Events
WITH CONNIE CLEVELAND
Connie Cleveland is an internationally recognized dog trainer who offers specialized weekend training seminars to competitive obedience competitors throughout the USA and internationally.
★★★★★
Connie’s seminars focus on understanding how dogs learn and building clear, effective communication between dog and handler. She is passionate about helping people at every level of the sport — from those just beginning to teach basic skills to seasoned competitors fine-tuning their performances.
Seminars begin with an engaging discussion about How Dogs Learn, followed by individual coaching sessions with each working team. Participants often come with challenges related to teaching new behaviors, maintaining attention, improving heeling, or refining retrieves. Connie also frequently works on more advanced topics such as choreographing performances, maintaining a trained dog's attitude, and troubleshooting complex exercises.
Seminar options:
🐕 Problem Solving with Connie Cleveland
🐾 Working Seminar with Connie Cleveland & Kelsey Wehr
Seminar Options
Problem Solving Seminar
with Connie Cleveland
I offer a limited number of my signature Problem-Solving Seminars, focused on individualized coaching and in-depth training support.
How it works
I typically begin my seminars by spending an hour on the morning of the first day discussing how dogs learn. I then work with the handlers and dogs attending.
Generally, there are people having problems, or are unsure how to teach attention, heeling, retrieving, and recalls, so this becomes the focus of the first day. The second day will cover a variety of problems and questions, such as go-outs, articles, drop on recalls, poor ring performances, etc.
The seminar is limited to 20 working teams. Each team is worked individually. This allows for approximately 35 minutes per team over the course of the two days. If you want each participant to have more time, you may choose to have fewer working spots.
You may have as many spectators as your facility can accommodate. Plan for the working space to be the size of a utility ring.
Working Seminar
with Connie Cleveland & Kelsey Wehr
I’ve teamed up with Kelsey Wehr, my Obedience Road partner, to co-teach a dynamic, hands-on seminar format. This new style gives participants multiple opportunities to work their dogs throughout the two-day event - making it an ideal experience for those who learn best by doing.
How it works
These seminars are designed to give participants multiple opportunities to work their dogs during the two-day event.
The seminar will have short group discussions, and then divide into a beginning and advanced sections.
For example, Saturday morning will have two groups working on heeling. The basic group will work on attention through Novice/Open heeling patterns. The advanced group will work on Utility heeling and signals. Each participant will choose a group to join and will take turns working dogs with their group members. When all participants have had a turn, another breakout session will begin dividing the members between basic and advanced retrieving skills.
There will be three breakout sessions each day. Typically, Saturday’s sessions will focus on heeling, retrieving, and jumping exercises. Sunday’s sessions include position changes, preparing to show, and an opportunity for the participant to choose what he/she wants to review. Participants are welcome to bring more than one dog but can only work one dog per breakout session.
Kelsey and I will alternate between the beginning and advanced groups so that each participant gets equal input from both of us.
The seminar can accommodate 6 breakout sessions for 18 working teams. Alternately, we could consider 27 teams that each participate in 4 breakout sessions. You may have as many spectators as your facility can accommodate. Plan for a working space to be the size of two rings.
2025
- December 6 & 7 - Anchorage, AK 🐕
Janet Brown [email protected]
2026
- January 10 & 11 - Ocala, FL 🐕
Betsy Powers, [email protected] - January 24 & 25 - Arab, AL 🐕
Kitty Thompson, [email protected] - February 7 & 8 - Ft. Myers, FL 🐾
[email protected] - March 14 & 15 - Council Bluffs, IA 🐾
Gerianne Darnell, [email protected] - April 11 & 12 - Cleveland, OH 🐕
Connie Rigotti,
[email protected] - June 27 & 28 - Louisville, KY 🐕
Bella Gaudette, [email protected]
- July 11 & 12 - Ontario, Canada 🐕
Cait Roffey, [email protected] - August 1 & 2 - Quebec, Canada 🐾
Wanda Brown, [email protected] - August 15 & 16 - Spokane, WA 🐕
Linda Ward, [email protected] - September 12 & 13 - Seattle, WA 🐾
Terrie Sato, [email protected] - October 31 & November 1 - Catoctin, MD 🐾
Caren Brouse, [email protected]
2027
- January 9 & 10 - Hampton, VA 🐾
Merrimac Dog Training Club
Julie Kolberg, [email protected] - February 13 & 14 - Syracuse, NY 🐾
Ellie O'Connor , [email protected] - March 20 & 21 - Council Bluffs, IA 🐕
Gerianne Darnell, [email protected] - April 10 & 11 - Washington, DC 🐕
Capital Dog Training Club
Donna Cleverdon, [email protected] -
July 3 & 4 - St Louis, MO 🐕
North County Obedience Training Club
Deborah Baker, [email protected]
- July 24 & 25 - Ann Arbor, MI 🐕
Ann Arbor Dog Training Club
Jeanne Thomas, [email protected] - July 31 & August 1 - Decorah, IA 🐕
Carmen Hurley, [email protected] - August 14 & 15 - Nova Scotia, Canada 🐕
Jill Cairns, [email protected] - September 4 & 5 - Albany, NY 🐕
Mary Maltbie, [email protected] - October 19 & 20 (mid-week) - Essex County, NJ 🐾
Diane Kramer, [email protected]
"Connie is an excellent speaker and has the knowledge to address every aspect of obedience and each team's specific needs.
She offers various ways to address the same problem depending on the dog's response to the training or fix of a problem. She kept the audience engaged with her input of funny personal stories and humor."
Book A Seminar
Bring Connie’s internationally recognized training - designed for competitive obedience handlers of all levels - to your local community.
Email Connie for further information, and to book:
[email protected]
" I loved how Connie included basic skills for people who are newer to obedience.
She really took her time and not only helped them solve problems, but taught them the basic skills they needed. She did this in a way that encouraged them to continue in obedience, but also with a dose of a reality check about having and using corrections when needed for all situations. Her continuous work with Bella over two days was a great example of her commitment to helping with problems, not just obedience exercises."
"I just want to say the seminar more than exceeded my expectations.
Connie is very detailed and a wealth of practical information.
Aside from getting my own problem solved, I liked watching and learning from Connie as she worked with the other teams. I also liked the science behind training (use of reward markers, understanding how dogs learn, types of errors and how to apply corrections) and how this was presented ahead of time. It sunk in better as Connie role modeled and reinforced the concepts over the weekend. Laid out in a systematic way, her system gives you a framework to train and encourages you to think through your problems, focus on the dog in front of you, and make adjustments to better your handling skills."
Thank you! It was a great weekend!
The individualized sessions allowed us each to correctly feel well heard and well helped. And, the cumulative sessions really did give us a sense of not only exercises to use for specific problems but, also, a sense of your overall Obedience Road curriculum.
It was interesting to me that when I was in the “ring” with Ella and you, I really did not think about or worry about people watching. My focus was all on what we were doing. It was like being in a closed space within a much larger space.
I probably should have realized it before, but I had not recognized how much of a human psychologist you have to be to help people train their dogs. Wow! Lots of emotions out there as an overlay to: "I would like my dog to do . . . . " But, you managed both the dog challenges and the handler issues firmly, but supportively on a case-by-case basis.
Although you have defined a clear framework (“the principles don’t change”) in which to teach, you tailored each session to the situation at hand. That’s what makes your approach special and the workshop so meaningful.
I am confident everyone went home well satisfied - and wanting more!
Ella and I have our work cut out. We’ll get up early in the morning and take some more steps down Obedience Road!
~ Warren & Ella
