CanineLink Alumni Spotlight - Melanie Jansen

By Jamie Damato Migdal, CEO & Pet Industry Entrepreneur

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I love our students, and I love watching them learn and grow throughout their time with us, whether they just take the eight-week Behavior Fundamentals course or continue on through Essential and Advanced Training Skills. I’ve been very lucky in that a lot of our alumni stay in touch and remain part of the CanineLink family long after classes are over.

With that in mind, we’re starting a new semi-regular feature on the CanineLink blog, spotlighting alumni from all of our classes. First up – Melanie Jansen, graduate of the September 2012 Behavior Fundamentals class. (Full disclosure: we liked Melanie so much that we kept her on as our Social Media Director.)

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What is your background? I was born and raised in Chicago, and I’ve lived here my entire life. I’ve worked in academia, travel, and finance; I am now a freelance website and social media manager. I grew up with birds, cats, and my grandmother’s very testy but thankfully toothless Chihuahua. My neighborhood on the South Side was full of dogs, and I was the designated dog-walker and sitter for most of them.

How do you pay it forward? I do a lot of volunteering, primarily with The Anti-Cruelty Society (though the dog you see in the picture is my adorable former foster dog Lolli, from Be Fido’s Friend). I train new volunteers, socialize dogs, do event photography, and foster dogs. I specialize in fostering puppies, because you can practically see new synapses being formed, every hour of every day; it’s endlessly fascinating. I recently discovered the term “exuberant synaptogenesis”, and I think it’s a spot-on description of the process. Also, I’m a sucker for those perfect little paw pads.

What drew you to CanineLink? A fellow volunteer who lived in Jamie’s building made the introduction. I came to the office for what I thought was going to be a polite, casual, probably-a-waste-of-time networking meeting with a total stranger, and by the end of it Jamie and I had decided that the next logical step was for me to sign up for Behavior Fundamentals. So that’s what I did. I remember thinking on my way out of the meeting that you don’t often get to appreciate pivotal moments in your life while they’re actually happening, but I certainly got to appreciate it that day. It was really quite a momentous occasion for me.

How has your CanineLink training helped you in the various aspects of your life? As someone who trains other people to care for shelter dogs, it’s been very important. It’s easy enough to teach new volunteers all of the official procedures, but I think where I really add value to the process is the emphasis on paying attention to what the dog is telling you. In a shelter environment, you don’t often have the luxury of getting to know each dog’s quirks, and to be safe you have to be able to read the body language and circumstances correctly and react accordingly. On a personal level, the Fundamentals course really expanded my horizons and opened my eyes to so many things. I developed a lot of critical thinking and observational skills both in class and during externships, and I use those skills every day of my life (and not just for dogs). The world is a much more interesting place now that I can interpret the secret language of dogs. :)

How do you plan to use your CanineLink training in the future? I’m going to keep building on the foundation I obtained during Fundamentals, and deploy that knowledge to continue helping rescue dogs and foster puppies. Every time I send a foster pup off to her forever home, I know that I’ve done my absolute best to set her up for success because of what I learned at CanineLink. It’s a great feeling.