Meet the Trainer
My name is Ashley Carlton. I am a former police officer and a member of Athens-Limestone Rescue Squad K9 unit. We have one dog cross trained in Airscent and Cadaver, 1 trailing dog, and 1 cadaver only dog, as well as a therapy dog. I am a former member of the United Schutzhund Club of America, with 2 retired 1st place Sieger dogs. I participate in PSA, but focus on realistic scenario-based protection. I specialize in obedience, behavior modification, personal protection, and Search and Rescue. I also have experience with training Service dogs for PTSD and Autism.
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I have been training for over 12 years. I grew up with dogs and always trained them to do tricks. I first got interested in training agility dogs with my Maltese. I was fascinated by border collies and bought me a border collie mix, Chloe. She was the hardest dog I've ever trained, but she made me who I am today. She passed in 2020 and I still miss her.
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I decided to look into professional training for her and realized how much the prices were and how normal people couldn't afford that. So, I researched all the different methods and used Chloe as a test dummy. I am big believer in understanding psychology and over the years I have learned to combine methods for each dog to best suit their learning abilities. I started taking in rescue dogs and training them and rehoming them, which made me realize most dogs are dumped due to behavior issues that arise from lack of training. So, I started taking dogs in on the weekends for cheap to try and help prevent dogs being dumped.
I got my first imported GSD Westa in 2015 and fell in love with the protection world. We started as IPO, but soon realized it was useless in the real world, so we moved to personal protection and PSA. My husband was a volunteer firefighter, and the department didn't have dogs for search, so I decided to train Westa for it, and fell in love with SAR.
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I have learned a lot over the years, but the most important things are that all dogs learn differently, and the dog's success is dependent on the owner's dedication and understanding. Most owners do not believe in corrections or dominance and that is a very important part of most training. If your dog doesn't feel like you are doing a good job at being alpha, it will take leadership from you and then things start to get bad. Some dogs require positive only, while some dogs require dominance and control. It is important to see why a dog is doing something and fix the cause, rather than just trying to stop the behavior without fixing the issue.
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