In the beginning
Tamara Zerener started Fit Dogs in 1997.
Long ago, Tamara was a world-ranked tennis player, and went on to become a social worker for at-risk youths. In the early ‘90s, she brought the sporting life to the chaotic lives of her young clients. Many were introduced for the first time to an organized game with goals, rules, protocol and oversight.
She used sports to channel kids’ energy, challenge them physically and mentally, and teach self-control and social skills – a great concept that helped her clients learn and feel a different way of conducting themselves in the world. Plus they were naturally tired at day’s end!
But while she was teaching kids self-discipline, her understimulated young dogs at home began chewing up the house.
From the role that sports had played throughout her life, and her work with kids, she understood up-close the multiple behavioural benefits that flowed from exercise.
And so it came to pass that Tamara developed dog-centered exercise interventions, starting with her own dogs. After each workout, her dogs were very tired, very happy, refreshingly unambitious on the homefront, and newly slim and trim – they were fit dogs!
