The Canine Communicators
Pioneering effective innovations for lifestyle dog obedience training,
canine behavioural rehabilitation & quiet kennel management.
The Canine Communicators concept brings together four distinct businesses that complement each other through a set of professional ethics and standards that combine to produce exciting customer service and training innovations within our industry.
Alpha Dog Training, Boarding School For Dogs, Alpha Canine Professional and Alpha Boarding Kennels have all gained a strong reputation amongst other industry professionals as businesses that provide referred clients with a high level of friendly and professional service. This service is based on results for our customers, whether it's helping owners with difficult dogs, training professional people how to understand, handle and train dogs or providing a quiet and peaceful environment for owners wishing to board their dogs.
Testimony to this achievement is the amount of excellent feedback we receive from vets and groomers who have commented on the positive feedback they have received from our mutual clients. Word-of-mouth is the strongest advertisement for any business and we thank our loyal customers for spreading the message when it comes to sharing their positive experiences.
Each site has testimonials from those who have taken the time to put these experiences down in writing or in our customer feedback interviews. Whether it's boarding your dog, training your dog or learning to become a dog trainer/handler, The Canine Communicators take pride in the services we have to offer and have passionate, highly skilled and friendly staff to help you out every step of the way.
About Greg Fontana (Training Director)
The Canine Communicators is the brainchild of Greg Fontana, the Training Director for Alpha Dog Training, Boarding School For Dogs, Alpha Canine Professional and the co-proprietor (with his wife Amy) of Alpha Boarding Kennels. Greg's love for dogs, pride in helping dog owners, dedication to trainer education and standards and passion for researching and developing better ways to improve all aspects of these interests has kept him driven and inspired for well over 20 years.
Because of Greg's passionate and active involvement in all of these businesses, it became apparent to him that there was the need for some degree of consolidation that would bring them officially together under the one banner. The Canine Communicators concept has effectively been a work in progress since 1996 and is now finally a reality.
In about 1994, Greg stepped up from being a part-time dog trainer to become a full-time professional dog trainer working for a successful training business here in Victoria. Over the next two years he developed a strong sense of service ideals and many training ideas that needed their own space to develop, so the difficult decision was taken to step out and go off in his own direction.
With the support of many loyal customers and talented trainers of the same mindset, Alpha Dog Training was created along with his steadily growing boarding and training business.In Alpha Dog Training, Greg teamed up George Visentin and Kylie Bright (Kylie is no longer with Alpha) and together they formed a tight knit group of like-minded individuals who all believed in creating something very new and exciting in the dog training world. To this day both Greg and George remain passionate about Alpha and have, through their belief and dedication, created a business model that is unique within the dog training industry.
Heading back to 1996, as a full-time professional, Greg's focus was now purely on developing an experience base of his own on a foundation of new and exciting ideals that would take these businesses into the future. Being a full time trainer and with the most training experience behind him, Greg was charged with the responsibility of everything from manning the phones to guiding the business direction and system development within Alpha. There was always so much to think about and organise, and of course, to put into action and it was from the very early stages that Greg and George in particular, developed both a friendship and working bond that would produce many exciting innovations for dog training in the weekly class environment.
Even at this time in his career, Greg had his sights set firmly on one day having a complete service package for dog owners that would include a full-time boarding and training complex where he could educate the general public and professionals alike. Anyone who knows Greg well will remember these early times and the drive he had to one day achieve these goals!
Things were moving fast at this time. By 1997 Greg gave his rapidly growing boarding and training business its official trading name, Boarding School For Dogs (BSFD). This name describes the business so well that it is now often copied by others in the industry and used as a generic term to describe similar offerings within their own business. But, there's much, much more to a business than its name or description and Greg was incredibly focused on researching and developing his own methods, terminology and standards based on the exciting dog training and canine behaviour rehabilitation results that were coming his way.
It was also incredibly obvious in those early days that his dedication to service delivery was very much on the right track. Spurred on by the feedback he was receiving both over the phone and in person from many concerned dog owners, Greg set out to create higher standards for both instructors knowledge and skills, their own trained dogs and for the quality of services offered to customers requiring their help. This was (and still is) the driving force behind every business and training decision made in those early days and it has helped to forge a strong identity of professional integrity within the industry.
With the creation of Alpha Dog Training, Greg, along with George and Kylie developed the "Lifestyle Canine Communication System" (LCCS), a synergistic combination of customer service and relations, lifestyle obedience training, effective behavioural modification techniques and instructor training and standards. These four areas of the business were all integrally connected to each other, thus starting an exciting journey of research and development into new and effective techniques that could be totally relevant across the whole system. In simple terms, this meant that the development of new handling techniques or instructor standards was going to have a direct affect on customer service.
