About Me

Hello! My name is Grace, and I am a graduate of UW-River Falls with a major in Creative Writing and minors in Professional Writing and Animal Science. I had the amazing opportunity to participate in an internship called ADEPT (Assistance Dog Education Program and Training) through most of my time as an undergraduate student, and I also am a Certified Professional Dog Trainer -- Knowledge Assessed through the CCPDT (Certification Council of Professional Dog Trainers). This blog combines both my passion for writing and dog training.

​My love for dogs began when I was very young.  My first dog was our family dog, Charlie, and he was the one who helped me fall in love with training.  I remember being absolutely thrilled the day Charlie succeeded with "roll over" for the first time.  As the years passed, I became more and more interested in training, and I have worked at both a local animal shelter and a doggie daycare in recent years. I started fostering dogs in 2016 (the slideshow to the right shows all my fosters so far), and I fell in love with helping dogs come out of their shells and find wonderful families.

This fall, I am pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and will also get some experience teaching during a Teaching Assistantship at the university I am attending for the next three years. My end goal is to teach Creative Writing courses full time and hopefully be able to train dogs on the side! Alongside teaching both college students and dogs, I also want to publish a novel and particularly enjoy writing fiction.

I am looking forward to seeing how I can integrate my passions for both writing and dogs into my future life, and I have been loving working with my own dogs and a few client's dogs in the meantime!