Teaching a deer to play dead, a raccoon to carry a bird in its mouth without hurting it, a mouse to type, a dog and a cat to play tug-of-war—anything that Hollywood can imagine Lauren Henry has done!  Impossible tasks for most trainers, but not for Lauren.  She trains literally hundreds of animals each year for film and television.  Lauren is extraordinarily creative and has pioneered training advances that have allowed her animals to succeed where others have failed, and many of those training techniques have been adopted by top trainers throughout the industry. Lauren is an authentically motivational trainer, and every animal she works is happy and enthusiastic.

        Attractive, appealing, and equally at home in front of the camera or behind it, Lauren can quickly develop a rapport with other on camera talent and can effortlessly work with animal owners to get them focused on training, not on the camera.

Lauren is no bright-eyed, eccentric animal training enthusiast wearing a fanny pack and bait pouch overflowing with chicken.  Her immersion in training began at age five —eagerly learning everything she could about training and raising animals—and she spent the subsequent 30 years acquiring knowledge and skills that are simply unheard of among casual trainers, and honing her natural gift with thousands of animals and hundreds of species. 

From formal schooling—an animal science degree—to countless seminars in an eclectic array of related topics—marine animal psychology to cranio-sacral osteopathy—Lauren has been committed to learning everything that science and real world experience have to offer a world-class animal trainer. For example, while many people home prepare food for their dogs, Lauren was not content with the information available.  So she joined forces with veterinarians and doctors at Oregon State University and conducted several groundbreaking studies on nutrition and immunology.  These studies were published in scientific journals and remain accepted today throughout the field. In addition, she worked with Hewlett Packard to develop and patent several medical technologies to improve animals’ lives.

            When not training professionally, Lauren competes, and often wins, at the highest levels in virtually every competitive animal activity imaginable: obedience, agility, conformation, search and rescue, flyball, protection sports, herding, disc-dog, tracking, lure coursing, freestyle, skijoring, carting, weight pulls, dock diving, dressage, etc.

Lauren also conducts seminars and classes for other trainers and animal owners. She has a natural talent for creating a fun-charged environment where people and animals come together and learn from each other. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and her animal-centric attitude refreshing. She has an amazing ability to discern the real issues between animals and their trainers and can quickly reveal the underlying reason behind conflicts and how genuinely to resolve the issue.

Lauren has skill and knowledge unlike that of other trainers you may meet.  She has thousands of advanced techniques at her disposal, and an uncanny knack for knowing which is right at any given moment. What cannot be conveyed in prose is the magnitude of Lauren’s innate gift with animals.  “Whisperer” is a term that has been cheapened by mediocre TV trainers using obsolete techniques, but when you witness Lauren with an animal you understand what it truly means.  There are a few people who can converse in a language that is secret to most, and can easily encourage or calm an animal that is confused or lost. 

            If you want identify a truly great animal trainer, speak with their references or even better watch them with an animal. Provide Lauren with an untrained animal and watch what she can do in a few minutes, or ask her to bring in an animal she has already trained and see a more polished performer.  Either way, observe closely and you will understand that what Lauren does with animals is something extraordinary, rare, and magical…