Welcome to Peace, Love & Fostering! My name is Juliana and I spend a lot of time with dogs.

In May 2015 I took a leap of faith and left my safe, comfortable career as an event planner at a local animal shelter to become a dog trainer full time. I had joined the world of non-profit development right out of college and was on a solid track to move up in that field – but thanks to a spunky foster dog, I started to feel a pull towards training and behavior. For about two years I juggled both jobs, ducking out of my 9-5 during the day to see clients or meeting with people on evenings and weekends. I actually loved the workload and the fast-paced demand of having both jobs, but my heart was so much more with the people and dogs I was helping through training. An opportunity presented itself to join the behavior team at my local animal shelter, the Washington (DC) Humane Society, and I knew it was time. I put in my notice at my fundraising job, saw us through one last big event, and made the jump.

On any given day you can find me working at the shelter falling in love with our animals, meeting with Dog Latin Dog Training clients, giving presentations around the DC area about dog-related topics, writing for this blog or a few others, posting way too many dog and non-dog photos on Instagram (@julianajean), waking up really early to run around DC to train for a marathon, being best friends with people I’ve never met thanks to the dog world and Facebook, stalking some of my favorite training and behavior idols in order to learn as much as possible, or trying to find time to enjoy being a 26 year old living in the nation’s capital.

I’m here to write about, well, pretty much all of that. This blog was created to promote my foster dogs, but it’s morphed into a place to discuss everything from training to fostering to simply living with and loving dogs.

You can also find me on Victoria Stilwell’s website, Positively.com!