About Our Founder, Jane
- Hi, I’m Jane Messineo Lindquist – professional dog trainer, breeder, AKC judge, and founder of Madcap University. We live in beautiful western New Jersey, USA. I’m thrilled to welcome you to our community!
I’ve had Bull Terriers since 1982 and I’ve been showing and breeding Bull Terriers under the Madcap Kennel name since 1998. My husband, Mark Lindquist, and I have bred and/or shown our Bull Terriers and three Australian Cattle Dogs to over 100 titles in conformation, rally, agility, tracking, nose work, barn hunt and watersports. Mark and I have produced numerous ROM champions, Versatility award winners, and best in specialty show winners.
Although our show and performance record is impressive, we are, first and foremost, pet breeders. We never lose sight of the fact that our goal is to breed behaviorally sound dogs that will enhance the lives of the people they live with, and that is the proposition that our program is based on. - We’ve truly done it all with our dogs and, in our over 40 years of experience, we have learned two things more than anything else:
First, behavioral soundness is the most important thing in the world. You can breed the most talented, smartest, healthiest dogs, but all of that is nothing without behavioral soundness.
Second, behavioral soundness is, to a large extent, determined by what you do with a puppy in the first few months of his life. - Over the years, we dove deep into the research and developed a science-based early puppy development program for our own puppies, with great success.
Our puppies grew to dogs that were easier to show and train, were less environmentally reactive, and made better companions.
Meanwhile, as a professional dog trainer and rescue foster, I noticed that many, if not most, of the “behavior” problems were really just gaps in the dog’s education as a very young puppy.
These were behavior problems that could have been so easily prevented by doing the right thing at the right time when the dog was still a young puppy. - So, I knew that optimal puppy rearing made puppies easier to train, less environmentally reactive, better companions, and also prevented a large portion of “behavior problems” in adult dogs.
And I knew that the science on this was out there, available to everyone. So, why wasn’t the word reaching breeders and owners of young puppies?Well, even though the research on best practices in puppy rearing was out there, it really wasn’t easily accessible.
The information was scattered and sometimes buried in obscure scientific journals. Someone needed to organize it and put it all together in a comprehensive and easy-to-follow program of early puppy development. And so, Puppy Culture was born. - Today, we’re a thriving community of over 75,000 followers with well over 170,000 videos, courses and books sold.
We’re proud to say that our work has changed the way an entire generation of breeders thinks about puppy rearing, and brought together breeders, rescue workers, trainers, and puppy owners under one roof with a common cause of doing the best thing for every puppy.
The proof is in the puppies.