By Sandor Slomovits • Photos by Susan Ayer
The biggest picture on the wall of my home office is not of my wife or daughter, or our parents, or any other relative. It is of a now long-gone but still cherished member of our family—our first dog. Murphy was a brown and white, thirty-pound Sheltie my wife and I adopted a few years after we married. He was, before our daughter was born, our first “child.” He was a thoroughly lovable dog. Sharp as a tack—I taught him to sit and shake in about ten minutes—an endless source of delight in games of fetch, and great company—most of the time. He was also an incorrigible chowhound, forcing us to guard our food zealously at mealtimes. He exploded into fits of barking and jumping whenever we had guests or if he saw a bicyclist, car, or dog on our walks. We tolerated it all, not knowing that it might be possible to change those behaviors. We figured it was a small price for living with a wonderful dog.
Things might have been different had we known about K9 Translations.
Kathryn Gordon, 58, owner and operator of the K9 Translations dog training facility in Whitmore Lake, is trim, with a ready smile and a thoughtful way of speaking. She has worked with dogs for most of her life, “But I didn’t initially go on a path of becoming a dog trainer.” She earned a master’s in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was a social worker for some time, then went back to school and became a lawyer. “I loved law school. I hated practice.” During this time, she also had a dog, Misha, and began training with her. “Misha ultimately achieved her CD, which is a companion dog title. She qualified for the nationals and received her Dog World award. We also did the CDX, which is the next level title, and she qualified for the nationals with that too. We did quite well.”
But then Gordon developed cancer and was unable to work at her daily job for several years. While she was ill, she acquired a German Shepherd. “I got involved in search and rescue with her and she ultimately became my first human remains detection dog.” Gordon went on to nationally certify a number of dogs in crime scene detection, and has deployed for cases in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. At one point her local dog club asked her to teach scent detection classes, and when she said, “I’ve never done scent sport,” they replied, “At least you’ve done detection work,” and so she began teaching scent and other classes. “I had been training and working with my dog as a search dog, and I continued to do that all the way through chemo. When I finished chemo, I was looking at what would be a career for me. My husband said, ‘Whatever you do, do something you like.’” When she was invited to teach dog training classes at several facilities, she recognized that, “This is starting to become a thing. I didn’t really choose this career; it seems like it kind of chose me.” But, she decided, “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to get my certification,” which she did from both The Karen Pryor Academy and the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers.
Then along came Covid. Gordon, “Ended up doing a lot of work, only outdoors, with private clients.” Eventually, in the fall of 2022, she opened K9T in a large, low building just off a rural stretch of North Territorial Road.
Gordon’s goal, as stated on her K9T website, is to teach clients how to “Communicate positively with your dog.” Her training method, and it seems her personal philosophy, “Humane and reward-based to build a relationship of trust and respect,” is based on positive reinforcement. Instead of punishment or harsh consequences, the dogs learn by being rewarded for doing what their human is trying to get them to do, or not do. “One of the funny things about dog training is a lot of people get into it because they don’t like people which is exactly wrong. Unless you’re doing a board and train, what you’re really doing is training people. When I sat for the certification, because I had an MSW, I didn’t need as many hours of dog training because they recognized that having people skills is actually a big part. You have to know how to train the dog, but almost more importantly, how to deal with people.
“I kind of got pulled into this, [dog training] rather than me starting it with intention. But when I started K9T, my intention was very specific. I wanted to create a place where dogs and people could feel safe, where they could learn the skills that they need without being judged, without being berated, without being put down. That was, and is, really important to me.”
While Gordon affirms that there are many wonderful people in the dog training industry, she has also seen toxic interactions and behaviors. She thinks some people are aware that there are problems, but others don’t even know; they just think that’s how it is. “You’ll be at a show, somebody will do poorly, and they’ll come out yelling at their dog, ‘You knew better.’ That kind of stuff bothers me intensely. Your dog didn’t choose this activity. You did. They don’t know what to do unless you help them know what to do. What I think people often forget is that part of their job is to motivate their dog to want to do it. Making them afraid not to do it is unethical. I feel very strongly that we need to, as a society, start thinking of animals as sentient beings. The ways they see the world are different, but they’re not inferior.”
