Instructor Adele Yunck

Updated June 2024
Adele began teaching obedience for the Ann Arbor Dog Training Club in 1987 while still working as a Software Engineer. She left the world of computers to start Northfield Dog Training in 1990. She teaches group classes and private lessons at her training facility in Ann Arbor. She is NDT’s head obedience instructor. Her main passion is teaching competition obedience classes. Her classes are made up of dogs from a large variety of breeds, from toys to giants. She really enjoys helping people learn the details that makeup competition obedience and rally. She also occasionally teaches beginning field training for retrievers. She has been teaching 2-day training seminars around North America since her first one sometime in the 1990’s. You can read more about her seminars here.
Adele earned her first CD in 1986 on her little Austrlian Terrier Casey. Her dogs and their titles:
- Australian Terrier Casey (U-CD Hott Pursuitt on the Farm Am/Can UD) 1984-1997
- Flat-Coated Retriever Tramp (Am/Can CH OTCH U-CD Grousemoor Some Like It Hot TD WC) 1985-1994
- Australian Terrier Rio (CH OTCH U-CD Free For All on the Farm UDX TD; Can CDX) 1989-1996
- Flat-Coated Retriever Treasure (CH OTCH U-UD Grousemoor Forget Me Not UDX RN OA OAJ WC; Can UD; RL-2; 1 leg on her JH earned at 11.5) 1993-2006
- Border Terrier Java (OTCH U-CDX Riversides Magen’s Starbucks UDX2 RE AX AXJ; Can CD; RL3) 1997-2011
- Border Terrier Joker (Kandu’s The Joker Is Wild UD RE; RL2) 2001-2014
- Flat-Coated Retriever Gryffin (CH OTCH Grousemoor Gryffindor UDX OM1 RE MH WCX; RL3) 2003-2012
- Flat-Coated Retriever Ty (CH Grousemoor Timeless UDX OM2 RE SH WCX; RL2) 2004-2017
- Flat-Coated Retriever Sonic (CH OTCH Coastalight Primetime UDX3 OM7 GN GO RE MH WCX) 2011-2021
- Border Terrier Jag (GCH CH OTCH4 Riverside Jaguar UDX4 OGM BN GN RE NA NAJ RATN) 2014-
- Flat-Coated Retriever Tigger (CH OTCH Northfield Quantum Leap UDX3 OM5 RM MH WCX) (Sonic’s son) 2016-
- Flat-Coated Retriever Clipper (CH Northfield Total Eclipse of the Moon CD BN RM JH WC) (Sonic’s daughter, co-owned with husband Fritz Yunck) 2018-
- Flat-Coated Retriever Seven (Shootingstar Seven Sisters over Northfield JH WC) 2023-
- Adele has titled 11 dogs (6 Flat-Coated Retrievers and 5 terriers) to the UD level, and earned 8 OTCH titles: five on Flat-Coats, one on an Australian Terrier (the breed’s first), and two on Border Terriers, as well as earning numerous High In Trial & High Combined awards and tournament placements over her 35+ year obedience career. Her 10th dog, Border Terrier Jag, went from CD to UD in 12 months, and completed his final title, the OGM (Obedience Grand Master) in May 2024. Her 11th dog, Sonic’s son, Tigger earned 2nd place in the Advanced Division at the 2018 Rally National Championship. He finished his UD on February 11, 2022 and his OTCH on February 10, 2023. He has four of five needed passes for his Master Hunter. When he completes that, he will be Adele’s 3rd CH OTCH MH, a rare combination of titles earned by retrievers.
- Adele has competed at the AKC National Obedience Invitational/National Obedience Championship numerous times, and has been invited several more times, placing in the Terrier group with three different dogs, made it to the top 50 with Sonic in 2018, and placed 4th in the Terrier group with Jag in 2022 and 2023. Adele has also competed with her dogs in conformation, rally, agility, tracking, barn hunt, and hunt tests, earning the Master Hunter with her 1st hunt test dog, Gryffin, and Sonic. She is working hard in 2024 to complete Tigger’s Master Hunter and Clipper’s Senior Hunter, and prepare youngster Seven for many future titles.
- Adele is the co-author of the book Competition Obedience: A Balancing Act (1998) and the video Positively Fetching: Teaching the Obedience Retrieves Using Food (1995). She self-published The Art of Proofing: Preparing Your Dog for Obedience Trials (2010), and in January 2011, she released an update of the retrieve video on DVD, now called Totally Fetching: Teaching and Proofing a Reliable Retrieve. She released Musings on a Balancing Act Volume 1: Essays on Competition Obedience during the pandemic shut down (2021).
- Adele was an AKC Rally and Novice Obedience Judge (now retired) and served on the 2007 AKC Obedience Advisory Committee.
- When Adele brought Sonic home in October 2011, she started recording training sessions with Sonic and began to release short training videos on YouTube that came to be called The Sonic Videos. There are several videos starring Border Terrier puppy Jag on her channel as well.
- Adele has several on-line courses available for competition trainers, including her foundation course, FCOOL (Fundamentals of Competition Obedience On-line), which introduces all of the exercises she starts with her own puppies when they first come home. The courses are hosted in the Thinkific website @ https://northfielddogtraining.thinkific.com/
- During COVID, Adele created her COPS (Competition Obedience Practice Sessions) program, doing Zoom sessions Monday-Friday of a 30 or so minute training session with one of her dogs. The Zoom sessions inspired a lot of people to get off their couch and train the dogs, Adele included! Although she stopped doing the Zoom sessions in April 2021, the Facebook group with links to all the YouTube recordings is still available here.
- When Adele brought Seven home, she started a memberhip program called Bringing Up Seven, on which she shares videos of her training with Seven, as well as training logs and Zoom training sessions. As of June 2024, there are 731 videos and 65 hours of content. She is training Seven for obedience, Rally, hunt tests and conformation. For more information on the membership, click here.