Canines are our passion. They are our addiction. They are our way of life right down to the very core. And without them, we would be lost. The canines of this world really are something to behold. They assist us at work. They accompany us at home. And they perform for us in the field. No matter where we go, they are by our side. Canines really are a ride or die, and for that,
we are grateful. This podcast will showcase working canines of various breeds and disciplines as we search for those canines and their handlers who are always striving to be the best at what they do. Those who are always grinding. Those who are always pushing the limits. Those who are always dogging. Join us on our adventures as it is sure to be a wild ride. I'm your host, Bryce Matthews. And I'm your co -host, Stephen
Basham. And this, this is Semper Doggo. Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of the Simper Doggin Podcast, guys. I am your host, Bryce Matthews, and today we are joined by Mr. Stephen Basham and Mr. Jeremy Cox. How's it going, gentlemen? What's going on, guys? Good, good. Man, that is awesome. You staying awake over there? I'm trying, dude. I'm freaking snoozing. You know, Nikki's been working me like a dog. And then starting a new job. I know, man. Yeah, we're
slinging campers now. RV sales is getting wild. We had to go chase some money here. It's about that time of year. I'm telling you, it's nonstop. I mean, from 7 .30 in the morning to 5 o 'clock at night. I forgot to eat lunch today. It's crazy. I need to eat lunch every now and then. Oh, man. Something I didn't realize until we were talking before we went on air was... I guess in my head, I'm thinking of just like a normal car salesman.
It's whoever comes in. And Bryce is sitting here telling me that he sold one to a lady in Washington and then one to a lady in Texas. So I guess I just didn't understand the concept of why would someone from Washington buy a camper in Indiana? Like if I was looking for a camper, I would just go down the road to the local camper. and I would buy one from there. So I guess I just don't understand that concept. Well, do you like to save money? Yeah, but is it really saving you money if you've
got to pay for transport too? Let me tell you something here. That lady in Washington and the guy in Texas, both of them, I got them the unit
that they wanted. with all the aftermarkets oh god here we go this is not a sales pitch this is the this is the facts we are at rv dynasty we are the number one rv camp or forest river dealer in the country okay by the end of 2025 we are on track to be in the top five of independent rv dealerships in the nation here's why because we operate like amazon right we're wholesalers so forest river We're Forest River exclusive, and I know this is not dog related, but I got
to just tell you this. This is crazy, okay? Hey, guys, he is excited about his new job. Here we go. I'm telling you, it's so much fun. I get to deal with people all over the country all day long, right? So we're Forest River exclusive. Those two people in Washington and in Texas, I got them the unit they wanted with the aftermarkets they wanted, plus shipped at $2 .85 a mile, cheaper than they could go 20 minutes down the road and buy it from their local dealer. Do you sell them
John Strickland campers? No, we're not into the drive -around vans. We do have a couple of Class C motorhomes. We don't have any vans. I thought you meant the mini pop -up campers for midgets. No, I was talking about one of those that you drive to a hunt and it brings all the good luck with it. If we had those, I'd buy one for myself.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Hey, we didn't come here and talk about campers and RV sales, but just so you know, RV dynasty, Bryce Matthews, you guys need a camper anywhere in the country, East coast, West coast. I am your guy. Okay. Over off my soapbox. So, guys, today we did bring Jeremy Cox on here. This is somebody that Basham and I have both known for quite a while. You know, Basham gets to hang out with him more than I do. They are kind of more local to each other
geography -wise. But Jeremy's going to bring a really interesting side to this podcast today,
guys. We can talk a little bit of Coonhound stuff here, but really what... what he's going to bring into into this podcast and simper dog and is is more of like a police canine military canine side of things um you know jeremy and basham both have experience serving overseas um as canine handlers um and in that world so tonight we're just gonna we're kind of focused more on that um obviously we got to tie some coon hounds in here because we're coon hunters at heart but
