Hello, world.

Welcome to discover your talent, do what you love.

Number 565.

I'm your host, Don Hutchison.

Every Monday and Wednesday, I interview someone around the world who's discovered their talents to do work they love to create a life of success, satisfaction, and freedom.

On Fridays, I interview a well-known expert from the fields of personal or business development who share experiences, tools, and insights to

help our listeners along their journeys. Laura was learning about dogs, especially obedience and

agility. A colleague said, to learn about agility, get a border collie. But when Laura approached

a breeder, she was told, there's no way I'm going to sell you a border collie. You have no

idea how to handle this dog. I'm delighted to bring you our featured guest, Laura Della Cruz.

Welcome, Laura. Hi. Laura, are you using your talents doing work that you love? Yes.

All right. Well, we want to hear that whole story. A few words about Laura.

Author, teacher, trainer, and judge, Laura started lease up dog training as an alternative to the PAC mentality, focusing on people who consider their dogs to be part of the family.

Bestselling author of over 80 books and journals. She teaches business and marketing at New Mexico State University. She's trained herding dogs and their people for over 10 years. She's also a

hurting judge for AKC and the American Herding Breed Association. Well, Laura, that's a pithy

summary of your career. Tell our listeners around the world what you're working on now that has you engaged and excited. Well, I just went on break from teaching at the college, so I'm off

for the summer, and my big plan this summer is to start an international herding dog association

where people can get non-competitive hurting titles on their dogs from anywhere in the U.S.

by recording them working the dog through a course and then sending me the link to the video,

and I will have judges from AKC or AHBA judge the run, and then we can give them their non-competitive hurting titles.

Good heavens.

The best pet I ever had, and I've had great pets, was an Australian herding dog. And I didn't know anything about it, and I didn't use, I wasn't on the farm or anything, but it was one of the brightest animals. And so I got a little bit fascinated with that. But, you know, we'll hear more in your backstory. But this is fascinating. How long has this idea for this international herding dog association been in the works for you?

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