A well-mannered place for dogs
On a recent cloudy Saturday morning in a field off Sperring Road, eight dogs and their people gathered for a weekly meeting. The owners (in masks) chatted and sipped coffee. They were there for dog training, a session playfully called “Pandemic Pups” hosted by Belinda Head, a practicing dentist who happens to be an accredited dog trainer. The dogs hung out, bribed by the occasional treat. Their owners, Head admits, are there as much for the social element as a shot at Westminster.
“They have a fun time,” she says of the humans, who, if they had tails, would be wagging them. Locked down by Covid, the weekly outing is “something to look forward to, a social occasion. There’s a real silver lining.”
Head’s mother was a Hollowood-famous dog trainer (Benji, etc.), and as a kid Belinda hung around the movie sets. She was equally well-known in Britain, where daughter Belinda studied and practiced dentistry. She moved back to the U.S. 30 years ago and opened a practice in San Francisco. Nice apartment, no yard. The move to Sonoma Valley’s greener pastures – dogs, horse, donkeys, sheep – came in 2017.
Friends and acquaintances knew Head had “grown up in the business” and cajoled dog-training lessons from her. One pup here, one rescue there; she was making house calls and one day figured, let’s do classes in that wide-open field of mine. The casual demand for training was compounded by the pandemic. People were adopting or being given dogs, and they needed help.
So in September, Head began the Pandemic Pups classes, based on an American Kennel Club program of 10 specific skills. Grads get a ribbon and a treat. It takes about six weeks, but often the owners don’t want to give up their Saturday morning routine. They’re still welcome, says Head. A stickler for good manners from her canine pupils, it would be bad form to turn away their owners.
She charges all of $100 for the entire term, with some of it for the coffee and cake, and the bulk going to an animal rescue program in Oregon. “So we’ve really closed the loop on the karma.”
Contact Belinda at [email protected]
