About Sits & Wiggles Dog Training

Sits & Wiggles is a behavior consultancy rather than an obedience school, run by Ferdie Yau out of New Rochelle and working in clients' homes across Westchester since 2009 by his own account.

Who he is

The credential on the site is CPDT-KA, the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers' knowledge-assessed certification. What makes the background unusual is everything around it: the site states he trained dozens of exotic species at the Wildlife Conservation Society, including polar bears, sea lions and river otters, that he is a former New York City ecologist with a master's in conservation biology from Columbia, and that he studies the city's urban coyotes with the Gotham Coyote Project. He describes the coyote work as giving him a different angle on canine behavior.

What he takes on

The stated specialty is complex behavior cases. The model is in-home consulting where the owner is taught to run the behavior plan, rather than the dog being handled and handed back. For rates, the site asks you to get in touch.

Method

The written approach pulls from ethology, psychology, evolutionary biology and neuroscience, and the training itself is positive reinforcement based.