Our Team
Salem Flores - Professional Trainer
Salem Flores began working with dogs more than 15 years ago, steadily acquiring skills from his father and uncle, who between them have more than thirty years canine training experience.
Studying at the University of Guadalajara, Salem ultimately earned his PhD in veterinary medicine. While attending the University, he joined the Mexican Canine Federation, where he assisted AKC judges with organized competitions, while at the same time gaining valuable experience working with a wide variety of breeds.
Salem joined Markim Pet Resort in 2003 as a trainer and manager. In 2009, he, along with his wife Luz who oversees Markim Grooming operations, acquired the business. Salem proficiency in dog training, combined with his veterinary medicine education result in his remarkable ability to quickly and accurately assess whether a problem is medical or behavioral.
In addition to being licensed to practice veterinary medicine in Mexico, Salem has been involved with training dogs for several California police departments. He is the former Obedience Club of San Diego Director of Training, and also donates his time to evaluate, rehabilitate and train rescue dogs for organizations such as Lab Rescuers, and It's the Pits to prepare them for adoption.
Yael Flores - Trainer
Yael started working with dogs at a very young age, taking care of the dogs in the kennel and helping his father, Salem, with his training classes growing up. He always enjoyed watching his Fathers technique and watching the client’s faces glow up when they saw their dogs well behaved. Since then, he has learned Salem’s training method and has used it to develop his own style over the years.
He has 4 years of training experience at Markim and in that time has taken over 90% of the training at the business. Yael has built his own Intermediate and Beginners group classes, prepared clients for the CGC and CGCA exams and taken over all the inboard and day-board training sessions.
Yael continues helping as much as possible with the rescue groups in order to rehabilitate dogs in order to be adopted.
Gabriella Ravani
Gabriella Ravani has been instructing agility since 1998. She is totally addicted to the sport and competes in all venues of agility: AKC, USDAA, CPE, NADAC, UKC. She loves sharing her knowledge, passion for the sport and really enjoys working with all breeds.
She has over 84 titles on her 4 Dalmatians and her Dals are consistently ranked in the AKC top ten Agility Dalmatians. More importantly, her students are very successful in every agility venue.
Her goal for her clients and their dogs is that they: A) have a great time at class and B) learn everything they need to meet their own goals - whether that is to win Nationals or just to get some exercise and have fun with their dog.