but we're gonna just roll into that a little bit deeper so basham why don't you give us started buddy um you and jeremy kind of set this thing up at a hunt a couple weeks ago Yeah, so what really interests me about Jeremy was the fact of there's not too many people out there. You know, Heath Hyatt, you know, there's a few, but there's not too many people out there that know the different realms of working dogs. And so,
Jeremy, it's kind of funny, real quick. uh before jeremy gets on here and gives his spiel it's kind of funny how it all worked out i was selling a coon dog and jeremy called me up and we got to talking about this coon dog and he wanted to come down and try it out so he come down to try it out and come to find out as we're sitting there talking in the woods he was in baghdad iraq at the same time i was he was a canine handler and so that just kind of uh sparked the interest
between me and him you know having that common ground and so uh jeremy i appreciate you joining us here on the simper dogging podcast and uh for the listeners just kind of go over your background who you are where you're from where you got into dogs and uh where that has taken you to this point yeah so uh jeremy cox i'm from central illinois a little town i live in a little town called tower hill And, man, we got a Casey's gas station and a post office. And that's about
it. That's all you need. Hold up. That's it. Have you ever had the breakfast burritos at Casey's? Well, yes, I have. I'm not a big, big breakfast person. But, you know, at Casey's, they got some pretty decent coffee when you live out in the middle of nowhere. And it's, you know, it's the only option. A little rabbit story. I used to eat a burrito every morning, and then a guy looked at me and said, man, he said, do you know how
many calories are in them damn things? And I'm like, no. Do I look like a guy that looks at calories? I flipped that darn thing over. I've seen 1 ,400 calories, and I don't know that I've eaten one since. It's like an MRE. I love me some Casey's. Me too. Go ahead, Jeremy. So the funny part of me and Bastion's story that he left out in the beginning is not only were we in Iraq together, but we were actually on the
exact same compound. We probably walked past each other three or four times a week and never come in contact with each other somehow, some way. We were literally at the same place at the exact same time. He probably looked at me and snubbed his nose because I was in suit and tie. Yeah, right, right. That would have been a scary sight to see. Oh, hey, I can clean up pretty good, but I was on APD, which is the Ambassador Private Detail, and so I had to be in suit and
tie all the time. Yeah. But no, my background with the dogs, you know, the coon hunting side, my dad and uncle was coon hunting probably before I was born. I mean, certainly before I can really remember. So I grew up coon hunting and we was just, my entire life, we was just never without
a dog. Whether it was a coon dog or, you know, we had... german shepherds and you know we always just had dogs and i got into law enforcement and my first uh the department i first started my career with uh started a canine unit small town i was up in maine and uh we we just had one handler and one dog and so that was really my my first taste of, of a working dog. And I wasn't the handler, but dad gum, I, uh, I volunteered to, to wear a, you know, a bite sleeve and, and
a, uh, a bite suit. And, you know, somebody that's never done that before your, your first, you know, time putting that bite suit on it's man, there's an adrenaline. Oh, definitely. You got
a, you got a Mally coming at you. what looks like 90 miles an hour i mean it's just fur and teeth and you're wondering if that bite suit's gonna hold up well and and you know i guess the first bite i ever took was on a sleeve and not a i didn't have a suit on and so i hadn't really given it much thought until that dog was coming down range and then i got thinking well what if he goes for my leg Or what if he misses this
leaf? You know, there was a lot of what ifs going through my mind in that split, you know, second and a half. But that was really my first taste of a working dog. And then I, you know, I worked in that department for several years and we did a lot of, you know, search warrants and, you know, traffic stops, narcotic searches and that type of stuff. I later had moved back home to Illinois, and I started with a department here in Illinois, and they did not have a canine unit.
