relationship with their dogs.  

We decided to move to Oxford, Michigan in 2021 to be closer to my family (spoiler, I am from the Mitten) after our second trimester loss of our daughter, Lyra. Debated writing this bit because it is so devastating even to this day, but that experience had a huge influence on who we are and how we see the world, so it’s important to share. 

 

Next up, a little more about yours truly! If you missed it on the home page, my name is Kate. I am Corey's wife and partner in the biz. I too am a lifelong lover of animals, but instead of a tiny zoo, when I was young, I lugged around as many stuffed animals as I could carry. In fact, I was 2 years old when we moved into the house where my parents still live today, and I had a total meltdown because I thought they were leaving all of my stuffed friends behind. Explains a lot...

Anyways, I am from Sterling Heights, Michigan, but in 2014 I ventured off Arizona to thaw and see what I could see. It took me several years to find Corey, which is unfortunate on many levels, one of which being that at the time, I had the biggest problem-child dog of them all, Riley. Now Riley was my heart dog. I love him most still to this day, even though he made his way over the rainbow bridge in 2019, but man was he a butthead. I mean really. I took him in when he was 5 years old and I was 19 with "SUCKER" written on my forehead. I just couldn't resist those ear tufts. He peed on everything, including my dad's TV and my parent's chandelier (I'll have to do a YouTube vid on that story at some point, it's a good one), he pulled on the leash like a freight train, reacted at anything that moved, had a general distrust of strangers, I couldn't get him to eat regularly to save my life so he was always skinny skinny, and he would chew up my moldings, carpets, anything near the door when I would leave. 

All of this changed when I met Corey. I couldn't believe it but after 5 years of struggling with my then 10 year old dog, we finally had a breakthrough. That was when I knew that Corey was on to something and I wanted to spend the rest of our lives helping people out of the same types of holes that I had found myself in so many years ago.

Outside of the dog world, we also clicked on our general nerdiness. We both love video games and fantasy stories and very soon after we started dating got into Dungeons and Dragons. I now run multiple games as the Dungeon Master and it is such a blast! Corey even proposed while running a very special D&D game. Dungeons and dragons and doggos, what else could you need in life really? 

A little bit about my work background. I graduated from Grand Valley State University in 2012 with a photography degree and minor in business. After graduating, I couldn’t find a job that I liked to save my life so I worked 2-3 part time gigs at a time doing photography as well as working at horse boarding facilities where my horse at the time lived. I eventually landed a gig in recruiting for a healthcare system (thanks mom) and did that for a bit but knew it was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my existence. When the opportunity arose to move to Phoenix, I leapt at the chance even though I didn’t have a job lined up, nor a place to live. I did find a job pretty quick in staffing for Kelly Services and it was not too bad. I learned a whole lot about recruiting, management, communication, and my team was awesome. We had good times. I left there to take on an opportunity at PetSmart Charities which started amazing but fizzled after about a year and a half. Again, I learned a ton about all kinds of things and met amazing people, but that experience made it abundantly clear that corporate life just wasn’t for me.

So, I shifted gears and landed a job with the Arizona Animal Welfare League as their Volunteer & Events Manager. The two and a half years there was a total roller coaster ride. Some days were beyond amazing while others so heartbreaking I could hardly breathe. But! Again, the trend with my career so far is the incredible people I was blessed to meet and get to work with for my time at the shelter.  My volunteers were a constant inspiration and kept me going even through the roughest of times.

While I was at the shelter though, I always knew that my path would take me into entrepreneurship because Corey and I decided early on that our dream was to open our own dog training biz. So in December of 2019, I took the leap and joined Corey full time. (Just in time for the pandemic!) As much as I miss my volunteers and the other staff at AAWL, it was the best move I could have made. We are having an absolute blast and knowing that every day we are helping people improve their lives with their doggos is so incredibly rewarding.

 

But enough about me, let’s talk about our dogs! You’ll see our three in our YouTube videos and social media posts.

Our oldest is Bella. We lost her sister, Loba, early in 2021 to cancer. That was a devastating blow to our little family and we miss her dearly. Supposedly the girls were from the same litter but they look so different so we don’t know for sure. Corey adopted them from Maricopa County Animal Care & Control when they were only three months old. Even though Corey saved them, Bella is my dog. She immediately gravitated towards me and is basically my spirit animal. She loves snuggling on the couch, all the snacks, and just wants to sunbathe and chill.

Our middle child is Ogun. Ogun is Bella’s foil character in every way. He has more go than the Energizer Bunny and is constantly looking for ways to get into trouble. He’s the type of dog who we could put on our treadmill for 2 hours and he would still be ready to run a marathon right away. 30 minutes on the treadmill would put Bella up for a week. Even though I continuously compare him to a gremlin, we do just love him to pieces. I just can’t wait for the day we can finally buy a larger piece of property and he can run around to his heart’s content. Plus, we plan to get goats, so he can herd them. That’ll be fun. :)

Last up is the newest addition, Bear. We didn't intend to add Bear to our family, but we tried placing him three times and three times he came back to us. If we were to find the perfect family for him, we absolutely would place him again, but until that day comes, he's safe with us. He was found on the streets when he was only a couple days old. His mother had been shot and half of his litter had already passed. Given the behaviors he has shown us over the years, we can only assume that his family had been on the streets for generations. He is overprotective of his space, skeptical of anything different, reactive to dogs and strangers, and a resource guarding extraordinaire. He is the type of dog that you have to be super careful with and must be on a solid structured program to be successful. So, that is exactly what we do. He is not an easy dog by any stretch, but he has taught us a great deal and only solidifies in our minds the importance of responsible breeding practices. But! That’s a soapbox rant for another day.

 

Also, we can’t end this page without mentioning our kitty! Even though she is a feline, we still consider her a part of the DEV dog pack. Cali Cat is very much like Bella, and quickly decided I was her human when we first met years ago. She too loves the naps and all the snacks and sitting on my shoulder. Every day starting at about 1pm, she thinks it's dinnertime and lets us know it until it is actually dinnertime. She’s quite the micromanager but we love her spunk. Since our move to Michigan, she has been living with my sister and found her newest love: Sam’s fireplace. She lays for hours warming her tummy in front of the fire making happy chirps when given the opportunity. And if the fireplace is off while humans are around, she yells at them until they turn it back on. Tellin ya, she is such a boss. 

That about sums us up! I hope this gives you a little bit of insight into our lives and who we are as goofy dog loving humans. Now that you know us a little bit, let’s talk about how we can help you. Click the button below to read more about our training philosophy and why it’s important to know before you get started.

Next Up - Our Training Philosophy