Why Families Trust
Snowy Pines

What brought me to Snowy Pines was, he kind of came with a “Hey, look what I found — I found these cute puppies.” So he shows me the pictures, and of course I’m like, oh my God — my heart’s melting already because they look so cute. And then I started asking the tough questions, because for me I’m like, well, how are they raised? What level of freedom do they have? What are they doing? Can we visit? All those important questions. So then I started doing my own research, looking around, and I was like, all right — I think it sounds pretty good.

We got on a call with Gary, and it was just amazing. The level of love, the level of care — and it’s not so transactional. You come into the Snowy Pines family, and they were just so transparent about everything: the level of care that they receive every day, the type of training they get. It was very extensive, and very nice to see that we would be coming home with a family member and just making good memories together.

All the research that I was doing caught my attention here — the way that the team raised their puppies at Snowy Pines. Part of the selection process was super important to see. We’re taking two puppies, so not only how they’re interacting between themselves, but how that brings the dynamic to our family. It was a very involved process, which was really great. I would always cross-reference what they said with someone else who works in the industry, and it always checked out. I actually had a family member tell me, “I’m really pleased with where you chose to get your dogs from, because they are telling you all the right things.”

I think something that really impressed me was the house setting that they have — how they prepare the puppies to be in a home setting: in the living room, in the kitchen, all the different scenarios that they go through with these dogs.

And all the land — I think the main point for Jeanette was how much land and freedom the parents of the puppies have: to go explore the land, to go down to the creek and just be themselves and be happy dogs. The whole setup — nothing was staged for us. They knew we didn’t just show up; we’ve been telling them from day one that we want to get there a little bit early, to spend time with them and mainly learn how to train the puppies, to continue training them.

From my perspective, what amazed me is just how trainable the girls already are. So we’ve been here for three days, just to kind of see everything out and meet everybody. Everyone’s fantastic and super passionate about what they do, and really good at it. And so I was sold.

I would say that if you’re on the fence about going with Snowy Pines or not — you’re really looking for something that you want, something that maybe you need — I think that doing your research is really important, and that’s where you’re going to feel the most comfortable. The quality of life that they have when they leave here is just as important as what they provide while they’re here. And they give you the best of the best to consider when you get home, on how to take care of them.

Gary: The service dog facility at Snowy Pines White Labs is world class. This has been a dream of ours for so many years, and we are excited to introduce to you this state-of-the-art facility. And we’re going to give you a tour — we’re going to walk you through so many things. This has been intricately designed to not only produce incredible service dogs, but incredible family members. It takes more than just a training room to produce the kind of dogs that we want to produce — dogs that are comfortable at home, dogs that are comfortable out in public and restaurants and schools. So as you walk through this, as you experience our facility, know that it’s all designed with a purpose, with a synergy that matters, that allows us to produce dogs that we believe — and most importantly, our customers attest — are some of the best in the world. So let’s explore this facility. Let’s dig in here. We can’t wait for you to experience what we have built here at Snowy Pines.

Chloe: My name is Chloe, and I’m so excited to take you through a tour of our service dog training facility here at Snowy Pines. Come take a tour with me.

So this is the first stop on our tour. What this building is, is it houses all of our dogs. Around every exterior wall is a dog with its own area. We have inside and outside runs, so they are never confined to the inner part of the building — they always have access to the outside. What they’re also going to have in these is food and water bowls, as well as their own bedding and toys. In this building is also one of our open floor training areas. We use this floor training area for doing big things such as introduction and use around wheelchairs, walkers, as well as crutches. It also helps us create a good area for distance and duration training for our service dogs, as well as our therapy dogs.

All right, so this is our lovely grounds. We have our lovely creek that runs through the middle of our grounds, and over here is one of our main walkways. We will do a lot of walkway traffic through here — this is going to get our dogs used to different people and everything like that.

We are approaching our next building. This building is going to be our mock-style building, where we have brought all of the outside world in. So let’s take a look at it.

This is our first room in this building, and this is a very important and very special room for us. This is where we are going to bring our clients in — and for many of them, it’s the first time that they’re going to get to meet their dog. It happens right here in this room. So we want it to be super casual. We have coffee, we have other drinks, and we’re able to just sit here and hang out and get to witness our people meeting their babies for the first time.

This room is one of our service dog handoff rooms. It is also extremely important and extremely special to us, because this is where the beginning foundations with our service dogs and their handlers will take place. We’re going to bring them in here, and we’re going to begin teaching them how to properly handle their dog in the very basic beginning stages of their home. We will be teaching them how to properly take their dogs through a home setting in this area. Super, super special, super important to us. If the walls could talk, it would be absolutely amazing — the stories that they could tell that happen in this room.

This is our Snowy Pines classroom. Whenever we’re in here, we are going to be getting the dogs used to the classroom setting. We do hold true classes in here for our trainers, as well as bringing in younger kids to hold classes in here as well. We’re trying to really submerge the dogs into the fullest, truest form of school.