And so after a little research and that, we made a stab at it and started our own. you know, canine unit. And I was, I was able to, to get a dog. I actually went to, uh, Von Lick, uh, to pick out my dog, which is in, uh, Peru, Indiana. Yeah. I mean that Von Lick and, uh, Kenny Licklider, they're about five minutes up the road from me. Yep. Yes. Yep. That's where Heath Hyatt gets his dogs from too sometimes. Well, get some train
down and stuff. Yeah. We went, uh, so we went there, me and another, uh, canine handler here in Illinois. Uh, We took a weekend and went over there to Licklider's and we tested a few dogs. And, you know, I was making my list of, you know, pros and cons. And, you know, he was a pretty experienced handler. He had done, you know, I think he was on maybe his third dog. And so I asked him before we ever went over there, I said, man, I said, I want you to take this list of
dogs we're going to look at. And as we're looking at them, I want you to write your own notes down. I said, because I really want to, you know, try to first day, try to narrow this down to, you know, three or four dogs. Cause I mean, we're going over there to look at 30 dogs, you know, it's going to take a while. I mean, we're, we're going to look at them, uh, you know, doing a little bite work, uh, maybe a little, uh, tracking, uh, definitely some, some, uh, you know, odor
detection and that type of thing. I said, I just want you to make your own notes and stuff and not tell me what your top three or five or whatever is, but I want to have that to fall back on. So by the end of the day, we had looked at most all of them, but we had narrowed it down to three, and I had two of his three. the dog that we ended up going with, we both had on our list and, and we had both kind of narrowed him down to the
very last one. There was just a few different things that, you know, we really liked about him. Uh, and he turned out, his name was Brom, uh, Belgian Malinois. And he was only about, I don't know, I think he was like maybe 18 months old when we got him. Um, but we went through. I can't remember now. It was a long time ago. I think it was in 2012 or 13. The school then, I believe, was eight weeks for a dual -purpose
dog. But we stayed over there. So Licklider at the time, I don't know if they still do or not, but they had half of the old Air Force base. What's that name of the Air Force base over there? Grissom? Yes, yes. So it shut down, or part of it did. And so they had, you know, part of the housing from that old Air Force base. And that's where we all stayed. And we did a lot of the training in some of those buildings and stuff over there. So I was over there for about eight
weeks working with this dog. And when we test them out over there, I mean, they're pretty green. You know, they got the basics and stuff. But they're not finished dogs by any stretch of the
imagination. And the good thing about it, you know, getting them that way is... finishing them on out or or the next eight weeks worth of training is done by the handler that's going to be handling them yeah so and so you really spend that next eight weeks you know bonding training you're the one giving them the commands the new things that they learn they learn from you they learn from your voice um yeah and so you guys kind of And there's a lot of times that, you know,
dogs are like people. They have personalities. There's certain dogs that just are not going to click with a handle. And you see that, you know, you see guys in the coon hunting world that can take a dog and just win everywhere they take it. And then you can see another handler jump on that same dog. He can't win a cast, save his life. You know, you, you've seen it time and time again, but I think it's more noticeable in the working dogs. The personalities are, you
know, really come to light. So we, you know, we spent about, like I said, eight weeks over there and we come home. I think it was maybe, and we, we're a small town, but you know, a rural
town with a large. farm community all around us and i i think it was the first three months maybe on the road just in traffic stops and narcotic searches i mean we ended up uh it was six or six or seven guns um wow that's pretty impressive from vehicles that were were drug related yeah um so it's you know it was a blast uh I had a lot of fun doing it. I got out of law enforcement. Yeah, I was going to say, how did you transfer from law enforcement to overseas? How did that
happen? I had enough years in to secure my retirement between the two departments that I worked for. In 2017, I was really just getting an itch. to go overseas and I had known guys that had got into contracting security contracting basically it's do you remember the company called Blackwater it was several years ago they were a security contractor they contract for Some of the contracts are with DOD. Some of them are with the Department of State. So I worked for the Department of State.
I contracted for them as a bomb dog handler. And that's pretty much – so for the listeners that don't know, what happened was Blackwater, everybody, any of your old military guys, they know the – that Blackwater ran into, and they were made to sell out, which they sold out to Triple Canopy. Triple Canopy was then bought by a big umbrella group called the Olive Group, which is actually Constellus. Constellus bought up Blackwater, the Academy, the whole nine yards.
