Today we’d like to introduce you to Susan Alvin.
Hi Susan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Briefly I started learning about dogs at a young age. At the start of grammar school my family and I moved from Philadelphia to a nearby suburb in New Jersey. Our house was tiny, but our yard was huge and we quickly had a great home for ducks two Dobermans and a cat. Like anything the progression was slow my father would bring home a lost dog. We would try to find the family, and in the meantime, we would work on their behaviors and socialization.
In a nutshell, I grew up in a very working-class family where my mom and her family were always involved in community volunteer service. My mother besides working at the hospital was a volunteer EMT for more years than I can remember and her two brothers were volunteer fireman. Besides learning about dogs and animals as a child by the age of seven I was already learning ASL. I really loved it and was soon signing the Christmas songs at the community holiday events. Before I start volunteering for The Seeing Eye in 2008, I had over a decade of volunteer service under my belt. From volunteering at the Stratford Kennedy Hospital in my junior and senior year of high school. During my community college years at Camden County community college and my time at Western Maryland College now McDaniel college Maryland my volunteer services included, shelters for dogs and homeless shelters for women. taking notes for deaf students in their classes A group of us started an organization that still present on the campus today, called women for justice. We were very involved in the local domestic violence shelters collecting everything from work clothes, including shoes, handbags, etc..
In 2000, after leaving college, I moved from Maryland to New York from New York to San Diego and back to Philadelphia where I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity at the hub in North Philly for 8 months. I strongly believe that all the community service, education and traveling before I began my volunteer service with The Seeing Eye contributed to my choice to work with dogs. Especially all the work with ASL and the deaf communities completely aided in my comprehension of the nonverbal world of dogs and animals in general. It’s funny how the experiences we have in life sometimes they align and add up unbeknownst to us becoming crucial elements in our career paths.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Oh my gosh, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this being a question. lol. I’m sure every small business owner has the same Marriott of obstacles they’ve had to overcome and learn from it become successful. It’s one thing to become an expert in something you have a passion for, and another thing to wear all the masks of running your own business. A small tasks are even complicated from the financial legal taxes, all the way to the time, consuming social media, advertising and keeping up or not keeping up with These demands. I think every small business owner grapple with many of these issues. For me personally, the biggest ones were not having a network when I moved after my divorce from New Jersey to North Carolina. I had hired someone through a new friend to make me a website do some advertising. I’m sure it goes without saying it was a disaster. Nothing was right and after spending more than a five grand, I hired another small company in Chapel Hill to build me a new website. They did without a firewall which is still unbelievable to me today. They fixed it but once that’s done, it messes things up. Due to the fact that my Energy has to be so balanced because dogs are a magnet to our physiology. I stayed calm and I had this second website I didn’t like and it was terrible and I was working for a wonderful family training, their young puppy. I didn’t know until after the training was finished that I was the third trainer they hired. They told me they hated my website and here they built them and the wife does advertising. I briefly told him what happened. They told me they were building me a site which is my site currently today. They refused to take a dollar from me. They still host it for me. I tried to pay them and they refuse. Again, sometimes you just have to persevere keep moving with a positive attitude and you turn the corner and meet this couple who magically fixes it all. I hate these the word magic, but it feels like alchemy
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a dog trainer for over 20 years and the owner of Errol & Tia. My two specialties in working with puppies and dogs are working with reactivity and basic obedience skills or as I like to call them manners. I love love what I do. I don’t consider work. It’s a passion. I especially love puppy training. Since moving here, people have started to call me puppy Poppins, which I love.
I full heartedly believe my service with The Seeing Eye set up my level of experience into a different category compared with most individuals in my field. What I’ve been concerned about since the beginning of my career is the ability to transfer my knowledge to my clients. Having all of these under my belt being in innumerable families’s homes, I feel so lucky today to be confident in my ability to transfer that information easily.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Absolutely continuing researching & reading in your field is the only way to proceed. This past year and the dog world we lost Karen Pryor who wrote an incredible book in 1987 titled, DON’T SHOOT THE DOG The New Art Of Teaching And Training. I love anything from Jean Donaldson. In the last few years, my two favorite books if I could pick two would be
DOG SMART Life Changing Lessons in Canine Intelligence by Jennifer Holland
AN IMMENSE WORLD HOW ANIMAL SENSES REVEAL THE HIDDEN REALMS AROUND US By Ed Young
