During his 16 years in the Uruguayan air force, Miguel Severo taught and worked with dogs to find and point out drugs, identify explosives, rescue people who’ve survived a collapsed building and attack people who pose a danger.
He’s a certified trainer in a handful of countries — including the United States — and has seen professional K9 instruction ever since he was a young boy, when his older brother was the chief of his local police department’s K9 unit.
Just because he can teach working dogs how to sniff for bombs and detect drugs doesn’t mean he can’t also teach Fido how to stop barking when someone crosses by his front porch or Rover to stop yanking on his master’s leash when they’re out for a walk.
Severo, who’s lived in Park City with his family for just over two years, is ready to reconnect with his dog-training past and is looking for clients for a training course he’s planning in April.
He has a few clients now, but he aspires to grow his operation. He works primarily in a restaurant — a job that has nothing to do with dogs — and while he finds Park City to be a nice place to live, restaurant work is not what he wants to do.
His dream is to have a place more remote than the Park City apartment where he lives. There, he could establish a reliable place where people or organizations could take their dogs for training.
When he trains dogs, Severo said, he incentivizes them to follow his commands. For some dogs, that can mean he rewards them with an opportunity to play. Other dogs that might not be as active or social receive food.
The biggest problem he often sees in dogs isn’t their problematic behavior at all, but rather how their owners react to bad behavior and speak to their pets.
Often, he explained, a dog might destroy something small or commit what its owner could consider a relatively minor infraction, so the dog isn’t made aware that its actions were incorrect or inappropriate.
But while letting furry friends off the hook may seem like an act of compassion in the short term, it has negative impacts in the long run because the dog will not learn that its behavior was problematic, nor will it correct it.
The question, he said, becomes “is the dog’s action OK?” If so, then good. If not, then it needs correction.
He also emphasized the important difference between asking a dog to behave and commanding it to.
“Please sit,” he first said, somewhat longingly and undemanding, as an example of what not to do.
“No, no, no. Sit!” he then said with authority.
Dogs recognize the difference and know the different voices, he said.
While he doesn’t have as vast of a clientele as he hopes to have someday, he works across the state. One dog in West Jordan, he said, was biting at people and animals.
After a month of working with Severo, the dog no longer barked and no longer bit.
For basic behavioral training, Severo said he can typically work with a dog three times a week for two to three weeks and have it understand and follow basic commands. Off-leash training, he added, takes a little bit longer.
When Severo trains dogs, he always asks the owners to accompany him, though he understands busy schedules sometimes make this impossible. He is willing to pick up a dog, go to a park or field, train the animal and return them home after coordinating how to pick up the dog with its owner.
For those interested in Severo’s upcoming April training course, his number is 561-503-1889.
Severo doesn’t speak a lot of English, but neither do dogs.
He does speak both Spanish and Portuguese, responds to texts in English, and can teach dogs English commands.