If I'm not mistaken, you worked for SOC, didn't you? I did. Yeah, you worked for SOC. So you basically kind of had three contractors over there at the time that we were over there. You had SOC, AMK9, and then Triple Canopy. And AMK9 was – so I think Triple Canopy mostly had the contract that you guys were on, correct? Yes. When you were with Triple Canopy. And AMK9 was kind of – phasing out. They didn't have too,
too many guys left over there. I think they had maybe some, some mobile guys, but they over on Condor where we were was all that was left was, was SOC. But that's anyway, that's how I ended up over there is I had enough years in between the two departments to secure my law enforcement retirement. And I had just known guys that had went, done that, the experiences they had. And I just, man, I really had an itch to do it. You know, I did not join the military when I was
young enough. And that was kind of always a regret that I had because my grandpa was a veteran.
My dad was Air Force. And, you know, I never... ended up in the military somehow and here i'm you know in my early 40s and i'm i'm going to iraq so i kind of did it backwards you know for for the listeners i i would suggest uh starting that career when when you're young it's a whole lot easier i mean just just the plane flight alone bryce you couldn't imagine 14 hours straight on one plane oh so my okay a little bit off topic but we knew we was going off topic anyway so
i mean i got to listen out there though uh so i'm not like a huge huge fan of uh planes and flying you know a couple hours here and there that that's fine 14 hours that that's a different story Hey, I did that one time on the way to Australia. 14 hours. Oh, you did? Yeah. I board this plane and it's like a row of three seats.
No. It's got three seats up against the window and then there's an aisle and then there's like four seats in an aisle and then there's like another four seats over against that far window. So it's like 11 seats across. And I mean, it goes as far back as you can see. The thing's huge. Well, I get on this plane and I go to my row and it's a window row. But my seat is right smack dab in the middle of the three. I'm the center. Oh, you're screwed. I got this guy on
the aisle. And this bigger woman on the window. Well, I'm sitting there. We're waiting for the runway. And these two start talking back and forth. And they're like leaning forward and like talking past me. And I realize this is a husband and wife. So I'm like, hey, would one of y 'all like to, you know, maybe switch seats with me? He's like, oh, no, we bought them this way. He says, I'm tall, so I need the aisle so I can stretch my legs out. And she likes to look out
the window. And I'm thinking, well, this is going to be a long flight. Man, we ain't even taken off yet, and these jokers are passing food back and forth. They're like pulling out a daggum snack bag. And I'm like, how'd you even get that on here? And they're passing crackers back and
forth and juice boxes. i'm like holy cow well we get ready to take off i kid you not this joker gets down on the floor and starts doing his prayers these guys are muslims and i'm like holy hell i am screwed this went on for 14 hours you know every time this woman had to had to go to the bathroom or something which was uh once an hour i mean she's climbing over the top of me and you know, pressing right into me. It was miserable.
14 hours of that. And this is a guy that I ain't all that keen on flying, you know, long distance to begin with, but it was quite the experience. Man. So let's dive into the actual dog aspect of it, Jeremy. You know, one thing that really interests me about... the conversation that we had was the differences and, you know, and what people, what people think about the hound versus
the canine. And, you know, just like what me and you were talking about, about the, the drive in them, you know, whereas the canines are more toy oriented. So let's talk, let's talk about the difference. You know, we all, we all know we've been on this podcast and talked about, what we're looking for in a puppy, what we're looking for in a young dog that's going to make
a good dog. What exactly, when you went up to Peru, what are some of the traits that you're looking for in a canine to be able to purchase?
What are those traits? You know, the first thing that... that we were looking for so we were going with a a dual purpose hound or hound uh dog and we were looking for one uh even though we were looking for for dual purpose apprehension and detection uh the detection was was the big thing uh the drug detection yep and and you know for people that are not familiar with working dogs
working dog, you have to have ball drive. You give me a dog that will absolutely lose his mind over a tennis ball, I can make that dog find anything you want to find. I've been asked a thousand times, can you train a coonhound the same way that you can train a a working dog, you know, a drug dog? And the answer is no, you can't. So the working dogs, they have just an
altogether different drive than hounds do. So when we start a an odor detection dog, like, like for a drug, let's just talk about drug dogs for a minute. Uh, there is a couple of different methods of training a, a working dog to, uh, detect odor. And one method that we use that lick lighter is, um, some, some call it the cocktail and some call it the, the stew method. The reason they call it the stew method, you take four or five odors and put them in one box together.