Gordon has witnessed classes where trainers and participants say things like, “I would never let my dog do that.” Or people get scolded: “Why did you let your dog do that?’ They don’t seem to realize that, If those people let their dog do that, whatever that bad thing was, it’s because they didn’t know how to not do that. Yelling at them louder isn’t making it better. I wanted to create a place where people could come and admit, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ and be told, ‘That’s okay.’”
She gives an example. “You have a dog who maybe jumps on me. That’s okay. We’re going to work through it. I start to normalize some of this stuff that they [dogs’ people] are going through, instead of them feeling like there’s something uniquely bad about them.” She understands that everybody struggles with a young dog. “Even dog trainers, struggle with a puppy. Each puppy is new and has different little challenges. And you have to adjust your lifestyle to deal with it. If a person’s dog jumps on the counter and steals the treats, it’s not a time to scream at the person or the dog—the dog for taking the treats and the person for letting them do that. You figure it out. What can we do next time—not this time—to make it so that maybe we have better success, and we don’t have stolen treats. That was my goal, to create that kind of mentality.”
Gordon has assembled a team of trainers at K9T who between them have amassed an impressive array of awards and honors at regional and national competitions and who all share her philosophy and training techniques. They offer a wide range of classes: There are several levels of basic training, where puppies and older dogs, and their people, learn the skills that help them live together harmoniously. Of them are scent detection classes, sports classes such as Agility, in which dogs learn to navigate a series of obstacles, jumps, tunnels, and teeter totters as well as Musical Freestyle where people learn how to teach their dogs a variety of tricks and create a routine to perform to music.
I attended an introductory Musical Freestyle class led by Yoko Ichikawa who, along with her Bichon Frise, Kei, has won numerous prizes and tributes in regional and national competitions for nearly fifteen years and is one of the few trainers of Musical Freestyle in Michigan. “This is the only place in our area,” she said, “for people who are interested in these sports to get hands-on help to get started with them.” After briefly discussing the sport of Musical Freestyle, Ichikawa brought out Kei and demonstrated a standard element of many routines, the weave, where dogs learn to do a figure eight pattern between their handlers’ legs, at first while the handler is standing still, eventually while the handler is walking. Then she showed the class, with step-by-step, detailed instructions, how to teach dogs to do the weave.
People enroll in Musical Freestyle—and in Agility classes—to compete in trials, (there are many good examples of both on YouTube) but also to provide enjoyable activities and exercise for their dogs, and opportunities for themselves to produce creative joint dog/human choreographies. “And many dogs really seem to like music,” added Gordon.
I also sat in on Rebecca Bastien’s Reactive Dogs class. Bastien has been dog walking and dog sitting for several years and working with Gordon at K9T for about two. “I came to Kathryn for help with Nirvana, [her rescued Doberman mix], as her needs [fear reactivity] were out of my wheelhouse at the time. With Kathryn, I was able to hone my training skills further and get my certification.”
The class’s first session was just for the human half of the dog/person pair, and Bastien discussed both the causes of reactivity, usually fear, and the multiple ways they will work in the class to address them. She detailed the safety precautions they’ll take, among them having the dogs double-leashed and limiting the class to four human/dog pairs, but she also offered practical advice on how to deal with reactive dogs in ordinary situations, including how to hold a leash properly to avoid injury to human or dog.
