Meet Our Team

Christian is the founder of Angier K9 Consultants and our lead Behaviorist—pairs years of hands-on experience with a deep, evidence-based understanding of canine psychology. He personally evaluates every training case that comes through our doors, ensuring each dog’s plan addresses root causes and clear goals. While Christian excels across standard and off-leash obedience, his true specialty lies in working-breed dogs, where he combines precise behavior-modification protocols with balanced, results-driven methods. As head trainer for all service-dog and protection-dog programs, he guides every step of these demanding curricula, delivering the rock-solid reliability and calm confidence that define Angier K9’s reputation. With Christian overseeing your dog’s journey, you can trust that potential will be unleashed—safely, ethically, and effectively.

Kelton Azuara-Walker is the co-owner, alongside his partner Christian, of Angier K9 Training and Behavior Center, where he treats dog training as applied philosophy and experimental psychology rather than a loose collection of “tips and tricks.” He is, by his own cheerful admission, a huge nerd—about ideas, about learning, and about how living systems change their behavior. That obsession drives everything from how he evaluates a new case to how he builds training plans for the messiest, most complicated dogs.

Kelton’s academic roots are in analytic philosophy and the philosophy of religion, where the central questions are about arguments, evidence, and explanation: What actually counts as a good reason to believe something? What does it mean to say one theory explains the data better than another? How do causes and effects relate? That framework carries straight into his work with dogs. Every behavior problem is a competing set of hypotheses about what the dog is learning, what the human is signaling, and what the environment is rewarding or punishing. Training, for Kelton, is structured hypothesis testing: watch, predict, intervene, and see which model of the dog’s learning actually survives contact with reality.

This philosophical foundation led naturally into a deep interest in linguistics and language learning. For seven years, Kelton worked as a Swahili and Spanish interpreter in courts, hospitals, and across everyday life, helping people communicate clearly when misunderstanding had real consequences. Constantly switching between languages and conceptual worlds taught him that “communication” is not just words; it is timing, tone, context, and shared expectations. In dog training, marker words, play rituals, leash pressure, spatial patterns, and tools are all part of a communication system—a cross-species language. The key question is not “Did the dog comply?” but “Do dog and handler share the same meaning for this signal, and does that meaning hold when things get hard?”

Alongside his intellectual work, Kelton has maintained a long-standing interest in physical training and sport. Over the years he has been drawn to American football, rock climbing, basketball, pickleball, calisthenics, gymnastics, and a rotating cast of other disciplines. Learning new skills, managing fear and excitement, dealing with failure, and coming back to refine mechanics and timing over thousands of repetitions gave him a concrete, embodied sense of what it feels like to be the learner: uncoordinated, confused, or right at the edge of your comfort zone. That lived experience shapes the empathy and structure he brings to both dogs and handlers struggling with “hard” behaviors.

Kelton’s practical training style is strongly influenced by modern play-centered, game-driven approaches associated with trainers like Dylan Jones, Jay Jack, and Ivan Balabanov—systems where play, drive, and games are not a side dish but the main engine of training. These approaches use tug, fetch, chase, possession, and other predatory-sequence games as the primary way to build relationship, emotional regulation, and precision, and then let obedience grow out of that shared game rather than out of rote drills. 

At Angier K9 Training and Behavior Center, Kelton organizes his philosophy around five core pillars that he believes underpin every successful case:

Evaluation

Cooperation

Fulfillment

Socialization

Authority

Everything else is built on top of these.

Evaluation means more than a one-time test in a quiet room; it is an ongoing effort to understand how a particular dog is reading the world and what it thinks “works” for getting its needs met. Cooperation is the process of building a shared project between dog and human, where both are genuinely engaged instead of one simply enduring the other. Fulfillment is making sure the dog’s drives and appetites are not just suppressed but given ethical, structured outlets. Socialization is not random exposure but careful, graded experience that teaches the dog how to exist calmly and confidently in a human world. Authority, last on the list for a reason, is about providing clear leadership and boundaries once the first four pillars are in place, so that structure feels predictable and safe rather than arbitrary or adversarial.

In practice, Kelton does most of his real evaluation and teaching through two primary mediums: adventure walks and play.

