Six-month-old Milo the bloodhound is all floppy ears and padding paws, and the leather leash flaps against his neck as the puppy and his owner trot along a green runner that follows the outer edges of the training room. Behind those soulful eyes and somewhere under all those wrinkles is a potential champion show dog. But first Milo has to learn how to gait.
“He’s still pretty fidgety,” says Ray Billadeau of Kankakee, watching his wife lead the dog around the room. As if on cue, Milo breaks the gait and, bouncing playfully, tries to lick Kathy Billadeau’s hand.
To become a champion, Milo will have to strut his stuff for a panel of judges. Competing in conformation, as he is destined, means the bloodhound will be awarded points based on how closely he showcases the characteristics of his breed. Judges will consider the color of his coat, the shape of his head, the curve of his tail. The criteria can be subjective and it is up to the Billadeaus to show Milo in his best light.
Directing the couple and their dog is Tim Olmstead. He’s the owner of Topono Pet Resort in Momence and a certified dog handler who has notched more than 20 championships during his career.
After observing Kathy Billadeau, Olmstead takes Milo’s leash. Immediately, Milo calms down and begins to move gracefully alongside the trainer. The puppy’s muscles ripple under his fur as the two trot around the training center. Olmstead then works on stacking Milo, in which the animal’s front and hind legs are positioned evenly and the tail and head are held up.
“He makes it look so easy,” says Ray Billadeau.
“The emotions you feel are transferred down the lead to the dog. It’s like a telephone line,” Olmstead says. The dog can tell when its owner or handler is nervous or unsure, and the animal loses confidence, he adds.
Olmstead, 51, has been breeding, training and showing dogs since 1972. He is a member of the National Dog Handlers Guild and is certified to show any American Kennel Club-registered breed. Olmstead also has applied to and been accepted in the Certified Handlers of America.
“The AKC used to certify handlers but they dropped their licensing procedures,” he says. “And then all sorts of agents popped up declaring themselves handlers. These two groups have started testing and certifying handlers, which gives us back our credibility.”
If it’s a dog’s life, then the best dog to be might be one in the care of Olmstead and the staff of the Topono Pet Resort. And south suburban residents apparently agree. The 2 1/2-acre compound surrounded by corn and soybean fields west of Kankakee is currently home to a capacity crowd of 104 dogs and cats from suburbs including Orland Park, Tinley Park, Frankfort and Park Forest. The daily rate for boarding is $8.
Full-time residents include the Olmsteads’ 18 beagles, a golden retriever and a bulldog named Clarence. Topono–a combination of Olmstead’s, his wife Pat’s, and daughter Nancy’s initials–is both a kennel and training school for show dogs and family pets and is the location of Cat Town, a one-of-a-kind boarding house for felines that has been featured on national television.
Olmstead had a cocker spaniel as a youngster, but it wasn’t until college that he and Pat bought their first show dog, a beagle. Pat says they bought the dog even though the couple hardly had enough money for food. “We all lived on vegetables,” she says. “Even the dog.”
It was the beginning of a lifetime devotion to dogs and the start of the Topono line of beagles, a breed developed by the Olmsteads. Betsy Ross was the name of that first beagle, and she is commemorated–along with Ben Franklin, the first of the Olmstead’s line of golden retrievers–in a carved wood silhouette that hangs on the wall of the training center.
Tim Olmstead started showing the beagles at dog shows and apprenticed with professional handlers for nearly six years before gaining certification.
At that time the family was living in Hazel Crest. Olmstead was teaching at Rich South High School (he’s now the director of media and TV at the Park Forest school), and Pat was working as a librarian at Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Flossmoor, a position she retired from last year.
“When all our walk-in closets were being used for whelping areas we knew it was time to move,” Olmstead says, adding that there were 20 beagle puppies living in the home in addition to the couple and their daughter.
They bought a house in Momence and built the kennel and arena. A special beagle compound houses the show dogs, and Olmstead was on the road nearly half the year showing his own and others’ dogs at events throughout the Midwest. He is qualified to show dogs in all AKC groups but specialized in “hounds, sporting,” which includes retrievers, terriers and working dogs such as mastiffs.
Jon LaBree of Schaumburg is an American Kennel Club judge and has worked with Olmstead at dog shows for nearly 20 years. He has bought beagles from the Topono line, including a champion, and Olmstead has also worked as a handler for two of LaBree’s dogs.
“Anyone can say they’re a handler, but the better ones are usually certified,” LaBree says. “Tim handled two of my dogs and brought home championships for each. He’s a hard worker and treats the animals well.”
To stay qualified, a handler must attend a minimum of 72 shows each year. Olmstead, who suffered a massive heart attack in August 1993, is getting back on the circuit after finally receiving his doctor’s okay.