And that dog smells all of those odors separately. So if you came home and your wife had just made a big pot of chili on the stove or was making beef stew, you would walk in the house and you would smell. chili, or you would smell beef stew. That dog would walk in the house and that dog would smell each individual ingredient in that pot of chili or that pot of stew. He would smell the parsley. He would smell the basil. He would smell the meat. He would smell the carrots, the
potatoes, whatever was in there. He would smell those separately. Whereas we, We just smelled a big pot of stew. And so we would take an older box, about a 12 -inch square plywood box. And it's got about a 3 -inch, maybe a 4 -inch hole in the very top of the box. And then it's got a hole about the same in the back of the box. And I have to come outside to talk because I got a new roof put on that's got a metal roof,
and so I lose reception when I go inside. So what we would do with that young dog that's just learning odor is we would post him up in front of that box, and we would bounce that tennis
ball. right in front of that box and just jazz him up i mean he would just get wound up just lose his mind crazy watching that ball and then we would go over and drop that ball in the top of that hole in that box and so yep we lost him we're losing you bud hello going that hello in that box and then the handler would walk that dog up there as soon as it was in there Yeah. We got him back now. We got you now. You got
me now? Yep. All right. So we would drop that ball in that hole, and of course that dog would see that, and he'd go nuts over it. Well, the handler walks him up to that box, and of course that hole is only three or four inches. He can't see his whole head in there, but he drives his muzzle right down in that hole trying to get that ball. Well, the whole time he does that, all he's doing is... Sucking in all of that odor.
Right. Sucking in all of that odor. And we'd reach around behind that box and grab that ball and lift it up to his muzzle where he can grab it. Well, what he don't realize is we just made him think that all of that odor was that tennis ball. We just tricked him into thinking that
all of that odor. was that toy that he was wanting so bad that's a smart way to do it now now we add a box and we walk him up to two boxes and he drives his nose in the first one and it's going to be blank and he's really going to be looking for that odor and then we move him to the next one he drives his nose in there and he finds that odor again and uh You lift that ball up to him and he's found his ball. You're teaching him to find an odor based off of the
desire to find that ball. As long as that dog has got the ball drive, the hunt drive, you can make him find anything you want him to find. So what if you tried to take a coonhound to do that? Like, could you train a coonhound to do the same thing? The problem is with that is the drives are different. You're going to find some coonhounds that have a little bit of toy drive, but it's not going to be significant enough to teach them that. It's just, it's night and day
difference. You know, your coon hounds, yes, they have strong nose. Lots of them are wound, you know, like a night and day clock. But their drives are just night and day difference. I got you. It just does not feel the same. Yeah, so when you were over there, you know, Basham and you guys were serving over there together. What was your favorite part of being over there with the dog on an assignment? I've heard some of Basham's stories. What was your favorite part
of using the dog over there? I did a lot of the ECPs, the control points, coming out of the red zone into the green zone. if there was any explosives coming in, you know, to the embassy to try to detect them and stop them before they got, you know, in. That you may run, you know, 1 ,500 vehicles a day. And I don't know. I guess you've got to be an adrenaline rush. You know, you get
that alert whenever we would. uh, the Iraqi army would typically just, uh, you know, they worked kind of side by side with an alert on a, on a vehicle or whatnot. And, you know, we, we had hand signals with them guys and, and they come right down, typically just escort the vehicle and really get to find out, you know, what there was in it, uh, could have been, you know, just an old residue, um, or, or there could have been
something big in there. You know, it was, uh, There was a lot of those days that was, you know, on some of those ECPs that was pretty boring, that some of them didn't have a lot of traffic. Well, some of those entries, like gates actually going into the embassy itself, like where Bastion would work. Anytime the ambassador would have meetings and vehicles would, you know, come in, vehicles would come in. We'd have to. Basham, you guys usually line them all up back there
on the... But now, why did you say that you would just escort them around? I don't understand why you didn't see what you were alerting on. We didn't have U .S. forces, you know, that's their... I guess you could say, you know, Iraqi army. It's their property. It's their property and their country. Gotcha. It's still their land, still their laws. We're just there kind of for support. Now, what it comes to, what a lot of people don't realize is the embassy, like America
