Intro
Our Board and Train Retreat combines expert-level training with the comfort of living in the home of Beyond the Dog’s co-founders, Dr. Kristyn Echterling-Savage and Sean Savage. This exclusive training experience takes place in Tampa Bay, Florida, offering your dog a one-of-a-kind training retreat.
If you are short on time for training or will be heading outside Kansas City, your dog will thrive in a structured environment designed to teach high-level obedience, manners, and address behavioral challenges. Training happens both in their home and when exploring Tampa Bay’s parks, trails, shops, beaches, farmers’ markets, and more. Your dog will return not only highly trained, but refreshed, confident, and able to be at their best in a wide variety of environments.
Your dog will receive unmatched daily attention, ensuring that advanced obedience skills and reinforcing positive behavioral changes are part of their everyday routine. By the end of their stay, they’ll return home refreshed, highly trained, and ready to show you everything they have learnt for at-home and public environments.
Common goals during the retreat include, but are not limited to:
Travel to Tampa Bay and back to Kansas City is complimentary.
By living at the trainer’s home, your dog learns and reinforces good behaviors in a real home environment, ensuring new skills transition smoothly to your own home. At Beyond the Dog, we combine the latest research with proven operant and classical conditioning, reinforcing behaviors in ways that create lasting, positive associations.
With training occurring both at the home and throughout the Tampa Bay area, your dog will be exposed to a variety of diverse environments. Training in different environments gives your dog the opportunity to improve their obedience, manners and address behavioral challenges more effectively, as we can address every situation.
Dr. Echterling-Savage is a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist (CAAB) and Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) with a Ph.D. in Behavioral Psychology, specializing in animal behavior. Not only does she have over 20 years of hands-on experience teaching dogs, cats, and other animals, but she also mentors and trains our trainers across Beyond the Dog.
Sean Savage is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC), Certified Professional Dog Trainer – Knowledge Assessed (CPDT-KA), who brings extensive experience with decades of training obedience, manners, and treating a wide range of behavioral challenges.
Together, they will ensure every retreat provides personalized, science-based training that delivers real-world skills in both the home and public environments. As part of the family, your dog balances training with play, exercise, and downtime, making each retreat both productive and enjoyable.
Your dog’s retreat begins with a consultation with Dr. Kristyn Echterling-Savage, who reviews your pup’s behavioral history and your training goals. Using your submitted Indirect Assessment of Canine Behavior, Kristyn and Sean design a personalized plan that blends our training expertise with a retreat-style experience.
On the scheduled start date, your dog will be transported by a trusted staff member to Kristyn and Sean’s home in Tampa Bay. While living as part of the family in sunny Tampa Bay, your pup enjoys daily training sessions built into real-life routines, from manners and socialization to advanced obedience, all within a supportive retreat atmosphere.
Throughout the four-week program, you’ll receive regular updates, calls, and correspondence so you feel connected to your dog’s progress. At the end of the retreat, Sean returns your dog home and together with another trainer will provide 4.5 hours of follow-up training across two days, ensuring you have the tools to continue their success long after the program ends.
Dr. Echterling-Savage will evaluate your dog and discuss your training goals with you. She will then create a personalized training plan that teaches high-level obedience, manners, and treating behavioral challenges, including reactivity, fearful behavior, resource guarding, touch sensitivity, cat chasing behaviors, and separation anxiety.
Your dog will not just be attending training sessions, but live in a nurturing home environment, experience new places and situations, and become a more confident dog able to handle any social situation.
At Beyond the Dog, we combine the latest scientific research with proven operant and classical conditioning techniques. We don’t just teach commands, we reinforce positive behaviors in a way that creates lasting, positive associations, ensuring your dog learns confidently and effectively.
This refined, science-based approach allows us to address everything from high-level obedience to complex behavioral challenges, all while keeping your dog motivated, engaged, and promoting a lifelong love for learning.When your dog returns home, you’ll receive detailed guidance and support through four and a half hours of follow-up lessons. This helps ensure that the skills and confidence they gain are maintained for the long term. And that you know how to utilize their new skills and encourage a new lifelong love for learning.
We always prioritize your dog’s comfort and safety. When traveling to and from Tampa Bay, your dog will never go in the cargo hold. Instead, they will travel with a trusted staff member in their car or sit with them when flying. This helps ensure your dog has a relaxed and carefree journey. Transportation is included in the price of the program.