Crystal Clear Canine Academy

09/05/2026

I’ve been doing board and train in one form or another for most of my career.

And after 20 years of training dogs full-time, I’ve learned that bigger isn’t necessarily where I want to be.

There was a time in the evolution of my business when we got busy. We had kennels. We could take more dogs. Like a lot of business owners, I thought growth meant doing more, helping more people, training more dogs.

These days, I’ve come back around to something much smaller and much more personal.

When a dog comes to stay with me for board and train, they live with me.

Not in a kennel building out back. Not somewhere I visit for training sessions throughout the day. They move into my home in the country and become part of our everyday life for the time they’re here.

They live alongside my daughters, our dogs and cats. They load up in the car and go to the Academy with me in the morning. They come home with us at night. They hang out while we make dinner. They learn to settle while a family is moving around them. They watch us work in the yard on the weekends. They get playtime, downtime, training time and all of the ordinary little moments that make up actually living with a dog.

Because ultimately, that’s what I’m preparing them for.

Life.

It also means I can only take a small number of dogs at a time. I want every dog staying with me to comfortably fit into my life — and quite literally, comfortably fit into my vehicle so everybody can come to work with me for the day.

And I’m okay with that.

At this point in my career, I’m much more interested in quality and long-term relationships than I am in how many dogs I can put through a program.

Ideally, board and train isn’t the beginning and end of our relationship, either. I want to know you and your dog before they come live with me. I want to understand what everyday life looks like at home and what you actually need help with. And when your dog goes home, I want to continue working with you so the training becomes part of your life together — not just something your dog learned while they were away.

That’s also why dogs who have trained with us to a certain level can eventually become part of our Boarding Club. Once I know a dog, they know me, and we’ve built that foundation together, they can come back and stay as one of the crew.

So if you’re over in the Cities looking at board and train options, you may have to drive a little farther to find us.

We’re across the river in Wisconsin, out in the country.

We’re small.

And these days, that’s very intentional.

If this sounds like the kind of experience you’ve been looking for for your dog, shoot me a message. I’d be happy to schedule a time to chat about your dog and see if we might be a good fit.

Get expert dog training with personalized attention. Learn more! River Falls, WI.

09/04/2026

“Certified dog trainer” can mean a lot of different things in an industry without one universal standard for what that certification requires.

And I say that as a certified trainer myself.

My education gave me a foundation. The years that followed — working with real dogs, real people, complicated behavior, successes, mistakes, and dogs that made me rethink what I thought I knew — gave me experience.

If you’re looking for help with your dog, ask about both.

Especially when what you’re dealing with isn’t simple.

09/03/2026

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to show up as the face of your own business.

I built my first website for Crystal Clear Canine Academy myself back in 2011. For all of the years, I wrote my own content, took my own pictures, figured out Facebook, worked on the website, trained the dogs, talked to the clients... all of it.

At some point I started thinking maybe that wasn't professional enough anymore.

Maybe my website needed to be more modern. Maybe my marketing needed to be more polished. Maybe I needed people who understood algorithms and ads and AI and all of the things I don't particularly want to spend my life understanding because, at the end of the day, I'm a dog trainer.

So I handed a lot of it over.

And somewhere along the way, I think I handed over a little too much.

Recently I pulled my old website back up. It's imperfect. There are things that need to be updated. There are things I want to change.

But I looked at it and thought, "There I am."

It felt like Crystal Clear Canine Academy again.

The reality of my business right now is that it's small. It's me, with some help from a trainer part-time. I'm the one answering your messages. I'm the one talking with you about your dog. I'm the one training dogs and working with owners and figuring out what the next step should be.

And I think it's time my online presence reflected that again too.

Which means you're probably going to see more of me.

Sometimes without makeup. Sometimes talking into my phone for 41 seconds because I have something I want to say about dogs. Sometimes with a website that isn't perfectly updated yet.

I'm learning to be okay with that.

Because I'd rather have something that's imperfect and actually feels like me than something polished that doesn't feel like Crystal Clear Canine Academy at all.

So that's where I'm at.

Showing up again.

09/02/2026

9.2 at Daycamp

09/01/2026

9.1 at Daycamp

09/01/2026

Hi, I’m Crystal, and this is Teddy.

If you’re new around here, I’m the owner and head trainer behind Crystal Clear Canine Academy. I started this business back in 2011, and after all these years working with dogs and their people, there’s one thing I’ve found: dogs can learn really quickly.

But learning something and actually changing long-term behavior are two different things.

A dog might understand a new pattern within a session or two. Building new coping skills, changing old habits, and getting to that point where they think, “Okay, this is just how life works now,” takes consistency. I generally look at that as a three-to-six-month process.

That’s a big part of why I designed our Good Dog program the way I did.

We start with a Jump Start process and focus on putting three things in place:

A plan.
The how-tos.
And support.

And I prefer to start with you—the social center for your dog.

From there, we can absolutely do more of the heavy lifting through Day Training or Board & Train if that’s what your dog and your life need. But I still want to start together, get to know you and your dog, and build the plan from there.

If you and your dog aren’t quite where you’d like to be, shoot me a message and we can schedule a time to chat about what’s going on and where you’d like things to go.

Real Life Training, Community, Fun
Pro-Active Dog Owners & Pro Dog Trainers
Find your Tribe & Bring your Dog

08/31/2026

8.31 at Daycamp

08/29/2026

8.27 at Daycamp

08/27/2026

8.26 at Daycamp