Meet the trainers
Carrie Bieber - ANWI
Nosework Magic was passed into the excited hands of myself, Carrie Bieber, and my esteemed friend and colleague, Janine Strada-Vanderyacht.
I was born and raised in Bellingham, WA, and has grown up loving animals, loving music, and spent the first 2 decades of my work career in the field of social work and community services. At present, I have 5 (yes, I said FIVE) dogs, who take up most of my time (and I wouldn’t have it any other way). When I’m not training dogs, I am a singer in several local bands and can be found around Whatcom and Skagit county singing funk, blues, R&B, and country tunes. I have been taking classes through Nosework Magic (Alecia Elvstad) since 2018, have trained my own 5 dogs from beginning the game to Elite level trialing, and have helped train several other dogs to play the game as well. My partner Steve (who also has been training in Nosework since 2018) and I are also very active in the foster/rescue community and have fostered (to date) over 60 dogs through our home. From Cattle Dogs to Bichon Frisés, to Mastiffs, and everything in between, I have owned, trained, fostered, or had experience with various breeds of dogs, and of all types of temperaments. I am soon to complete my Certified Nosework Instructor training and will be a certified CNWI. I will continue to enroll in ongoing education courses and trainings to better my knowledge and skills so I can pass it on to my students.
Janine Strada Vanderyacht
My dog training journey started with my own dogs. I’ve had dogs for my whole life and they were always members of my family. Like many people I was taught to use correction methods to train my dogs. That was all I knew so that’s what I used. Jump forward to the year I brought home my new dog, a border collie puppy I named Ronan. I started him in the same obedience classes I had taken my other dogs to but Ronan seemed different when we were there. He moved more slowly, wasn’t as playful and generally seemed to be shutting down. I knew then that I needed to be doing something different with him so I started researching other training methods. That started my journey to becoming a dog trainer. Once I started learning about updated, science based training methods, dog behavior and everything else that goes along with this I couldn’t stop trying to learn everything I could. I originally did this for my own dogs but it wasn’t long before other people started asking me to help them with their dogs as well. I also started assisting with teaching classes, agility, obedience, reactive dogs, anything I could get my foot into. It was incredibly rewarding to see the dogs and their humans suddenly understand what we were trying to teach them. The smiles, the sparkle in their eyes, the happy body language…it was amazing! I started to teach classes on my own. This is what I wanted to do with my life!
I started my own dog training business, Janine’s Super K9s dog training. The name is in memory of Ronan, my Super Dog. He lived his whole life with a grin on his face and that is what I want for my students’ dogs. I want to help them understand their dogs and to build strong relationships with them by having fun with all of their training, including Nosework!
“Scientists have determined that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain – unless its done with play, in which case, it takes between 10 and 20 repetitions.” – Dr. Karyn Purvis