Colorado K9 Conference Instructor Rob Lukason

Intro for Rob Lucasen. Hey everybody, we'll get to the show in just a minute. I have Rob Lucasen, he's another one of the instructors at the Colorado Canine Conference. And Rob did pretty much everything from beginning dog handler to where he was a student at the Canine Center in El Paso for bird patrol, all the way up to becoming the boss of all the dogs.

So a great guy to talk to and he sees things from the perspective of a dog handler and then all the the way up to the top management position so he's always a good guy to talk to and and really kind of get some different ideas and we're gonna spend a little time talking about getting dogs ready to go in an operational environment so stand by for that and like i said he's gonna be one of our instructors at the colorado canine conference check out colorado canine conference.com that's got all the

information and all the instructors and still have spots available so check it out colorado canine conference if you think you're gonna come reach out to me send me an email who will help you get signed up, whatever you need, or help you at the hotel. So ColoradoCanineConference.com. And I want to mention real quick, Kevin Sheldahl from Canine Services. Kevin's been doing this job for a very long time and does all kinds of different dogs.

So if you go through Canine Services, he can do integration like SWAT integration, advanced patrol detection. He's even doing electronic training. Training with you know e-collar stuff just like i do but he does it from a different, perspective so he does human remains guns you name it kevin does it down there so canine services go to canineservices.com so k-9 services.com and kevin's phone number is 505.

250-4576 you could give him a call and he could kind of tell you what what you could do down there or bring kevin to you he does a lot of seminars all over the place so canine services is a big supporter of the show and i certainly appreciate it also a supporter of the show that and the supporter of our canine conference is ray allen canine so i talked to them just the other day went and saw them in person they got a lot of exciting stuff going on right now some changes in different things

it's it's going to be exciting they're just growing their business all the time never resting on their laurels and it's fun talking to them just talking to them like we had a conversation about one of the harnesses that they're getting ready to send out and before they They started offering that harness for sale. It went out to all kinds of people who put their hands on it, worked it with dogs, played with it, made suggestions for modifications, and went back and forth.

So they don't just come up with something, draw it out, and then put it together and throw it on the website and wait and see what customers think of it. Before customers can buy it, it's a product that's well-tested and, you know, keeping their quality up. So check out RayAllenCanine.com for all your canine stuff. With that, let's get to the show and talk to Rob for a little bit. Music.

Every canine team be the best they can be. Music.

Welcome to the Police and Canine Training Podcast. This is Jeff Maher. I'm your host. I'm doing another episode today with one of the instructors from the Colorado Canine Conference, talking again about critical skills and how to make your dog even better every day on the street. So I have one of our instructors, Rob Lucason. He's going to be there in Colorado, here in Colorado, doing some detection training.

And then also he's going to help out. We have three people doing a supervisor class on the last day. So Rob has a ton of supervisory experience, and then he's He's also trained a whole bunch of dogs with his position of the board patrol. So I brought him on today to kind of continue the theme that I've been doing the last couple shows about transitioning out of training environments and onto the street.

And one of the things that I want to talk to Rob about today is some of the, how they, what they did with the handler after they certified him and how that handler would go from training to working his way into working the street all by himself. So with that, how are you doing today, Rob? Doing good. Good. And thank you for including me in this. Absolutely. And just to catch everybody up, your resume is on the website, but you did how many years with the Border Patrol?

33 government service, 25 with the Border Patrol and eight years in the Navy. Okay. And now you're retired and living on your ranch, doing great stuff now. So enjoying retirement. Yep. Horses and dogs. There you go. So in your time at the Border Patrol, you went from a leash handler all the way up to the man in charge of it pretty much. And so you have a perspective from, you know, beginning to end.

So maybe we'll start back when, you know, as a new handler, you know, we don't have to go into all your training protocols, but obviously you work a target rich environment on the border.

So if you're working a drug dog on the border, you're going to have a lot of fines. what was your experience as a new handler i know the school is regimented and fairly tough but once you got through the school and you were certified and they sent you back to your sector how did you feel then and how ready were you back in that day and then what was the program that the patrol had for you to make sure you were kind of transitioning out of training and onto a you know a real working team?

Well, since I'm an old ogey-fogey right now, when I started the program back in the early 2000, 1999. It's evolved from when I went in to what it does now. So when I went in, at the end of your handler school, they tacked on two weeks of on-the-job training onto the training academy part.

So the training academy is in El Paso. And when we graduate everything, we would just, after graduation, we'd detail to, they have three, four major checkpoints and various motor patrol stations in the sector that we'd deploy to. And work in an on-the-job training capacity. And you do that with trainers out there in the field where you had your dog out? And augmented with some academy trainers as well. So that was pretty good, and that was kind of like a one-size-fits-all.

