Mo of Mo Mountain Mutts: Wilderness, Training & Family - 3-Part Series

Kicking off the first episode of a must-listen 3-part series, I sat down with Morgan (Mo) Thompson to learn about her inspiring journey founding Mo Mountain Mutts in Skagway, Alaska. Mo shares how her story began when she moved from Michigan with her husband, who wanted to escape the restaurant industry and teach in AK, while she boldly proclaimed she needed a puppy and the rest is history.  

What started as a small, no-vehicle operation just caring for friends’ dogs on her bike quickly grew into a community staple. Mo describes her early days balancing multiple jobs in the service industry before COVID-19 turned her life upside down. Through all the uncertainty, she and her dogs found new creative outlets, especially with their fun TikTok account, showcasing their goofy relationship and the animal-centered lifestyle they’ve built in the Last Frontier.  

This episode gives a heartfelt introduction to Mo’s passion for dogs and her adventures in AK. It’s a genuine look at how taking a leap of faith and following your calling can lead to a fulfilling and inspiring life. Stay tuned for part 2 as Mo shares even more of her story!

Check out Mo - IG: https://www.instagram.com/mo_mountain_mutts/

Website: https://www.momountainmutts.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SkagwayDogWalker/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MoMountainMutts

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@Mo_Mountain_Mutts?fbclid=IwY2xjawLA5kZleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETE0d0luYWhhSndiMWEydGxsAR57FLTUpXcpZtSRMp89YDOUlQb2b4nPeGCKXfJ2A87jya8tXiO9Uu_5WHNXug_aem_HlZmxM46j82VcEb8ZY89RQ

Today's product review on Wild Nosh pet treats. Nutritious and sustainable treats for cats and dogs. - https://wildnoshpets.com/

Dog Friendly location today was at Pelo's Delia and Provisions in Longmont, CO. https://pelosdeliandprovisions.com/

Alpinehowl.com for your Handcrafted apparel for dogs and matching hats for their best friends.

Info@alpinehowl.com

IG: @alpinehowl

Check out Bixbipet.com for dog and cat food.

Dog Friendly Podcast TM

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, dog lovers. Welcome to Dog Friendly, the podcast where we celebrate the joy of dogs and the adventures we share with them. I'm your host, Brandon Bennett from Alpine Hollow. Each week, I take you to dog-friendly locations to chat with passionate dog owners about their furry companions and the unforgettable experiences they've had together. We'll also hear from experts who share valuable insights on training, health, and making the most out of our time with our canine pals, all while enjoying the great outdoors. So whether you're a seasoned pup parent or just a dog lover, grab your leash, maybe a libation, and join us as we enjoy the world of dogs and incredible adventures that await. Let's dive into today's episode. Welcome, welcome everybody. It's a happy Thursday in June. Hope everybody's staying cool in the parts of the country that are getting warm and staying dry where there's storms going on. But it's going to be warm here in Colorado, so I'm getting this edited and edited. I think that's what you say. Edit this episode. An episode of the first of a three-part series. My dogs are looking at me ready for a walk. We're going to get them out in just a minute, but... Got to sit down and talk with Morgan Thompson of Mo Mountain Mutts. She goes by Mo. She has got a business. She started in Segway, Alaska. She's a dog walker, pet sitter, family dog trainer. She transformed a bus into her carrier. You can check her out online on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. It's so cool. Such an amazing story. We kick it off with... Her introduction to who she is and why she moved into Alaska with her husband and what she's doing. But first, a three-part series because it was a great conversation. We talked for a while, originally Midwestern. But I hope you enjoy. It's a cool story. So stick around for three parts. And here's the opening with Mo. Take her away. So we're going live here. That's a loud one.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Mo,

SPEAKER_00 2:26

this is Brandon Bennett with Dog Friendly. You there?

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Yep, I'm going to turn my volume all the way up on speaker. There we go.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Sound good?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Can

SPEAKER_00 2:40

you

SPEAKER_02 2:40

hear me?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

I can hear you just fine. Can you hear me? Sure can. Okay, great. That's fantastic. Thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk with me. My internet at the dog-friendly location I'm at, they just opened this back patio area. So it's a little far away from the internet. So it's not quite good. So I can't get on the Zoom. And sometimes the Zoom helps with, you know, mannerisms and talking to each other. And because my podcast is... I don't have any video. It's just good for people to talk back and forth on. But unfortunately, this is the first time at this location. That's what I do. I go around the country, and I go to dog-friendly locations and talk to people about their dogs. Oh, cool. And I even do what we're doing today. I'm recording this. We sit down. Someone calls in. I've had an author call in from L.A. a couple weeks ago, and it's pretty cool. And we just get the... It's just about dogs. It's nothing more than just, what are we doing? What do we love? I talk to regular people, people like yourself, professionals, and there's no political, religious, anything like that. It's just, we love dogs. Love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

I'm in the same situation with the internet, too. I'm in the process of moving, so I didn't have my office set up, so I'm kind of glad it wasn't a video. I am currently sitting on my dog bus with Echo, and I've got my Starlink set up. So that I can Wi-Fi. My service is also a little spotty where I'm at.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

That is so cool. And can you introduce yourself and tell us about Mo Mountain Mutts? How it came to life? First and last name, and then how did it come to fruition?

