About Annie
Annie Grossman, CPDT-KA, KPA CTP, is a journalist-turned-dog trainer who has spent more than fifteen years helping people help dogs help people. She is the author of How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science (Sourcebooks, 2024) and the founder of School For The Dogs, the East Village training center she ran from 2011 until the start of 2025.
Today Annie works one-on-one with dogs and their people, in homes across New York City and virtually anywhere. Her approach is reward-based and grounded in the science of behavior: no leash jerks, no shock collars, no alpha rolls. Just clear communication, good timing, and a real understanding of why dogs do what they do. Annie has answered questions about dog training and behavior for listeners of NPR and The New Yorker, and currently hosts monthly Q&As on her Substack. She has worked as an ASPCA behavior specialist and an Animal Planet associate producer, and is a cofounder of Petcademy, which works to provide affordable and humane training to families who adopt shelter animals.
The book
How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science breaks down what positive reinforcement is (and isn't) and offers building-block exercises for everyone from brand-new puppy owners to people hoping to teach an old dog new tricks. Woven through it is the century-long history of reward-based training, from Pavlov's dogs and Thorndike's cats to Skinner's pigeons and Karen Pryor's dolphins. Dogster named it the #1 best book for new dog owners.
Get the book →From 2018 to 2024, Annie also cohosted a podcast, first as the School For The Dogs Podcast and later as How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science.
Listen: Annie with Alison Stewart on WNYC's All Of It
School For The Dogs
Annie started School For The Dogs out of her apartment in 2011, shortly after graduating from the Karen Pryor Academy of Animal Training and Behavior. It grew into a two-story East Village storefront with a dozen trainers on staff, and for more than a decade helped New York City dog owners live as peacefully as possible with their pets. From 2017 to 2024 she also curated StoreForTheDogs.com, which sold enrichment toys, reward-based training tools, and vegan and vegetarian treats. School For The Dogs closed unexpectedly on January 1, 2025; Annie later wrote a nine-part account of how it happened.
Before dogs
Before becoming a professional dog person, Annie was a staff reporter at the New York Observer and the New York Post, wrote wedding announcements for The New York Times, and ghostwrote a book about embroidery. She worked on Animal Planet's Too Cute! and was nominated for an Emmy as a writer for the game show Cash Cab.
She still writes. Her work on pet ownership has appeared in The Boston Globe, Vice, and The New York Times, among other publications, and she writes weekly about dogs, training, and behavior on her Substack, Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog. She has been quoted as an expert by The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. See Press and Writing.
As seen in
See all press → In Annie's words
We love stories about animals who have best friends that are a different species. When a kitten befriends a goat, it's total click bait. The human/dog relationship is really only another kind of fascinating interspecies partnership. Friendship is today at the core of our lives with dogs, but it wasn't always so. Once, they provided protection and hunting assistance for us; their side of the bargain consisted of table scraps and shelter. Today, they give us unconditional love and a reason to laugh and coo. In return, we don't give them much consistency. Sometimes we give them processed foods and leash jerks; bumblebee costumes and euthanasia needles; electric shocks and alpha rolls. And sometimes we share our tennis balls, or give them peanut butter-filled Kongs, and clearly expressed commands followed by rewards, thoughtful menus and adequate playtime.
As a writer and trainer, I aim to help people think about dog ownership in a modern way, and also to think about training as a form of two-way communication. I believe that a basic understanding of the science of behavior, along with a little bit of education about dog body language, can go a long way towards bettering the lives of the dogs we bring into our worlds.