I literally grew up in animal shelters. My father, William Bellamy, was the executive director of animal shelters in Colorado, Oregon and California. When I was 18 months old, I had my first experience with dogs. My father, who was an animal control officer in Tacoma, Washington, would leave me with the puppies while he filled out his day's paper work. I was well socialized! As my parents were founding the animal shelter in Salem, Oregon, I remember my mother, Claudia Bellamy, assembling cages as I played in the fields surrounding the construction site.

At 16, in Riverside, California I started working part-time as a kennel worker and eventually advanced to a replacement for animal control officers. I drove trucks picking up strays and injured animals. During this period I also had the unenviable but necessary task of performing euthanasia.

This is also when my interest in theatre began. For more information on me as an actor, director and playwright check out Azzizz Theatre's Homepage.

In 1981, my love of theatre brought me to New York City where my love of animals lead me to becoming an adoptions councilor at the A.S.P.C.A. in Manhattan. After a year I was promoted to assistant manager of the new Brooklyn Shelter where my responsibilities included head of adoptions and caring for all exotic animals in the Brooklyn facility.

In 1983, I met Brian Kilcommons who was teaching group obedience classes for the A.S.P.C.A. Brian took me on as an apprentice and within a year I became his assistant. Under Brian I learned obedience training in the line of his mentor English trainer Barbara Woodhouse. I learned handling and dealing with a wide variety of canine problems and personalities. I filled in for Brian conducting his group and private lessons while he was out of town promoting his books and making television appearances.

It was also at this time that I began working extensively with dogs with aggression problems. Within a few years I went off on my own and began Leader of the Pack. At a time when there were few other trainers doing work on aggression I went into a period where 100% of my referrals were dogs with serious aggressive behavior. This went on for 5 straight years.

I became disillusioned with the classic training techniques that worked great for professionals but not for lay people. I found that most people were unable or unwilling to devote the time and energy required to learn handling at a high enough level to change behavior. This often lead to over use of corrections. I then began fusing the use of Body Language and Voice from traditional training with Behavior Modification techniques including "Clicker Training".

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email us at leaderofthepack@gorge.net

Robert Bellamy © May 23, 2003.