All but as as time went on budgetary constraints uh they had to you know trim the fat yeah various places and and that was the first thing to go the extra two weeks the extra two weeks yeah because you know you had to pay for the detail for the hotel and you know all the handlers and stuff like that before we move on just because i know people would be and i know i'll be and you know cool to hear you're a brand new dog handler and you're working in that environment so

what were were a couple of the cool finds you were able to have with your brand new dog well for me for me it was as as you know i'm sure i don't know too many people are other our our dogs are concealed human first and then narcotics second so the main reason why we have dogs and we're able to work at the checkpoints is because we have the concealed human capability yes because that's our main priority what we're looking for and secondary is narcotics yeah.

So for me, it was actually finding concealed humans in compartments of vehicles that, you know, I've only, you know, before that, I've only heard stories. And we've had little training, you know, training, you know, assignments set up, you know, at the academy. But actually, my first probably, I want to say 45 minutes working at Checkpoint, I got a compartment load of a station wagon.

And they built a compartment in the back in the back cargo area and my dog alerted and and you know the subsequent search and secondary they they found like four four four bodies in the in the small compartment in the back and and to go from you know just training being a new guy yeah to you know 45 minutes later you know and i'm sure you found some some big amounts of dope in those couple weeks too i imagine oh yeah yeah yeah it was there back back then it was a lot a lot of a lot of a lot of

narcotics a lot of concealed humans so so we were lucky in that aspect because you know in the checkpoints the whole world has to stop at those checkpoints yeah yeah so like semis and and it was high traffic and uh we were kind of we were kind of spoiled in that that aspect as far as like the local pds and stuff yeah you found more dope in those two weeks and most of us would find our whole career i'm sure so yeah we were lucky yeah.

So then after you did that for a little bit then you went back to your sector yeah yeah. Yeah, when we got back to the sector, they usually assigned you for a pay period, which is two weeks, to a senior team. They put you on the same shift, either checkpoint or field, with a senior team.

And I'm sure that's similar to, I don't know how police departments do it, but I'm sure you guys do something similar where you team up with a senior canine handler and you just kind of learn the ropes on the job. Well, surprisingly, not a lot of people. Well, that's why I'm kind of doing this is because a lot of agencies, it's like you get your certification. Now you work, you know, Thursday through Sunday nights, you know,

see at 7 p.m. and let me know if you need anything. And they're out on their own. I mean, so. Good luck. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people that are listening to this are going to say, yeah, that's what happened to me. So I'm trying to put this together. So hopefully maybe, you know, trainers that are out there and supervisors will start thinking, you know, we're going to structure it somehow, you know, so they're not on their own for a while. because it's a dangerous job.

Yeah, so like I said, we got sent out with the senior team, like a field, like an FTO type of scenario, the senior team. And I was able to ask questions with a fellow colleague and how do I work this area? How do I work this area of brush? How do you work the checkpoint? You'd be able to have all those questions that you were afraid to ask in the academy. You were able to get out and then apply the application and do it through the field.

So it was good. Of course, larger sectors got to develop, got to make their canine FTU program a lot bigger. And as you get down to the smaller stations and stuff like that, it was, hey, I'll team you up with a guy for a couple nights, just as manpower provides. But it was pretty common practice just, you know, after, after you did your ODT, you, you went out with the FTO type of a scenario. Yeah.

Then as you worked your way through and you became an instructor and supervisor and stuff, did you start changing some things? I tried to, but I wasn't able to make any kind of changes until I was in, I was in management. And once I was in management and had a little more of a voice, a little more of a say-so, or, you know, like, like, like you mentioned, I, I took the stairs in the program.

I didn't take the elevator to the natural program. So I was able to articulate, you know, my, you know, my, my plan, my plans and my wants, my, the needs of the program on paper, because I actually did it. Yeah. So I had to, I was able to articulate it. So, so I was able to do, do a few things to get, get funding secured for it.

Have you know have you know we we even went as far as having the actual academy we did our own academy where we trained a green dog with a green handler at at the sector level and we were able to implement the ojt into that into the we called that homeschool uh-huh and that was i felt that was the the best the best way to go about it you actually train a dog from ground zero which i'm I'm sure you guys do, or let's get it from a vendor already trained,

but we were able to train a dog from ground zero to OJT, but all in the operational environment. Oh, nice. Yeah. In their own sector. Yeah. Yeah. Were there, were there going to be working in the field every day? We, they would, they would train, you know, you know, trained to learn their handling skills, you know, so, so these guys were comfortable and.

