The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Redding’s Canine College gives dogs new leash on life
Thousands of dogs and 75 years later, playful woofs and obedient barks are still echoing from Redding’s Canine College.
Stephanie Kassner, 49, and her mother Sharon Lanoue, 70, inherited the dog boarding school from a long line of relatives threequarters of a century after its origination in 1946.
John Behan — one of the first renowned dog trainers — started Canine College training military and police dogs on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but sought a suburban backdrop and moved the facility to Redding in 1947.
Canine College has evolved into a dog training center and boarding house where people could leave their pets while away.
Today, Kassner and Lanoue have stopped offering protective training and channel the business’ attention into giving household pups basic obedience lessons.
“It’s just basic obedience for clients who want a nice family dog and they’re looking at their dog and going, ‘I don’t seem to be able to do it. Can you help me?’ ” Lanoue said.
Although the center experienced a “significant reduction” in its boarding
services during the pandemic, it saw an increase in the need for training. Kassner and Lanoue shifted their resources to accommodate the sudden spike.
Dogs are sent to the center to stay for either three or five weeks as trainers ingrain behavioral commands in their minds. Owners are obligated to return for a few sessions with their dog before it returns home to ensure the lessons sink in.
In more than 50 years of training dogs, Lanoue said it is not a question of whether you love dogs, it is a question of whether you respect them. She views dogs as intelligent animals who need to learn how to be a “productive member” of a family.
Lanoue believes training is a two-way street. Dogs need to learn how to behave and owners need to be taught how to properly interact with the dog. She calls it the “two essences of companionship with a dog.”
The “essences of companionship” are lessons Lanoue learned at 9 years old, when her father — an “old Irishman” who stuck to his guns — brought home a stray dog named Gigi on his way back from church. Lanoue said she was the “most beautiful”
black poodle she had ever laid her eyes on.
Head over heels for Gigi, Lanoue locked herself into a gridiron contract with her father, promising to properly teach, care for and groom the poodle. If she failed to do so, he would take Gigi and find her another home.
Lanoue quickly learned grooming techniques from her aunt and never looked back. She groomed nearly every dog that arrived at the center. Now Lanoue chuckles about how every client thought their dog was being groomed by a professional, but behind the curtain was a young girl with clippers. In time, she learned the ins and outs of her family’s craft.
“With grooming, it’s short. You start and you
finish in the course of an hour and a half. Training is not the same,” Lanoue said. “It’s a process, it takes time, day after day. But each day that you finish with the dog, it should be better than the day before. And that’s what we strive for. Every dog that goes home has to look and feel better than when they came in.”
Knasser said dogs leave smarter and clients walk away confidently respecting their dog’s intelligence.
“We are very good at what we do, and people recognize it just as they drive in the yard. They can see it, the pride that we have in this place,” Lanoue said.
Now, Lanoue is passing the leash to her daughter, excited to see what the next decades might bring.