It Started With Blueseph

My story starts with a dog named Blueseph.

I was fresh out of the military, at the height of my amateur boxing career, and wondering, “Where is my life taking me?”

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She was my first dog. I was 23, had finally gotten back on my feet after leaving the military, and was living with a friend who had recently bought Blueseph’s sister.

When my friend gave me a point of contact to check whether there were any puppies left, the response was, “All the pups are accounted for.”

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That was the last I thought of it.

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This was two weeks before Christmas. Then, at around 1 a.m. on New Year’s Day, I received a message from the family: “Someone just backed out, and a puppy is available.” Who would have known that $350 would turn into one of the most enriching and eye-opening decisions of my life?

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Blueseph loved to please. She loved to learn, and she taught me how to love learning, too. We faced everything together, and she was a major reason I was able to say goodbye to my life in Canada and move to Southern California.

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And while my journey began with Blueseph, and she is no longer here, our journey is just getting started. That is what Canine Conscious grew out of. People saw how well-trained Blueseph was and wanted to know how to do the same with their own dogs. Eventually, it became my full-time work.

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Today, I train dogs on our property in Valley Center or go wherever we are needed. I work one-on-one with owners, take dogs for board-and-train stays, and share my work publicly through training content so owners everywhere can learn to read their dogs better.

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Blueseph is gone now, but everything I teach traces back to her.

She was not the dog I expected. She was the dog I needed.