Canine Country Club

Leslie Baumann has been training and showing dogs her entire adult life and began participating in agility about twelve years ago.  Her first agility dog, Winston, was the first Lhasa Apso champion to receive Open, Excellent and Master AKC agility titles.  In 2007 and 2008, Winston ranked among the top AKC agility Lhasas.  The team competed at the AKC Invitational in Long Beach, CA in December 2007.

Winston retired in 2008 and passed away unexpectedly last August.  In his place, Leslie is currently competing at the Excellent level with her young Lhasa Apso, ShiSedo Reverie OA, OAJ, NF (aka Paris) and her Border Collie, Cloverdale Rock Maven AX, OAJ, XF.  In addition, Leslie’s one year old male Border Collie, Rival’s I Spy, is beginning to shine in both agility and herding.

An agility instructor for the past seven years, Leslie regularly attends seminars and camps to learn from nationally respected instructors, including numerous AKC World Team members, past and present. As a professional member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, an organization founded by Ian Dunbar, her training philosophy is geared towards building communication and teamwork between handler and dog via incremental learning and positive reinforcement. While competition keeps Leslie on her toes, she believes the real joy in agility is the ongoing development of a close working relationship between handler and dog. 

Because of Leslie’s commitment to force-free training, she has revamped her introductory agility classes to include more behavior training based on the latest research in canine learning theory.  Her successful “Take a Minute” dog training exercises help students to become  thoughtful trainers while their dogs learn how to be “thinkers” as well as “doers.”  “Take A Minute” exercises are easy and fun even as they provide a solid foundation not only for continued training but also for improving day-to-day behavior.  Leslie’s goal is for all her canine students to reach their full potential and become the sort of dogs – like Winston – whom we never forget.

Linda Knol currently teaches classes and does private training consultations here at Canine Country Club. She has also taught Obedience classes, Canine Good Citizenship classes and tricks classes for many years in Michigan, Florida, and Minnesota. She has shown and titled her own dogs in UKC Obedience. Linda was instrumental in starting the Prison Tails program at Westville Correctional Facility, Westville, Indiana, where she designed the curriculum, lectured and taught classes.

She is a member of the Professional Humane Educators Association. A former 4-H Dog Project Leader, Humane Society volunteer, Porter County Animal Shelter volunteer, and Board Member of F.O.U.N.D. (Friends of Unwanted, Neglected Dogs),  Linda also works for Therapy Dog International, Inc with her therapy dog, Ellie.

Andrea Erickson has been active in breeding and exhibiting purebred dogs since 1972. She has successfully shown and finished many of her own dogs as well as handled dogs for others. Her Kivalina Siberian Huskies are known as Group Winners and Specialty Winners. Andrea is also the proud owner of the #1 Polish Lowland Sheepdog in 2003. Kivalina bred and co-bred champions number over 60, and have been successful in competition around the world.

Emily and her family relocated to the area from Pennsylvania one year ago. In her former life she taught High School Biology and currently teaches online Anatomy and Physiology. Emily's family is her priority and that includes her two dogs, a beagle-mix (Indy) and a rescue border collie (Jen). They both live for flyball! They have both earned their Flyball Master Champion titles and have over 34,000 points between the two of them.

Emily and her husband, Phil, have been involved in the sport of flyball since 2001 and she has been teaching the addictive sport since 2002. Her training has included lessons from several of the leading trainers in flyball including the world record holding team (Springloaded) and hands on training of over 100 dogs. She co-founded the team of United We Fly, and co-captained the 2006 Region 15 Multi-Breed Championship Team, as well as having two dogs race on the championship team.

Her main focus in training dogs and their humans are flyball, positive training methods, canine nutrition, and dog behavior.