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about us
Serving the surrounding areas of North Dallas, McKinney and Greenville. Mark and Treat is a husband and wife team offering dog training for basic obedience for pet or competitive obedience for your sports dog. We can also help you get a handle on reactive dogs, shy fearful dogs or overly energetic dogs.
Our philosophy: Achieving the highest level of training success with the least amount of conflict.
We do not choose our tools before we meet our students. Each training program is individualized to the personality of the dog and the needs of his/her family. We are very heavy on positive reinforcement though. Our goal is always to have a happy, confident dog that enjoys training and working with his/her owner.
Melissa, Yo Yo and Fay Fay
Melissa’s journey in dog training started in 2009, when she joined a PSA club with our late German shepherd. Dog sport really opened her eyes to animal communication. She was amazed by how dogs could be assertive, yet obedient at the same time. But even from the very beginning, Melissa was very clear that she didn’t just want a dog to listen. She wanted a happy dog that loved working with her.
Her desire to develop better communication skills led her to Michael Ellis’s School of dog training in 2010. From then on, she took seminars from multiple world-level trainers in ringsport and IGP to learn how to be the best handler she could be. She fell in love with Ivan Balabanov’s training method at a seminar in late 2019. Ivan’s ability to connect with dogs on an emotional level was what Melissa had been looking for all along. Without hesitation, she took Ivan’s course and became a certified Training Without Conflict trainer in January 2021.
Melissa’s specialty is in competitive obedience. Not only does she have an eye for details, she has a way to motivate dogs to make obedience training fun-filled and enjoyable. Obedience with good precision is not enough for her. She wants attentive ears, wagging tails, and relaxed body posture during training. Anyone who has seen her working with her Malinois, Yo Yo, knows what happy training looks like.
Languages: English and Chinese (通國語和粵語）
Thuan Mai
Having never had a pet in childhood, becoming a dog trainer was something Thuan never dreamt of. That changed though, when Melissa talked him into becoming a helper for her PSA club in 2010.
The world of competitive dog sport and helper work piqued Thuan’s interest in dog training. Working powerful dogs during high arousal states taught him how to read dogs’ emotions quickly. In protection work, it is a helper’s job to build confidence in a less secure dog and teach control without compromising performance in a more confident dog. This fine art of balancing power, motivation, and control in highly driven dogs, eventually led to over a decade of learning on Thuan’s part. He attended various seminars by world-level trainers in competitive obedience/protection, fostered (along with Melissa) for different rescues to help dogs with behavioral problems, plus titled our late rescue dog in Mondioring and IGP.
The skills Thuan has obtained through his years of helper work in PSA, ringsport, and IGP are undeniably important for his success in helping pet dogs with fear, reactivity, and confidence issues. Over the years, Thuan has developed the ability to assess a dog’s temperament and come up with a game plan within a few minutes of meeting a dog.
Thuan’s latest accomplishment is passing Ivan’s tests and becoming a certified Training Without Conflict Trainer in January 2023.