Amy Cook, PhD (she/her) has been training dogs for over 30 years, and through Full Circle Dog Training and Play Way Dogs in Oakland, California, has been specializing in the rehabilitation of shy and fearful dogs for 20 years. She is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC) through the IAABC and was one of the first trainers nationally to become a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CDPT) through independent evaluation. She is a graduate of the SFSPCA academy for dog trainers and has attended all four “chicken camps” in Hot Springs, Arizona, taught by Bob Bailey.
Amy has worked for the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, the San Francisco Animal Care and Control, and has provided behavioral evaluations for shelters and rescues throughout the Bay Area of California. She has worked with the anti-cruelty team at the ASPCA doing behavioral evaluations and psychological enrichment of dogs seized in dog fighting, puppy mill, and hoarding cases.
Amy returned to school in 2006 to get her PhD in psychology from UC Berkeley. Her research focused on the dog-human relationship and its effect on the problem solving strategies dogs employ. She has also studied causal inference in dogs and toddlers and olfactory navigation. She has extensive experience as a graduate student instructor, having taught sections of Introductory Psychology (both in person and online), Human Emotion, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology, Stigma and Prejudice, Statistics, Animal Cognition, and has taught Fundamentals of Psychology and Developmental Psychology as a full instructor.
