A business with bite
Dog training and grooming facility opens in DeKalb
by Brian Egeston
be@brianwrites.com
Click the above photo for video of Brian's experience.
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Garland Whorley has seven dogs…snakes, birds, fish and a host of other creatures that resemble the sign of an impending 40-day flood.
|Watch video of Brian's training session|
But the DeKalb business owner is partial to canines. Along with his partner Leroy Clark, they operate K-9 Companion Dog Training on Memorial Drive. The company specializes in grooming, breeding and obedience and kennel services.
Upon entering the humble space, perspective customers may be shocked by the simplicity of its appearance. The shop is a wide-open area with nothing more than a counter a few benches and a cash register.
Clark stares out the window at Memorial Drive while Whorley moves around the shop with a confident stride. When the two get into their groove, talking about dogs and what makes canines work, the end result is almost magical.
"The hardest thing about training dogs is training the owners," Clark said. According to Clark, some dog owners are unaware of dog behavior and therefore don’t care for a dog properly.
"We’ve seen people come into our place and the dog is holding onto the door like a child that doesn’t want to go in a store," Whorley explained. "We know right away that the dog hasn’t been exposed to much. Most people just take a dog home, put him in the back yard and tie him to a tree. Then they bring him to us and wonder what’s wrong with the dog."
The team’s approach to working with a dog starts with a foundation of analyzing the dog, learning how the dog behaves and learning some of the dog’s history. They perform a few tests and then decided how to proceed.
With the same approach the business uses to teach dog obedience, K-9 Companion breeds dogs with care. Whorley explained, "I might talk to a customer over the phone who wants to bring a pure bred dog in for breeding, but when the dog gets here, I can look at the dog and tell it won’t make a good breeder."
The dog lover said many people try to breed dogs simply because they have a male and female of the same breed. Others, Whorley said, may try and breed from the same litter without regard for the consequences.
Protection training is the heart of the business. Whorley said dogs can be the first line of defense when a predator approaches a human. A dog properly trained for protection in some cases can be better than self-defense classes, Whorley claims.
The two owners are so confident in their training that they agreed to let a casual observer handle one of their trained dogs while Whorley tried to attack the observer, who had never seen the dog before.
Nila, a Belgian shepherd was brought from the kennel into the front area and the observer was handed the leash. Whorley whispered some key commands to the observer that he was to use once the demonstrated started, then the instructor put on a protective sleeve.
Whorley approached the stranger, shook his hand and the dog did not move. The observer yelled out, "Watch!" Nila stood at attention. The instructor approached the observer and dog again, this time with a stick raised above his head.
The observer yelled, "Hit!" and the dog leapt onto the instructor and bit the protective sleeve and hung on with all its might. The observer then yelled, "Out!" and the dog immediately released its bite on the instructor.
The observer was asked to drop the leash. The instructor approached again and tried to attack the stranger. Without the command, the dog jumped on the instructor again to protect the observer until the observer yelled, "Out!"
The observer then walked away from the dog and said, "Heel." The dog, that had never seen the observer before the demonstration, scurried around the observer’s left side as though they’d been friends for years.
For more information visit: www.k9companion.com
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