Meet Your Trainer

Hello! My name is Nicole Thraen, owner of Top Dog Training LLC and Top Dog Academy. I taught 4th grade for five years from 2016-2021. In 2019, my husband and I decided to take the journey into puppy life where we got our boxer, Toby.

I quickly learned he was a true, high energy boxer and became interested in learning how to channel his energy in a positive and more structured way. I took him to training and fell in love with the process. Our relationship and bond grew with every training session. I soon realized that I wanted to learn how to teach other dog owners how to grow their relationship and bond with their own dogs like I did with Toby.

I began volunteering at a training facility to explore and learn how training worked. The experience I gained there was incredible, and I decided to leave the elementary education profession in 2021 to follow this new path.

My journey led me to working full time under a local trainer and later opening my own training business in October of 2021. I have trained hundreds of dogs through my business, where I also began working on social media and video editing.

This led me to create an entire online program where I could train dogs not only around me, but from anywhere online. I wanted this program to be a one stop shop with everything you need to know because I remember feeling very overwhelmed trying to research different training methods on my own when I first became a dog owner. This program covers everything down to the "why" of each command and how it applies to your dogs' overall mental health. I am very passionate about dog training and believe it is so important to give you as much information about the process as possible. I am proud to be able to share the wealth of dog training with you through Top Dog Academy.