The short answer: I agree with Craig and recommend it if your heading into rattlesnake country with your dog. Especially a curious dog.
To me it’s peace of mind. Plus my wife has always made it clear that if I take the dog with me and something happens to the dog “don’t bother coming back”.
I’ve always had very mellow Golden Retrievers who probably need no training to stay away from a coiled up, hissing rattlesnake. But before I was aware of rattlesnake training, I was fishing and watched in horror as my golden stepped over a gently moving rattler. She didn’t mind and apparently the rattler did not either but I almost had a heart attack. Hence the beginning of rattlesnake trainings with my dogs.
I have used and highly recommend Get Rattled but they are only in California and Nevada. I was somewhat concerned about the use of the shock collar on my sweet Abby. So when I got to the first training I told the trainer that she was very gentle and very sensitive. He said good to know and dialed the shock down to lower levels. He said their philosophy was to set the collar to a level that was effective for the specific dog. At the trainings I’ve seen some dogs that lower shock levels just piss them off as they keep going for the snake. So they crank it up until the dog learns. So IMHO I would suggest a trainer that understands that not all dogs need it cranked up to a 10 on the first pass.
So with my dogs, because they just don’t seem to care about snakes let alone want to attack it, the goal has been to train them to be aware of the presence of a snake, stay away from it and certainly not walk over it.
Ron