Snake Avoidance Dog Training

Very occasionally, we introduce a live, non-venomous snake into training.

However, with 10 years of snake avoidance training with hundreds of dogs, we have found the use of freeze-dried rattlesnakes, paired with mechanical snakes, and recorded rattler sounds is HIGHLY effective, without the need for risking the safety and well being of live snakes for the training to be successful.

We use a remote e-collar to teach your dog that snakes are dangerous and to be avoided at all costs.

Why do we train this way, when others claim they can get dogs to avoid snakes without using an aversive tool like an e-collar?

Simple - Your dog’s SAFETY is our #1 priority.

While some dogs may respond to positive-only methods of snake avoidance training, we are not willing to risk your dog’s life by taking a chance and just hoping they will respond to positive-only training. We incorporate both positive and negative experiences into the training, for a higher level of success.

A bite from a rattlesnake may kill your dog, and at the very least will be profoundly painful for the dog, and extremely costly to you.

The static correction from our e-collars is harmless, but sends the message loud and clear.

In essence, we would much rather have your dog get a ‘bite’ from our harmless collar, than a bite from a real snake that could end up killing your dog.

Click Here to Read More: Death Before Discomfort?

Experience!

We have more than 35 years of dog training experience, paired with more than 20 years of experience with handling snakes, and 10 years of snake avoidance training with hundreds of sessions.

When you work with us, you’re not just taking your dog to some stranger in a field with a bunch of other dogs - where you’ll only get 5 or 10 minutes of training with someone who may or may not be a professional dog trainer.

Instead, we take each dog’s history and temperament into account, as well as working with your dog for 30 to 60 minutes, if needed - to make sure the lesson sticks.

Additionally, we’ve become experts at determining whether each dog is a high, medium or low bite-risk, based on their response to the training, and we’ll be honest with you about your dog’s bite risk.

Last, but not least, our owner and training director not only keeps non-venomous snakes, but also has extensive experience with rattlesnakes (she removes 5 or more of them from her own backyard each year), and unfortunately has been through the heartbreak of losing a dog to rattlesnake bite - which began our journey with snake avoidance training for our own dogs and client dogs.

It’s simple: We want to save as many dogs and owners from the same devastating loss as we can.

We recommend a ‘refresher’ for at least 2 consecutive years after the original training.

Our owner and training director, Jennifer Hime, lives in rattlesnake territory and removes 5 or more rattlesnakes from her backyard each summer.

She does snake avoidance refreshers with her own dogs every spring.

Before she began doing snake avoidance training, Jennifer’s dogs had 9 rattler bites from 2008 to 2015 (including one fatal bite to her collie). That’s more than a bite per year!

Since beginning snake avoidance training in 2015, Jennifer’s dogs have only had 3 surprise bites (unavoidable bites, where it’s likely the dog did not know the snake was present), even though the number of snakes in the yard each summer has not decreased. Those numbers say a lot for the efficiency of snake avoidance training.