The Centre of Applied Pet Ethology (COAPE Ltd) was founded in 1993 in the UK by Prof. Peter Neville, Ross Tiffin, Dr Robert Falconer-Taylor and Val Strong, offering Residential courses in Animal Behaviour in the UK.

In 2008 an agreement was signed with COAPE Ltd for Karin Pienaar (née Landsberg) to offer the COAPE courses, under license, in sub- Saharan Africa under the name of ThinkingPets CC, which was owned by Karin Pienaar (née Landsberg) and Nicola Elliott. Wendy Wilson, who had been working with Karin and Nicki since 2009, handling the financial side of the company, was offered a member’s interest in the company in 2010.  Nicki exited ThinkingPets in 2012, to concentrate on her boarding and grooming business, and in 2016 Karin, Wendy and Peter co-founded ThinkingPets COAPE SA in 2010, to reflect our alliance with COAPE.

By 2018 Ross Tiffin & Val Strong had exited the UK business and both Peter Neville and Robert Falconer-Taylor decided the time had come to retire from COAPE Ltd in the UK. However, Peter had held a member’s interest in the ThinkingPets COAPE SA business since 2010, and he continued to give valuable input to the business until he decided that a life of leisure was calling, and fully retired from COAPE SA in 2021.

On Peter’s retirement in 2021 he offered Karin and Wendy the full curriculum of COAPE Ltd, this was accepted and, with having already moved all COAPE courses to an online format, COAPE continued to grow with students from all over the world. To represent this spread of students more accurately, the company’s name changed to COAPE International CC.

Wendy has been managing the Finance, HR and Course Enquiries departments since joining the company, and Karin was looking after all the courses, ensuring we were teaching the most up to date information. From the middle of 2024 Karin was becoming more involved in her 2 passions; MHERA and Captive Wildlife, so in October 2024, in a very amicable agreement, Wendy took over COAPE International with the courses in Companion Animal Behaviour, supported by the wonderful team that you can meet in the ‘COAPE Team’ tab,  and Karin started MHERA Wellbeing focusing on courses in MHERA for both Companion Animals and Wildlife, and the wellbeing of Captive Wildlife – you can see the wonderful work she is engaged in at https://mhera.org/