DALTON, Ga. — When Dalton resident Emily Coker and her husband were looking for a trainer for their labradoodle puppy in January, they began asking other dog owners for a recommendation.

“About four or five people gave me contact information (for Stephen Kinder, owner of Kinder Dog Training),” she said.

She reached out to Kinder and discussed training and prices. She later toured Kinder’s facility in Cleveland, Tennessee, and met his wife Morgan.

“The place seemed clean. The dogs seemed well cared for, and the Kinders seemed like nice people,” she said.

But her dog had been there just a few weeks when Stephen Kinder was arrested in February and charged by Cleveland police with four counts of animal cruelty. Coker said she asked Morgan Kinder to get her dog back.

“I didn’t say anything about (the animal cruelty charges). I just said, ‘Hey, we are going to come get our dog tonight. What time can you meet us?'” she said. “No reply. She didn’t answer the phone. She didn’t return my texts. She finally texted me and said she was out of town and could meet us in Cleveland between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. I said my husband was heading up there and law enforcement would meet him there. She finally called me back and said my dog wasn’t at the facility, it was at her house in Dalton with some other dogs. I told her I hadn’t given her permission for that, and she hung up on me.”

Coker said her husband met up with Morgan Kinder. Coker said when they got their dog back its fur was matted with dried feces and urine.

“She said he’d run through a mud puddle and got dirty,” Coker said.

Coker said the dog was also very underweight.

The Dalton Police Department was told that some of the animals from the Cleveland business were being kept in Dalton. Detectives obtained a search warrant for the Kinders’ residence on Mattie Street and executed it on Feb. 7. The house was in “deplorable condition,” according to the police department. “There were 16 dogs in the residence, along with two baby goats, two turtles, a snake, and in the back yard there were nine ducks. There was also a dead turtle and also several dead snakes. The animals were malnourished and living in filth, with the dogs all in kennels and many of them covered in their own waste,” the police department said.

Stephen Kinder told a detective that day he would meet with investigators at the residence but investigators were later told by Bradley County, Tennessee, officials that Kinder had apparently killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot in Cleveland.

Morgan Kinder was arrested by Dalton police and charged with six counts of aggravated cruelty to animals (felonies) and 16 counts of cruelty to animals (misdemeanors). She received a bond on her first appearance in court and is not in jail.

Coker said after the Kinders were arrested she talked to some of the people who had recommended Stephen Kinder and they were stunned to find out what had happened.

“They were heartbroken, just heartbroken,” she said.

Murray County resident Billy Callahan said a friend had heard about Stephen Kinder when Kinder worked as a trainer at a Dalton pet store. Callahan went to the store and talked to the people who worked there.

“They said he used to work there and was a good trainer,” Callahan said. “I looked him up online, found his website and got in contact with him. This was a little over a year ago, January 2018.”

Callahan had a young Great Dane and was looking for a trainer.

“We were looking for your typical obedience training — potty training, leash training. That kind of thing. She (the dog) was about three months old at the time,” he said. “We messaged over Facebook, and I made a payment via PayPal to his account. His wife actually came to our home. They recommended they pick the dog up at home because they wanted to see the condition in which the dog lived with us. At that point, I still hadn’t met him.”

Callahan said the agreement started out for a four-week training period but was extended for a couple of weeks and ended up being six weeks total.

“They said the dog would stay with them at their Dalton home and travel with them daily to Cleveland to their facility,” he said. “We weren’t allowed to go to their home. They said the visits would have to be at their Cleveland facility, and every time we wanted to visit, we had to make an appointment to make sure the dog would be up there. We visited every week.”

Callahan said he noticed nothing unusual about the Cleveland facility itself but had some concerns about his dog.

“It was basically a warehouse-type facility, but it was fine,” he said. “But when we visited, we noticed our dog looked thin. My wife asked what was going on, and they said maybe it was the stress of being away from our home. It was kind of concerning. But there were no injuries.”

When he got his dog back, she had kennel cough and had to be taken to a veterinarian.

“The vet also pointed out she was really underweight,” Callahan said. “After the diagnosis of the kennel cough, I messaged Morgan and told her she might need to look at the other dogs. She messaged me back that their facility was the cleanest and they make sure each kennel was taken care of and cleaned. At that point, we just washed our hands of the Kinders and chalked it up as money lost and a bad experience. The dog didn’t really learn anything. She would sit for a treat. That’s about it.”

But during the next few weeks, Callahan began to notice the dog was “extremely skittish.”

“Specifically, she was almost terrified of me, and she wasn’t that way when she went up there. To this day, she’s still apprehensive of me. Something happened up there,” he said. “During the time we had our dog up there, my brother put his dog up there, and when he got it back, it was visibly underweight as well. When this all happened (the arrest of Stephen Kinder), we started talking, and it all started making sense.”

Dalton resident Amy Vess said she was one of Stephen Kinder’s clients when he was a trainer at a Dalton pet store.

“I only trained with him at the store. I boarded my dog with him only one time for four days,” she said. “He was not abusive. He always trained in public in the store. I never saw anything suspicious.”

Based on her experience, about a year ago, she recommended Kinder to friend and fellow St. Barnard owner Philip Radford.

“I witnessed how badly treated (Radford’s dog) was,” she said. “We didn’t pursue anything. I guess we felt it was a one-time thing. But when I saw that (his arrest), I knew it was real and he needed to be shut down.”

Radford calls what happened to his dog “maybe the most traumatic thing I have gone through. It baffles me.”

Radford’s dog was supposed to stay at the Cleveland facility for four weeks.

“After about two weeks I called and said I have the day off and want to come up there,” he said. “They said no.”

A few days later, the Kinders agreed to meet with him in a Walmart parking lot and bring his dog. He said when they brought the dog out, its face was bloody and had dried urine and feces on its backside and stomach. And he said the dog had “lost a crazy amount of weight.”