Community & Business
5 March, 2025
Unique training facility gets the green light
MAREEBA dog owners will soon be enjoying a state-of-the-art dog boarding, training and daycare facility, after Mareeba Shire Council last week approved the development at the Mareeba Industrial Park.
Business owner and dog trainer Taylor Skinner said construction would begin in the coming weeks with an opening date hopefully at the end of May.
“I have people already booked into the kennels as soon as it opens, my clients have been waiting for this,” she said.
The building will include 15 kennels; two sound-proofed training rooms with a special entry for nervous, or aggressive dogs, so they don’t get overwhelmed; a large central area for group training classes in the evenings, which becomes the day-care area during the day; amenities; and a commercial kitchen, where Taylor’s raw-food products will be prepared for sale.
Outside, the property will have roll-out fences for exercise areas based on the number of dogs at the time; five fenced yards for the dogs, when cleaning is in progress inside; a large shed for storage; landscaping and a car park. Acoustic fencing will also be installed to reduce the noise impact on the industrial estate.
Specialised one-on-one training will be available for reactive and aggressive dogs, and general training classes go from beginner to advanced. Customers would also be able to buy dog food and products at the facility.
Taylor’s Alpha Lykos K9 Training and Behaviour business has been running for the past eight years, but three years ago she and her business partner Serina Lynch, who owns M&M Companion Retrievers, developed courses for assistance training dogs.
The two met when Taylor travelled to South Australia to pick up a pup, and they clicked.
Serina breeds Golden Retrievers and Labradors and has also crossed them to become “Goldadors” which are popular as companion dogs.
“Serina’s ability to match an owner with a dog... I’ve never seen anything like it,” Taylor said.
The two believed there was a gap in the provision of trained assistance dogs, particularly for people with mental health disabilities.
“It is so hard to get an assistance dog, really hard. The waiting list is huge, the cost is substantial - $40,000 for a fully trained assistance dog. And most of the time, it’s only for physical disabilities, not mental,” Taylor said.
“So we made the program, the M&M Companion Retrievers Program and we got the ball rolling.
“In our first litter, we ended up with five out of the 10 doing assistance dog work. We still have two of them in the program that have moved on from normal assistance dog to advanced training.
“We’ve now got 21 dogs, Australia-wide.
“We do it all online. We have weekly meetings on zoom with the owner/trainer, then they have one-on-ones with me. They have what no other course offers, which is a one-stop shop – because I’m a vet nurse, most of the questions I can answer. Or I tell them to call their vet. As a nutritionist, I structure their diets, and I’m on call nine to five, five days a week.”
Taylor’s regular training classes have been going for five years in Mareeba.
“The dedication up here to training in comparison to a lot of the other places is... less half-arsed,” she said.
“And the ones I’ve had for ages, they want to do some wonderful things, and I push them and so it’s great to be able to work with people like that.”
She recently suggested to the council that it introduce a discount on dog registrations for owners who achieve a particular dog training level (an option provided in Cairns).
Currently, Taylor holds her classes at the industrial precinct. As well as regular classes, there is also a yearly membership option for clients to come and go to any of the classes.
Once the building is complete, dog boarding and daycare will begin. Clients will have the option of combining both if the dog is suitable.
“Daycare sounds ridiculous to many people,” Taylor said. “But I used it for my Koolie when I was in Cairns. I worked eight-hour days and when I came home from work, I didn’t always have the capacity to entertain him, which wasn’t fair.
I’d bring him home [from daycare] and he could barely move, and he was more social.
“Daycare would be ideal for people who work in Cairns, who could drop their dogs in the morning and pick them up at night. Or if people want a weekend away, camping, they can leave their dogs for boarding and play.”
For now, Taylor is focusing on her classes and building her dog centre dream.
• Read about Taylor’s journey from a misfit kid from Kuranda, to specialist dog trainer building her unique business, in our International Women’s Day feature section on page 13.
