Meet the Training Team at My Dog's Place

Marge Lineweber - Owner / Manager / Instructor

Since childhood, Marge Lineweber’s life has been filled with animals. She was raised with an assortment of animals from reptiles, rabbits, sheep, and horses to dogs and cats. Marge’s love and respect for animals lead her to work in a veterinary practice, where she served as a veterinary technician for over 5 years. Her passion for dog training was realized when her Gordon Setter Java helped her find positive reinforcement training. While fulfilling Java’s love for socializing through doggie daycare at My Dog’s Place, Marge began to learn that dog training without force was possible, and the world of positive reinforcement training opened up to her and Java. Marge began to soak up all she could about positive training by reading books, taking classes, attending seminars, and apprenticing with established trainers. She does believe that the greatest teachers of all have been her dogs, “they tell us everything we need to know about training, we just need to listen."

Marge now shares her life with Pike (an Australian Shepherd), Kade (a Gordon Setter), Frye (an English Setter) and Surf (an Irish Red & White Setter). Together they enjoy agility, water sports, frisbee, flyball, pet therapy, rally obedience, scent, and search work, but most of all just the pleasure of each other's company. Her previous dogs were Java (a Gordon Setter), Summit (an English Setter), Ares (an Australian Shepherd), Fyssher (an Irish Red and White Setter), Derby (a Red Irish Setter), River (an Australian Shepherd) and Noodle (a pointer mix) who were all instrumental in their own special way in bringing Marge new learning experiences and changing the course of her life. They are all greatly missed and lovingly remembered every day.

Marge has owned and managed My Dog’s Place since 2002. She is very closely involved in the day to day activities of the business; conducting daycare interviews, training and supervising staff, setting class schedules and curriculums, and handling client communications. As one of the facilities instructors, Marge enjoys all aspects of positive reward training with dogs. She teaches Puppy Primer, Companion Dog Fundamental, Companion Dog Essentials, Companion Dog Advance, Canine Good Citizen, Therapy Dog, Retrieving, Scent work, Thinking Dog, Basic Frisbee Skills, and Canine Water Sports.

Marge is a professional member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers , a Certified Pet Dog Trainer, an AKC approved Canine Good Citizen Evaluator , a founding member of Canine Water Sports as well as a Canine Water Sports Judge and a Certified Professional Animal Care Provider .

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Kristie Foss - Instructor

Instructor Kristie Foss has owned and trained her own dogs for over 35 years, and has been teaching at My Dog’s Place since 2002. Currently, she is owned by three Australian Shepherds, Kiri, Yuki and Keiko She is a proponent of positive training techniques and uses clickers for both training and modifying behaviors. Kristie gets special satisfaction from training both dogs and their handlers in agility. Her other training interests include tricks, obedience, and general manners. Dogs of the past: Beloved Kobi, Teka and Kemu, all Australian Shepherds, as well as Suki, an Akita, and Meko, a GSD/Husky rescue. Kobi often visited classrooms demonstrating obedience and tricks, and she accumulated many agility titles in a variety of agility venues. Both Kobi and Kemu were Canine Good Citizens.

Kristie also has experience and special interest regarding dogs with behavior problems and has attended numerous training seminars and workshops on related topics. Her dog Teka taught Kristie the importance of patience and persistence.

As the dog sport of agility has changed and grown, Kristie has continued her own education through special classes, workshops, online courses, and seminars in order to keep her skills current. She and Yuki attend 2 agility classes each week. Kristie has completed an intensive Agility Instructor program through Data-Driven Agility. She teaches agility instruction using a variety of approaches, and incorporates many of the tenets and techniques from current agility methodologies.

Kristie has her Masters degree and 6th year diploma in education. She is a professional member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, and a member of the Australian Shepherd Club of America and the Australian Shepherd Club of New England.

Kathy Howard - CPDT-KA - Instructor

I am passionate about animals, but dogs and horses are my favorites. There is always at least one dog in the house, young mixed breeds adopted from local shelters. I found My Dog’s Place when I adopted my first puppy, Zoe, in 2005. Using positive training methods to introduce and develop skills made sense immediately – I was practicing this same philosophy with my highly sensitive, spirited young horse and with my teenage high school students!

