Today we’d like to introduce you to Butch Cappel.
Butch, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Growing up in Louisiana my first childhood chore was scooping poop behind a dozen or so coon hounds, I think I got a dollar each time. But my first love was horses, so as a young adult my dog and I moved to Amarillo, TX. with dreams of being a horse trainer.
Not thinking all the “want to” in the world still needs a little experience, I presented myself to a lot of people as a horse trainer, I fooled very few.
But several times, as I was walking away, someone noticed my dog (a Collie Shepherd mix) at my side. Sandy’s perfect manners and obedient ways always brought her attention and me a little praise for her training. It also brought me a few well-paying jobs, training dogs instead of horses. Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow.
As I trained more dogs, a game warden asked me to train a patrol dog, to protect him, as he worked alone. Soon sheriff deputies that patrolled New Mexico and the open spaces of the Texas Panhandle were asking me to train them a “partner”. And now dog training has taken me almost around the world. So it’s a good thing I changed from horses to dogs, because that horse trailer would have been real hard to get to Australia.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I think very few of us have a smooth road in life, and I think we all have our struggles.
I guess I’m no different, though I may be a little more fortunate.
You see when life gets tough, you sometimes lose the support of people you thought were friends, and that makes things tougher.
But I’ve always been surrounded by my dogs and my customers’ dogs, and those dogs always agreed with whatever I was doing, and however I did it and that is support!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
My business does Dog, pure and simple I do anything that has to do with dog. We board and train dogs at my K9 Country kennel, I am licensed by the state of Texas to breed & train executive security, and police dogs, and I have a no-kill shelter, I support through my non-profit, Pets are For Life, P.A.L. (currently with 24 lonely dogs looking for a home) I am certainly proud of having saved all these lives, but still feel sad that they don’t have a life and a family.
Of course support for these dogs and myself, comes from obedience training that is really our specialty. Helping people train their new dog, sometimes their old dog, with new bad habits, is what I do best. I feel a very strong obligation to help people turn their dog into the best family member he/she can be, because that just might keep that dog from winding up in my no-kill shelter to feed for years to come.
But if I had to choose one thing to be proud of it would have to be between two things. The creation of K9Pro Sports, the only internationally recognized certification system for Personal protection dogs, Germany, Holland, and other Europeans have always led the way in all things dog especially precision training, so my K9Pro Sports is the first dog discipline done by an American to be adopted by European countries and even Australia.
And the Western Shepherd project, which recreated the German shepherd breed into the healthy, trainable breed it was one hundred years ago, is only waiting for Germany to begin importing my no-shed Shepherds to improve their breeding stock.
What were you like growing up?
Not real sure, probably an obnoxious, curious kid, that always had a stray dog at my side, or at the back door waiting for a scrap or leftover snack.
Contact Info:
- Website: cappelcanine.com
- Phone: 817 483 2026
- Email: k9ps@att.net
- Facebook: Butch Cappel, Western Shepherd, or K9 Pro Sports
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
