Scott founded The Snake School for Dogs and runs the program. He is a professional rattlesnake handler with five years handling venomous snakes alongside his father, rattlesnake wrangler Cary Quashen — plus many years working with dogs. Hundreds of dogs have been through the course he built.
The Snake School isn't a dog-training operation that figured out snakes. It's the other way around — and it shows in the dog's response.
Built from what works — and what doesn't. Scott trained under California's most popular rattlesnake avoidance program, made the course safer, and built a team where everyone is both a rattlesnake person and a dog person.
Scott Quashen is the founder and Rattlesnake Avoidance Trainer (Director), and a professional rattlesnake handler. Cary Quashen is the most trusted rattlesnake wrangler in Santa Clarita — together they have caught over 1,000 rattlesnakes at people's homes in Santa Clarita alone.
Scott learned 12-station rattlesnake avoidance training hands-on, working under one of the top trainers in California — the state's most popular rattlesnake avoidance program.
That program used muzzled rattlesnakes. Muzzles slip and fail, handlers get bitten, and a muzzled snake doesn't behave like a real one. Scott decided the whole thing could be done better, and left to build it.
The result is the program running today: every rattlesnake securely caged, never muzzled, each sense trained on its own, and one dog at a time — the course he wanted to put his own dog through.
He works the snakes alongside his father, Cary Quashen, a professional rattlesnake wrangler. Between them they've caught over 1,000 rattlesnakes at people's homes in Santa Clarita alone — which is where the snakes your dog meets on the course come from.
It sounds impossible. It isn't — it's just what happens when a dog learns rattlesnake avoidance from an actual rattlesnake, run by an actual rattlesnake handler. Every dog we've put through the course has stayed snake-safe in real-world encounters. To our knowledge, not one has been bitten after going through the course.
Every weekend at our private Santa Clarita ranch — a multi-station, scent-first rattlesnake avoidance course built around the standard you just read about.
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