Sunday Small Business Spotlight: The Good Shepherd K9 Training | Idaho

COTTONWOOD – Amity Larsen, the owner of The Good Shepherd K9 Training, has deep roots in the local community. Her family homesteaded a ranch just west of Clarkston Heights, somewhere around 1889, and animals have always been a big part of her life.

She volunteers for Lewis County with her dogs trained in human remains detection (HRD), air scent, and tracking-trailing. Much work and training goes into keeping the dogs certified, fit, and ready to work. For her, it’s all about the personal satisfaction she gets from being able to give back to the community and work with the dogs.

Each dog is specifically trained for a task. “Cadaver, or HRD, dogs are pretty self-explanatory; when someone has expired or there’s been an incident and we’re looking for persons that are deceased, we use those dogs. There’s a lot of training that goes into being very specific to that. They ignore animal remains completely. Air scent dogs, or area dogs, are dogs that can search a lot of ground very quickly. Our area dogs will come and tell us about anybody they found. There are benefits to those dogs being cross-trained. You find people deceased because maybe, you know if they’ve been gone a week, they might be alive. They might not. We don’t know. The tracking-trailing dogs are dogs that we use and are very scent-specific, area dogs are not. You present the odor, and they’re looking for it. Those are usually when we know exactly where the person was last seen, and we figure they’re probably within a mile or two, three miles and we’re there within 12 hours or less.”

While dogs were always a part of her life, her path to becoming a dog trainer, didn’t start until around 2010 when a Lewis County K9 named X was forced into retirement because of an injury. “My husband, who worked for the Idaho State Police at the time, was friends with a canine handler for Lewis County. One of his canines got a limp and then had to be medically retired. We knew the dog because my husband ran traffic stops with him, so we’d been around the dog, and we agreed to house him.”

What everyone thought would be a short-term hospice situation for X, turned out to be the catalyst for Amity’s life to change paths. Through her dedication, care, and the help of professionals, X was able to come out of his retirement. She contacted some of the most highly respected trainers and K9 handlers across the US and other countries. “This dog was certified in multiple disciplines. He was a phenomenal working dog and as soon as we realized we might be able to bring him back out of retirement, I started going through training for his disciplines with different handlers to keep up his certifications. I just suddenly found myself immersed in dog stuff. And that’s really what sparked it.” 

In 2015, Amity started taking on clients who had found themselves with working breeds as pets and needed help. Seeing the difference it made in the dogs (and their owners) lives, combined with the fact there were very limited resources for owners in the local area, The Good Shepherd K9 Training was officially created. 

When asked about the inspiration behind her business’s name, without hesitation, she replied, “My mom was really into German Shepherds and loved them. We always had dogs, and we had the variety. So, you know, we had the mixes, and we had the purebreds and everything in between, and all different kinds of breeds. It didn’t matter, but always a German Shepherd was a consistent thing” 

The Good Shepherd K9 Training proudly offers a long list of training services that include; private and group training sessions, puppy board and train services, search and rescue training, puppy workshops, socialization workshops, reactivity workshops, scent workshops, and tracking-trailing workshops. Amity is also an AKC evaluator, offering courses and certification for the AKC Canine Good Citizen, including advanced and urban Canine Good Citizen.

For those who just got a puppy for Christmas, Amity does puppy workshops two or three times a year, the next one is scheduled for January 18, 2025, and another is tentatively scheduled for sometime in March. She encourages families to participate, even children as young as 5 years old.

“They’re (puppies) a ton of work, but it’s worth it. And I love getting them with their people in that beginning when things haven’t gone sideways yet and before the terrible teen phase. It’s a good controlled environment for them to go to, to learn people get so much misinformation on the Internet that they get to be uncertain about what’s okay or not.“

For families that have younger children, she suggests private in-home sessions. “I mean, it’s hard if you have babies or toddler-toddlers. I offer that we probably should do in-home to help them know what the boundaries are and how the kids should be interacting with the dogs and things like that. Safety is number one. It’s a huge deal.” 

The Good Shepherd K9 Training also works closely with local rescue groups in the area (Amity has a “foster fail” of her own she added to her pack), offering discounts to those who have recently adopted, or are fostering. 

Visit the The Good Shepherd K9 Training Facebook Page to view upcoming events and training workshops, reached by email at [email protected] or by phone or text at (208)791-4113.

***If you own or know of a local small business that you would like to see in our Sunday Small Business Spotlight, reach out to us by email at [email protected]