Julie Mendelsohn

Julie Mendelsohn began her career in high tech, but in 2001, she left the corporate world to pursue her passion. She started a dog walking company and enrolled in the Canine Behavior & Training Program at Mt. Ida College, with the goal of opening a dog daycare facility.In 2002, Julie founded Paws Here, Inc., a Dog Daycare, Boarding & Training Facility, dedicated to helping dogs be more social, have fun and go home a little better behaved every day. During 15 successful years, Paws Here won the Best of Boston award for best Boarding Kennel. Julie's experience owning a dog daycare helped her understand how difficult it is for many people to find the time to train their dogs and follow through with lessons.In 2019, Julie decided to embark on a new goal: to help dogs and their people to have a happier shared life by helping people communicate better with their canines. She discovered Zen Dog Training and studied directly with Gordon Fontaine to become a trainer. She was drawn to the program's science-based foundation and mission to help people better understand and train their dogs with compassion, while also realizing that people need easy-to-implement solutions that work. Julie graduated in 2020 and has excelled in teaching fear-free training.Fear-free training was always Julie's goal at Paws Here so Zen Dog Training methods of never punishing or causing fear during the training process combined with Gordon's Zen attitude toward training dogs fit in perfectly with Julie's philosophy and training experience.Julie loves to work with new puppies and get them and their parents started on the right path from the beginning. She is also passionate about helping shy/fearful dogs break out of their scary lives and become happy dogs. Some of Julie's best training experiences have been helping to transform dogs that were barely able to function into confident, playful pets who bring joy to their parents.Currently, Julie volunteers for Friends of Rescued Mastiffs and several other rescue organizations, and is involved with evaluating dogs for foster care, fostering dogs with issues (including starvation, poor socialization skills and lack of training), evaluate homes for the fosters and place dogs in their new homes. Taking a shy, fearful dog into foster and placing a confident, happy dog into a new, welcoming home is a very rewarding experience.Julie has shared her life with four amazing English Mastiffs of her own, as well as several fosters. When she's not hanging with her dog or training dogs, she enjoys reading, kayaking, pickleball, golf, and Texas hold-em.