NEW PORT RICHEY — Marilyn Wolf grew up on 3 acres in Indiana farm country. Her parents loved animals and took in a menagerie of strays and injured pets that needed tending.
As a little girl, she cared for wild rabbits, dogs, cats, birds, a pig, a groundhog, skunks, horses "and whatever showed up looking for love."
She learned to read their "body language" long before anyone knew what "body language" meant.
When she spoke to animals with a soft tone and gentle hands, they listened. When animals spoke to her, she listened, too.
What did she hear?
Well, things that the rest of us might not even notice.
Let her tell you.
"When a dog freezes with his weight forward and his ears going up, you know something's up — he might bite," explains Wolf, 57, a tall, exceedingly calm woman with a patient demeanor who works as pet trainer and animal behavior consultant.
Focus on behaviors
Her business, Korrect Kritters (www.korrectkritters.com), takes her throughout Pasco, Pinellas and northern Hillsborough counties. She likes to work in people's homes because seeing a dog in its everyday environment can tell her a lot.
"I like to see how people in the home interact with the dog," she explains. "How is the dog fed? Is it a shy dog that's being fed in the middle of the kitchen? Maybe that's not the right thing."
She's tuned in to behaviors like barking at the front door, nipping, chasing bicycles and kitchen counter grazing.
Wolf believes there are no bad dogs in the world: "Yes, there are aggressive dogs; yes, there are dogs that bite," she says, "but there are no bad dogs. Just behaviors that aren't desirable."
Wolf spends Thursday mornings as a volunteer at the Suncoast SPCA in New Port Richey, where she sometimes works with dog health issues.
A lot of times, dogs are dropped off at the shelter because they have behavior problems their owners can't handle.
Lately, the shelter has been taking in dogs whose owners have been forced from their homes by foreclosure.
"It's a sad, sad situation," says executive director Martha Murray. "So often in this business we see dogs that have been neglected. In these cases the animals have been loved, adored and held. They've been given up with such reluctance, it would break your heart."
One of the dogs Wolf was working with may well have been a foreclosure victim: Murray found Lily, a young shepherd-boxer mix, leashed to the mailbox of the veterinarian's office across the street.
"She had actually pulled the mailbox out of the ground," recalls Murray, who named her Lily because she found her right around Easter. She suspects that families facing foreclosure sometimes don't want to actually bring their dog into the shelter and tell their story because they are embarrassed.
For her part, Lily was full of happiness and love, so much so that she just wanted to jump up and down.
"She's just young and hasn't had any training," explained Wolf, who after five minutes had captured Lily's undivided attention. The brindle-colored dog had stopped jumping and was gazing at Wolf attentively.
"If I can't get her attention, I don't have anything at all," said Wolf , who charges $65 an hour for her expertise. Typically, training can be addressed in about five sessions, she says, but if there's a specific behavior that needs to be worked on, she can often help in just one session.
Wolf, who lives in the Timber Greens development in New Port Richey with her husband, Burt Weitzman, a retired IBM executive, wasn't always a dog trainer.
Thanks to Tommy
She's worked for the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Wolf and Weitzman moved to Pasco County in 2000 because it fit criteria they developed for retirement. Proximity to a large city, airports, hospitals, the water — as well as a solid local Jewish community — were high on their list.
"We chose the Tampa Bay area because it met a lot of those needs," Wolf says. After retirement, she began to pursue dog training, thanks to the influence of her late dog, Tommy, a Rhodesian ridgeback mix. Tommy posed a real challenge to the normally animal-savvy Wolf.
"Before he was a year old, he decided his job in life was to be our sheriff. He took his job very seriously," Wolf writes in a section of her Web site devoted to Tommy. "At home with us and with most people he was funny, happy and playful. When people came to the door or in the house, he was vigilant in his duties. He might be friendly, he might not, and I was never able to consistently identify the things that set him off. "
Wolf consulted discussion boards and began to read avidly on the subject of dog health and dog training. She attended seminars, classes and joined professional organizations.
"I wanted to be as good a partner to my dog as I could be," she writes. "I learned different techniques, training, behavior analysis, more body language specific to dogs, and environmental management."
Wolf became a certified pet dog trainer and earned other accolades. She's also a member of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. She officially launched Korrect Kritters in 2007, but health problems forced her to put things on hold for a few months. She began marketing the business in earnest about a month ago.
Now when she shows up for an appointment, she's driving her tan Honda van with a "Korrect Kritters" sign and wearing a polo shirt emblazoned with the logo. At the SPCA, dogs seemed to mellow in her presence.
She is following her dream, she says. And more.
"One reason I love training dogs is that I get to hug dogs all day," she says. "What a great job!"
Source: http://www.tampabay.com/
Every pet lover dreamed of having the best pet for themselves. Most of us go to the petshop to get those, but did you know that some of the best pets came from the shelters?
