Jane Messineo Lindquist Joins BreedaCon 2027 | Puppy Culture
Updated: Oct 6
By Jen Moody - Wanna Be Copy Writer / BreedaCon Co-Founder
We'd followed Puppy Culture for years before we ever spoke to the woman behind it. Here's what happened when we called Jane Messineo Lindquist and why she's now BreedaCon 2027's keynote partner, not just a speaker.
If you run a dog breeding program in Australia, you've probably already heard of Jane Messineo Lindquist even if you've never spoken to her. She's the reason half our whelping boxes have a laminated developmental-milestones chart taped to the wall, and the reason "manding" entered the vocabulary of breeders who'd never heard the word five years ago.
Like many new or experienced breeders - We've followed Jane's Puppy Culture program way before BreedaCon existed - first as a breeder trying to raise better puppies, and now as the team announcing her as BreedaCon 2027's international keynote partner.
What I didn't expect, even after years of following her work, was what she'd actually be like on a video call, or how much that one call would reshape what BreedaCon became.
By the end of this post you'll know exactly who Jane Messineo Lindquist is, why BreedaCon fought to bring her to Australia, and what her Puppy Culture program at BreedaCon 2027 means for your own breeding program. Grab a cuppa, put your feet up for a sec and stick with me to read full story.
Key Points
Why Jane Messineo Lindquist and Puppy Culture Matter to BreedaCon 2027 Meet Jane Messineo Lindquist: Puppy Culture, Madcap University and the Call That Changed Everything What This Partnership Means for Your Breeding Program
Puppy Culture didn't start as an industry movement. It started in 2011 as Jane filming one of her own Bull Terrier litters, meaning only to make a 20-minute instructional video for her own students. Four years of research and consultation with behaviourists later, that footage had become Puppy Culture: The Original Film released in 2014 and built around a simple, science-backed idea: behavioural soundness is largely decided by what a breeder does with a puppy in its first few months, not by genetics alone.
That idea landed here.
A 2025 peer-reviewed study of Australian breeders' rearing and socialisation practices, published in the journal Animals, found that among breeders using a structured socialisation protocol, 69.83% are already using Puppy Culture. Nearly seven in ten. That's not a marketing statistic — it's independent evidence that most of Australia's breeding community is already trying to do this work, often without formal training, without a mentor to check their approach, and without anyone to ask when a protocol doesn't seem to fit their breed. That's the sticky point: good intentions, patchy execution, and a lot of breeders quietly guessing.
This is exactly why BreedaCon exists, and exactly why Jane Messineo Lindquist matters to this conference specifically. Bringing the creator of Puppy Culture to Australia in person turns something breeders have been piecing together from Facebook groups and workbooks into something they can actually learn properly, ask questions about, and get right.
Meet Jane Messineo Lindquist: Puppy Culture, Madcap University and the Call That Changed Everything
The breeder behind the brand
Here's what most breeders already know about Jane ... she's bred and shown Bull Terriers since 1982. She and her husband, Mark, built Madcap Kennel in western New Jersey in 1998, and between them they've put over 100 titles on dogs across conformation, rally, agility, tracking, nose work, barn hunt and water sports , sports most of us would never attempt with one breed, let alone all of them. She's an AKC-licensed judge, an AKC Breeder of Merit, and president of the Central New Jersey Bull Terrier Club.
From When Pigs Fly to Puppy Culture Less breeders actually know how she got from the whelping box to the classroom. In 2007 she published When Pigs Fly!, a training book for so-called "impossible" dogs that's since sold over 70,000 copies. That book led directly to the litter-filming project that became Puppy Culture. Since then she's built out an entire ecosystem around it: Madcap University for course-based learning, Madcap Radio and the Puppy Culture Potluck Podcast for breeders who'd rather listen than read, and a body of work that's reached well over 75,000 breeders, trainers and puppy owners worldwide. The call that confirmed it I'll be honest ...we kinda thought we knew who Jane was before we spoke to her. We'd followed Puppy Culture / Madcap in our own breeding programs for years - Her podcasts are EPIC... So we had an idea of the person behind the brand!
Then we got on a call with Jane to talk through what we were building, and the picture we'd had in our heads didn't survive the first ten minutes. She was genuinely excited ... not polite-excited, actually excited to hear what BreedaCon was planning and why we were building it the way we were. We spent that call talking through the real challenges breeders face right now: the misinformation, the pressure, the gap between what the research says and what actually happens at 2am with a struggling litter and what Australian breeders keep telling us they want from a conference that's finally built for them, not around them.
Jane was a presence we simply weren't expecting. She was keep'n-it-real no polish, no PR-safe answers, just a genuine passion for honest conversation that felt instantly relatable to us as Australian breeders. She really cared. She was up for the tough stuff, no-crap approach and all, and unafraid of the questions that usually get danced around at industry events. She made us laugh. She made us reflect. I walked away from that call with more questions about my own breeding program than I'd had going in which is not what I expected from a speaker introduction call, and exactly why we knew we had to get her here in person.
All breeds, no exceptions
One more thing sealed it for us. Jane's approach to Puppy Culture has never been built around a handful of "show ready" breeds.. it's genuinely all-breeds inclusive, purebred and mixed-breed alike. That matters to us. It's the same principle BreedaCon was built on, and it's a big part of why bringing Jane here, in person, stopped being a nice-to-have and became a priority.
More than a keynote
What started as a speaking invitation has turned into something we didn't originally plan for. Jane has partnered with BreedaCon beyond her Sunday program, backing our mission to make genuinely good breeder education accessible to breeders across Australia not just the ones who can afford to fly to the US for it.
What This Partnership Means for Your Breeding Program
So here's where that leaves you. Jane Messineo Lindquist will anchor a full Puppy Culture day at BreedaCon 2027 on the Sunday, plus two dedicated Friday Masterclass sessions where you can go deeper on specific protocols for your program in a smaller room.
If you're one of the many Australian breeders already running Puppy Culture off the workbook and the Facebook group, this is your chance to learn it properly, from the person who built it, and get your specific questions answered instead of guessing at them alone.
If you haven't started using a structured socialisation protocol yet, this is very much your on-ramp - no prior Puppy Culture experience required.
Places in Jane's Friday workshops are capped, and given how much interest we've already had, we expect them to move fast.
BreedaCon 2027 runs 30 April to 2 May 2027 at Mantra on View, Surfers Paradise.
We're also putting together a full breakdown of that Australian breeder socialisation study — the 69.83% number is just the headline, there's more in there worth unpacking so keep an eye on the blog for that next and don't forget to reach out if you've got questions about Jane's sessions, what to expect, or how to make the most of BreedaCon 2027!
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