Canine Country Club

Leslie Baumann has been showing and training dogs her entire adult life and began participating in agility about twelve years ago. Her ten year old Lhasa Apso, Winston, is the first champion in that breed’s history to receive Open, Excellent and Master AKC agility titles. In 2007 Winston ranked among the top five AKC agility Lhasas. As a result, the team competed at the AKC Agility Invitational in Long Beach, CA last December.

While Winston focuses on rally obedience this year, Leslie is competing in agility with her Border Collie, Maven, NA NAJ in AKC and USDAA venues. In addition, Paris, a two year old Lhasa Apso, will start attending trials with Leslie and Maven this summer.

An agility instructor for the past five years, Leslie regularly attends seminars and camps to learn from nationally respected instructors, including numerous AKC World Team members, past and present. Her training philosophy is geared towards building communication and teamwork between handler and dog via incremental learning and positive reinforcement. She believes that the real joy in agility is not just the competition, but also the ongoing development of a close working relationship between handler and dog.

Linda S. Knol has taught private and group obedience classes, Canine Good Citizenship classes and dog tricks classes for 18 years in Michigan, Florida, Minnesota and Indiana and has shown and titled her own dogs in obedience. Linda was instrumental in starting the Prison Tails program at Westville Correctional Facility where she created the entire training curriculum, lectured and led obedience classes for the Prison Tails program.  She is a member of the International Positive Dog Training Association and a board member of F.O.U.N.D. (Friends of Unwanted, Neglected Dogs).  F.O.U.N.D. is a non-profit advocacy group seeking to educate the public and to help the plight of unwanted and neglected dogs.

A former 4-H Dog Leader, humane society volunteer, animal shelter volunteer, and PetSmart Trainer, she now volunteers with her dog, Ellie, and visits schools and other groups to demonstrate good dog care and responsible dog ownership.
"I'm so happy to come back to Canine Country Club to teach again. I look forward to being instrumental in helping people develop a positive relationship with their dog and to help foster the skills that are needed. I enjoy teaching people and dogs so in my classes we learn a lot, work hard, and still have lots of fun."

Linda Knol is an Instructional Aide at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School. She lives with her husband and their three teenage boys in Valparaiso. She enjoys quilting, reading and is taking classes at Purdue University to become a Master Gardener.

Andrea Erickson has been active in breeding and exhibiting purebred dogs since 1972. She has successfully shown and finished many of her own dogs as well as handled dogs for others. Her Kivalina Siberian Huskies are known as Group Winners and Specialty Winners. Andrea is also the proud owner of the #1 Polish Lowland Sheepdog in 2003. Kivalina bred and co-bred champions number over 60, and have been successful in competition around the world.

Emily and her family relocated to the area from Pennsylvania one year ago. In her former life she taught High School Biology and currently teaches online Anatomy and Physiology. Emily's family is her priority and that includes her two dogs, a beagle-mix (Indy) and a rescue border collie (Jen). They both live for flyball! They have both earned their Flyball Master Champion titles and have over 34,000 points between the two of them.

Emily and her husband, Phil, have been involved in the sport of flyball since 2001 and she has been teaching the addictive sport since 2002. Her training has included lessons from several of the leading trainers in flyball including the world record holding team (Springloaded) and hands on training of over 100 dogs. She co-founded the team of United We Fly, and co-captained the 2006 Region 15 Multi-Breed Championship Team, as well as having two dogs race on the championship team.

Her main focus in training dogs and their humans are flyball, positive training methods, canine nutrition, and dog behavior.