About Ebb Tide Kennels & Stables

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Ebb Tide Kennels & Stables Horse with head down

Ebb Tide Kennels was founded in 1979 as a dog obedience school. Our first students were folks looking for basic control of their dogs, but some of them achieved much more in the way of obedience titles. Agility too.

At the outset we were students of Jack & Wendy Volhard. We attended their instructor schools and made the treck to their home (2.5 hours away) for training and theory sessions every weekend for almost 3 years. They gave us the tools which we use to evaluate our training and teaching methods and provided the foundation for our techniques. Our collaboration with them resulted in the movies (then videos) "Puppy Training" and "Puppy Aptitude Testing", winner of the top film award by the Dog Writers Association. Seaward's Ebb Tide (the one we named the place after) was the star of the movie. She became our first CD, CDX, UD, WD, and WRD. I additionally provided most of the photo's in two of Volhard's training books.

Over the years we have learned lots about dog training from many of the best trainers around. We've come up with a few gems ourselves and passed these on to our students and to other schools.

Most recently we have become involved, some might say immersed, in Agility training. We built lots of equipment, went to the various seminars, read the books, and finally developed a training method consistent with our philosophy of dog training. We and our students have done quite well in competition, achieving many titles and placements. All this and it's aerobic too!

For the past 20 years Joan had been trying to get me on a horse. I was deathly afraid of the creatures and had little interest in getting on one. Finally she prevailed and I took a few lessons. Then the real troubles began. We bought a horse (Adam) for Joan. Later that year I "appropriated" him and got her another horse (Carmen). After riding at an eventing stable in northern California (while on a business trip) I came home and traded in Adam for Amy. In 1994 we completed the construction of our horse barn and moved our trusty steeds home.

We now train variously in dressage and jumping, and can often be found at local carriage competitions driving Amy to our Meadowbrook cart. I for one would never have believed how much fun this really is.

The kennel building houses our retail store, grooming shop, and boarding kennel. The original building was designed in collaboration with our trusted veterinarian, Dr. Kerry Brown. He advised us on the details of the layout and construction of the runs and on the ventilation system. The design has proven to be very functional. The addition, which is larger than the original building followed the same design concepts. Our current capacity is about 40 dogs.

The training facility is a 3600 square foot, fully insulated building. We provide winter heat - just enough to take the chill off, and ventilate in summer with large exhaust fans. It is almost always pleasant inside, and the bugs are seldom a nuisance. Located in the training building are our obedience jumps and agility obstacles. There is enough room for a full-sized utility ring or a challenging (but not regulation distance) open agility course. Just outside is a very large fenced field (which doubles as a horse pasture on occasion) used for outdoor training and summer matches. In addition we have a large pond suitable for water training the newfies.

The horse barn currently has four 12x12 stalls, floored with rubber mats. Two additional stalls will be completed as required. In addition we have a full-sized wash stall with hot and cold running water, a heated tack room, and bedding and hay storage areas. Two pastures are connected directly to the barn, each with large shade trees. Our 58 wooded acres contain lots of trails suitable for riding. In addition we are only a few miles from some lovely parks (which permit horses) and the Barge Canal (which has hundreds of miles of tow path).

Services offered at Ebb Tide Kennels & Stables include dog grooming by Joan (graduate of the Rochester Institute of Dog Grooming), dog boarding, in-kennel training for pet or competitive obedience, group and private obedience instruction, group and private agility instruction, horse boarding, and riding instruction. In addition we are available for training seminars and clinics.