Katie Westrom

Katie Westrom
Katie’s love of animals brought her to spcaLA as a volunteer during her senior year of high school. Her time as a volunteer fueled her passion to learn more about animal behavior. Since the age of 17, she has had the privilege of training a great variety of animals including horses, dogs, cats, reptiles, falcons, pigs, sea lions and parrots to name a few. She has experience in many fields within the animal industry including rescue and rehabilitation to entertainment and live performances.

She was brought on spcaLA’s Behavior and Training Department in 2008. Throughout Katie’s career with spcaLA, she spent thousands of hours working closely with shelter dogs, instructed hundreds of students in obedience and specialty classes and led workshops for spcaLA’s volunteers who care for the shelter dogs. In 2012, she was a speaker at the Animal Care Conference and has had the opportunity to appear on Animal Planet.

After spending years with shelter dogs, she observed similar, recurring behaviors in relinquished dogs, many that could be considered preventable from an early age. Focusing on giving puppies a head start in socialization, impulse control and coping with new environments/people, she created Ready Made Rovers, a training business specializing in early socialization and training for puppies during the most crucial period of their life with a goal to keep them out of shelters as adults. At the same time, she works closely with spcaLA’s Humane Education department programs, TLC, spcaLA’s Court Youth Diversion Program and Friends for Life Camp. She is also a Canine Good Citizen Evaluator. In recent years, her dogs have done work on television, commercials and print ads. In addition to her three dogs, Katie spends her free time with her husband, Erik, a horse trainer and stuntman, and her two, little, future training assistants, Aimee and Emmett.