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Yeah, so I'm Mo, and my husband helped me come up with the name Mountain Mutts. We're in Alaska. A big old tour bus just drove by. We live in a tourist town. And that's kind of how it started. So my full name is Morgan Nelson, or Thompson. Forget him. My husband is Lee Thompson, and we run Mo Mountain Mutt here in Southeast Alaska. So how it kind of started was people around, people like, we just drove that bus by, and they do these long work days and they have their dogs. And it's a long day for a dog to be at home. So my business started out with specifically seasonal workers only. So it was only a summer gig for a while. And so I worked at a salon. I worked at a restaurant. And I would walk my co-workers' dogs in between my two jobs. So I only had one pack to start with. And it was just my dog and my friend's dog. We adopted two other dogs. It was both four, plus another friend's dog. And then somebody was like, hey, I heard you're grabbing... We all lived in community housing. So we were all... neighbors, like it's kind of like a hotel and we're all in hotel rooms. So walk across the street to work, run over, grab the dogs, get on my bike, take them for a biking hike. Sometimes I go play fetch. It was kind of like whatever I had time for is what they got. If I had a little bit of time, I would run them hard. And if I had a lot of time, then we would go on like a nice leisure hike. So that's how that started. And The dogs that my friend and I rescued were just total messes, just like aggro at people, other dogs, super spooky. And so I was doing a lot of training with them and I was going through a lot of treats and other dogs. So at this point, it wasn't a business. It was just like my friends would grab my dogs and I would grab their dogs. And it became this thing where I started just scheduling it in. And I was going through a lot of treats, working these two dogs. I was like, hey, can you guys throw me some treat money occasionally? And so they would either like buy me lunch or leave a 20 randomly. And that was to go towards like poop bags because one of their dogs would poop like five times on a walk. Wow. So it was kind of like, all right, I'm not trying to like, you know, spend a bunch of money on poop bags and treats, you know. So it became this like really nice trade where we just, we all took care of each other's dogs kind of thing. And then once I started scheduling time, I started to make it more of a thing. My husband at the time worked at the school and he worked in the special ed department and it just kind of got around at the school that I was really good with dogs. And a teacher reached out to me and was like, I got a puppy. I got a problem. I heard you're really good with dogs. Do you think you could help me? I was like, yeah, sure. So that was my first like real client that wasn't just like a friend. And then another teacher asked for help. And so that's when I talked to Lee and we ended up coming up with a business name. And I got a business license and started making time on my schedule for it. So that's kind of how it all started. The very early stages. I didn't have a vehicle or anything. It was just all on foot or on my bike.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Sure. And are you from Alaska? What brought you to Alaska? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

My husband and I are both from Michigan.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Midwestern. We

SPEAKER_02 7:58

went to high school together.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah, yeah. I'm from Wisconsin, so I can relate. Oh, cool. Neighbor. Yep, for

SPEAKER_02 8:05

sure. Yeah, we grew up in Michigan. We went to high school together and we went to college at like community college there. And I was finishing up my psychology degree and Lee came up here first. He had a cousin that lived here first. And so he came up with another cousin. They had a little cousin seasonal work shenanigans. And Lee came back and was like, this was so much fun. You would love it here. I want to take you on these hikes. So that next season and summer season is here. So in the winter, there's not very many people that live here. And there's a lot of people here in the summer. All the seasonal workers come up and then they leave. It's a very seasonal transitional thing here. So he brought me up the next season and then he wanted to apply at the job at the school, which was what he went to school for. He wanted to use his college degree, get out of the restaurant stuff, you know, get into the school. And I was like, that sounds great. I don't want to stay the winter though. I think I'll be really bored. There's not a lot here. So we made an agreement that I would stay the winter if I could get a puppy.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

And

SPEAKER_02 9:16

so that's how that whole dog, My friend got a puppy the same, or he adopted a little bit older dog, but he was still pretty young, probably like a year and a half. So my friend and I, we got our puppies, we were hiking together, had another girlfriend who had two dogs, and then we all had our two dogs. It was like us three girls and our six dogs going for hikes every morning. So that was just kind of like how the pack started. Okay. And so it was really easy to take those six dogs out by myself because us three girls had been walking for a very long time. And I have a big tour bus parked right next to me.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

There's some tour that is going on down here. All

SPEAKER_00 9:58

right. All right. Where in Alaska? I'm going to interrupt you real quick. What specifically?

