50 Years of Dog Training: Meet Bob “Mutt Master” Warren

(EL PASO COUNTY, CO) — “Should I wave?” Bob “Mutt Master” Warren asked as he looked into the Fox 21 camera. “Welcome to the Little Dog House on the Prairie! That’s the official name of this place,” he exclaimed as he stood in front of a field with an agility course.

“368 days, I don’t count things like that,” Warren said, recalling the time between
meeting his future wife and the date of their wedding. They have now been married for 50 years. “I know, it’s rare, I was told.”

It’s not the 50 years in business that Warren is celebrating by offering discounts on his dog training services, but rather his marital bliss. “I started working with dogs in 1974,” he said. “At the time, I was 24. I was living a crazy life and I thought I would be a dog trainer, but there weren’t many dog ​​trainers at the time.”

Warren found himself in southern Colorado in the ’90s. “I moved here in ’98 to get away from Boston because the big dig was happening right outside my place. I really should have looked at a map and taken a test drive, I thought Vail was closer.”

Warren says puppies born during the pandemic were more timid and nervous, presenting new hurdles for the experienced trainer who develops training plans based on the individual dog, not the breed.

“The only way to look at a dog is to look at it as such, not as its breed, not as its crosses, not as anything else… It’s the individuality of the dog that counts.”

The key to Bob’s Mutt Masters K9 Academy’s success is this: “We take what we do very seriously. We strive to train dogs more effectively and correctly, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. So if you really want to love something…especially working with dogs.”