Our instructors love Barn Hunt and want to share our love of the sport in a manner that is fun for both the dog and the dog’s teammate (that would be the human working with the dog). Learning how to work together, have fun and build on the dog’s natural instinct to hunt is our goal.

How The Red Barn come into existence

A group of my friends and I started taking Barn Hunt Lessons and wanted to bring Barn Hunt closer to home. We convinced the Dog Club we were members of to let us bring in an instructor and the response from our membership was great. Before long we were teaching classes and in July 2022 we held our first licensed Barn Hunt Trial.

It did not take long to realize having classes and trials in a building where the Straw Bales, and Rats could not be permanently housed was costly and labor intensive. The training facility was used by people taking classes in other dog sports. The manual labor to move 75 or more bales from where it was stored at my house to the building and back again became too much. I owned and raised the Rats, packing up them along with their cages and moving them back and forth each night of classes was also time consuming and the rats were not thrilled with the ride. But it was worth it to see students have fun and learn what Barn Hunt was all about.

While attending a Barn Hunt Trial at another friends home, where she had converted a horse barn into a place to hold Barn Hunt trials, it dawned on me that having Barn Hunt in the same location where the straw and rats were located made a lot more sense than transporting those 2 essential items for any Barn Hunt event across town to the club’s building. A plan was hatched and I decided to build a place on my 2 plus acres where we could practice, hold classes and trials and the straw could be kept in the building.

In July 2023, the construction of a heated and air-conditioned building was complete. At the same time, I moved the shed where I used to store the straw closer to the new building, added heat and air-conditioning and was able to move my 35 plus rats out of my spare bedroom into the “Rat Shack”.

The instructors know each dog/handler team is individual and need to be taught at the level the team is at, so class size is limited to 4 in the lower levels and we may go up to 6 in the higher levels. Our first classes were held in September 2023. We had to add a second class for our first series, and had four classes during our second series. We have continued growing and have picked up several new students.

The Trial Committee consist of 15 people dedicated to Barn Hunt. In December 2023, we had our first licensed trial at what I had started calling The Red Barn.

I teach Private and Semi-Private Lessons in the evenings and most weekends.

Keeping track of lessons and letting more people know about classes available brought me to create this website.

If you want to know if this is something you and your dog might want to do but don’t know if your dog would be interested, text me at 803-446-3575 (Put Barn Hunt in the subject line) and I will arrange a short time for you to bring your dog to the The Red Barn and see if your dog shows any interest. There is a minimal $15 charge for this. For this visit all you need to do is bring your dog, plenty of treats and see what happens.

If you have never seen a Barn Hunt Trial, I suggest you go on YouTube and type in Barn Hunt Trials. That way you will know what a fun team sport you are thinking about joining.