Lake Oswego Review/West Linn Tidings | September 11, 2014
Written by Cliff Newell
Lucid Dog Training makes dogs better dogs, masters better masters
Photo Credit: REVIEW, TIDINGS PHOTO: VERN UYETAKE – Katie Brower and Chris Wodja want owners and dogs to see each other in an entirely new way. They are supported in this goal by Brower’s dog, Annie.
Sometimes a dog owner looks at his dog and thinks, “Rover is just not as good a dog as I would like him to be.”
But has a dog owner ever thought the dog might be thinking the same thing about him?
This paradox has provided an opening for a new kind of dog training business called Lucid Dog Training of Lake Oswego. Chris Wojda and Katie Brower have combined their unique talents to offer a service dedicated to developing richer relationships between dogs and the men and women who love them. Dogs become man’s best friend in fact as well as in cliché.
“In working with dogs I’ve been able to get them to do some amazing things,” Wojda said. “Not just dog tricks but showing owners and dogs how to relate. Our entire curriculum is to help people understand their dogs better. It’s a lifetime learning experience. Dog training is not something you do for six weeks and it’s over.”
Wojda graduated from Lakeridge High School and recently moved back to Lake Oswego. He had a 16-year career in advertising before he decided he liked training dogs better than making business deals. He has long been deeply involved in the intellectual side of dog training.
“It has always been my personal passion to work with dogs,” Wojda said. “I’ve always studied it.”
But Lucid Dog Training would not have come about if Wojda had not met Brower a year ago. Brower did not have Wojda’s expertise with dogs, but she was an expert with people after six years as an elementary school teacher and earning a master’s degree in adult education. Her meeting with Wojda was a match made in dog training heaven.
“I’ve gotten out of public education, and I’ve switched to critters,” said Brower, who also trains horses. “Chris is very skilled and knowledgeable about dogs, and I’m catching up with him. But my specialty is people.”
Together, Brower and Wojda are creating golden futures for owners and their dogs.
“Families can do a lot more with dogs than they ever imagined,” Wojda said. “Once they can get their dogs to really want to do things, the training is easy. The dog can be made to see the person as the center of all things good, the source of everything it likes.”
Wojda and Brower can teach dogs to walk nicely on a leash instead of jerking you all over the neighborhood and how to play catch, play recall (training your dog to come when it is called), attain impulse control and much more.
“People see a highly trained dog and say, ‘If only my dog could do that,’” Wojda said. “It can. You can set up your dog for success.”
A dog owner can’t ask for more than for their dog to do a lot of tricks and to idolize them.
Just like Brower’s dog, Annie, a canine of boundless good nature and a role model for other dogs on how to act in a park.
For more about Lucid Dog Training, go to luciddogtraining.com or call 503-702-3690.
Photo Credit: REVIEW, TIDINGS PHOTO: VERN UYETAKE – Katie Brower and her dog, Annie, have a romp at George Rogers Park. Lucid Dog Training has helped Annie achieve a supremely good nature.
Download a PDF of the Lake Oswego Review article here, or check out Pamplin Media’s website to read the article.