Jeanette Sams-Dodd has a broad educational background that includes veterinary medicine from the Royal Veterinary School in Copenhagen, Denmark; a graduate course in animal behaviour from the University; and an education in economics, Spanish and Germany from Copenhagen Business School. She has held positions at Danida under the State Department in Denmark; Dresdner Bank and Aventis in Germany; Transportes Campillo (transport and supply chain company) in Valencia, Spain; and she was the CEO of Ecu-Carn, a subsidary of the Danish Dat-Schaub in Barcelona, Spain. She was responsible for establishing and managing the subsidary for 5 years. Jeanette speaks and writes Danish, English, German and Spanish fluently and also speaks Catalan and French.
Jeanette received her education as an instructor of service, hearing-, therapy and facility dogs at the Canine Companions for Independence (CCI) headquarter in Santa Rosa, Californien, USA. She learned how to establish and run a non-profit organisation for dogs to the disabled. In addition, she became familiar with how guide dogs are trained in the US. While at CCI, Jeanette initiated a program to evaluate and select puppies for their suitability as service dogs at an early stage in their development. This program has been continued by CCI.
Jeanette has acquired her experience with dogs over more than 30 years. She received her first dog at the age of 13, a curly-coated retriever, and two years later it was awarded in Winner-Class for hunting dogs - the first curly-coated retriever ever to achieve this in Denmark. Jeanette has subsequently trained several hunting dogs and she was for many years dog supervisor on pheasant and duck hunting on Danish estates. Jeanette has run several courses in the training of hunting dogs and in obedience training for all dog breeds for different Danish organisations and has been involved in dog exhibitions, their rules and requirements; one of her dogs became Danish Champion. |
Within the framework of Canix, Jeanette focuses on three key areas: The first is the education of working dogs that can solve complicated tasks, e.g. seizure-alert dogs, service dogs and movie dogs. For example in 2007, she trained the first seizure-alert dog in Denmark. The training is based on a new set of educational and training methods that Jeanette has developed. In 2000 she received an award for the system; the system is described in her new book. Jeanette has also participated in a number TV and radio broadcasts and newspaper and magazine articles covering her training of movie and service dogs. In addition, her dogs have on several occasions demonstrated their skills on TV, radio, and at exhibitions and conferences in order to increase the knowledge and awareness of service dogs and their importance to their owners.
The second area is counselling to solve behavioural problems, e.g. for family dogs. Jeanette has practised as a behavioural counsellor for a number of years in Denmark, the US, Germany, France, and Spain and she familiar with most types of behavioural problems. She is therefore well aware of the broad range of causes that can give rise these problems, why they appear and can in most cases find a solution that also in the real life can be carried out by the owner. A number of veterinary clinics and hospitals refer all their clients with these types of problems to Canix.
The third area is speaking, teaching and writing about dogs, dog behaviour and training. In 2009 the book "About the Dog - Development, Education, Training and Language" was published on Borgens Forlag in Denmark. It describes Jeanette’s personal view on dog behaviour and the educational system that she has developed as well as how it can be applied in practice for the education and training of family and working dogs. Finally, Jeanette teaches and runs courses in dog behaviour, education and training.
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Frank Sams-Dodd has a M.Sc. degree from Copenhagen University in ethology and neurobiology and a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University, USA in integrative neurobiology and physiology. In 2001, he received a doctoral degree (Dr.med. / D.Sc.) in medicine from Copenhagen University in recognition of his schizophrenia research.
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Frank has previously worked in the Danish pharmaceutical company H. Lundbeck A/S in the area of CNS disorders, particularly involved in schizophrenia and Parkinson’s Disease research. He has been Director of Physiology at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in San Diego in the area of metabolic disorders; Head of Psychopharmacology at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma, Germany with responsibility for pre-clinical drug discovery in Alzheimer’s Disease and psychiatry; and Vice President of Pre-Clinical Research at Bionomics Ltd., an Australian biotech company and CEO of Neurofit SAS, a subsidiary of Bionomics located in Strasbourg, France.
He has published several papers in Drug Discovery Today on approaches to improve the output of the drug discovery process and regularly gives talks at academic and industry meetings on the strengths and weaknesses of different drug discovery approaches. Finally, he has served on the advisory board to the Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative by the Wellcome Trust, UK, has acted as consultant to several pharmaceutical companies and served for several years on the Board of the FENS (Federation of European Neuroscience Societies) and the Danish Society for Neuroscience. |