owns where they own. So used to, we have green zone, amber zone, and red zone. And after we pulled most of our... our troops out of there uh to green zone and that's where the ecp is and so we kind of you know control inside the green zone which is no weapons or anything like that yeah so we we don't allow them into the green checkpoint then then that's that's back back out um Most likely, they probably tell them to try to go get in on some other ECP, you know,
best of luck vehicle or anything. I got you. So were you able to take any of that stuff, still doing any type of contract work or anything like that? Do you still have any of your old dogs or are you mainly just coon hunting now? Now I'm pretty much just coon hunting. In 2020, 2019, 2020, it was New Year's Eve. We got hit at the embassy. They bombed us. They blew up our mess hall. They took a couple of our entries out. blew up the gates, a couple of the gates going
into it. In fact, if you Google it, one of the pictures that shows up is one of the control points on the wall itself, on the embassy wall itself. And I was actually stationed on that
checkpoint that day when they attacked us. But once I... came home from there they they had to descale us down to a a certain number just because we lost all of our ecps outside the wall and so they those of us that were due to come home on r r anyway in the next you know few weeks or whatever they went ahead and shipped us home and we were supposed to sit at home for our 30 days and then we were supposed to go back over and relief the Guys were still there and they
shut us down. Where we were contractors, we were considered civilian contractors. We were not military. And so we did not get a fly in and out on military flights. They flew us in and out on commercial flights. We would always fly into either Amman, Jordan or Dubai. and both of those countries would not let us in. They wouldn't take any. I mean, they shut down their airports. And so we sat at home on the bench waiting to go back over. I think we lost you
again. Oh, there you are. Got him back. So, yeah, so after COVID hit, you know, I mean, I'm sitting at home benched. I end up, uh, waiting around for about six months for an okay to go back over and they don't, they're still not letting us go. And so I ended up, you know, just moving on with life, but I, I messed around with a few, you know, canine projects, um, you know, just recreational more than anything. I, I spent a couple of pups up, um, getting them started for,
for trainers or whatnot. Nice. Then I played around with a couple dogs, doing some deer tracking, searching for antlers. Played around with one for a little bit with morel mushrooms. Oh, wow. Searching for mushrooms. Like I said earlier, if you've got a dog that's got high, high toy drive, to where there is just nothing in the world that they would not do to get their teeth on that tennis ball. You can make them find anything you want them to find. They use canines for bed
bug detection. I've seen some billboards for that, like in Indy. There is companies that go around to hotels with canines, and they search the hotels for bed bugs. um cell phones in prison canines uh they they they train them on the uh the odor of the lithium batteries uh searching for cell phones so i mean there's man that the canine the the list of of odor detections that is just endless but it really does not uh flow over into the coon hunting aspect of Two totally
different styles of working. Two totally different types of dogs. Different drives. There are, I have seen guys that, you know, play fetch with their coon dog. You know, throw a tennis ball to a knee. Completely different. Brings it back. That is not the ball drive we're talking about. No, we're talking about a tack ball drive. I mean, you got that ball in your hand, that dog, I mean, he comes up the leash at you to get that ball. There is nothing, no place he won't go
for that ball. That's the type of ball drive. And you just don't see it in hounds. They're built different. They're mentally built different. There are certain breeds of dogs. other than what we called pointy -eared dogs. So, you know, in the military side of it, the security side of it, you know, overseas, they started getting away from your pointy -eared dogs, which were your German Shepherds, your Belgian Malinois, and your German and Belgian Crosses. We ran a
lot of labs. We started getting into phasing out the pointy ear dogs, and we started doing a lot of labs and a lot of GSPs, German short hair pointers. I had a lab for a while, and she was just, I'd come off of five different, I'd had five different Belgian Malins, four Malinois
and a Dutchie. which a dutchie might as well be a malinois but i went from that to a lab completely different and i'm like holy cow man i i'm not geared for this i'm not you see it's slow and methodical and you know just the way she operates is a lot slower pace than what i'm used to um If you've ever been around a Mallee, they're psychotic. They really are. An actual working Malinois is typically not suitable for a family pet. They're just geared different. But the labs,
