David Shama

David is the found­ing father and vision­ary behind The Orig­i­nal Dog House Inc., he has earned the nickname“The Dog Father”. Three years into his early retire­ment after a suc­cess­ful career in busi­ness, he decided to live out his long time dream of work­ing with dogs, which led to the cre­ation of an ‘Ulti­mate Cen­tre for Dogs’.

Since the age of nine, David has been infat­u­ated with dogs, and has always grav­i­tated towards the Ger­man Shep­herd breed. For many years he has focused his free time to the res­cue of GSDs’ that were labeled incor­ri­gi­ble or non-adoptable, yet time and time again he has proved sev­eral res­cue orga­ni­za­tions to be wrong in their assess­ments of the dogs he took on. David truly believes that just about all dogs can be helped and reha­bil­i­tated as long as they are han­dled fairly and firmly by some­one who has a sound under­stand­ing of canine behavior.

Over the years his inher­ent tal­ent to work with and reha­bil­i­tate dif­fi­cult and/or dan­ger­ous dogs pre­ceded him and led to hav­ing numer­ous friends and neigh­bors ask him to help them with their dog train­ing prob­lems or to address cer­tain unwanted behav­iours. The Orig­i­nal Dog House has given David the plat­form and oppor­tu­nity to finally live out his pas­sion. Since start­ing the com­pany he has worked with a vari­ety of dogs and had the priv­i­lege to meet many of their won­der­ful owners.

To this day, David, in con­junc­tion with The Orig­i­nal Dog House train­ing team con­tin­ues to res­cue dogs that would oth­er­wise be put down. When he feels com­fort­able that a dog has been set on the cor­rect path and is ready to be safely rein­te­grated into soci­ety, David will work hard to find the dog a new for­ever home. At present, David and his wife Mar­i­lyn (a retired teacher), are empty nesters liv­ing within the Avenue & Lawrence area of Toronto. They share their lives with their won­der­ful dogs Dash (their GSD) and Loo (their Boxer), who are for­ever present in David’s office at The Orig­i­nal Dog House.

Luke Gau­vreau - Man­ager

Luke and Train­ing Part­ner Winston

Luke has been a com­mit­ted client of The Orig­i­nal Dog House for the past 2 years. Dur­ing that period his pup (big) Win­ston has been a reg­u­lar fix­ture in our day­care pro­gram. For the past few months Luke appren­ticed as a part time han­dler, to a full time han­dler and now has estab­lished him­self as the hands-on Man­ager for The Orig­i­nal Dog House.

Luke brings a wealth of infor­ma­tion and expe­ri­ence as a man­ager and admin­is­tra­tor. Luke is a con­sum­mate dog lover and has long term plans at The Orig­i­nal Dog House when David retires within the next cou­ple of years. Luke’s pol­icy is an ‘open door pol­icy’ wel­com­ing both our cur­rent clients and new clients to address any ques­tions or con­cerns they may have directly to him.

All About Our Team

Dur­ing the years 2009 and 2010 ‘The Orig­i­nal Dog House Inc’ (TODH) as many other busi­nesses was faced with some chal­lenges. It was then that­David Shama (Owner & Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of TODH) brought on board an ener­getic and pas­sion­ate young man (Luke Gau­vreau) as the company’s Busi­ness Man­ager to help David bet­ter admin­is­ter, mar­ket & pro­mote the company’s services

With their com­bined efforts, David and Luke set in motion a series of new admin­is­tra­tive poli­cies to bet­ter man­age the company’s affairs, in con­junc­tion with an aggres­sive radio & mag­a­zine adver­tis­ing & pro­mo­tion cam­paign. This was topped by enlist­ing the ser­vices of a mature and expe­ri­enced Team of pas­sion­ate ‘Dog Pro­fes­sion­als’ who would step up to the plate as Han­dlers, Obe­di­ence Train­ers, Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Spe­cial­ists, Groomers and Supervisors.

As such, we the Man­age­ment at ‘The Orig­i­nal Dog House Inc’ take great pride in intro­duc­ing our Team:

Yael -

Pro­fes­sional Dog Han­dler & Admin­is­tra­tor, she is also appren­tic­ing as a Behav­iour Spe­cial­ist under the direc­tion of David Shama.

Sarah -

Pro­fes­sional Dog Han­dler and expe­ri­enced all around Trainer. Sarah has worked with guard and bomb sniff­ing dogs. Over and above the lat­ter Sarah is also an accom­plished artist who will immor­tal­ize any dog by way of a hand carved clay sculpture.

Lori -

Pro­fes­sional Mas­ter Groomer who per­forms her skills with great patience, kind­ness and pride. Lori has over 20 years of hands-on expe­ri­ence within the groom­ing industry.

Megan -

A Pro­fes­sional Dog Han­dler, Megan has been work­ing with dogs for many years. She joins us as a han­dler and trainer.