Nicholas Bell’s affinity for dogs is lifelong. Dogs seemed to be attracted to him as well. Eventually, others noticed that dogs respected him and asked for his advice.

French bulldog Spike’s manners were beyond horrible, owner Karen Campbell said, crossing the line from “possessive” to “possessed” and making every outing a nightmare. 

“Around people and other dogs, he would absolutely go berserk,” she recalled. “I could hardly take him on walks. It was so embarrassing.” 

As much as she loved Spike, Campbell recognized he was a source of tremendous stress in her life. A friend referred her to Bell, who now owns The DogPa K9 Training, and his immersive Pawcademy behavior training. Campbell’s experience with Spike was so disheartening that she feared he would fail. 

“I honestly thought—before I decided to commit to having him boarded and trained with Nicholas for two weeks—that Spike was untrainable. I thought he was going to break Nicholas, that he’d be ‘that one dog,’” Campbell said.

Instead, Spike demonstrated immediate respect for Bell, something his owner had never witnessed. 

“All of a sudden he calmed down—It was so weird,” she said, adding that Bell’s rapport with dogs is remarkable. “There’s something about him; he can communicate so well with them.”  

“Being able to take someone’s dog, work with them extensively, shape it in a good way and set them up for success, has been life-changing for some people,” Bell said.

Campbell agreed. After graduating from Bell’s Pawcademy, Spike is now a good boy. 

“That anxiety level has gone down,” she explained. “We’re happier now. He’s more pleasant to take on walks now, and I am actually able to take him into a store—and this was a dog I could take nowhere.” 

Matt Hodges, who sent his husky mix, Eevee, to Bell when she was a pup, praised The DogPa’s Pawcademy for accelerating a process that could be laborious for a busy family.

“I wanted her to be integrated into the family as quick and healthy as possible,” he said. “I didn’t want to be putting this dog in a crate all the time. I wanted to be able to take her everywhere we can potentially take her, and I wanted her to understand how to be around people. That takes a lot of time.”

After Eevee’s intensive training, Bell worked with the family to ensure that everyone could effectively manage the family pet. 

“He basically skips you forward six months to a year and gives you a language to work with, and a base of understanding,” Hodges said. “It’s like a time warp.” 

Bell started The DogPa in 2020 after working as an independent contractor for another dog training company. He’s still in his 30s, but when receiving his professional training a few years ago, his mostly younger classmates called him “Grandpa.” “They said I talked to the dogs in a ‘grandpa’ voice,” Bell explained. That’s why Bell goes by the DogPa.

He didn’t start out that way. Bell’s professional background includes coaching, teaching, marketing, and creative writing.

“I always wanted to be as well-informed and educated as I could in raising and training [dogs],” he said. “I built upon that interest.”

His current role nods to his past experiences. Bell uses the phrase “Run towards your obstacles” as a social media hashtag, which also serves as a tagline for the business and a personal mantra of sorts. Bell lives with cystic fibrosis.   

“It wasn’t until I truly started running towards the obstacle of my illness that I became healthy enough to become a full-time dog trainer,” he said. Entrepreneurship provides the flexibility he needs to accommodate daily treatments to manage his condition, and he’s trained his husky, Kima, as his service dog. Pomeranian mix Tod and German shepherd Max complete his and wife Kristin’s family pack, and all three dogs serve as role models for Pawcademy participants. 

Bell recently opened a facility near 108th and Maple streets. He continues to take on the hard cases including reactive, aggressive, and obnoxious behavior. 

“I feel for all parties involved in those situations: the owners, the dogs, the people who come to visit, those owners. Everybody’s missing out when there are those kinds of issues where essentially the dog runs the household,” he said. “That’s not how things should be. As much as we love our dogs, in the modern era I think we mistakenly humanize them in ways that cause a lot of problems. People think of dogs like their kids, but they should not be treated like a human child. They should be treated like they are a dog and you are a human.”

Any dog can respond to training, Bell insisted, and he is flexible in his methods. 

“I think it’s all relevant. Dogs act bad because of the situations they’re in, whether it’s being not trained, being in an unhealthy environment, or having come from a history of abuse. All these things can lead us to believe a dog is, like, bad or unruly, but they’re all capable of learning,” he said. “I can give them the tools they need to be successful.” 

Visit dogpatraining.com for more information.