About Top Dog Training LLC

Overview

Top Dog Training LLC is a small, owner-operated board-and-train business in Terre Haute run by Nicole Thraen. It is the opposite model to the large multi-service facilities elsewhere in the metro: no boarding-for-travel, no grooming, no daycare, no drop-in classes — one trainer, a handful of dogs at a time, living in her home.

Thraen's route into training was not the conventional one. She taught fourth grade for five years, from 2016 to 2021, before moving into dogs full time. The turning point was her own boxer, Toby, acquired in 2019, which led her to study dog training at Ruff Lyfe Dog Training in Coatesville, Indiana — working there with dogs across a range of breeds, sizes, ages and temperaments — before bringing that experience back to Terre Haute and starting Top Dog.

The teaching background is not incidental to how the business reads. Board-and-train lives or dies on the handover: a dog can be beautifully trained and still fall apart in a week if the owner is not taught to run the same system. A trainer who spent five years in a classroom is, at minimum, someone who has thought about how humans learn.

Training Approach

The defining structural choice at Top Dog is that program dogs stay inside the trainer's home for the duration of their stay rather than being kennelled between sessions. That is presented as a comfort-and-supervision decision, and it has a real training consequence: the behaviors that most owners actually care about — settling in a living room, not counter-surfing, greeting people at a door, being calm around household noise — are trained in the environment where they will be used, all day, rather than only in scheduled sessions.

The second structural choice is the weekly group class offered exclusively to board-and-train clients. This is the transfer mechanism most board-and-train programs are missing. Instead of a single go-home lesson, graduates get an ongoing, recurring venue to keep practising with their own dog under the trainer's eye, in a group setting with distractions. For an owner weighing board-and-train against owner-attended classes, that continuing access closes much of the usual gap.

Beyond those two features, Top Dog does not publish a detailed methodology statement — no formal position on tools, corrections or reinforcement schedules is available, and no professional certifications are claimed. Owners with strong preferences on training philosophy should raise them in the initial conversation.

Programs & Services

The menu is deliberately narrow:

– **Board and train.** The core and, in practice, the only product. Dogs come to the property for a residential program and go home trained, serving Terre Haute and surrounding communities.

– **Weekly group classes.** Reserved for board-and-train clients as follow-up, not sold as a standalone class series to the general public.

There is no advertised puppy course, day training, private-lesson-only track, boarding-for-travel service, grooming, sport work, or protection or bite work of any kind. This is a single-service business, and the narrowness is intentional.

Location & Setting

The operation runs from the trainer's own 8-acre property in Terre Haute. On it are an indoor training facility — so weather does not dictate the training schedule, which matters through a west-central Indiana winter — and a fully fenced yard used for play and potty breaks between sessions. Eight acres also means genuine space for distance work and controlled exposure to open ground, which a storefront training room cannot offer.

Capacity is inherently limited. When dogs live in the trainer's home, the number of slots is bounded by the house rather than by kennel count, and the business has previously run with its board-and-train spots booked out well in advance.

What Sets Them Apart

The in-home board-and-train format is the distinguishing feature, and in this metro it is genuinely differentiated. Terre Haute's other residential option is a purpose-built commercial kennel; Top Dog's is a house on acreage where a small number of dogs live as household dogs while they learn. For an owner whose real complaint is household behavior — and for a dog that does not do well in a kennel environment — that is a materially different product, not just a nicer-sounding one.

The client-only weekly group class is the second differentiator, and arguably the more important one, because it addresses the standard weakness of the board-and-train category.

Two cautions belong in any honest write-up. First, capacity: a one-trainer, in-home program cannot take many dogs, so availability should be checked early rather than assumed — the business has at times paused new intake entirely, including around the trainer's own family leave. Second, verification: the business's Squarespace website has expired and no longer loads, so its Facebook page and direct phone contact are the reliable channels for confirming current status, availability and pricing before making plans.

For an owner who wants their dog trained inside a real home, by one person, with an ongoing class to keep it, Top Dog fits a niche that nothing else in Terre Haute occupies. Confirm they are taking clients before you count on it.