I also watched Gordon teach a scent detection class. Before class began, she placed props, chairs, traffic cones, cardboard boxes, and flower planters around her large, mostly empty indoor training room. (She also has an outdoor agility setup.) She scented a few of the objects in advance with essential oils, while others either had cat food in them or no special scent at all. When class began—this was an intermediate class, so the handlers and dogs were already familiar with the exercise—Gordon stood in the middle of the room as the first handler walked in with her White German Shepherd. The handler, who did not know which items were scented, let her Shepherd roam about the room sniffing the various objects. When the Shepherd recognized the essential oil scent on an object, she sat, her handler said, “Alert,” and Gordon acknowledged that the dog had correctly found the scent. The handler then rewarded her dog with a treat, and they continued searching.
One by one, the four dog/handler pairs repeated this exercise with Gordon offering calm comments, praise, and suggestions. She pointed out to one person that even though her dog didn’t sit to indicate she recognized the scent on one of the objects, she did raise her head each time she walked by it, and that her handler could learn to recognize that signal. Gordon later told me, “As a scent detection person this is important to me; the dog is your partner. They’re not your servant; they’re not your slave. They have skills that they’re bringing to the endeavor, and you have skills. There’s a back and forth: it’s not all one way. You have to read where they’re at; they have to read where you’re at. You need to keep adjusting to help each other be successful and to have fun.”
As with Musical Freestyle and Agility, some people enroll in scent classes as preparation for competitions but, Gordon said, “Nose work has additional benefits for dogs. Modern life doesn’t give dogs many chances for species typical behaviors; scent detection helps provide dogs with the opportunity to work a significant part of their brain dedicated to olfaction and engage in normal dog behaviors which together can reduce boredom and anxiety, build confidence, and help curb a variety of behavior problems. This is important because behavior problems often lead to a dog (and their humans) living a very restricted and unhappy life or, in some cases, ending up in a shelter.”
“With this business, we’re trying to create a community that supports kind relationships between people and dogs, but also between people and people,” said Gordon. “They’re learning skills that they can take to other situations that don’t involve dogs. They are learning other ways of motivating. A part of my goal is to have a space where people can learn to interact kindly with their animal and kindly with their peers in that context.
“When I have somebody come in and they want to use a pinch collar, [I always say] ‘I understand that you’re using this on your walks, but why don’t you start learning how to handle your dog without it here so that eventually you can let that tool go.’ Instead of shaming the person and saying, ‘How dare you use this?’ We’re trying to help people the same way we would with a dog, through reinforcement and kindness instead of punishment.”
Barbara Zmich and her spouse, Celeste McClellan, who’ve been taking their Mini Schnauzer pup, Rennie, to classes at K9T for over two years, said to me about Gordon, “Kathryn’s approach helps you create a more comfortable and meaningful relationship with your dog. But it’s not just dog training stuff. Her demeanor is just so kind it makes you feel comfortable…makes the dogs feel comfortable.”
“I don’t mean to sound grandiose because I know I’m only doing my little, tiny piece,” Gordon said, “But I think if you keep having people think this way, learn these techniques, even if they don’t integrate them fully, even if all they do is implement them here or there, it’s going to start to spread out. And this society needs that so badly. We really need to start handling things differently.”
In late October 2024, Gordon learned that due to unforeseen circumstances, K9 Translations would need to move from their Whitmore Lake facility. At press time Gordon was still looking for a new location. In the meantime she and the other K9T teachers are continuing to offer private lessons. For more information, please visit K9Translations.com.
Related Content:
The biggest picture on the wall of my home office is not of my wife or daughter, or our parents, or any other relative. It is of a now long-gone but still cherished member of our family—our first dog. Murphy was a brown and white, thirty-pound Sheltie my wife and I adopted a few years after we married. He was, before our daughter was born, our first “child.” He was a thoroughly lovable dog. Sharp as a tack—I taught him to sit and shake in about ten minutes—an endless source of delight in games of fetch, and great company—most of the time. He was also an incorrigible chowhound, forcing us to guard our food zealously at mealtimes. He exploded into fits of barking and jumping whenever we had guests or if he saw a bicyclist, car, or dog on our walks. We tolerated it all, not knowing that it might be possible to change those behaviors. We figured it was a small price for living with a wonderful dog.