Dog Trainer
Maya Chen
Certified Dog Trainer CPDT-KA · High-Energy Breed Specialist
About Maya
Maya Chen knew from her very first internship at a dog training facility that she had found her calling. That was eleven years ago. Since then, she has earned her CPDT-KA certification (Certified Professional Dog Trainer — Knowledge Assessed) from the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, built a thriving private practice, and worked directly with more than 800 families to help them understand and live more harmoniously with their dogs.
Her specialty is high-energy breeds: the Border Collies, Australian Shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Siberian Huskies, and Jack Russell Terriers that routinely exhaust their owners and end up surrendered to shelters not because they're difficult animals, but because the match between their needs and their owners' lifestyle was never properly evaluated. Maya's work is fundamentally about prevention — helping people choose the right dog before they fall in love with the wrong one, and giving those who already have a high-drive dog the tools to channel that energy productively.
At The Cosmic Pet, Maya brings this practical, experience-grounded perspective to the training and breed-zodiac sections. Her breed-zodiac articles for dogs are distinctive in that they go beyond temperament description to offer concrete, actionable training and lifestyle recommendations tailored to each sign-breed pairing. A Gemini owner with a Border Collie faces very different daily challenges than a Taurus with the same breed — Maya maps those differences with the specificity that comes from a decade of in-home, hands-on work.
She writes from a strongly positive reinforcement framework, informed by the work of Karen Pryor and the principles of applied behavior analysis. She is skeptical of dominance-based training theories and vocal about the behavioral science that has largely discredited them. Her content is always honest about difficulty levels, realistic about time investment, and grounded in what she has personally observed working in living rooms and backyards with real families.
When she is not writing or training, Maya volunteers with a local rescue organization that focuses on herding breed rehoming, and she runs a popular Instagram account dedicated to enrichment activities for high-drive dogs. She lives with her Belgian Malinois, Riot, who she cheerfully describes as "a 28-kilogram argument for choosing your dog very carefully."