After 20+ years as a dog trainer, I’ve happily chosen to pause offering in-person seminars on dog training at this time. The Grisha Stewart Academy is still active; it has over 140 classes online and I think I’ve taught about 40-50 of them.
The good news: I’m still available as a keynote speaker for select dog events and I can also be booked as songleader and for community grief rituals. Learn more about my grief tending here and some of my circle songs here.
Contact me (Grisha) for availability and fees info for hosting an event in your area and to get started on picking dates, etc. To help make the decision whether to host, you will need to check on prices for venues, etc. Event locations should ideally be close to an airport or train station (but not so close that it’s noisy) with public transit access, so that more people can attend. Alternatively, you can provide support for carpooling.
Please note that I have signed the Minimum Viable Diversity pledge for events: “I will never speak at any paid conferences or panels as part of a homogeneous group of speakers.” Some resources here.
Keynote Topics for Dog (and Other) Events:
- The Border Collie In Your Head: Life Skills for Joy and Thrival (wellness for people, similar topics to the self-study How to Human course)
- Cultivating Adaptive Attachment with Family Dogs
- Grief Isn’t Just from Death: Essential Grief Skills for Dog People.
- Nourishing Community
- Work-Life Balance
- Beginners Mind: On Letting Yourself Learn
- Your Career, Your Life: Adapting and Learning as a Dog Professional
Other Events:
- Community Grief Ritual. This is my major passion these days. Any change brings a form of grief, and when we haven’t yet adapted to it in a healthy way, it festers. Community grief ritual is a way to express grief with witnesses, to release frozen grief to nourish presence and compassion. I facilitate grief rituals in Oregon with Alison Roffman in our collaboration, Stellar Village. I also am willing to travel to facilitate or co-facilitate grief rituals in your area.
- Song Circle: As part of a larger event or as the only songleader. My simple songs are uplifting and community-building. The lyrics are trauma-informed and accessible to all, with a general theme of doing the important work to nourish kinship and belonging. (Sample songs).
Host Feedback on Dog Events (BAT is Behavior Adjustment Training)
Feedback from UK seminar host Muriel Brasseur, Ph.D., Oxfordshire Animal Behaviour Centre:
We hosted the first UK BAT seminar with Grisha. It was brilliant, in every way. The talks were really engaging and interesting and the practical sessions were great fun. The feedback from everyone involved was overwhelmingly positive, and I truly believe every person who attended greatly benefited from their two days learning about BAT.
Grisha is a great teacher and speaker, and makes BAT accessible and easy to understand for everyone, whether you are canine professional or simply a dog owner. She explains the concepts clearly and logically, and engages with everyone throughout her talks, captivating her audience. Her presentation materials and handouts were excellent, well compiled and backed up by science, while simple to follow. She also uses a lot of video footage to demonstrate various set-ups, which kept everyone interested and wanting to see more.
Grisha is very calm and endlessly patient, and was fantastic with the dogs and owners featured in our demonstrations, as well as with our volunteers. She can also multi-task, handling several groups simultaneously, which was very impressive. In all, it made for a very interactive and enjoyable seminar and we were all able to see that BAT really works! Post-seminar, all the dog owners involved in the demos reported an improvement in their respective dogs, and all the canine professionals who attended could not wait to go home to practice.
We are eternally grateful Grisha came to the UK to show us how and why BAT works. She is great and we look forward to organising more seminars with her!
Feedback from US seminar host Tammy Wallace, Helping Idaho Dogs:
I found working with Grisha as a seminar host very rewarding. Grisha provided us with ample marketing and advertising material well in advance of the seminar. Grisha is personable and professional in all her communications during the seminar preparations and of course once she arrived in Idaho she was quite pleasant to work with. Grisha made our jobs as hosts a pleasurable experience. She took the time to learn about our local trainers and continues to support our efforts to help dogs become more comfortable in their environment.
Grisha easily navigates a wide range of technical data and is able to skillfully share her skills and knowledge to a variety of people ranging from Applied Animal Behaviorist, Veterinarians, canine professionals and common dog owners.
Grisha has supporting literature and video clips available on her website making her a valuable resource for dog owners and canine professionals.
The seminar we hosted with Grisha was a complete success. I personally appreciate her attention to detail and her ability to speak clearly and with purpose. One of the seminar participants told me that the thing they liked most about Grisha was her ability to work with a dog and handler team with kindness and respect.
Feedback from US seminar host Michele Crouse, CDBC, CPDT-KA:
Grisha was a pleasure to host. Working aggressive dogs is always stressful Her BAT method took that stress away. This is the first aggressive dog seminar I have been a part of where all the dogs stayed under threshold and there was no barking. I was impressed. Dogs stayed calm and showed significant progress after only a few sessions.
BAT is something I will definately be using. I feel it is a protocol that is easily transferred over to the owner. I really like the fact that the option to escape is not taken away from the dog. I highly recommend it.
Feedback from UK seminar host Claire Goyer BA (Hons.), HND, Canine Nutrition Therapist, Haslemere Pet Company:
Anyone mulling over the idea of hosting a seminar with Grisha Stewart should stop thinking about it and get in touch today! From timely emails, to clear seminar support materials, Grisha stayed in close contact throughout the planning stages and was simply a joy to work with. She not only provided helpful hints and tips on how to successfully market our event, but also sent templates for posters, and emailed a handy check list which covered all those “little things” so easily forgotten when organising a large seminar.
The seminar itself was a huge success with many delegates going out of their way to provide positive feedback. Some praised Grisha’s “relaxed but professional presentation style”, others remarked upon her “rare ability to make a complex topic easily accessible”, and even more have now “embraced the spirit of BAT”, and “felt a renewed inspiration” after attending.
Grisha’s clever use of video clips during the presentation kept everyone’s interest, while the live demonstration made converts out of even the most skeptical with one delegate remarking “I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes – SOLD”.
We truly enjoyed Grisha’s stay in Haslemere. Nothing was too much trouble, and not a “Diva Strop” in sight! We spent a lovely few days together, and feel that we have not only gained a professional colleague, but also made a new friend.
So what are you waiting for? Contact Grisha today and get the BAT ball rolling in your neighbourhood!