The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘We love what the dogs can do’
Litchfield’s Katalyst Kennels serves families, law enforcement
LITCHFIELD — A sign in front of Katalyst Kennels shows the face of a black Labrador retriever and the words, “Welcome. We already know you’re here.”
Judging from the spontaneous canine chorus from inside the building at 568 Torrington Road when a visitor arrives, the sign is accurate.
Katelyn Graham, who owns Katalyst Kennels with her husband, Tom Graham, said they moved the business from Morris just before Memorial Day this year. It’s a pet training and boarding facility, but also handles the raising and initial training of working dogs for law enforcement.
“On the pet side of things, we work on pet training and general manners, working through some basic behavior problems,” she said. They also board cats and dogs for families on vacation.
“The pet business can be a more busy part of the business, just because we’re working hands-on with clients,” she said. It accounts for about 60 percent to 70 percent of the business, she said.
“On the working dog side, we keep it small enough that we are able to really put a lot of emphasis on the dogs that we have,” she said. “So on a normal basis, we have between five and 10 dogs here that are training for careers in detection.”
The federal Transportation Security Administration is a major client, she said. “We also raise a lot of dogs for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), search-and-rescue dogs. So we have a couple of dogs right now that we’re getting prepped for Florida Task Force-1. That’ll be through FEMA and then for the hurricane.”
Dogs raised for police K-9 units have been placed with municipalities in Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, California and Colorado, she said.
“We have dogs that are narcotics dogs. They’ve made great drug busts. That’s always a wonderful thing,” she said. “And our dog in Connecticut that’s over in Wallingford, he, twice now, throughout his career, has been named narcotics detection dog of the year.”
Katalyst Kennels also has placed dogs that went on to find missing children and elderly individuals, she said.
Dogs have the ability to learn a variety of
odors, but Katalyst does not train for odor detection.
“In theory, we could teach a dog to be a drug sniffer and a bomb sniffer and a cadaver sniffer. We could teach them all of those odors,” she said. “Where we run into issues is with case law and the ability for that dog’s alerts to be able to be considered evidence and probable cause.”
For example, if a dog trained in multiple odors is used in narcotics detection and alerts on a vehicle in which the owner also is carrying a legally owned firearm, the drug evidence might be disallowed because you can’t ask a dog, “What are you smelling?”
Most of the candidates for working dog careers are bred overseas, Graham said. In recent years, other countries were buying these dogs at premium prices, making it difficult for the United States to obtain them. But in 2019, Katalyst Kennels became one of only four U.S. training sites to join a Department of Homeland Security pilot program called the Domestic Breeding Consortium, she said.
The International Working Dog Breeding Association states on its website, “The DBC’s goal is to focus on establishing and expanding a domestic supply for odor-detecting dogs and developing lines of canines that are suitable for the user community’s immediate needs as well as longterm demand.”
“That’s been a huge reason why we’ve been able to do what we do, aligning ourselves with partnerships like that,” Graham said. “And being able to get into that program was huge for us. That program has really focused on researching what makes a dog successful, what makes a breeding program successful, providing and collecting a lot of data on the dogs to try to create better predictive value on what dogs will be successful and what dogs will not.”
Graham graduated from the State University of New York at Cobleskill and later became an instructor there. She is an associate member of the North American Police Work Dog Association and the International Police Work Dog Association.
“We love the dogs,” she said. “We love what the dogs can do. Those dogs just love their job, and they excel at their job. They’re in their absolute glory. And we’re able to say we knew them when they were a tiny puppy.”
On the domestic side of the business, she said she is pleased to be able to help families build better relationships with their dogs by changing behavior patterns. “It’s really nice to see those dogs that the owner couldn’t walk down the street and now they’re able to go and walk and hike and go places and do things,” she said. “It’s really rewarding to see.”
For more information, call 860-361-6383, email info@katalystkennels.com or visit www.katalystkennels.com.