Establishing this synergy within the LCCS forced Greg to assess all facets of the business virtually as one and it wasn't long before an unbreakable thread of consistency emerged as the strength within the system as a whole. This then formed the foundation to his instructor training manual written for the Alpha Dog Training Professional Dog Trainer's Course, coming in to its 8th edition and now approximately 200 pages long. It contains invaluable information for instructors covering everything form the "Pattern Learning" Training Method and specialised, obedience handling techniques to the Alpha Random Training Techniques and the unique Alpha "Split System" Class Structures.
The LCCS was specifically targeted at group training sessions where classes were offered to the general public ranging from puppies to high level, off-lead advanced obedience.
At the same time Alpha Dog Training was moving forward, so too was Boarding School For Dogs (BSFD). Greg was passionate about the training methods utilised in both businesses and as a full-time professional was actively applying and assessing techniques everyday on the dogs he was personally training, ensuring that they were truly effective on any breed, any age and any disposition. The more challenging the dog, the more exciting the results. This inspired Greg to continue looking into better handling techniques and variations on obedience exercises that were reliable under distraction.
The reliability of the training methods under distraction is also a fundamental part of Greg's research into obedience and behavioural modification. Since the beginning of BSFD, Greg has taken the dogs that he trained in the kennels back into the owner's homes to do the official hand-back. This 'jumping into the fire' attitude is something that has been non-negotiable for Greg since he started offering his boarding and training service. The dogs had to perform reliably once home again, regardless of the distractions confronting them upon their return. To his mind, this was the only true way of establishing whether the training methods were effective in real life scenarios.
All this hands-on dog training wasn't just about the obedience and behaviour modification either. Greg was also dedicated to developing teaching techniques that would empower owners to understand their dogs and retain their new handling skills at the same time. Add to this behavioural modification techniques and you can have a fair bit of ground to cover with the dog owner. However, this wasn't as daunting a challenge as some would think. Because of Greg's total focus on overall consistency, the flow of information was structured to help owners learn in a manner that assisted both learning and retention of the new skills. There was total method and structure to the hand-back process and it was proving to be very successful indeed.
As the BSFD and Alpha Dog Training businesses grew in both size and reputation, Greg, along with his wife Amy who is also an accomplished dog trainer and business manager, decided it was time to take the next step towards realising his initial dream. In 2003 they purchased a boarding kennel in Macclesfield, located in the beautiful Dandenong Ranges and moved headlong into a new chapter in not only their lives, but also in the direction of their businesses. The timing was perfect. There was enough loyal clientele from both training businesses along with a loyal referral network to ensure that rapid growth would be a certainty.
It wasn't long before Greg was applying the same approach to service, standards and development within the new kennel environment. Alpha Boarding Kennels adopted consistent service standards from the other two businesses and with Greg's working knowledge and understanding of the kennel industry in general, it wasn't long before the ideas he had been waiting to put into practice started to become a reality. The quiet kennel concept was the main focus of this operation and Greg had always known that this could be achieved with highly trained staff who understood canine behaviour and were equally motivated to create a peaceful environment conducive to keeping dogs both calm and happy.
Again, it wasn't long before the Alpha Boarding Kennel's reputation started to spread. Without fail, customers, delivery drivers, trades people, full-time course participants and those visiting for inspections all started to openly comment, often in amazement, on the lack of barking and the overall peaceful atmosphere – even when the kennels were at capacity! Happy, calm dogs – all achieved without the use of sedatives.
In 2004 Greg took the development of Boarding School For Dogs a step further when he developed the Canine Leadership System (CLS), a specific training system aimed more at boarding and training and individual (private tuition) training applications. The CLS also included intensive trainer and handler education for professionals in dog related industries. Greg has developed full-time, intensive course structures for professional dog trainers, animal assistants and dog handlers and has successfully trained visitors from overseas on courses ranging from seven days to four weeks in duration. His passion for teaching and attention to individual progress ensures that all course attendees gain skills and knowledge that actually works in real-time applications.
Another exciting development at that time was the formal introduction of Canine Good Behaviour Shaping (CGBS). This has long been a strong focus of Greg's commitment to find the common threads of canine behaviour that were consistent across all breeds and all dispositions. Ever since he started BSFD, he knew there could be a better approach to training dogs and educating their owners. Eventually he found a way to bridge the gap between obedience training and behavioural modification, bringing the two concepts into one consistent language. This has taken years of research and development, but the results have been truly amazing. These results are relevant to both BSFD and Alpha Dog Training where the Canine Good Behaviour Shaping System has been adapted into the training system to educate trainers and help dog owners attending weekly classes.
Since 1996, Greg has also been a prolific writer over the journey and has documented all developments within the Lifestyle Canine Communication System and the Canine Leadership System. He has been responsible for all advertising and promotion of each business and has designed and written all advertising brochures and booklets and provided all content for these and previous websites. Combine all this with the trainer's manuals and the production of the monthly newsletter for Alpha Dog Training which contains detailed articles on canine training and behaviour, then you end up with a very substantial body of work outlining the development of all the training methods and systems (see the Intellectual Property Page).
© Copyright Greg Fontana, Training Director, Canine Communicators, 2008. This website was created by Ladybug®.