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Gagway. Okay. Gagway, Alaska. Cool. So it's at the end of the fjord. And all the cruise ships come up here. They park. And then a million people come into town in this teeny, tiny little town from like 1st to 8th Street. Okay. And so it's really busy down there. And so I would take the dogs and do distraction training. So I'd walk them up and down town. And if they could ignore the tourists and all the people and all the dogs and all that chaos down there, then they had really good impulse control and it made them a lot easier to take on the trail. But they can ignore all that chaos and they can definitely ignore that one squirrel on the trail.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Yeah, that

SPEAKER_02 10:41

makes sense. So I would do this like, town training stuff I call it distraction training I get the dogs up on these boxes they have to sit stay pay attention to me ignore everybody ignore all the strangers and that helps them not run up on people on the trail like when I'm out off-leash hiking on trails and there's another person or another dog it's now like hey we've done significantly harder distractions ignoring that one person is a lot easier so my town training translated to off-leash training trail training. So that was, I still do that. I still, every new dog goes through my distracting training in town and then they get to work their way to being off leash on the trail.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

So are, and are you now there full time in Alaska?

SPEAKER_02 11:29

I am. I came up here and never left.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Oh, okay. So there wasn't that break. Oh, you said the puppy, you got the puppy. What kind of dog?

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Yeah. That's Carl. He's the rat carrier.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

And then we adopted Louie. He's our Chihuahua Dachshund mix. And it was those two dogs for a long time. And then Carl is what I call a mentor dog. I use him to train other people's dogs a lot. And so aside from my pack walks, I do private one-on-one training. So I might go to an owner's home and work with them something on there. I might meet them in town and work on like car chasing or we might you know, go wherever they're having a problem. And if another dog, like if they're really reactive to other dogs, then I bring my dog and we work through it. And so Carl is now 10. And when he was eight, I was like, all right, he's going to need to, you know, retire. He's going to need a replacement. And so Echo is my, my newest dog. She's five now, but she's taken over Carl's job. And now when I go train with other people, I have her. And so I've actually, it's, specifically for that. Where Carl was like two-ish, three-ish before I got into like using him more as like a mentor dog. Because he was just, you know, hanging out with his buds for a while.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Yeah, and...

SPEAKER_02 12:49

So that's kind of... Yeah, that's just my dogs I have.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Okay, well, no, that's awesome. So the new dog, what type of dog is it? Remind me the name

SPEAKER_02 13:00

again? She is a Carillion Bear dog. And so... I, my friends and I, we call it Bear Noia when we're hiking really early in the morning and we're super scared of bears. So one of the girls that I walk with every morning, we got matching puppies during COVID. We have sisters. So she has Guinness and I have Echo and our other friend has Sophie. And so we have three of the dogs that are litter mates and they all are friends. It's

SPEAKER_00 13:26

really cute. That's awesome. And what... What sort of training did you go through? Did you go to school for dog training or what, what was, uh, what was your life back in Michigan?

SPEAKER_02 13:37

My degree in psychology is the sciences of psychology. So it's a lot of animal stuff. It's not like people counseling. It's not like therapy or, um, like the drug side. That's definitely a different branch in psychology. Sure. Um, I did the sciences of, so a lot of animal studies, a lot of conditioning behaviors, but it's like the person studying, um, the tests that were done. That's kind of what I went to school for. Like, you're taking the data, you're seeing how it works, and you're cross-checking, like, you know, you can't do a test once and be like, I've come to a conclusion. You have to check it many, many, many times, right? And so that's kind of, that's what I was going to school for. And my intentions were to get a master's, but I ended up not continuing. I got into the dog thing, and I just quit. Cool on hold because this is working well for me. When I was in high school and college in Michigan, I was doing dog sitting like for family or just close friends or friends of friends, like referrals like that. I love to go stay at other people's cool houses and watch their dogs. That was like one of my favorite things to do. And then the dog training, I have a lot of dog handling skills because my parents were dog breeders and they had me... basically have my own child to learn on for doing like AKC dog shows. And so my parents got this puppy and they helped me learn how to potty train and how to do leash handling. So I had a lot of early skills with leash work. And that's really the foundation of dog handling is being really good with leash work. If you're good at leash work, you're good at off leash work. Everything kind of translates. Anytime somebody is struggling with a behavior, I'm like, how is your leash work? That's really like, you have to master that first before you can progress to any other advanced training, especially if it's anything with impulse control. Because if a dog won't walk nice and calm with you on the leash, they're not going to respect you off leash, you know? Yeah. So that's kind of like the main thing was handling Siberian Huskies. I was in a newspaper when I was like nine with my Siberian Husky Cinnamon.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Cinnamon, that's a great name. That's a

SPEAKER_02 15:51

big dog.