And how much did that, how much did that help things? Cause I can, you know, one of the things we've talked about with the patrol dogs is that, you know, whether detect dog or patrol dog that, you know, they're dogs. So some things aren't going to go very smooth, you know, either with new dogs or sometimes a veteran dog will just doesn't, you know, doesn't have the odor. Who knows?

But how did that change when you started? I like how you said, you know, you were training in the operational environment. So before, like when you went there, you went to El Paso, you were in your training buildings in El Paso. So did you see a big gap from leaving, you know, the controlled environment of a training building and then going out into the operational side of it?

And when you started training that operational environment, did it make it a little more seamless to get dogs from training to the street? Absolutely. I don't care how good you are. You can't replicate the operational environment in the sterile academia environment that they're trained in. So it's a better transition to go from student status to, okay, you're a deployable handler. It's more seamless, and the confidence level you see in the handlers is a lot greater.

But like I alluded to before, the money for me is before you even get a kid in school is the dog. The dog is trained how it's trained, and the dog knows what he's going to do. But the handler, selecting the handler is a, In my opinion, it's a major point of a handling team, how good or how not good they are going to do. Because, you know, I don't know how the PDs are, but Border Patrol has a tendency

to say, we're just going to pick the senior guy. Okay, you're going to go to handler school. Yeah. And that's not always the best fit because sometimes the more senior guy is the laziest guy. and he does what he can to get out of work instead of trying to drum up business. And we want just the opposite in the canine. We want the guy that's already out there kicking ass in the field, catching aliens, catching dope, and catching stuff. We just need to give this guy a tool.

So we need to get that in, just as well as we do the selection process for the dog, how we put him through all those exercises to make sure he has the drives to do the work. We need to stick to a better selection test for the handler. So we have that same amount of probability of success when we put that team together.

Well, and the problem with, I think, sometimes you get the guys who are real active, their IAB file is going to be thicker than, you know, they've got four or five years on the job and they've been through internal affairs a few times. You got a guy who's got, you know, 20 years on the job. He hasn't been in internal affairs for 15. I want the guy who's going upstairs every once in a while and having to explain what he's doing.

You know, as long as he's doing it right, you know, when you're out there working, you're going to get called out on some things. And I think sometimes people think, I think sometimes supervisors will think that lower liability, you know, starts with, you know, not having any internal fires complaints. And I don't think they equate a lot of times as long as, as long as the, you know, I mean, if you get investigated and you're clear, I don't have a problem with that.

Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. You need the guy that's willing to go out there and get dirty and, and do his best. And if he messed up on policy or something like that, okay, slap his hand, move on. Let's let him back out there. Yeah. Absolutely. So when you were saying that you train in mostly, you know, for the sector, you can train in the operational areas.

Did that start with, I mean, like for odor memorization and some of the basic training, or did you do that, you know, at the office and then kind of move out in the field for searches or how did you do that?

That we for odor introduction is that what you're referring yeah yeah yeah yeah odor introduction we we kind of mimicked at the sector level at the station level we we mimicked what what they did at the academy well we had like pigeon holes yeah you know you know different training areas but then right away as soon as the soon as the dog got the odor we call it a split as soon as the dogs didn't recognize the odors individually yeah we take them out to the the field environment we

We take them right out to junkyard or we take them out to, you know, wherever, train yard or out in the field and, you know, hide actual odor out there. So the dog is already, hey, I find this is where I find dope. This is where I find the people. This is, you know, so it's, you know, they don't have to, they don't have to relearn it. Yeah, yeah. When they come from the academy, it's almost when they get back to the field, they have to relearn, you know, all that basic stuff.

Hey, I can find stuff in the car. I can sign stuff in the bus and I can find stuff in the field. And every sector is a little bit different. I like that. And I would say, you know, myself included, like, you know, the last couple of bomb dogs I trained, we had a really good building, which was an empty building. And due to the beginning stages, it worked really well. But I'll be honest, I think we stayed there too long because it was easy. You know, we had keys to it. We could get in it.

We could keep working searches and stuff. But I like the idea of doing the basic training, you know, and then quickly moving out. And fairly quickly, we moved out into the field and did stuff. But it sounds like you're doing it. As soon as the dog starts searching, he's searching in real environments, not in an empty building that has one odor in it, you know, and everything is stale.

Yeah, that's a big advantage we had of the homeschools. And then, of course, powers to be, someone started complaining about, well, I guess it was when another entity took over the training capacity in the service, and they wanted credit for all that. And so they disallowed or forbade us from doing homeschools because they wanted all the dogs to come to the academy only. So that was something I had to fight to get back when I was up there in DC.

