Frania Shelley-Grielen is a New York City-based professional applied animal behaviorist/ethologist, dog trainer and educator who holds a Master’s in animal behavior from Hunter College, New York City, and a master’s in urban planning from New York University. She is a licensed pet care technician instructor, a registered therapy dog handler, and a certified Doggone Safe bite safety instructor. She specializes in behavior modification work and training with cats, dogs and birds and humane management for urban wildlife. She is also the author of “Cats and Dogs: Living with and Looking at Companion Animals from their Point of View.”
She founded AnimalBehaviorist.us in 2009 to share her work on how welfare based, science focused strategies and solutions from the canine and feline point of view are more effective and make everyone happier, including the humans. During her five years developing and teaching the pet care technician program at a post-secondary vocational school for individuals with disabilities, she gained wide-ranging experience in training learners to use the best, most low stress, informed and humane approaches to work professionally with animals in the pet services industry. She also taught the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ (ASPCA) fundamentals of dog care course for the Houlton Institute, an experience that led her to create PetCenterEd, Inc., an innovative not for profit, science and welfare based learning and services center for people and pets.
In addition, she has presented to private groups and given webinars for the Pet Professional Guild on animal welfare and training and written on the pet services industry for BARKS from the Guild. She has also worked on graduate research projects at the Wildlife Conservation Society on thick-billed parrots, the American Museum of Natural History on horses and dogs and the ASPCA in New York City on cats.
Sessions
Why Can't We Be Friends? From aggression to affiliation in multi cat households