UNKNOWN 15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

for a nine year old? She

SPEAKER_02 15:54

was a really small, tiny, so there's different kinds of pussies. There's working dogs and then there's show dogs.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

And a lot of the show dogs, they're smaller, lighter bones. They're bred for being pretty. You know what I mean? They're not a working dog. And so we had working dogs and we had show dogs. And so I had a really good, you know, balance of knowing, you know, how sled dogs roll and how the show dogs are and just being exposed to dogs and animal handling at a young age is really, it just feels natural. You know what I mean? I've never not handled dogs. I've never not been around a whole pack of dogs.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah. I know what you mean.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah. I just, when I'm being up here, I was like, I can't be up here without a dog.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

That's so special. I mean, to be out there, how many people are in the town? Like on a peak time and then... My

SPEAKER_02 16:45

husband's good at that answer. I'm really bad with numbers. I think it's like something like a thousand people in the winter.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Wow. I could be wrong. Don't hold me on that.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

No, and that's fine. I mean, as far as that information... I

SPEAKER_02 17:01

think if you Google Skagway, you know, whatever, that might come up. Yeah. You'd think I would know that because you're asked that all the time. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't remember.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

It's okay. You know, now, you know, when you get asked it in a different way, maybe now it'll stick. Who knows? It's just a question for me. I grew up in a town of 1,600 people. So, I mean, it was a tiny town in Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Yeah, it's got to be very similar to something like that. Yeah. Very, very similar. Small town. The community here is awesome. That's really what made me stay here. It's just that small town feel. I'm sure if you grew up in a small town, you know. It feels like the best place to raise a kid. So we have a three-year-old and we want to raise him here. We don't want to go anywhere because our childhood here is just so cool. Oh, I meant to tell you this. So you were asking something and I think I rambled. It's okay. So when COVID happened, my business flipped. because the salon kept closing down and I had already let my restaurant job go. So I was working full time in the salon and working two pack walks. I had like a morning one and an afternoon one. So I'd go out, walk a pack, run into the salon for maybe like a color cut wax and then zip back out, go run the dogs and then come back and do an evening shift kind of thing. And then I got enough socially selective kind of like just asshole dogs that just couldn't vibe with the crew. They're just too risky. And so I made their own group. And so I had this like particular group of dogs that are only good with certain dogs and their pack is just way more restricted. They're not allowed to, you know, pick up sticks or it's just kind of dogs who would maybe fight over a stick kind of thing, you know, resource guarding or have behavioral problems. And I would use like, it was like four or five dogs. It's a really small pack. Sometimes it's only two. And so I would do that in the middle. And then those dogs got really good. And they got comfortable with the routine of adding in a new dog, as long as it's the right vibe. And so that one ended up becoming its whole own pack. So then I had three packs. I stopped going into the salon in the morning. And so I was just running dogs during the day and salon in the evening. And then... During COVID, my husband didn't have his... He was working the athletic director position and they just eliminated that job during COVID because nobody was traveling anywhere for sports and stuff. And so he was in this mode of like, I don't know what to do. And I'm like, you should just come on a walk with me. Just come out. So he started coming on one walk and then he was coming on a couple of the walks. And then I was like, what if... Because I had this dream a couple times. I would be frustrated that I needed another hand. Or I would be like, man, if I just had somebody to do this with this dog, then I could do this. Sometimes I'd have to tether a dog down and then work one dog and tether that one down and switch. If I just had another handler, then I could do so much more. And so then I started training my husband to come with me. And I was like, you should just come with me all week in all the packs and do what you think. So that started happening during COVID. The salon was constantly shutting down. And all these people had gotten puppies. And nobody could socialize. So there was this dilemma. It's still kind of going on. There's these highly under-socialized dogs that were young. And they're high energy. They need to be around other dogs. They need to be socialized by other dogs. But there's all this socializing restriction. So during COVID... I started doing like puppy groups. My, my group before were like behavioral issue dogs in one group, dogs who just need to get out in the middle of the day, just high, high energy, high drive dogs. Um, but somebody who's like working like a 12 hour shift and their dog would be destructive, you know, if they weren't getting out.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

