This Isn't Just a Business.
It's a Promise I Made.
There's a reason I specialize in the cases that others turn away. Reactive dogs, fearful dogs, aggressive dogs. The ones people have given up on. Understanding why starts with understanding where I came from.
Free 20-minute call. No pressure, no obligation.
It Started When I Was Eleven Years Old.
A chocolate lab named Daisy. She had been kept in a 400 square foot third floor apartment by a gentleman who knew she needed more than he could give her. More space. More enrichment. More life. So he found her a family, and that family was ours.
Daisy bonded to me immediately. She wouldn't listen to anyone else in the house. My mother would come get me just to get her to do something. So I started training her. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and looking back, I was absolutely doing it wrong. But I was seeing results, at least what an eleven year old considers results. And I was hooked.
Around that time, a friend at church connected me with a canine officer from the Norfolk Police Department. I started asking questions, learning, absorbing everything I could. I thought maybe I wanted to be a canine police officer. That idea eventually gave way to something deeper: a genuine obsession with psychology, neurobiology, and how the brain works. How we interact with our environment. How behavior is shaped and changed.
I was running a blood drive for my NJROTC unit when I met Staff Sergeant Seelbinder. No pressure, no pitch. He just told me to look at some jobs in the Army because he liked how my mind worked. I found the Military Working Dog Handler MOS. It had literally just become its own career field. I spent the next year studying for my ASVAB, preparing for the physical requirements, and not taking no for an answer. I signed my contract as a dog handler and left for basic training fourteen days after graduating high school.
At Twenty Years Old, I Deployed to a Combat Zone With My Dog.
About a year after enlisting, I was certified on my first Military Working Dog: Bob, tattoo number R784. We deployed together when I was twenty years old. Serving in multiple combat zones, working with a dog where reading behavior accurately and building real trust weren't optional, they were everything. A dog that shuts down, panics, or misreads a situation in that environment doesn't just fail the task. People get hurt.
My next dog was Chantel, tattoo number Z388. She was a drug detection dog, a completely different type of work than Bob, and working with her reinforced something I had already come to believe: no two dogs are the same. The same approach, applied the same way, produces completely different results depending on the dog in front of you.
The mental health toll of my service had been building for years, largely untreated. By the time it finally surfaced in a way that couldn't be ignored, my psychiatrist determined I was no longer in a state to safely continue serving. I was medically discharged and retired with a 100 percent disability rating. Seven years. Two dogs who trusted me completely.
The neurobiology obsession I had as a kid found its fullest expression in that work. Understanding a dog's stress response, their threshold, the way fear manifests in the body before it ever becomes a behavior you can see. That knowledge doesn't come from a textbook. It comes from years of working with dogs in the highest-stakes environments imaginable.
I Had to Euthanize My Own Dog Because of Aggression.
Shortly before getting out of the Army, I was faced with the hardest decision of my life. My own dog had become too aggressive to safely manage. Despite everything I knew, despite everything I had done, I had to make that call.
I have never cried so hard in my life. Before or since.
That loss shaped everything that came after. When I transitioned to working with family pets at Phoenix Dog Training, I found myself drawn specifically to the cases that scared other trainers. The aggressive dogs. The reactive ones. The fearful ones. The dogs that families had been told to give up on. Because I knew what was on the other side of that decision, and I knew that many of those dogs didn't have to end up there if someone with the right knowledge intervened in time.
That's why Steller Dog Training exists. Not as a business opportunity. As a promise I made to myself about what I would do with what I learned.
The Approach Behind Every Session. And Why It Works.
Most reactive, fearful, and aggressive behavior isn't a training problem. It's an emotional state problem. You can suppress a behavior with force. You cannot suppress the fear driving it. And suppressed fear always comes back, usually worse, usually somewhere you're less prepared for it.
We Work on the Root Cause
Reactivity, aggression, and fear all have emotional drivers. We identify what's actually happening beneath the behavior and address that, not just the symptom you can see.
We Train Where It Happens
Real behavior change requires real environments. We work at home, on walks, at the park, in the car, at the vet. Wherever your dog actually struggles is where the work needs to happen.
We Build a Team
You are part of every session. The goal isn't a dog that behaves for the trainer. It's a dog that works with you, because you understand each other. That's what lasts.
