Montessori education isn’t just for kids.
The five furry students at Pinecone Pups have a full schedule ahead of them on a gloomy June day. There’s time to run around with their buddies, human and canine, work on manners, sits, stays, touch and recall, nap, sniff and just plain be a dog.
Newt, an 8-month-old golden retriever, works on a few commands with his mom, Lynde Nanson, who’s also a Pinecone trainer, before getting to roughhouse with his other puppy friend, a doodle named Bella, who’s been in puppy classes for a month. Bella’s brother, a Chesapeake bay retriever named Emmett, shows anxiety with his pinned-back ears. It’s his first day at Pinecone, and his stress in an unfamiliar environment is normal. But by the afternoon he’ll be a whole new dog, happily rolling on his back in the sand in the yard, as Pinecone founder and owner Elissa Ferguson takes video to show his mom.
“Dogs want to learn, work, be fulfilled,” Ferguson said. “They want to do dog things. They want to dig, chase, smell, and if you have a stale environment, which means your typical doggy day care, with plastic play equipment and fake grass, that’s not my thing.”
Ferguson, a dog trainer and previous dog day care owner, relocated from Chicago to Colorado Springs specifically for the natural environment and to find a yard as big as possible for Pinecone Pups, her Montessori-inspired dog day care, puppy development and enrichment center on the west side. It opened in January.
The definition of Montessori, for Ferguson, is a focus on self-exploration, choice and learning. The pillar being that this is an individual and you need to be able to tailor to them. She’s taken that approach and made it dog-friendly.
“A lot of it comes down to choice,” Ferguson said. “We’re not saying it’s a free-for-all. But they don’t have a lot of control in their life. We feed them when we want to feed them, walk them when we want to walk them, or they get put in a big group of dogs without getting a say who they’re next to. Space and choice give them some control over their life.”
There will never be more than 10 dogs per trainer, Ferguson says. And right now it’s her and trainer Nanson at the helm.
“The idea is this stays two to three trainers and we want to do it with the least amount of dogs possible,” Ferguson said. “If that could be 18 a day, that would be ideal. It’s really individualized stuff.”
And dogs need to be vetted before they can join the ranks at Pinecone.
“Is it the right fit for the dog and for us? But also, does the dog want to be here?” Ferguson said. “You’ll see that. The first day is tough. There’s usually a huge change even between morning and afternoon of the first day.”
The front room of Pinecone’s building houses large kennels for the dogs and lots of space to train. Outside is what looks like a slice of dog heaven. There’s a puppy yard where the youngsters can frolic, a second space to practice loose leash walking, and a third space filled with sensory and physical delights: big boulders to jump on, two culverts to run through, a sandy beach, hay, a big pile of mulch to run through, freshly planted aspens and other trees for shade, what will be a maze of native grasses, and a scratch and sniff garden with herbs and cucumber plants, which are great for dogs’ digestion.
And thanks to a connection with the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Pinecone soon will receive a log from the elephant exhibit, as well as animal dung for the dogs to smell.
“A lot of times when people walk them, and I was guilty of this for years, it’s like quit sniffing, we’ve got 20 minutes,” Ferguson said. “That sniffing — the nose is the dog’s whole world. It’s not sight, like us.”
Ferguson got into the dog business around 2009 with pet sitting, dog walking and working at a humane society in Chicago. In 2011, she opened Rockstar Pets, a traditional day care with lots of dogs, and operated for years until the pandemic, when she trained with an enrichment center in Florida and began to explore how the way zoos use enrichment for animals could translate into dog care.
She ripped apart her business, brought on Nanson and rebuilt the yards at her day care to make them more fulfilling for dogs. That meant cutting down the number of dogs they could take. That worked for a few years until Ferguson decided it was time to find somewhere that offered more outdoor space. She visited Colorado and fell in love with the area.
It’s midmorning at the day care and time to be out in the yard. Ferguson and Nanson confer on which dog needs to go where and do what, and decide Bayou, a handsome 4-year-old cattle/beagle mix, needs to run. He doesn’t give a woof about playing with the other dogs; it’s all about racing his herding ball around the perimeter of the fenced yard. He’s his own best playmate.
“He really is having the time of his life there,” said Maggie Turner, Bayou’s owner. “The activities he’s able to do and the training he gets and the adventure — all the things that are great for dogs, especially all the nose work. I’ve noticed a marked difference in leveling up in regards to his responsiveness.”
There should also be enrichment, rest and highly trained people leading the activities, Ferguson says. Pinecone soon will add a roster of weekend and evening workshops and classes on loose leash walking, enrichment and more, taught by Springs dog trainer Anke Roepke.
“The animals have some choice, within reason, with what they participate in, what they enjoy,” Ferguson said. “It’s again choice in group play, which is big for day care. Putting 15 to 20 or more dogs together — not all dogs like each other or have the same play style. If you can curate groups you can have the ones that are little more mouthy play together.”
Much like kids these pups get a daily report card sent to their parents, with videos, photos and lists of what they worked on and how they did. And there’s homework, too, depending on the trainer and what the dog needs to practice at home. It could be getting comfortable with collar grabs or learning to not barge through doors or gates. All Pinecone dogs learn to sit before they’re allowed through a door or gate at day care.
Pinecone membership means committing to bringing dogs on the same days every week. Drop-ins aren’t available. Consistency is key.
“Once you get a group together that comes on the same day,” Nanson said, “they all know each other, we know how they interact, and it makes things go more smoothly. We can do more.”
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