Laurie Lawless
Laurie Lawless is a certified expert in dog behavior with extensive hands-on experience and a successful career in both private consulting and sheltering. Through her private training and surrender prevention programs, she focuses on keeping families together by resolving complicated behavior challenges.
Laurie provides guidance for shelter operations and team leadership, and develops or enhances behavior programs already in place. Laurie enjoys working right alongside staff to bolster knowledge and skills assessing and working with complicated dogs. She truly believes in getting more dogs into playgroups and other social activities, increases welfare and decreases length of stay.
Laurie has worked alongside top behavior and shelter professionals in the country, serving as a behavior lead with the ASPCA’s Behavior Science Team. She has directly helped many survivors of dog fighting, puppy mills, and hoarding situations overcome their past and prepare for life with a loving family.
In 2019, she opened a training and behavior center in Vermont, serving hundreds of dogs in the community while mentoring and sponsoring the certification of 5 dog trainers through the CCPDT. Laurie closed Dogs Rock! Vermont in 2022 to pursue her dream of helping shelters increase adoptions, reduce length of stay, and boost staff and volunteer engagement and founded Shelter Behavior Integrations, L3C. Today Laurie is helping shelters all over the U.S. integrate behavior forward strategies into their operations!
