About Us

Based in Cave Creek, AZ our mission is to provide Pet Parents with a delightful relationship with their pups.

Our origins

Founder and Training Director, Leighton Oosthuisen, emigrated from South Africa to the USA in 1992. Prior to emigrating, Leighton had been the animal wrangler for a Hollywood movie production filming in South African.
Leighton also served in the South African Police, Search & Rescue, and in the Military working dog unit, specializing in Explosive and Narcotic detection K9’s.

He started training dogs in 1973 at a mere 10 years old and in 1985 joined a pet training school as an apprentice, going on to become an Instructor and later, Head Trainer.

In December 1997, Leighton purchased an old race horse training facility in Cave Creek, named Lone Tree Ranch, and founded Partners Dog Training School. (The “Lone Tree” still exists on the main training field). This laid the foundation for what was to become one of the biggest dog training schools in the USA.

While training detection canines, he met his first civilian client, a Great Dane puppy, in a park near Paradise Valley Mall, and by word-of-mouth, Leighton built a following of dedicated loyal customers, most of which are still with him to this day.

His goal was the same then as it is now, “Training Good Dogs to be Great”, and as they say…the rest is history.

Industry

defining

Success Rate 95% 95%
Motivational Training 85% 85%
Training Expertise 95% 95%
Customer Happiness 90% 90%

Leighton Oosthuisen-Training Director

Leighton is a behavioral expert with over 40 years of dog training. He is a former K9 handler, and has worked with bomb dogs, drug dogs, and Search & Rescue dogs. He has also competed and titled dogs in French Ring, Agility, Dock Diving and Schutzhund. For the past twenty years he has specialized in behavior modification. Leighton lives on the Partners School property with his fiance Sarah, his children Christopher and Alessandra, their seven dogs, two cats and three chickens.
Leighton is also a World Champion target pistol shooter, and represented the USA in the 2014 and the 2017 World Pistol Championships.

Kelli McCoy-General manager

Kelli started with Partners as a client in 2008 and in 2012, joined the team. In 2016, she was appointed General Manager / Head Trainer. She has taught every level of class at the school, and specializes in behavior modification. Her true passion is developing a healthy relationship between dog and owner through training. Kelli has also competed and titled dogs in Dock Diving, Rally, obedience, and is a certified AKC Canine Good Citizen Evaluator.
She lives in Phoenix with her six dogs; Nessy, Tayzr, Tucker, Sophie, Maddox, and Bugzy. She truly is the definition of a crazy dog lady!

Christopher Oosthuisen- Productions Manager

Christopher has grown up at Partners. From the age of 3, he would walk through the kennels and could tell which dogs were “nice.” Since then he has been a trainer, content creator, and now manages all of the marketing and sales at Partners. He is Top 30 in the world for handgun shooting, has had photos published on Times Square, and has led 4 startups so far. He lives on Partners property with Leighton, Sarah, Alessandra, and their 6 dogs. He has also represented the United States multiple times in the World Pistol Championships.