During his recuperation, Olmstead devoted his time to helping others train their pets and to remodeling the dog kennel to match the luxuriousness of Cat Town.
The feline complex contains eight cat “houses” furnished with antiques, and the floor is constructed of 200-year-old, tongue-and-groove planking from a church in Peotone.
“It’s thematic in nature,” Olmstead says. There is the bank, occupied during a recent visit by a sleepy Siamese that was curled up on the banker’s desk, a pawful of play money from the “safe” within reach. Other rooms include a schoolhouse, tavern, library and a country kitchen that is decorated with a fake fireplace.
“People spend half an hour picking out a room,” he says.
“Cats don’t do well in a cage. They tend to just sit in their litter boxes,” Olmstead adds. The 6-by-8-foot houses, on the other hand, give cats room to prowl and a chance to become acclimated to new surroundings, especially since many of the felines are long-term boarders.
“If you’re going away for just a couple of days, you just leave out enough food and water,” he says.
The building also houses the pet resort’s office, a kitchen, and bathing and grooming areas. Across an open yard is the dog resort, currently under renovation.
“People have a lot of misgivings about kennels, which is why we dropped it from our name,” Olmstead says.
The Topono logo features a bulldog sitting with legs crossed in a rattan chair sipping a mai tai as a palm tree blows in the breeze behind him.
The yaps and barks of little and large dogs reverberate off the concrete floor and cinderblock walls as a full house greets Olmstead’s entrance. The kennel is divided into three rooms. One is nicknamed the Bahamas, with palm trees painted on the walls and posters from the Caribbean islands tacked up over the dog runs. The second room is called Vail, and posters evoke snowy peaks and the swish of skis. Cartoons provide the theme of the third room and will feature paintings and posters of ‘toon dogs frolicking among the boarders.
“Of course the dogs don’t care,” Olmstead says.
But their owners do. Many even send postcards to their pets, which the staffers (the three family members and a part-time employee) tack up in the kennel for the dogs to sniff.
The pet resort is state licensed and inspected, and the Olmsteads belong to the American Boarding Kennels Association, a national organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo. According to Pat Olmstead, who took over the day-to-day operations of the resort after her retirement from the library last year, the boarders are treated like family pets. The dogs and cats are played with and petted, and the dogs have day-long access to outdoor runs.
The boarders are fed in the morning and evening–along with an afternoon snack of chewy Milk Bones–and the kennels are disinfected twice each day.
“It can be a lot of work,” says Pat Olmstead. “But you have to get your attitude together. You want to have fun with the dogs.”
“They’ll warm up to you pretty quick,” says Nancy Rose of Kankakee, the Olmsteads’ 28-year-old daughter. A travel agent by trade, Rose also pitches in at the resort, and she’s a retired junior championship handler who now teaches youngsters how to show dogs.
“It gives a good sense of responsibility for children,” she says.
The entire family also helps judge specialty and fun matches for dogs and conducts training and obedience classes for family pets.
“It is designed for home obedience,” Olmstead says.
The classes are held in the arena, and mock setups help in teaching a dog not to eat off the table or jump on the furniture as well as how to get in and out of cars. They also cover the basics of sit, stay and walk–and practice the newfound skills in a variation on the game of musical chairs.
As music is played, the dogs walk with their owners around two lines of chairs. When the music stops, both owner and pooch have to be in one chair (either side by side or in the owner’s lap), which sometimes leads to bouts of hip checking by competitive human players, Olmstead says. Losers don’t leave the game but sit out the round in one of the chairs.
“The dogs learn to sit quietly even with all the activity going on around them,” he says.
All of the training, for show dogs and family pets, is non-aggressive, and the training is not limited to purebreds. The Olmsteads discourage the use of pinch collars, and they stress consistency and rewarding good behavior. “You have to be stern, yes; mean, no,” he says. “It has to be a partnership between the dog and the owner or handler.”
Olmstead says he has suffered only two dog bites in more than 20 years of working with the animals. “Fear is a big part of it. The animals can sense fear,” Olmstead says.
“You just have to be careful,” Pat Olmstead says. “If you don’t treat the dog aggressively, you’ll be okay.”
The Olmsteads are designing a new exercise class aimed at getting both dogs and their owners in shape. Dog aerobics will feature lots of running, jumping and stair-stepping routines; both pets and owners will have to obtain medical permission to join. And Olmstead is building a half-acre agility course for use in training sporting dogs and family pets.
According to LaBree, people who get involved with dogs very rarely get out of the sport. “If they make it five years, they’re hooked forever,” he says.
Olmstead is a prime example.
“This is a hobby that turned into a business,” he says. “Now, I don’t think I’ll ever retire.”
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The Topono Pet Resort is at 12260 E. 5500 N. Rd. in Momence. It is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday and Sunday. Other hours by appointment. Call 815-472-6836.
