Direction and Control: Hunting Dog Skills for Search Dogs

Instructor: Katelyn Graham

Location: Snohomish County, WA

Direction and Control:  Hunting Dog Skills for Search Dogs

We all want an independent dog in the search- but how do we maintain that independence while still having control for safety and search management reasons?

This hands-on seminar will demonstrate how skills from other parts of the dog world, such as hunt tests, upland hunting, agility, etc, can cross over to SAR to help handlers develop functional directional, control and emergency skills.  We will be applying these skills directly to search work, maintaining that necessary independence while enhancing cohesive teamwork.

Cost:  Working Spot (8 total, 1 K9/handler) $300; Audit spots $150

Applications Closed

Kate Graham’s Bio

Katelyn Graham (Barber) grew up in the competition dog world, training and trialing her dogs starting at age 10. Growing up with accomplished mentors who encouraged an early affinity for building dogs up to their potential allowed Kate to compete in agility, tracking, rally, obedience, conformation, and hunt tests all throughout her teenage years and beyond.  She graduated summa cum laude from the State University of New York at Cobleskill with a bachelor’s degree in canine sciences and went on to work with the breeding program at Guiding Eyes for the Blind. Kate then went on to be Director of Canine Wellness at another large service dog school, working to add predictive genetic practices and science-based puppy rearing protocols to that organization.

Kate had established her own small breeding program of working labradors in 2014, raising and training puppies from those litters to go to law enforcement & SAR careers. The inspiration for breeding solid working labradors came out of Kate’s own need for her next Human Remains Detection dog, and realizing how hard it could be to find a puppy that checked all the boxes in terms of phenotypic and genotypic quality.

Katalyst turned into a full time operation in 2022, and Kate and her staff raise and develop young detection dog prospects for federal, state, and private agencies. Katalyst Kennels is also a member of the Domestic Breeding Consortium, a federally sponsored project focused on understanding best breeding and raising practices to produce detection K9s.  Kate continues to be an active SAR handler, and currently has a 5 year old human remains K9 that is regularly utilized for federal and local cases.  In her free time, Kate competes with her non-SAR dogs in AKC tracking and scentwork, hunt tests, and American Schutzhund, and regularly upland hunts during the season.

Thanks to our funding partners, we are offering this seminar at a discounted rate.