My name is Tim Rains and I am the owner and dog trainer of Wagging Rights dog training. I am proud to be serving the fox valley area. One of my biggest joys is helping people learn to communicate with their dogs and increase the bond between them. It’s amazing to watch dogs learn and equally as amazing when people realize their dogs can be helped. I greatly enjoy being able to solve behavior problems always with the goal in mind to improve the lives of families and dogs.
Since the age of 7 dogs have been an important part of my life. My family dog growing up was a 90lb brindle boxer named Champ. I always enjoyed teaching Champ to do things. I had no idea at the time that what I was doing was correct, but looking back on it I was on the right track.
My brother Waylon really furthered my interest in dogs. Waylon liked a lot of mastiff and bulldog breeds all in the working breed group of dog breeds and some in the terrier group. Waylon and I would talk a lot about our favorite breeds and what it would be like to one day own them. We would compare a lot of breeds and spent a good amount of time reading the Dog Breed Bible and many other similar books.
I started my first “business” when I was in middle school. I would walk neighborhood dogs and pet sit for people when they were out of town. The only problem with my “business” was at that time I was only interested in certain breeds and only wanted to walk Boxers and Dobermans… bad business planning. There are only so many boxers and Dobermans in a neighborhood.
Our family got our second boxer a few days before Christmas in 2006. After a solid week of trying to decide what his name would be, we finally settled on Rocky. I again did the training with Rocky. I still didn’t know exactly what I was doing but Rocky learned things pretty quickly.
I worked for a dog walking and pet sitting company in 2007 while I was in my first year of college learning to work on cars. I began to realize that cars weren’t my passion and took a break from pursuing becoming a mechanic. At this time I started looking into dog training schools to get certified. I attended Animal Behavior College from 2008 and got certified in 2010. That experience was invaluable to me because I got to learn hands-on from some really great trainers. I got my first job training dogs right out of school and taught group classes at a local pet store for a couple of years.
After teaching group classes for a while I began working for a company doing all private lessons, dealing with many aspects of dog training including how to work with various forms of aggression, fear, problem behaviors like jumping and barking, puppy socialization and much more. During this time I spent countless hours of time studying and doing continuing education. In March of 2016 I passed the CPDT exam and became 1 of 3000 or so Certified Professional Dog Trainers.
In October of 2016 my wife and and rescued a fawn Doberman pinscher named Dalton. I am very excited to train Dalton many new behaviors and get started with various dog sports.
As with any skill or hobby I believe in continually learning and trying to better yourself. I am constantly working to improve as a dog trainer. The more you know and experience the more options you have to help your clients. I greatly look forward to helping with your dog training needs in any way I possibly can.
Tim Rains
