Our Trainer

Constantine earned his bachelors degree in the Behavioral Sciences after studying at Purdue University. Using only the most proven reward based training and behavioral methods, he has helped many thousands of local dogs and their owners over the past 20 years. 

Constantine began his dog training journey while volunteering at a pet adoption event as part of a college project. He found helping homeless pets get adopted very rewarding and was instantly hooked. He soon got involved with the local rescue group Sarasota in Defense of Animals (SDA), and joined them at their weekly adoption events.

His involvement with the adoption events led to him fostering shelter dogs. That's when Constantine began immersing himself with every dog training book, manual and video he could get his hands on. This, along with his lifelong love of animals, helped him to connect and work with his foster dogs and to get them adopted. 

Due to his success with helping some challenging dogs recover and find new homes, Constantine began to gain notoriety within SDA. They started asking him to take on ever more challenging cases and began to recommend him as a dog trainer. He was eventually put in charge of the weekly adoption events and was ultimately made the official dog trainer at SDA.

While serving as the dog trainer for SDA, Constantine would visit their 10 acre animal sanctuary on a daily basis. There he worked with the 25 plus dogs deemed dangerous or unadoptable that lived freely on the property as a pack. This is where much of his invaluable knowledge of the intricacies and dynamics of dog communication and interactions was learned.

During his years with SDA, Constantine also worked closely with the Sarasota Sheriff's Department's Animal Services unit, and was called into court a number of times to testify as an expert witness in some local dog attack cases.

After SDA, Constantine was hired by PetSmart to oversee the pet training departments in all their southwest Florida stores. For 7 years he would travel from store to store to train the PetSmart trainers and help ensure they were using only reward based methods and following best practices and procedures.

Since 2016 Constantine has been helping local dogs and their owners as a freelance dog trainer and dog behavior expert. He is also an American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizen (AKC CGC) trainer/evaluator. Constantine enjoys spending free time volunteering at the amazing Satchel's Last Resort, a local pet shelter/sanctuary, where he works with their most challenging dogs, and still participates in adoption events.