This Colorado Dog Trainer Specializes in Teaching Dogs “Brewery Manners”

We’ve all seen the craft beer industry create or grow any number of relevant side industries over the years. Whether it’s the obviously complementary nature of food truck purveyors, or the barbers necessary to trim all those brewer beards, it’s clear that breweries help infuse business into a community. But never until now have we considered dog training as a beer-adjacent business.

Someone out there, however, is seizing an opportunity. In Fort Collins, CO, a city well known for its wealth of brewery locations (23, currently), a dog trainer named Amber Quann of Summit Dog Training has started a course that specifically trains dogs in how to behave in brewery taproom settings. According to The Coloradoan, who first ran a story about Quann, these are skills the trainer occasionally taught in her regular courses, until demand for a brewery specific course made this new course of action an obvious choice. And thus: The four-week “Drink With Your Dog: Brewery Manners” course was born.

From The Coloradoan:

The class breaks down skills a dog might need in a crowded brewery—ranging from fundamentals like knowing to sit calmly at their owner’s feet under a table to executing a graceful loose-leash walk across a tap room without spilling their owner’s beer. It costs $125 total for four one-hour weekly classes.

“Dog skills are important,” says Quann in the piece. “But I think in a brewery setting, where the environment is designed for people, dog owners (also) need to be equipped with the skills to help their dogs enjoy that setting.”

It’s a cute idea, and one that zeroes in the prevalence of dog owners in the modern craft beer setting. Many breweries throughout the country allow dogs inside and outside their breweries, although some restrict canines to porches and patios. The “dogs in taprooms” debate occasionally stirs up some bad blood, although nothing approaching the nuclear hellfire of the ever-present “kids in taprooms” debate. In Fort Collins, where Quann is based, most breweries allow for dogs, but such things aren’t universal in each state. Just an hour or two south, in Denver—a city of more than 100 breweries—a city ordinance bans dogs from every brewery, which are considered regulated food facilities. Each state and city tackles things its own way.

If you’re a dog owner, though, and you just known your new puppy will be the key to meeting a significant other in a brewery setting, perhaps you should seek out a course like Quann’s first.