This room is going to be our doctor’s office. What we are going to be doing in here is getting our dogs used to the doctor’s office, and the whole idea here is that this is not the first time that they are going to experience a doctor’s office setting whenever we do have them in a true doctor’s office. We’re going to get them used to things like the rattle of the paper — this can be very scary to some dogs, so whenever you are in your real doctor’s office setting, they’re very comfortable with that. Of course, we have our lovely mannequin here that is just going to be getting them used to different figures, and then the rolly chair, because the rolly chair can sometimes be a little off-putting to dogs. We’re also going to teach them how to properly place themselves around the rolling chair — so if your dog is over here and the doctor needs to be up there, you’re going to be able to tell your dog to go to the other side while the rolly chair is there beside them, and they’ll be able to place themselves on the other side.

Down this hall is all of our potty training suites, and this hall leads to an exit door over here. What we will do with this is we will teach the dogs how to go in and out at a very comfortable rate to avoid any accidents. These areas are our turf areas, and they are used all throughout the day. We utilize them for potty training of our sweet dogs — they are brought out here numerous times during the day to stretch their legs as well as go to the restroom. We also utilize them for playtime as well as off-leash outdoor training.

If you’ll come across here, this is one of our potty training suites. In here is a big final touch piece that we want to put on our service dogs. What we do in this area is we get them very much housebroken. We’re going to bring them into this room at the very end of their training, and we’re going to give them full access to the room. They’re going to have full access to a TV. They’re going to have their crate — because they do still utilize their crate, but it’s also really a safe place for them, so they really like their crates — so we’re going to give them access to that. We’re also going to have a piece of furniture in here — this room, with it being empty, we don’t have any — and they’re going to have lots and lots of toys in here as well.

This is our kitchen and dining room area. What we do in here is we teach the dogs how to properly lay under the table, so while you were having a meal, if something were to be dropped, they know to ignore it. We also teach them the fundamentals of staying out from underneath your feet if you are to be doing cooking or things like that. We’re also going to utilize this area for the service dog piece of training on how to properly tuck underneath the table — to where they are there, but nobody else around them knows that they are there.

This is our Snowy Pines TSA area. What we’re going to be teaching the dogs in this area is how to properly go through TSA. We will have them stay at the end here and walk completely down here while simulating — this would be the area that you would be getting your checks and stuff — and then we would call the dogs over to us. We also have this great metal table, because with TSA, for the noise piece of it, they need to be used to having baggage rolled across a metal table, which we do very frequently with our dogs, and we keep them beside us to get them very used to that and prepared for that.

This is our Snowy Pines airplane room. What this is going to do is teach the dogs how to come in here and properly place themselves underneath the plane seats. We bring them in here, and we do teach them to go on in and lay down. This is a true measurement to our coach setting, and then we also have a true measurement to a bulkhead setting, or first-class setting. So the dogs are able to learn how to properly place themselves in these different settings. We also have these cabinets here — these are going to simulate our overhead storage area. This is going to get them used to the opening and the shutting of the bins above them, to where, if you are having to lift stuff up above their heads, it’s just a normal day for them.

And that is going to lead us to our agility room. What this room is going to help us do is teach some confidence as well as some body awareness. Getting the dogs up on the teeter-totter is going to help us build confidence, but it’s also going to teach them that whenever certain parts of their body reach a certain limit, it could cause a shift which they need to learn to adjust for.

And here is our Snowy Pines Ruff Cut — our salon. We do have actual clients who come in here for haircuts, and what we’ll do is we’ll bring dogs in here to get them used to the sounds of the clippers, the sounds of the hair dryer — and, of course, being comfortable on that placemat while we are in here getting our hair done. Because we want everybody to experience that freedom of being able to go into a salon or a barber shop whenever they get their service dog.

In here is our Bravery Den, and of course it is to help build confidence. We are going to bring dogs in here and get them used to all of these scary things — like, of course, our spider and our Mister Green Man. What we’re doing in here is we are going to be ultimately putting them in a more frightened state, but what this is going to help us do is achieve a faster recovery. Once a dog has hit that frightened state, we then back off and we allow them to work through that fear and get over it and ultimately become much more relaxed at a much quicker pace — which is going to be very beneficial out in places like Walmart or things like that, to where, if something were to fall off of the shelf, they’re going to be able to recover from that very quickly rather than taking a little bit of extra time.

And this is our dorm room setting. What we’re going to achieve in here is getting them very used to a dorm-room setting — so, of course, a bedroom setting. We’re going to teach them, if their owners request that they sleep in the bed with them, how to properly get in and out of the bed, how to quickly settle in the bed — don’t play with the pillows, anything like that. And then if their owners request that they just sleep beside them, not in the bed, we’re going to teach them how to place on a placemat or an elevated bed and settle themselves down for the night. We also are going to work with them on computers — so, having our desk area, we’re going to teach them that whenever we’re over here in this area to just settle and find their own things to do rather than constantly being right there beside us, so we’re able to get some work done, for the school piece of it.

This is one of our service dog handoff rooms. What we do in here is we bring our clients and handlers in, and they are going to be taught how to handle their dog using the cues that we have taught their dog — so whenever they get home, everything transfers very smoothly for them.

People ask what the hardest part about the job is, and it’s always the goodbyes. But watching each dog meet their true people makes it all so worth it. I really hope you enjoyed this tour with us today, and getting to see a little piece of what we do here at Snowy Pines.