Hi everyone, my name is Nancy Hatch. If you’re thinking about training your dog with Good As Gold k9 school, you probably want to know something about we, the trainers. So here’s a snapshot about me. I’m the founder and head trainer here at Good As Gold K9 School, on our family, land located in the heart of beautiful East Gwillimbury. Dog training has been in my bones for the majority of my life. In the very late 1960s when I was just a kid, our family had an older beagle named Tiger 
. At the time I remember being particularly captured by comments I heard from the adults around me saying, that you just can’t teach an old dog new tricks. In retrospect, they might not have actually been talking about dogs, but I didn’t realize that at the time. So with Tiger in toe and a box of milk bones in hand I set out to see if this was true or not. Somehow, at that young age, I was pretty sure it wasn’t. A lifetime before YouTube videos, little Tiger, and I figured it all out together. It wasn’t long before the two of us were showing off, what I thought were the most spectacular tricks ever taught to a dog! You know, shake a paw, roll over, sit pretty, etc. I didn’t know it at the time, but “believing” in the abilities of Tiger and not excepting a kind of negative comment that other people held to be true, was the beginning of something that would set the course for a large part of my life. I will forever be grateful to Tiger showing me that! I loved that dog so much. In 1972 my dad announced to us, that as a family, we were going to move to the country. He would build a house and a barn, and that my brother and I could each have our own dog, and our own horse, if we wanted. Well, YES!!! I was stereotypically one of those young girls who was horse, and dog crazy, so my response was, sign me up. Over the next decade, for me our wonderful life in the country I was all about horses, becoming a horse trainer, dogs and still making time for high school 
. I so loved doing wonderful things with the dogs. In 1972 the year we moved to the country my beloved beautiful golden retriever named Renowned 
and I joined
the York Regional Dog Obedience
Club. A year later Renowned And I competed in to our first obedience trial earning the first place trophy. In partnering again with my second amazing dog, came another confidence builder that would continue to shape my life toward becoming a professional dog trainer. Thank you Renowned 
I will always love you. Sometimes in life, there are just too many choices to be made, to many paths that you can take. I was passionate about working with my dogs, but it seemed much more realistic for me to a horse trainer. In our area at the time, there was a need… In addition to this, and maybe it’s because as a teenager I had the sense of immortality, I was drawn to the challenging horses. You know the scary ones that nobody else would, or could ride . Over that next decade of my life, I had so many success with those challenging horse. Changing them from absolutely dangerous to absolutely their owners best friends. Thank you to all those horses who taught me so much about never giving up on them 
. Jump forward a few years, I wanted to work more directly with people then the horse world gave me opportunity too. I was discovering a fundamental thing about myself. That I am at heart, a people person, so in the early 1980s I thought becoming a clinical psychologist would be a good idea. Again the dogs kept drawing me… People whose horses I had successfully worked with, started bringing me their challenging dogs. As it worked out, training dogs was now going to be more practical
while at university than working with horses. So that’s what I did, and the more challenging the dogs were the more I loved it-just like the horses. When you experience the big transformation, in a horse or a dog, when those creatures begin to trust you, and then completely trust you, there’s nothing else like it. It’s an honour and privilege and something to be taken exceptionally good care of, this trust given to you by a dog or a horse. For me, this was truly a life-changing pivotal time in my life. I loved teaching and freeing these dogs to become their peoples best friends. I was never put off or discouraged by the psychological state of any dog. Thank you to all of those dogs who taught me so much especially they taught me to never give up on them . Fast-forward to the first years of the 1990s, after I spent 12 years at university pursuing a career in clinical psychology, economic times had changed in Ontario from when I begin my university career is an undergraduate. Psychology jobs were being cut back everywhere, there was really no immediate future as a clinical psychologist for me. As i’d been training service dogs, problem, behavior, dogs, and family companion dogs and puppies, throughout my tenure at university: I thought to myself, I already love training dogs, I’ll just keep doing this until economic times get better. Economic times did get better, but this time nothing was going to take me in a different direction, away from working with dogs and their people. My path was so clear,
I was a dog trainer and that’s what I wholeheartedly wanted to be. The icing on the cake was, that all of those 12 years, studying the science of the human mind, was going to help me with perhaps the biggest part of dog training. All the dogs know that that this part of the equation, is someone like me
working with the people who belong to their dogs. From this very intentional point in the early 1990s Good As Gold K9 School was born. From those humble beginnings through the past three decades I’ve had the incredible privilege working with thousands of individuals, families and their amazing dogs. I am so thankful, to be a part of so much incredible growth in the school over the years. Good As Gold k9 School has established it self as one of the most revered, successful and largest schools in York region. Also developed over the years, I have a team of wonderful trainers working with me, who share the same abilities and passion for helping dogs and their humans that I have. We have also taken so many individuals with no experience at all, mentioned them for years and sent them on their way locally and through at Canada close to coast, to help dogs and their humans in their own training schools with the abilities they learned here. We have also given birth to Partner Dog Canada Inc. a fully accredited service dog school, providing fully certified serviced dogs free of charge to medically qualified individuals. It has been a honour for me to steer this project, Partner Dogs Canada. PDC also has a therapy dog program, this is our give back. We go out into the community with wonderful “advanced” therapy dogs to share these dogs with the community. Our motto is, with our dogs we help people reach for the stars. What privilege it is for me to oversee the therapy dog program. I would be totally remiss, if I did not talk about another extremely important aspect of Good As Gold k9 School. And that is, that we have FUN together with our humans students and our student dogs. I think the fun factor is so incredibly important. Having fun being joyful, laughing, celebrating, being lighthearted about it is central to building a great and loving relationship between you and your dog. This is why very early on in 1998 we added Agility and some other dog sports to our curriculum. It absolutely means the world to me to me to help people achieve the dreams they have, for the dogs they love. To watch people’s relationships with their dogs improve, thrive, and shine, to see their love and joy, and watch them celebrate their beloved dog, is my purpose and Good As Gold’s purpose for being here… in conclusion, I’d like to say, as a trainer and as a caring human being, my hope for you and your dog is that in the relationship you have with your dog you always find, more love, more hope, more fun, more trust. And if things ever become challenging in your relationship, that you never give up… this is who I am as a trainer. I would look forward to meeting you and your dog. Let’s all keep the faith
