Meet Liv Healy
My name is Liv Healy and I’m the other co-founder of Clickstart. I was the kid who was obsessed with animals from the jump. Every weekend I was binge watching Animal Planet programs and leaping at any opportunity to go watch mice and guinea pigs scurrying around in the pet stores by us. I couldn’t name a single NBA player if my life depended on it, but if you need obscure facts about kudu I’m your guy.
When I started college at UC Santa Cruz, I began as a neurobiology major. I loved the organic sciences, especially when animals were involved, but after being thwarted by organic chemistry (a cannon bio student experience), I switched majors to my other love: the arts. I graduated with two BAs, one in Fine Art and another in the History of Art and Visual Culture. My studio practice focused on narrative storytelling and bookbinding, and my critical theory studies culminated with a thesis on gender and power in depictions of witchcraft during the early modern period.
In stark contrast to my academic pursuits, throughout college I started working as a groomer at a chain pet store. Two years in I realized the salon life was not for me, but I was able to walk away with a lot of boots on the ground on handling experience and a good eye for body language. (Anyone who works with dogs in high stress conditions gets pretty good at avoiding bites!) As much as I loved dogs, seeing them consistently overwhelmed and unhappy to see me was too hard, and I didn’t have a passion for the art of grooming like some of my coworkers did.
I dabbled in a series of other jobs, including cake decorating, professional bookbinding, and digital animation. Eventually I relocated to Oakland and got a job as a handler at a local doggie daycare as I planned my next moves. Their training program involved an intensive series on canine behavior and body language, and at that point I was hooked. I found the science of behavior absolutely fascinating and started reading everything I could on the subject.
I moved back home to LA and was able to snag a position as an assistant dog trainer for a remote company and mentored under some truly talented positive reinforcement professionals. Over the course of seven years, I worked my way up to teaching group classes, coaching clients one on one, and offering board and train services. In this time I completed professional coursework and certifications, including the CCPDT, Fear Free Pets, and Dr. Susan Friedman’s Living and Learning with Animals.
After a stint of traveling through Europe working on farms with Maremmas (large livestock guardian dogs), goats, and poultry, I started my graduate degree at Laguna College of Art & Design with a focus in pedagogy. I decided to devote my time there to a project about my experience as a child caregiver for my father, who had an aggressive form of Multiple Sclerosis. This work explored the complexities of disability and compassion fatigue, and while that was fulfilling, it was also incredibly taxing. I found myself disliking the professional academia environment and falling out of love with art as a whole.
All the while I was still teaching group dog training classes and seeing private clients. Moving to Orange County meant I was assigned a new assistant: Cassie! It was unbelievably refreshing to work with someone as passionate about animal behavior as I was. Cassie and I attended conferences, studied for more advanced professional certifications in behavior modification, and day dreamed about having our own dog training facility.
In every way that my grad school experience was stealing my joy, working with dogs and the people who loved them was replenishing it. After agonizing over which path to take for so long, I eventually had to analyze my own behavior and realized that training filled my heart in a way that art simply couldn’t any more. I finally sat Cassie down and agreed to go into business with her. In 2019, after months of staying up past midnight working on our business plan and scouring city zoning maps, we officially launched Clickstart Dog Training Academy. We began to develop our dream team of passionate trainers and set to work building our brand.
Two years into running Clickstart, I finally began to pursue my niche interest in service dogs and graduated from the Atlas Assistance Dogs Trainer Academy. Service dog training combined so many of my areas of interest and expertise: creative thinking and troubleshooting to make training adaptive, teaching precise obedience skills, promoting disability advocacy, and empowering teams with the knowledge to accomplish huge training milestones. My appreciation for these amazing dogs flourished even more as my own health declined and I began raising and training a golden retriever puppy named Mouse to become my own service dog. I am so proud to say that at two and a half years old, she is making my world so much bigger and giving me the independence that I was worried my conditions would take from me for good.
I have worked professionally with dogs since 2007, and as a trainer since 2013. No matter how much I learn and grow as a trainer, I feel there is always something new to deep dive into. I’m incredibly lucky to get to work with our growing community of R+ handlers, and I cannot wait to see what the future of Clickstart holds for all of us.
