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By Mark Stone
Brad Pattison talks to Kelowna.com about all the upcoming fun in Season Six of At The End Of My Leash (photo: Gary Moore)
Dog training specialist Brad Pattison can’t wait for everyone to see the upcoming season of Slice network’s hit show At The End Of My Leash. The Kelowna-based reality show star is proud of the thirteen-episode season that begins tonight on Slice network. “Season six is by far the best season… with diversity, with situations, with emotion. I am so proud of this season. It’s amazing,” Pattison says, as we sit down at his dog training school, Hustle Up Training. “There are some crazy, crazy behaviours from the families this year. We have some beautiful people in season six, but some are just… well, you’ll just have to watch.”
Pattison made local headlines this past summer when he assisted local residents and the RCMP in rescuing a stray German Shepherd on Pandosy Street. When the story broke, Kelowna.com paid Pattison a visit at his training school and he granted us a fascinating interview. You can check it out here.
Since we met him back in August, Pattison has been working non-stop and just recently had his first day off after returning from a dog rescue mission to San Juan, where the situation for dogs is unfortunately pretty bleak. “We went down in December. Did you know there are 750,000 dogs living in San Juan? We went just to get a good understanding of how severe the problems and issues are there.” Pattison explains that in order to make a difference there, long term planning is required. “It comes with education, and it’s really a 10 or 20-year plan. But we have to work with the different rescue groups. The Humane Society of San Juan are good people, but some of the rescue groups have different agendas,” he says. Pattison and his team are taking the proactive approach and have a solid plan to get the ball rolling. “We’ve sent our information to a representative there so they can take our information, translate it, and apply it to their education system to teach the kids. We’re even going to have their people come here to take the course here so they can get up to date with our methods.”
As the conversation reverts back to Season Six of Leash, Pattison gets fired up about the first episode – which airs tonight at 6 pm. “It is on fire. It’s a doozy. It’s actually the first episode where I really truly get pissed off,” he says. “They had to beep me. I dropped the F-bomb, and I even asked them to leave it in.” What went down to set him off? “The husband was a real piece of work. It got so nutty at times with the behaviour, and you will see that big time with tonight’s episode. It’s ridiculous human behaviour. It turned into a Jerry Springer-like atmosphere at the house. It was crazy. You have to see it!”
Although none of the episodes for this season were filmed here in Kelowna, the crew did manage to do a few shows in BC. “We didn’t do any in Kelowna as the stories just weren’t strong enough for the network. We go through an interview process and once I give my notes the network will say yes or no. We ended up doing three episodes in Victoria and ten in Calgary.”
I tried to get him to reveal more details about the upcoming season, but Pattison was pretty scarce with the details. He did share an interesting tidbit about a future episode: “We worked with the Sheraton hotel and one of their hotel dogs, and that is a great episode coming up this season. It was a lot of fun and very different from what we’re used to,” he says.
Even after 78 episodes, Pattison says his job remains as complex as it was during Season One. “It doesn’t get easier because all the problems are all complex and never two the same. Once the episode is finished we move on to the next family. There’s so much prep involved in the shows and you’re working on three, four, five shows at a time.”
Although the future of the show is unknown (season seven is still up in the air), At The End Of My Leash will always be a success, primarily due to the show’s realism. It is a reality show in the truest sense of the word. “A lot of people ask me, but it is not scripted. You can’t script the dog, and we let the people act the way they do normally. I love our show; it’s so raw and so real. I love seeing the people succeeding, and it makes me feel so freaking awesome,” Pattison says.
In case you’re wondering, Rudy (Brad’s dog) is doing great. He spent a good part of the interview on my lap, and he’s just as cute as ever.
Need your fix of At The End Of My Leash? You can watch ALL the episodes online. Slice has every single episode online for you to watch.
Don’t miss the season premiere of the show tonight at 6 pm on Slice.
Dog Training Tip Wednesday
Each week Brad Pattison will be providing Kelowna.com readers a new dog training tip. Today Brad teaches us when to begin training your new dog and how to go about doing so.
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Many thanks to Brad and his staff for helping the dogs in San Juan. We need more people like this to care for all animals.
Wow, intense episode. What happened to Cujo, update please!
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