About Webfoot Outdoors and Rimrock Kennels

Webfoot Outdoors and Rimrock Kennels is a gun dog and obedience training operation on Clayton Center Road in Clayton, run by Mark Gawron and Martha Imperato. Its own summary of itself is training great dogs, good hunting and lifelong friendships, and the training side runs from puppy socialization and basic obedience through to finished upland gun dogs and retrievers.

Programs and prices

The training page publishes a rate card, which is unusual in this field. A board and train program runs by the week or the month with pricing quoted case by case. Weekly gun dog training with the trainer, dog and handler together is $50 a session. Group gun dog classes run at $40 a session with a four-person minimum. Basic obedience training with trainer, dog and handler is $50 a session, and puppy and obedience classes are $20 a session. Vaccination requirements are published too: rabies, DAPP, bordetella and a negative fecal at minimum, with flea and tick treatment before training.

How they train

The site's stated philosophy is to keep it simple and build a foundation, customizing each program to the handler and dog. For gun dogs the emphasis is on work under real conditions: dogs work a lot of live birds in natural hunting scenarios, on the grounds that exposure to a wide variety of hunting conditions is what produces a bold but cooperative dog. The business is a HuntSmith Foundation Certified Facility and hosts Rick Smith foundation and intermediate seminars annually, alongside NAVHDA events.

The trainers

One owner has bred, raised and trained five generations of German Shorthaired Pointers and has been an active NAVHDA member since 1990, with breeder awards at NA, UT and VC level, and also runs a Women's Outdoor Challenge program covering hunting, shooting sports and other outdoor skills. She spent thirty years as a certified veterinary technician in private practice and as an adjunct professor in a veterinary technician program before retiring to train dogs full time.

Also boards

The kennel side is a full-service boarding facility, and the site says so separately from the training programs.