Seth Simpson has been described as an animal whisperer.
Seeing as we’re fans of Jack Hanna, Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee, we had to meet the legend ourselves.
Seth Simpson is tall man in his twenties. He lives and works on a piece of property in between Caldwell and Notus, Idaho. And while he bears no resemblance (nor accent) to the TV-star animal tamers, Simpson, without a doubt, truly knows dogs.
“You can read all the books and watch all the videos and listen to people talk, but I’ve spent every day of my life with multiple animals for hours, for as long as I’ve been alive,” Simpson said.
Simpson is the owner of Gem State Kennels. He offers all breed obedience training as well as training for retrievers in waterfowl and upland hunting.
Hunting is where Simpson first realized he had a passion for dog training.
“I got my first dog of my own when I was 16 and trained it to be a hunting dog and found that I loved training dogs as much as I love hunting,” he said.
At any one time Simpson might have a dozen dogs in his care. Some of them stay for a few weeks and some of them stay for a few months. Despite the revolving door of dogs, Simpson is able to build a relationship with every single one of them.
“Some dogs you grow to like more than others, but with any dog, when they come in and go through the training program, you have to form some sort of connection very quickly in order to be able to train the dog,” Simpson said.
Although the connection between trainer and dog is hugely important in the training process, Simpson says another necessary piece to the dog-training puzzle is the owner.
“The owner comes out every week and works with us and gets to see the whole process,” he said.
“It’s more important to train the owner than it is to train the dog. It’s just like a horse, if I was a horse trainer and someone sends me a horse, if I don’t train the owner to ride the horse, they’re not going to be able to utilize it,” Simpson said.
It’s easy to see Simpson is devoted to his work, but it’s even easier to see how devoted his dogs are to him.
“In order to be a dog trainer, you have to know how a dog thinks,” he said.
“You can only learn that by learning from them, and the more time I spend training dogs, the better and better I get, and everyday I learn something new,” Simpson said.
You can find out more about Gem State Kennels through its Facebook and Instagram accounts.
