Jeanette Sams-Dodd has a degree in economics, Spanish and German from the Business University in Copenhagen and a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the Royal Veterinary School in Copenhagen. She has worked in several places in Europe, i.e. as CEO for a conference centre in Denmark, in a bank in Germany and as CEO for the Danish subsidiary of DAT-Schaub in Barcelona, Spain for 5 years. In 1997 Jeanette together with Frank founded the organisation Canix that focuses on behavioural counselling, movie dogs and service dogs.

Jeanette has acquired her experience with dogs over many years. She got her first dog at the age of 13, a curly-coated retriever, and at the age of 15 she had trained it to a level to be 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. As a result of her extensive work with hunting dogs Jeanette became an approved trainer in the Danish Retriever Club and for FOF and she has for both organisations conducted several courses in the training of hunting dogs and in obedience training for all dog breeds. Jeanette has also been involved in dog exhibitions, their rules and requirements and one of her dogs became Danish Champion.

In 1995 Jeanette and Frank got the idea for Canix and immediately began the planning of the company which was formally started in 1997. One component in these preparations was that Jeanette in the summer of 1997 participated in a 3 month intensive training course at the main office of Canine Companions for Independence in Santa Rosa, California, USA. Here she learned how they in the US breed and train service, hearing and therapy dogs and how they establish and manage a non-profit organisation for service dogs. Jeanette also learned during this period how they train guide dogs in the US. During her stay at CCI, Jeanette initiated a puppy-evaluation program in order to determine the suitability of individual puppies as service dogs. This program has been continued by CCI.

Canix focuses on two main areas: The training of working dogs that can perform complicated tasks, e.g. movie and service dogs and counselling on behavioural problems. The basis for the training of working dogs is a set of new methods developed by Jeanette. The system differs from other systems because the training begins as the same moment the puppy is separated from its mother and because it uses a combination of the methods the mother-dog would use and play, however as a play with rules such that the dog learns from the play. The system makes it more natural for the dog to learn and therefore easier – and most importantly the dog finds it fun to learn. The advantages of the system are also that it makes it possible to complete the education of a service dog at the age of 12 months whereas the normal age for completion of the education for other organisations is 24 to 26 months. In addition, the dog can learn more complex tasks and it is more stable in its performance, something that is particularly important for movie dogs because they often must learn highly complicated tasks. In October 2000 Jeanette received a price for this training system.

Canix’ service dogs have give demonstrations on TV, even radio and they have been featured in a number of TV and radio braodcasts and in newspaper articles. In addition, the dogs have appeared at a number of exhibitions and fairs to increase the awareness around service dogs and their importance. Canix movie dogs were in January 2001 featured on a Danish documentary covering media topics and they have participated in both full-length and short movies as well as commercials.

The second key area for Canix is behavioural counselling and correcting behavioural problems in family dogs. Jeanette has acted as a behavioural consultant for a number of years and has experience with most breeds and types of behavioural problems that occur. Several veterinary clinics refer all their patients with behavioural problems to Jeanette.

Jeanette also actively participates in the dissemination of information regarding dogs and dog behaviour and training. She writes a monthly column for a newspaper, she has given classes on dogs and dog training on a technical school for people wanting to work in this field, she regularly gives lectures and writes articles for speciality magazines on dog behaviour and training and on service dogs.

As entertainment for her own dogs, Jeanette trains agility at a non-competition level and teaches the dogs all possible (and some impossible) tricks to maintain their ability to learn and to stimulate them.
Jeanette is fluent in Danish, English, German and Spanish. In addition, she speaks Catalan and French.

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.

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 and Head of Psychopharmacology at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma, Germany with responsibility for pre-clinical drug discovery in Alzheimer’s Disease and psychiatry. At present he holds the position as 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 serves on the advisory board to the Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative by the Wellcome Trust, UK, acts as an advisor to Strathclyde University, UK on drug discovery issues, 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.
Frank's publication list can be seen here.