Results That Actually Hold
Fast results that fade in two weeks are not results. Every method used is chosen because it produces genuine behavioral change, not temporary compliance. The goal is a dog whose behavior holds up in real life, not just in training sessions.
Ready to find out if Steller Dog Training is the right fit for your dog? The first conversation is free.
Call (817) 217-8542The Cases That Drive Me Are the Ones That Look Impossible.
Like Sesi.
Sesi, the Chocolate Lab
Sesi's pet parent was a traveling nurse who had just moved to Arizona, freshly settling into a new city with a new schedule and no support network. Sesi had begun showing severe dog aggression. She was destructively chewing everything in the house. Separation anxiety that made leaving nearly impossible. The full picture of a dog whose emotional world had come undone.
We built a plan. Not just training sessions, but a complete behavioral approach that included coordinating with Sesi's veterinarian on an appropriate medication protocol to support the behavior work. That collaboration matters. Sometimes the nervous system needs support that training alone cannot provide, and knowing when to involve a vet is part of doing this right.
Sesi got so much better. Four years later, I still hear from her pet parent about how well she is doing. That's what this work is supposed to look like. Not a quick fix. A real change that holds.
Words From the People Who Know This Work Best.
"Jordan is an exceptional behavior specialist and dog trainer. Full disclosure, Jordan used to work for me in another state. I'm a certified behaviorist and have been training dogs for 50 years. Jordan has shown incredible expertise and competence and has been helping dogs with aggressive behavior, reactive behavior, separation anxiety, generalized anxiety, fears, phobias, noise sensitivities, obsessive compulsive behaviors, and more. You won't find a more experienced and knowledgeable canine professional in the Dallas, Fort Worth, Haslet Texas area. I highly recommend Jordan to anybody seeking help with severe behavior modification needs, obedience training, puppy training, anything canine training or behavior."
"Yuki is a part wolf dog, so finding the right trainer was not easy. Jordan actually understood what was going on with him instead of just trying to force compliance. He explained why Yuki was responding the way he was, which honestly helped me understand my own dog better. The difference has been real. If you have a dog that's more complex than your average Lab, bring him here. Jordan gets it."
"Before working with Jordan, we were in a really tough spot with our dog Lexi. She had attacked a neighbor's dog and had bitten multiple people, and we felt completely overwhelmed and honestly a little hopeless. Jordan came in with zero judgment and immediately gave us direction. The difference has been huge, not just in Lexi, but in our confidence as owners."
"I took my yorkypoo to Jordan over aggressive behavior he was showing towards other dogs after a scary incident at the park. After a few sessions we started seeing massive improvements. He is much more playful and less aggressive. My baby is finally playing with other dogs and he is so happy."
"Years of experience training dogs, he cares about the bond between animals and humans as a whole. If you want results you'll get them."
Even the Trainer's Dog Has a Story.
Harley is a nine year old German Shepherd, Husky, Rottweiler, Corgi mix (she received every breed's stubbornness and none of their size constraints). My mother gave her to me in December 2019, during one of the hardest periods of my life. She knew I needed something to pull me forward, and that something turned out to be a 40 pound mixed breed with a stubborn streak and an unshakeable loyalty.
Over the next few years I trained Harley to be my cortisol detection, PTSD, and panic attack suppression service dog. She was extraordinary at it. Then life stabilized. I got sober. I found my way back to my now-wife, my best friend of over thirteen years. Harley was needed less in that capacity, and somewhere along the way she went from trained service animal to happily spoiled house pet.
Shortly before reopening Steller Dog Training, I started retraining her. From the beginning. Because the best way I know to remain sharp as a trainer is to keep working, and the most honest content I can share with the families I help is the real, unfiltered process of what behavior change actually looks like. Including the setbacks.
Harley's training journey is ongoing. Follow along.
Your Dog's Story Isn't Over.
Let's Write the Next Chapter Together.
The first call costs nothing. Jordan personally takes every consultation and gives you a straight answer about what's driving the behavior and what it would actually take to change it.
Sgt. Jordan Marsteller, Dog Handler, USA (Ret.)
Owner and Canine Behavior Specialist · Steller Dog Training
Fear Free Certified · Fort Worth and All of DFW