With adventure walks, he takes every dog he trains out into the real world as much as possible—parks, trails, neighborhoods, shopping centers, hardware stores, malls, and other everyday environments. Dogs start on a 26-foot retractable Flexi leash, then progress to 25- or 50-foot long lines, and eventually to fully off-leash freedom where it is safe and legal. Those walks are not just “exercise”; they are data. They reveal how the dog scans the environment, what it fixates on, how it handles novelty, and where stress and curiosity spike. On these walks, Kelton uses pressure-and-release (negative reinforcement) and thoughtful management of access to things the dog wants—sniffing, greeting, exploring, chasing—to teach the dog that listening to the handler is the key that unlocks the world.

The second medium is play-based training. Kelton uses personal play, chase-and-catch games, and possession games like tug to tap into the dog’s natural predatory and social drives. Instead of fighting those drives, he recruits them into the training project. Negative reinforcement (learning how to turn pressure off) is paired with heavy motivation through play and access to things the dog already cares about. In this framework, tug, chasing, grabbing, and “winning” are not bad habits to be stamped out but resources that can be channeled into structured games where COMEs, outs, positions, and impulse control are all woven into the game itself.

Kelton’s case load covers everything from young pet dogs learning reliable COME recalls, leash manners, and neutrality in public, to intense behavioral modification cases involving human-directed aggression, anxiety, and complex reactivity patterns. He treats each case as an ongoing research project:

What predictions is this dog currently making about people, dogs, and the environment?

Which behaviors are being reinforced, intentionally or not?

How do arousal, stress, and prior learning interact to produce what we’re seeing?

Under the five pillars—evaluation, cooperation, fulfillment, socialization, authority—where is the real bottleneck?

Only then does he choose specific tools and games.

Kelton is especially passionate about meta-learning—the study of how learning itself works—and about sharing that with clients. He wants owners to understand not just what to do, but why it works: how play can become an engine for obedience, how negative reinforcement can be used ethically and precisely instead of harshly, how fulfillment and authority stop being in tension once the first three pillars are truly in place. He enjoys tracing the connections between philosophy of religion, analytic philosophy, linguistics, sports training, and canine psychology, because those connections often produce the most practical insights for real dogs in real families.

Whether he is building a tug game that channels a dog’s chaos into clarity, using a Flexi walk through a busy shopping center to re-write a dog’s predictions about the world, or helping a serious aggression case find a safer, saner way to exist, Kelton’s aim is consistent: to use rigorous thinking, play-based and walk-centered training, and ethical, evidence-driven methods to improve the lives of dogs and their people—and to give them both the skills and confidence they need to go on more and better adventures together.

Evan serves as one of Angier K9’s Dog Trainer & Behavioral Specialist, bringing an in-depth command of canine psychology, modern learning theory, and a full toolkit of evidence-based techniques. Whether tackling aggression, anxiety, or advanced obedience gaps, he begins by carefully assessing each dog’s unique temperament and follows our training plan that targets root causes—not just symptoms. Evan’s sessions focus on clear, two-way communication and practical skill-building for both dog and owner, forging a bond grounded in mutual respect, trust, and lasting results.

Jonathan brings seasoned expertise and an unwavering commitment to excellence to the Angier K9 training family. As a Dog Trainer, he works with our Standard Obedience and advanced off-leash programs, ensuring rock-solid recall, polished leash manners, and reliable performance across every breed that walks through our doors. Jonathan’s balanced, evidence-driven methods are matched by keen observational skills and a calm, encouraging demeanor that inspires confidence in both dogs and their owners. Currently under the mentorship of our senior trainers, he is expanding his skill set to become a specialist in working-dog disciplines—preparing service dogs and protection dogs for the demanding tasks ahead.

Gemma is a passionate animal lover who has dedicated her life to helping pets of all kinds. She started as our Kennel Tech Manager and has developed her training skills and animal behavioral understanding in our proprietary training program. We are happy to say that she is now one of our obedience trainers. With her in the picture your fur baby will get the amazing one on one training they deserve.

We’re thrilled to introduce the newest member of the Angier K9 family! He began his journey with us as a dedicated kennel tech, and now he’s joyfully stepping into the role of a trainer. With a heart full of patience and passion, he’s already winning over the cutest fur babies, guiding them with care as they take their first steps in training. His growth is a joy to witness, and we couldn’t be more excited to have him shaping the happy tails of tomorrow!