Debbie Schaefer is on all fours pretending to be a dog.

            The petite, blonde-haired woman with laughing eyes is the owner of the dog training facility, the Well-Mannered Dog. She is a respected, certified Eugene dog trainer. The natural assumption is that she’s obsessed with animals. In fact, it’s just the reverse: She works with dogs because she likes people.

            “So many dog trainers I know have poor social skills,” she says, “but it’s not a job for people who don’t like people.” Friendly comments and laughter punctuate her classes. She’s laughing with the dogs and she’s hoping to make the owners laugh too.

            “The best experiences have been all the times when I see people laughing and enjoying their dogs,” she says. “I love watching the owners’ faces and seeing their faces light up. You can see the relationship that’s developing between owner and dog.”

            On this particular Thursday night, she is helping that relationship along as much as she can by being a distraction.

            Several yards away, facing her, are four women and four dogs. The goal for tonight: The dogs need to focus on their owners and ignore all distractions, including trainers acting like dogs. Schaefer instructs the owners to walk toward her one at a time with their dogs. She calls out the dogs’ names, encouraging them forward. Each dog races straight for Schaefer, tail wagging furiously.

            “They all lost their brains,” she says. “Stop and get them focused again.”

             “They lost their brains” is one of Schaefer’s favorite phrases and when dogs lose their brains, it’s up to Schaefer and the owners to remind them what they should be thinking about.

            “You got a dog for enjoyment, not for work,” Schaefer says. She pauses and looks around the room. “But dogs are a lot of work.”

            The women in the Basic Obedience class look down ruefully at their dogs. The dogs look back up at them or around the room at the other dogs, tails lashing and perhaps the hint of a sly, doggy grin on their faces. The women laugh.

            Half of the battle with bad dog behavior is working with the owner, and the owner has to be comfortable and willing to change how they think about their dogs and to recognize the behaviors they’re encouraging or discouraging. This can be a frustrating process. Schaefer must work tirelessly, tweaking one training procedure for a certain dog, explaining a process differently for another owner, working as a go-between for the two species. Dogs and people are challenging. Schaefer has never said no to a challenge, which is how she started training in the first place.

            The first dog Schaefer ever trained was her mom’s sheltie. Schaefer was twelve years old at the time.

            The rule was that the kids could train the dog, but they had to work with it every day or they would lose the privilege. Schaefer’s sister worked with the dog first.

            “I let my mom know every time my sister didn’t train the dog,” said Schaefer, who was soon given the responsibility of training the dog.

            “I went to classes and did what I was told,” she said. “The methods used back then were the choke chain and correcting the things done wrong.”

            Years later, she developed a very different method when she branched out on her own with the Well-Mannered Dog in 1987. She focuses on positive reinforcement and understanding what influences a dog’s behavior. She has found that often the first and biggest challenge is to get the dog to calm down.

            “To be able to let the dog know, ‘You can lay here and not do anything.’ That’s a big deal for owners,” she said.

            Each dog and each owner is unique. Schaefer customizes every class accordingly. The classes are always limited to eight dogs and Schaefer also offers private sessions. This means a lot of mental gymnastics for Schaefer, who must constantly be catering to individual dogs and owners. Some might think this is enough of a challenge, but Schaefer doesn’t stop there and perhaps her love of a challenge is best illustrated by her own choice of dog.

            She says the stereotype of a dog trainer calls for a house overflowing with dogs and other animals. Schaefer has only one dog, a border collie Aussie mix named Guess who has an obsessive compulsive behavior.  When Schaefer first adopted him through a rescue group, he was an anxious mess.

            “I told them I was looking for a dog that would be a challenge and shouldn’t go into the average home,” said Schaefer. And that’s exactly what she got.

Guess would freeze up if Schaefer had his ball. He really wanted the ball, of course, but he couldn’t respond to commands. In the beginning days and months, he would just go rigid and Schaefer could actually sit down next to him and cross one front paw over the other and he wouldn’t move it back.

             With lots of patience and hard work, Guess improved dramatically, but Schaefer is careful about where she takes him and she doesn’t use him to help her teach classes. In the classes, she says, it’s important for the owners to see their own dogs doing something right.

            Guess helps to illustrate what she said earlier: Dogs are work. This doesn’t mean the work is boring. In the Beginning Agility class she teaches, it’s all about having fun while working hard. This class is for the dogs who can follow the basic commands of “come, sit, stay, down” and who don’t pull on the leash. They are by no means perfect, but Schaefer has found that the class helps strengthen training ideas and principles in the mind of both dog and master.

             The warehouse room becomes an obstacle course with tunnels and jumps and objects to avoid, weave through, and jump on. The dogs in the class are off-leash, friendly with each other and comfortable. Schaefer outlines the path she wants the dogs to follow through the obstacle course. The owners line up their dogs, waiting their turn. Candy, a mixed breed dog, is first.

              Her owner, Andrew Venor, calls out instructions: “Left! Through! Down!” And Candy is off as fast as she can through the obstacle course, ears cocked for her owner’s voice. Venor is excited and Candy is ecstatic; one behavior encourages another. Obedience is only one element of a dog’s successful run through the obstacle course; the dogs are relying on clear instructions from their owners.

             “For some people, it’s about figuring out their lefts and rights,” Schaefer laughed.

             Watching the dogs and people interact in the agility class, Schaefer sees the reason she even started training: “I just thought training would be fun.” She enjoys what she does because of the challenges and because of the people. Even though she has been bitten by dogs before, aggressive dogs and mean people have yet to discourage her.

              “There’s an aspect of me that’s a bit stupid,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of fears. I do have a lot of respect. I’m watching the dog and I can be very respectful because I don’t have fear.”

             It is through this lack of fear, this love of people and dogs, that Schaefer communicates her one simple goal: “I want people to enjoy their dogs.”