I've seen some good working labs. But there again, you're talking a dog that's a natural, free bird. That dog is, you know, toy geared. Yeah, completely different. Yeah, the GSPs are also a toy driven dog, but they are wound up much, much tighter than the labs are. So my preference was the pointy -eared dogs. That's just what I was used to. That was the style I was used to. A lot more faster pace, you know, with your pointy -eared
than your labs. See, whenever I had the bomb dogs, we created the IDD detector dog program in the Marine Corps, and that was all labs. But, you know, kind of transferring that over to the coon hunting world, you know, in my opinion, I think it's... Like you said, it's day and night because, you know, people can sit here and say they're dog men, you know, in, in the coon hunting
world. But for the most part, there's, I mean, there's a lot of correction training that goes on in the coon hunting world, but nothing, nothing like, you know, the, the detection side of it. When, so touching on that. A lot of these guys that coon hunt and not, you know, not taken away from any of these guys that have done far more winning than I have. But most of these, you know, professional handlers, they're getting dogs that are pretty much already made. And they're learning,
you know, they're learning that dog. A few tweaks still. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and I'm not going to say that those dogs are push -button, but, you know, most of them have got a pretty good idea already of what's going on. In the canine world, you don't even dream of going into
service with that dog. until you've spent a few months with it um because you're you're not going to win a hunt your life depends on it your life depends on it the life of your entire unit uh depends on it you know i have to know what that dog is doing at all times when she is at the end of my leash whether i am have got her on a on a 50 footer or or a hundred footer and i'm i'm gridding a road or whether i'm walking down a line of uh 50 cars i have to watch her body
language and um you know it may just be a flinch or a head snap and if i miss that and i keep on walking you know i i may be pushing her along when she needed to back up and and recheck something It may be something as small as a piece of debt cord. I make people laugh a little bit. My son's fully autistic. We were putting him in an ABA therapy. I told her that I train dogs. I train bomb dogs. I said, to be honest, dealing with my son is a lot like A lot like dealing with
the bomb dogs. In the hound community, you don't get to see the behaviors. You just hear the bark. Right. In the detector, right, a tail circling, one ear up, one ear down, or two ears all the way up, or their hair standing up. Every dog's
got different tails. identify those tails before the action happens you know how to adjust and the same way with my son you know if i can identify those small little behaviors i can avoid the big behaviors yeah yeah and it's you know it's uh watching that dog you're also listening to that dog you're you're listening for a a change in breathing um you know they may be just going along and all of a sudden they really really start you know breathing heavy um they're sourcing
an odor you know that tail may be maybe wagging and it may just come right to a a screeching halt um you know my bomb dog was uh well my my narcotic dogs um most everything in the last several years has been trained detection wise has been trained to to a passive alert um you know used to you had an aggressive alert and your narcotics dogs to where when they smelled odor i mean they would just go nuts they'd be clawing at the source of the odor they'd be biting
at the source of the odor after lawsuits from you know vehicles being damaged and stuff they they started going to a more passive alert but if i am working a narcotics dog I want him, when he finds that odor, when he hits that odor, I want him to really source it out and pinpoint where it's coming from, whether it's a door seam or up underneath the front nose clip of the vehicle. I want him to source that odor out and show me where it's coming from because I've got to find
the source of this odor. Whereas with an explosive detection dog, When she hits odor, I don't want her going past that point and start digging and really looking and finding, you know, putting
her nose on the actual source. You know, if I'm doing a roadside and she's, you know, 100 foot up in front of me or 50 foot up in front of me on a long line and she's gridding that road, when she comes to a stop, when she hits that odor, She would just take, and I don't, I mean, we didn't really train her to do this, but it was just her style. When she would be walking along, when she'd hit odor, it was almost like she had set back a step, and then she would just
lay down, and she was froze right there. She didn't take another step. You know, in a building, you tell where the odor was just based off of, you know, her position and her focus and that type of thing. But if you were outside, you know, you weren't really wanting to find out where that actual odor was coming from. You would end up recalling her back to you at that point. And then, you know, your, your bomb guys would, would
go in and take care of it from there. Uh, but it's two totally different, you know, styles of detection between, uh, narcotics and bombs.
