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M rs Landuris, after studying interior design in Düsseldorf and Munich, you
worked as an interior architect and designer for around 17 years. Looking
back, what did this period of your life and career look like for you?
My professional life as an interior designer was incredibly exciting and took me from the
Ruhr area via Düsseldorf to Munich. During this time, I got to know many great people
who are now some of my closest friends. The period of my studies at the Academy of Art
in Munich was particularly intense. At that time, I practically “lived” in the academy’s
studio. I worked at Schmidhuber in Munich for 12 years on exciting projects, for which I
was allowed to travel to such exciting far-away international cities as Tokyo and Shanghai
as well as to my yearly favourite construction site located much closer, in Berlin. I started
at Schmidhuber as a designer and later moved into project management. Professionally,
I have always been on the move in different fields: from exhibition design and stage
design to jewellery design with my own label haloa jewellery. All these experiences
have had a huge impact on me and I have learnt a lot during this time, which helps me
today in my dog school.
r In 2019, you started focussing on dogs. What made you decide to say goodbye
to interior design and do something completely different instead, namely become
a dog trainer?
My life has always been accompanied by dogs. We had a family dog during my
childhood and into my teens, and I had my first dog of my own from the animal-
welfare programme while I was studying at the Art Academy. Pepe was a great everyday
companion, academy dog and later also an office dog. After his death, I needed a break
to come to terms with the loss. But the longing for dogs always remained, and then our
animal-welfare dog Molly became part of our family. After a serious bicycle accident, she
developed environmental anxieties, which led me to take a close look at the subject of
trauma in dogs. I found various approaches on the internet and wanted to understand
which one made sense for our situation and would really help my dog. One thing led
to another and I decided to become a dog trainer. I suddenly realized that this was
exactly what I wanted to do for a living – my heart’s desire. In all my years as an interior
designer, I often thought about my professional future and was never really satisfied
with spending so much time sitting in front of a computer.
r What do your new job and self-employment give you? What new freedoms,
opportunities and challenges have you discovered for yourself?
For me, this is my absolute dream job. Working with people and dogs and the emotional
issues that affect human-dog teams are a wonderful challenge for me. I love encouraging
people and improving communication between them and their dogs. It’s touching to see
how people and dogs suddenly communicate better and problematic behaviour is reduced
as a result. It is also very much about encouragement, empathy, patience and flexibility.
No two cases are the same. It is important to me to understand each human-dog team and
to accompany them on their individual journey. For me, working outdoors is the greatest
freedom. I also have the freedom to determine and shape my company’s focus and values
myself. The challenges are the many small “mini construction sites”. All clients and their Meet us at
details have to be documented and organized: – name, dog’s name, age and origin of the ORGATEC 2024
dog, individual history... Then there’s the scheduling and travelling through Munich and
the surrounding area. All of this requires new organization. I have to have training plans in
my head and always keep an eye on whether we are on the right track with the plan we
BEAUTIFUL
have devised. You can’t be afraid of new paths.
r As a dog owner and -trainer, you certainly have a very different view of cities
than people without dogs. How dog-friendly are our city centres? And which cities INTERIORS
are ahead in this respect?
In my opinion, Munich is one of the most dog-friendly cities. There are numerous green START WITH
spaces, such as the English Garden and the river Isar, where dogs are allowed to run off
the lead. This encourages dogs to socialize with each other. This is important as the density THE FLOOR
of dogs is very high in Munich. There are also many forests, such as the Perlacher Forst,
heathland and great dog lakes. For me, this puts Munich at the top of the list of large
cities. However, I do wonder why there are hardly any fenced-in free-run areas in Munich,
which are often well represented in other cities. Many dogs cannot run off the lead due
to their hunting motivation or for other reasons. For these dogs, fenced-in areas would be Step into the world of Parador.
important so that they can play freely with other dogs or move freely without humans.
Many other cities are ahead of the game here. www.parador.de