About Tri-State Kennel Club

What they do

Tri-State Kennel Club is an AKC-sanctioned club in Joplin, Missouri. The About page says it

serves southwest Missouri, southeast Kansas, Northwest Arkansas and Northeast Oklahoma, and

that it runs dog training classes year-round in its own fully matted, climate-controlled

building. The home page describes the club as a non-profit organization established in 1936.

Membership is encouraged but the club states you do not have to be a member to take a class.

The classes

Classes run six or seven weeks, about 45 minutes each, and are capped at eight dogs. The

published ladder starts with AKC S.T.A.R. Puppy for dogs up to six months, moves through

Beginner Home Manners for the basic obedience exercises – come, sit, down, stays, leave it and

loose-leash walking – and then AKC Canine Good Citizen, which has Beginner Home Manners as a

prerequisite and ends with the CGC test. Above that sits AKC Community Canine (CGCA). The club

is explicit that classes are designed to teach the owner to teach the dog.

Method and house rules

The About page describes positive reinforcement using a marker and a motivator. The class

rules ask for an ordinary collar, martingale or head halter and a four-to-six-foot leash, with

no chain leashes and no harnesses, and soft treats. Current age-appropriate vaccination records

or documented titer testing are required, students must be at least twelve and accompanied by a

parent, and no more than two family members may work a dog on the floor at once. The club

states plainly that no aggressive dogs are allowed, so this is not the place for a bite case.

Sports and testing

Beyond obedience the club offers conformation, agility, scent work, AKC Fetch, FastCAT, rally

and trick and farm dog testing, and it hosts its own shows and trials through the year. It

sponsors a local therapy dog group and has a Tester/Observer for Alliance of Therapy Dogs.