But it was all about, you know learning the dog learning the body language uh it was visual yeah and the same thing can be said in the coon hunting world you know learning the bark learning the everything and you know for all the listeners you know that's kind of why i brought jeremy on here was just a kind of a different perspective you know we get caught up in you know they're talking about this talking about that but the at the end of the day whether you know we go
from from from the what was it from the bears to the chairs? That's right. You know, you know, here it's simple dog and we go from the bears to the chairs. So whether it's, you know, in the chair at your feet, you know, whether it's out there on a bear, the biggest thing is spending time with that dog, learning that dog, learning what that dog, you know, if you listen, hold on, here's a hard take. If you listen, I'm not
crazy when I say this. if you listen dogs will talk to you but you have to open the line of communication between you and that hound or you and that dog to open that line of communication and and it is you know listening it's creating that that bond to where you actually understand that animal that animal understands you um and like i said earlier on There's sometimes, you know, personality conflicts between what's on one end of the leash and what's on the other
end of the leash. You know, we would say this in the, you know, canine training. Your feelings, your frustrations are running down that leash to that dog. And it's that dog is feeling your frustration, you know, through that leash. Um, but it's, you know, listening to that dog, learning that the, what each of those, you know, barks and sounds, uh, you know, are, are, are meaning just like watching the body language of a working dog. Yeah, man. I mean, that's, that's super
true and it can be. said in a lot of different facets. People, if you guys listen to Nikki's podcast with us a couple weeks ago, she said the same thing. The dog can tell your emotions running down that lead. Whether you're in the show ring or whether you're handling a bomb dog or whether you're doing any kind of therapy dog, them dogs, they feed off of people. Man, Jeremy,
I appreciate you joining us today, man. This has been a great insight into kind of a different side of things that we don't get to talk about here on Simple Dogging very often. Man, you're a wealth of knowledge. You got a bunch of good old war stories. And I still can't believe that you and Basham didn't run past each other and notice each other, I guess, while you were over there in Iraq. Well, I never knew him beforehand. That's what I'm saying, yeah. I never would have
noticed him. And it was just weird that he ended up buying a dog from me. And so that's when we actually met up. It's a small world. That would have been probably later on in 2020. You know, probably the fall of 2020 is when I bought him, right? Oh, crash. Yep. One Kai Roberts head. It was crush. Yep. Crush, crush, crush. Yeah, and Kai ended up with him back after we sold him. And, man, he was eight or nine years old and still did quite a bit of winning with him.
yep absolutely he sure did that was a nice dog you know i got to hunt with a couple times but hey man we're pushing in on that one hour mark here so uh i'm gonna get this thing wrapped up here once again jeremy thank you for joining us uh we sure appreciate you having us and bash them always good to hang out with you definitely bud All right, guys. Well, hey, thanks for sticking around with us. We know this was a little bit
different than what we usually do here. A lot of good old word stories and a little bit of dog talk along the way. So thanks for joining us here on Semper Doggin. We know it's been a while since we've dropped a podcast. You know, life's been getting busy for Basham and I both. But, hey, we're still having fun doing this, and we said this from day one. It's going to be something that we do to have fun and something that we enjoy doing. So we hope you guys have
enjoyed it with us. And, guys, I'm good if you're good. I'm good. Hey, thank you very much. All right, man. Thank you. All right. See you guys. We'll catch you on the next one.