Educators and trainers, not just breeders
At Shinjukawa we are not just breeders. We are both Canine Educators and have obtained the CEPAS European Dog Trainer Professional certification — and are ENCI Canine Trainers. Myriam has additionally obtained the ANMVI-ENCI Master Canine Breeder qualification. These credentials are not medals hung on the wall: they are tools we use every day in our work with our dogs and with the families who adopt them.
What the CEPAS certification means
The CEPAS certification is an official third-party independent attestation that objectively demonstrates the skills, knowledge and work experience of a professional in a given field. It was founded in 1994 and is the leading Italian institute in the certification of competences and training. Since 2016 it has been part of the multinational Bureau Veritas group and is accredited by ACCREDIA (the Italian national accreditation body).
Holding the certification guarantees that a person complies with precise quality standards established at national or international level.
To obtain it, one must:
Demonstrate that one possesses certain educational qualifications, hours of specific training and work experience.
Take an exam — written and oral, theoretical/practical — before an independent committee to assess the real competences.
Including the certification as the completion of a course means guaranteeing the quality of the training, through verification by a third party.
What it means to be ENCI trainers
The trainer course largely covers the topics dealt with in the educator course, ranging from the history of the dog to the fundamentals of biology and mechanics, to the evolution of animal behaviour theory, but it provides a different approach, deepening the part relating to the activities proper to cynophilia for social utility work and sports competitions.
Among these, scent work aimed at finding lost objects, animals or missing people, search on rubble, agility, mobility, sea rescue and other disciplines.
Obviously, in a generalist course the theoretical foundations and techniques for setting up training work are provided, which will then be deepened in specialist theoretical-practical courses depending on the discipline chosen.
Over the years we have taken part in several specialization courses, with our Shibas, and one of the most interesting was the “International Seminar on Forensic Odorology” — a branch of criminalistics and forensic science that studies, collects and analyses the human scent traces left on crime scenes, on objects or on vehicles, using specially trained canine units. The seminar was held by one of the world’s leading experts, Dr. Mario Rossillo, a veterinarian and former Argentine police commissioner, scientific director of the forensic odorology squads of the Ministry of Security, and an international consultant for police forces, prosecutor’s offices and universities in various countries, including Italy.
The Shiba proved very talented for this type of work, effectively carrying out the tasks of Recovery — the odorous molecules identified by the dog are collected on the crime scene using sterile gauzes or molecular aspirators, then stored in sealed containers — and the subsequent phases of Comparison and Expert Appraisal — through an olfactory comparison in the laboratory (the “odorological wheel”), the dogs compare the recovered odour with samples taken from suspects to confirm or rule out the presence of a person at the crime scene.
All of this makes the search much faster and cheaper, considerably increasing the chances of solving particularly complex crimes or those in which time is a critical factor, for example in kidnapping cases.
All the knowledge acquired has contributed to providing us with techniques and food for thought that have led us to develop our own methodologies and techniques, specifically tailored to the Shiba and its management in the kennel, allowing us a deep understanding of the behavioural-cognitive aspect that we apply every day.
A concrete example. An owner called us because his Shiba, after about a year and a half, had started to show anxiety when left alone in the house: it barked at the curtains of the living room and damaged furniture and objects. To us it was inexplicable — how could a dog that had always been calm suddenly start showing these behaviours without, according to the owner, any reason? We knew him and we also knew his littermates.
After a quick round of phone calls to also hear from the other owners, we confirmed that Ken was the only one showing inappropriate behaviours and we began to investigate. The dog had been accustomed to being left alone in the house and knew how to handle the situation — there had to be a trigger that had upset the balance.
We asked the owner if something had happened in his absence, something of which perhaps even he was unaware, suggesting he ask the neighbours. We discovered that work was underway on the building’s facades and that, in his absence, workmen had intervened to fix the balcony on the floor above using heavy equipment — demolition hammers, angle grinders — standing on the scaffolding right in front of the living room window.
The dog had found himself facing alone what he had probably experienced as an attempted intrusion, an imminent danger that had traumatized him, associating it with the external scaffolding, which from that moment he experienced as a danger. Once the cause was found, we suggested to the owner how to behave and everything returned to normal in about ten days.
A breeder without training would not have known how to give the right advice.
A breeder without training would not have been able to give the right advice — he would probably have suggested isolating the dog in a room (something the dog would have experienced as a punishment) or turning to a veterinarian for a pharmacological approach, things that would only have made the situation worse.
How breeding changes
Being educators and trainers has radically changed the way we breed and approach the dog. The knowledge acquired is now part of our background and is applied naturally in the kennel every day. Being educators and trainers necessarily brings a change of mindset, it makes you see the dog in its complexity — it is the difference between a professional and an amateur approach.
So we do not limit ourselves to raising healthy, beautiful puppies — we work daily with our dogs for their behavioural and cognitive well-being. This means that a Shinjukawa puppy already arrives prepared to:
Go to the toilet outdoors — one of the first achievements owners appreciate immediately.
Walk on the leash — the basics, not formal training.
Handle contact with people — without fear or excessive distrust.
Handle new and unexpected situations — the resilience that comes from early stimulation.
Tolerate grooming — bath, ear cleaning, nail trimming, all already experienced.
The Shiba does not respond to standard training techniques — it is a dog that only cooperates if it understands the point of it, and this requires a different approach from the one taught in courses. An approach that can only be born of experience.
The value for those who adopt
For those who adopt, having a breeder who is also an educator means having the guarantee of constant specialist support for any problem. Questions about behaviour, socialization, feeding, resource management, reactivity — can be answered by the same people who raised the puppy. Tailor-made answers, because whoever answers knows that specific puppy from day one — they do not answer on the basis of theoretical models or generalist protocols, but from direct experience.
The ENCI-ANMVI Master Canine Breeder
The Master Canine Breeder is the high-level training path organized by the Ente Nazionale della Cinofilia Italiana (ENCI) in collaboration with the Associazione Nazionale Medici Veterinari Italiani, dedicated to breeders and enthusiasts of purebred dogs.
Its main purpose is to guarantee specialist training of a high level and to provide breeders with the tools necessary to ensure the health, welfare and breed type of the purebred dog.
The path develops over the course of a year and is divided into three distinct teaching modules:
Module 1: focused on canine reproduction and on the importance and management of the Stud Book.
Module 2: centred on paediatrics, growth diseases, genetics and the diagnosis of hereditary diseases.
Module 3: dedicated to the practical management of the kennel — hygiene, control of infectious diseases, ethology and behaviour, tax and regulatory obligations.
To be able to participate, it is necessary to sign the “Code of Ethics of Dog Breeders” attached to the Technical Rules of the ENCI Stud Book for purebred dogs, which imposes a series of obligations and strict behavioural prescriptions on the breeder.
The combination of all this knowledge contributes to making us what we are, to the seriousness and professionalism that distinguish us.
Why all of this matters
It should be remembered that in Italy the profession of canine educator is not recognized — anyone with a weekend course can self-proclaim himself an educator. That is why we chose to follow a 240-hour course accredited by Bureau Veritas: it makes all the difference.
As far as we know, we are the only Shiba Inu breeders in Italy to hold all three credentials: CEPAS European Dog Trainer Professional certification, ENCI Canine Trainer, and ANMVI-ENCI Master Canine Breeder.
