About Empire K-9 Inc.

Empire K-9 on Waterbury Road in Nassau is a board-and-train operation first and a lesson business second. The site's own framing is a boot camp: your dog stays with the trainer, is fully trained, and is then transferred back to you with the handling instructions to keep it.

The boot camp ladder

Four boot camp programs are published, and they are published with prices, which is rare in this metro. The Basic Course builds an on-leash foundation of heeling, loose-leash walking, a release command, down-stay, sit-stay and recall, plus pack socialization between training sessions and marker-based communication for correct and incorrect behavior; it is aimed at dogs six to twelve months old. Above it sits a four-week program at $3,000 plus tax, and a V.I.D. course in which the dog lives with the trainer as one of their own dogs and is worked around high levels of distraction in public.

Behavior work and one-on-one

Alongside the residential programs the site publishes one-on-one dog training and behavior modification, a puppy boot camp, and a dedicated deaf-dog training camp. The deaf-dog program is a genuine specialty; nothing else in this directory's Albany-area supply publishes one.

How they describe the method

The comparison the site draws is with the way service dogs, guide dogs and police and military working dogs are trained: full obedience, physical conditioning, confidence building and off-site work, with the emphasis on the handler being able to maintain the result afterwards. Boarding is offered on its own as well, and the site suggests the boot camp as the alternative to a plain kennel stay when you are traveling.