About Us
Meet our trainer!
Meet Holly, owner and lead trainer of Trust & Drive Canine, LLC.
Holly is a Certified Master Dog Trainer and U.S. Marine Corps veteran who completed the intensive six-month Master Dog Trainer Program at Highland Canine School for Dog Trainers, earning her certification in June 2024.
After graduating, Holly immediately put her education into practice by starting her own dog-training business in Orlando, Florida. Since then, she has continued expanding her experience by working with dogs of different breeds, temperaments, drives, behavioral challenges, and training goals.
Holly believes successful dog training is about much more than teaching commands. Her approach focuses on understanding the individual dog in front of her and developing a training plan based on that dog's temperament, behavior, needs, and the owner's goals. She emphasizes clear communication, fair expectations, consistency, and teaching owners the skills necessary to maintain their dog's training outside of structured sessions.
Ultimately, Holly's goal is to help create confident, reliable dogs and knowledgeable handlers who can live and work together more seamlessly—building a relationship rooted in trust, communication, and a better understanding of one another.
Education
At Holly’s Master Dog Trainer course, she completed 960 hours of professional education and hands-on training, gaining experience across both companion and working-dog training.
Her education included:
- Canine ethology and behavior
- Learning theory
- Training tools and techniques
- Behavior problems
- Veterinary and health considerations
- Dominance and aggression
- Fear and aggression
- Competition obedience.
- Therapy and service dog training, including mobility assistance, autism service dogs, and seizure and PTSD service dogs
- Scent discrimination and
- Search & Rescue (SAR)/trailing.
On the working-dog side, Holly trained in:
- Scent detection work such as bombs, narcotics, and more
- Criminal apprehension and bite work
- Police K9 equipment
- K9 handler instruction
- Tactical building searches
- Advanced police K9 training
- SWAT K9 concepts.
Her education also covered multiple areas of:
- Search and Rescue, including wilderness search
- Human-remains detection(cadaver)
- Disaster search
Giving her a diverse educational foundation that extends far beyond traditional pet obedience.
The dogs behind it all
A message from our trainer:
I got Dolly, my German Shepherd, in January 2023 when she was a year old while I was still active duty in the Marine Corps. Calling her a wild puppy would be putting it nicely. She had enough energy and personality for about four dogs, and at the time, I had no idea that trying to figure out how to manage all of that would eventually lead me to a career in dog training.
Dolly became my reason for wanting to understand dogs on a deeper level. The more I learned how to communicate with her, work through challenges, and actually channel all of that energy into something productive, the more I fell in love with training. She also became my little travel buddy—pretty much anywhere I went, Dolly came with me. Traveling with her showed me firsthand how much good training can change your life with your dog. There's a huge difference between simply owning a dog and having a dog you can actually enjoy doing life with.
Then, about a week after the one-year anniversary of getting Dolly, I apparently looked at my life and thought, “You know what this needs? A Belgian Malinois.”
So I rescued Kilo at six months old.
Kilo very quickly made sure I understood that whatever confidence I had developed from training Dolly needed to be humbled immediately. He is incredibly driven, intense, ridiculously smart, and has tested my patience, knowledge, problem-solving skills, and sanity more times than I can count. Just when I think I've figured him out, he finds a new way to keep me on my toes.
But that's also exactly why he's made me a better trainer. Kilo has pushed me to think outside the box, continue learning, adapt my approach, and understand that what works beautifully for one dog may completely fail with another.
So, in short: Dolly is the reason I became a dog trainer, and Kilo is the reason I continue becoming a better one. They couldn't be more different, but they've both taught me some of the most valuable lessons I know about dogs—and they're a huge part of why Trust & Drive Canine exists today.