It all started with Peanuts, Raul’s first dog at the age of nine.  He had a book of dog tricks and would slowly work his way through it, teaching his dog each trick before moving on to the next. When he was fifteen he took it a step further by working for Gorden’s Sentry Dogs in San Pascual California Saturday mornings and after school. There he began as an “agitator,” which unfortunately for him meant that his role was to dress up in a padded suit and act as a fleeing suspect or intruder when Gorden was training attack dogs.

After paying his dues he became an obedience trainer, and continued there for four years. By the end of this time he had also formed a relationship with the Humane Society located in Escondido California, where they allowed him to work individually with the dogs. Since this was a time before spaying and neutering awareness campaigns, shelters had ridiculously high turnover rates. Raul was horrified at the rate and amount of dogs being destroyed simply because of lack of space. He began working with many different dogs, teaching them obedience training and correcting negative behavior in hope that it would help increase their chances of finding families. At the same time, by working with so many different dog breeds and types of behavioral issues he was able to gain experience and learn how to adjust his training approach to address specific breed traits, giving him a more realistic strategy for success. Ultimately he was able to find homes for some of the dogs and also recruit some for his boss, Dan Gorden.

He spent some time in the dog show world, competing with Molly, a female Samoyed in the puppy to 12 month dog division, which was a positive experience. At that time he was also working at a dog grooming shop as a bather. He decided to take things into his own hands at the age of eighteen when he put an ad in the local newspaper for dog training services. He would either work with the client in their home or take the dog to his own for two to four weeks, then train the owner afterwards so he or she could reinforced the learned behavior.

In 1977, two weeks after stumbling across the morning workout at Del Mar racetrack, he got a job grooming thoroughbred race horses at San Luis Rey Downs in Fallbrook, California. He continued to be involved training dogs while grooming horses there before leaving in for Silver Lakes Ranch, a thoroughbred horse farm in Helendale, California.  There he learned how to raise, train and ride race horses. In September 1980 he moved to Burlingame, California and began working at Bay Meadows racetrack in the Northern California racing circuit as a jockey and exercise rider up until a career ending riding accident on November 26th, 1996. He was helped through his eight year rehabilitation period by his wife, Teresa English.

Teresa was raised in Felton, California as a country bare back riding girl who competed as a barrel racer and in other horse rodeo completions as well as participated in parades as an adolescent. As a young woman she left for the racetrack in 1978 to ride racehorses, and began her jockey apprenticeship in 1980. In 1983 Teresa’s riding career ended when a horse flipped in the paddock at Golden Gate Fields, crushing her beneath it causing career ending injuries. At the time of the injury Teresa was fifth in the jockey standing, an unprecedented accomplishment for a female race rider.  She has also had a lifetime of experience with dogs, and specializes in working with timid and fear regressive personality types, as well as geriatric dogs with medical conditions.

While raising his two daughters, Raul turned back to his canine origin in order to figure out a way to exercise his three large dogs despite his new physical limitations. This is when he began developing the Alpha-Ball, an interactive exercise and training toy. With the Alpha-Ball at his disposal he was able to control up to four dogs at a time, totally draining them of any excess energy in around ten minutes. He continued to utilize the Alpha-Ball throughout his recovery and still does to this day.

After replying to a craigslist ad in 2006 he began working for Woof Walks, an established dog walking service, before eventually branching out on his own to create Lobo Dog Walks, which is completely family-owned. We offer off-leash trail excursions, where your dog will get to exercise in nature as part of a pack of six dogs. This allows them to learn trail etiquette while simultaneously becoming socialized. Lobo Dog Walks was created with the goal of doing everything in our power to help you and your family maintain a long, harmonious relationship with your dog.