So those were like my, my base, my main client during COVID I started doing this puppy group, puppy socialization, um, which is really, um, what i'm good at that's kind of like what my parents did we did a lot of like early dog socialization that's kind of my jam and so that worked out really well i started getting year-round clients and i didn't have to supplement the dog like or like salon income as much it started becoming more dog business um and i eventually let the salon go Besides like one or two days a week, I would just come in kind of like for a couple of regulars. I just couldn't let them go. My five friends, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

I know how it is. It's a Midwest nice thing, by the way. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 21:44

it kept getting less and less and more and more dogs. And then so I started doing some media. And so when my husband joined me, we made a TikTok account and he started filming me. And us two were just like super goofy together. So we just started making like the silly videos. And that's where we started going viral. And progression of vehicles, right? So I was on foot. I had a minivan that I got a puppy and you cannot run puppies on a bike like that. So I just started using my van that I drove around all over my personal van. That became a crash from throwing wet dogs in it all the time. So it became a permanent dog van. And then I started getting dogs that... they wanted their own space. Like they didn't want to sit with the licky puppies. So they would sit shotgun. So then there was like this dog. She didn't want to sit in the back, but she loved going on the walk. So dogs are like, they're totally cool outside off leash when they can get away from each other. And there's like all this space to run around. But when you shove them in a small vehicle, then you have more behavioral problems with certain dogs. So I was like, Ooh, I need like something to separate them. I bought a bigger van and, And I put a cage up in the back and then the separator. So I had three sections in my van. And that was my favorite setup. It was really easy. I could get in all the driveways and stuff like that. And so my husband drove the old van and I drove the big dog van. So then we would put the pickup, meet, do the walk together. My husband was still being trained. And then we created this like old and little group because my husband, he loves tiny dogs. And he's like, he's a slower walker. And so we created this like being your dog social and he does it so now he has he took these three mini Aussies and those were his first clients they all live in one house they have three Aussies and those were his first clients I was like you just need to like take them out on your own and do your own thing and find your own vibe and see if this is something you like and because it's like you don't want somebody just watching you because I was training him and it kind of feels like you know you want to go out and do your own thing like you don't want somebody breathing down your neck while you're training all the time you know yeah definitely you know, have your own client. So he, he took the Aussies and, um, they're in like his old and littles and I love him. It's so cute. They're like,

SPEAKER_00 24:00

when I, when I'm around, it sounds adorable.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

It

SPEAKER_00 24:03

sounds just the

SPEAKER_02 24:05

one time I had to walk his group. They were looking for him. I'm like, guys, like you were my client first. Um, so

SPEAKER_00 24:12

cute. Wow. What a great interview. Great way to kick off the first of three parts. Uh, check out Moe, Mo Mountain Mutts, MoMountainMutts.com, on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Such a great person doing fantastic things up there in Alaska. Quite frankly, I didn't know existed that particular city, but thanks so much, Mo. We got part two and part three coming out in the following weeks. Very excited for everybody to hear her story and what she's doing. So cool. Check him out on Instagram and YouTube, TikTok, whatever you have. And show some praise. If you're up there and you got your dog and need some help, some training and looking after your pup, mows who you call. And on to this week's review, we have a local company. I was at a show selling Alpine Howell goods, alpinehowell.com goods. Hats and bandanas. It was a hot one. But I got to meet some people behind Wild Nosh, a fantastic, nutritious, and sustainable treats for cats and dogs. They make them out of grass-fed bison, humanely raised poultry, heritage pork. Doing great things. I mean, this is my dog's mouth through it. I got the bag here. I got a variety pack because that's what they were selling at the show. Bison marrow bone, split bison trachea. I'm going through these great dehydrated bison scapula. Kind of an interesting just mouthful there, but... They're, you know, just like any treat, you got to make sure you're watching your dogs. I just threw my dogs for the moment bison lung. Five out of five. Love the sustainable. Go check out their values. Wildnoshpets.com. Fantastic. My dogs are underneath me right now in the studio just wanting more. But we're also going to go on that walk that I promised them because it's cool out. And thanks, everybody. Until next week, pet them dogs. Today's episode was written and produced by me, Brandon Bennett, the owner of Alpine Howl. To get the latest gear, handcrafted scarves for your dog, and a matching hat for their humans, check out alpinehowl.com. It's summertime, so dogs look great in their bandanas and a matching ball cap for you. Again, check them out at alpinehowl.com. Remember everybody, pet them dogs.