Jean Donaldson

The founder of the Academy for Dog Trainers, Jean Donaldson has over thirty years of experience in dog behavior and training. Jean is a four-time winner of the Dog Writers' Association of America's Maxwell Award, and her seminal book The Culture Clash was named number one training and behavior book by the Association of Pet Dog Trainers. Her other titles are Mine!: A Guide to Resource Guarding in Dogs, Fight!: A Guide to Dog-Dog Aggression, Dogs Are From Neptune, and Oh Behave!: Dogs From Pavlov to Premack to Pinker. Her book Train Like a Pro was her first written training guide for a lay audience.

Before transitioning full-time to pet dog training, Jean competed in dog sports with dogs of various breeds, earning numerous titles and wins, including OTCh, HIT, TDX, and FDCh, as well as a CGC. She ran a successful training school for fifteen years, and spent six years focusing primarily on referral aggression cases. She holds a degree in comparative psychology and is a keen student of evolutionary biology.