Zoe and I reconnected with My Dog’s Place in 2012 when I adopted puppy Whiskey, and we all had fun refining basic obedience skills in Agility, Rally Obedience, and Therapy. I credit puppy Chaser, a terrier mix adopted in 2015, with challenging me to a greater understanding of dog behavior and proving the effectiveness of positive training. She excels at everything she tries, bores quickly, and devises her own plan of action when I don’t keep up with her! Her favorite things are Agility, Flyball, Tricks and Games, Rally O, Scent Work, Water Sports… well, everything athletic!

Thanks to my greatest teachers: my horse, my human students throughout my teaching career, my mentors at My Dog’s Place, and all of my canine companions along the way. I am now instructing Puppy Primer, Companion Dog Fundamental, Companion Dog Essentials, Companion Dog Advance courses at My Dog’s Place. My goal is to help every family have the safe, rewarding relationship they want with their dog!

Jennifer Saindon

CPDT KA -

Operations Training Leader / Instructor

Jennifer is a longtime animal lover. Her passion for dog training was sparked in 2005 when she rescued two Siberian Huskies. Jennifer has volunteered with Cathy’s Rottie Rescue and CT Animal House. She’s fostered over a dozen dogs, and also trains adoptable dogs. Outside of her volunteer work, Jennifer has worked at 2 doggie daycare facilities, in the daycare yards, as a grooming assistant, and has worked in pet sitting and dog walking.

Jen started at MDP as an instructor in 2016 and became our General Manager in the spring of 2017. She transition to the Operations Training Leader in 2023. She’s a Certified Professional Dog Trainer, CGC evaluator and an ADPT member. She is continually in search of the newest information on her craft. Reading anything she can get her hands on. Taking available online courses, listening to fellow trainer’s podcasts and attending conferences. Jen has been training dogs since 2011, in basic and intermediate obedience classes as a positive reinforcement obedience trainer. She has taken an interest (in the past few years) in "reactive" dogs and specializes in "sensitive dogs.

She is currently teaching Puppy Primer, Companion Dog Fundamental, Companion Dog Essentials, Companion Dog Advance, Canine Good Citizen, Out & About, Clever K9 and Fun with Rally.

She also does private training for behavior modification or basic obedience. She has also added Pet Sitting to her portfolio. She currently shares her life with two dogs, Slugger and Tulia both Boxers.

Catharine Garbo - CPDT-KA - Instructor

Catharine is an avid animal lover who got involved in dog training thanks to her now 4-year-old chocolate lab, Olive. Growing up with labs, she has a soft spot for retrievers.

Catharine got involved with MDP with her own dog in 2019 and became a class assistant in 2021. She is now teaching Puppy Primer, Companion Dog Fundamentals, Companion Dog Essentials and Companion Dog Advance.

Catharine has a passion for training dogs in the most positive way possible and is also well read and experienced in dog nutrition. She reads as many books as she can, and listens to numerous podcasts to learn as much as possible. She’s is planning on working towards a dog nutrition certificate in the near future.

Catharine and olive love taking many different classes. Olive’s favorite being scent work. You can find Catharine and Olive hiking, camping, paddle boarding and exploring many new places on a regular basis.

Leaving a career in the seafood industry after completing undergrad then her MBA, Catharine has started her own dog walking and training business. She loves the connections that she has with the dogs and helping dogs and their families live in harmony together.

Savannah Simon - Instructor / Daycare Shift Leader

Savannah has been with My Dog's Place since 2012. She is now a puppy kindergarten and basic manners class instructor and a valuable part of our daycare staff, when she's not on the daycare floor or wrestling puppies in the puppy room she works with Jen to run the day training program for Mystic.

While Savannah has always loved dogs, her interest really peaked in high school when she enrolled in the agri-science program at Ledyard High School. Where she earned her pet first aid, kennel management certification and her vet tech certification.

However, her career with dogs began in 2010 when she began raising autism assistance dogs for the Northstar foundation. What started off as a project for the vo-ag program, quickly became a passion.

Her desire to learn more and become more hands on with the assistance dogs brought her to My Dogs Place. Taking several classes with the puppies, led her to volunteering with socials and assisting with classes.

Savannah shares her life with Flynn a Golden Retriever, Mookie a Beagle and Doug a Flat Coat Retriever. Savannah and her canine kids have competed and earned titles in flyball, barn hunt, agility, and dock diving. They also enjoy therapy work, dog scouts, hiking and photography.