About Animal Connection Training & Consulting

A training center in the middle of the Park

Animal Connection Training runs from 48 Saint Bernard Street in Saranac Lake, open Tuesday through Saturday – a real address with real hours, which in this metro is unusual. Kinna and Gene Ohman-Leone created the business in 2013 and have been training professionally since 2015; both hold the Karen Pryor Academy CTP credential, and the site says they have worked with more than seven hundred clients. The strapline they use is practical and positive training for those who love to be outside with their dogs, based in the Adirondack Park of Northern New York, and the program is shaped around that.

What they work on

The published program falls into four groups. General programs cover basic manners, puppies, adolescents and rescue dogs. Preparation work covers therapy dog prep, service dog prep and wilderness search-and-rescue dog prep – the third of those is a genuinely local specialty and not something most metros this size can offer. Behavior issues are listed plainly: jumping on others, pulling on leash, not coming when called, separation issues and impulsivity. Exploration and sports covers travel, hiking, boating and camping skills, nosework and scent trailing, and agility. Two programs are named separately: the Precious Puppy Program, which the site frames as guiding an owner through raising a puppy into a confident and resilient adult dog, and the Reactive Dog Program, for any dog that is uncomfortable with other dogs or people, which is run in what they describe as a safe, confidential environment.

Method, and the evidence for it

The method is reward-based throughout. The argument the site makes for it is about feedback rather than kindness alone: with positive training there is space for the animal to respond and time to observe how it feels, so the trainer is not guessing. What makes the claim checkable is the continuing-education list they publish, dated year by year – a ten-month course on aggression in dogs with a veterinary behaviorist across 2022 and 2023, a separation anxiety seminar, a forty-two-hour puppy course, scent work and truffle hunting, adolescence and abnormal-behavior seminars, agility handling and canine conditioning. Both hold the Karen Pryor Academy CTP certification, and Gene Ohman-Leone also holds Fear Free Veterinary Certification.

Fit

Lessons are private and semi-private and can be booked at the center or taken virtually. The business is also a member of the Adirondack High Peaks Dog Training Club up the road, so an owner who wants group classes and titling can move between the two without leaving Saranac Lake.