But it worked out. It was worth fighting for. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like it. So when you were doing that... I imagine then the only real hurdle would be, you know, the dogs are out there and they're working in the operational area. So they're used to the noises, the smells and all the chaos and everything else. But there's still, I don't care, you know, what it is, whether it's people, conceited humans, bad guys, dope guns, it doesn't matter.

I don't know why, but bad guys, either they're dope or they're themselves or whatever is a different thing for dogs. So there is a bridge and did the dogs have a hard time learning the real odor from real bad guys compared to what your training aids were? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. And there's like, you know, there's, you know, there's depending on what station you're at and on the southern border, either just, just like heroin.

There's so many different types of heroin. There's so many different types of meth. You know, you, you know, this is, uh, it's yeah. Yeah, and so whatever is good to that locality, we have the training eggs that's appropriate for that vector. So what would you do when you were training a new handler? Because I know a lot of guys struggle with this because for you, I mean, you guys, you're going to have a dope load in the first day, two, three days, obviously.

But a lot of these guys, you have a drug dog. I'll use a drug dog as an example. You've been through the school. You're out working the street. You're getting some searches and then one night your dog is is working odor on a car.

He's showing a change of behavior he's obviously interested in it you but you don't know for sure because you know you haven't searched it yet he doesn't go to a final and what you and i would know is because it's just it's just close enough but just different enough that it's not tripping the dog's trigger how would you what would you you know recommend for handlers when they're in in that situation because you know i i like the idea of trusting my dog and praising

him not inducing him but praising him you know that hey you found some dope and start teaching him that you know all dope is going to be similar but different i know a lot of guys you know train that no you know because you might you might accidentally imprint the wrong odor or something which i'd deal with later but what what do you do in those situations when the dog is kind of teetering on on indicating and and kind of not yeah that's that's that's the big one and

and i'm a big proponent of trust your dog just trust your dog you're gonna have to you're gonna have to lay it all out there one day and and say yes my dog alerted or not and but but at the checkpoint that if the dog alerts or flashes or you know whatever kind of you know If you want to label it something non-committal, like, hey, my dog is interested in this, we'll put it in secondary. And then before you do a final with the dog, you're going to have to do a final.

You will have a in secondary we're able to do a search yeah and then then once once the dope is found be it either gas tank or manifold or whatever it is then you can bring the dog in and reward on the actual yeah but no we we do the same thing we'll pray a praise off we'll praise the dog in the secondary oh good boy that's good good boy good boy all the way in the secondary and then we'll verify or if we have to get the occupants out of the vehicle because like i said

our dogs are concealed human yeah detectors first so we have to eliminate okay is it was you alert not humans or or is it dope that's where we that's where we make that determination and then if it's obviously not concealed humans then okay the dog alerted here let's look for dope and if it's if it's confirmed okay we'll bring the dog in for a reward if not we'll uh you know apologize bow deep and set them down on their way and so when that happened though and i know a

lot The reason I'm kind of going deep on this is because I know a lot of guys struggle with it because, again. You might be a drug dog handler in a small area where you're only getting half a dozen good searches a year, and then it's going to take the dog a long time to transition to what you guys do in a week.

So on those times, and guys are worried about, well, if I praise him or if I call it an alert and mark it, if he's a marker or whatever, then I might induce a new odor, all those different problems. So obviously that happened on a regular basis with you guys as the dogs were learning it. You just gave the dog a little bit of praise. So you didn't tell him yes or no. You just gave him praise for basically searching.

Yeah basically yeah so it wasn't a negative for the dog but it wasn't necessarily the the final the positive that he would get from a final alert yeah because as as humans as officers and agents we we don't know if there wasn't dope in there then the exit before the checkpoint or if there was a if there was a bunch of you know sticky aliens in the in the trunk yeah you know we know yeah you know if the dog alerted dog you know obviously trained odor was available the dog alerted to it and he he

did his job now okay maybe you know it's not there now doesn't mean it wasn't there so we have to keep that in mind as well and the reason that's why i'm kind of sticking with this is because you had such a a great environment and you got to to see that you know with you got to see that in a month's time more than i'd see it my whole career that that it doesn't break the dog.

The dogs are just fine. And if you, if you want to use your marker, reward your dog on the street, whatever you're doing, it's not going to break that dog. I think it's more detrimental when the dog, when you're not sure your dog and you won't reward him or give him his marker or praise or anything, bring him back to the car. I get that. I get the question. I'm sure you do a lot where the guys will tell me, Hey, you know, my dog trains is great in training.

We go out on the the road and he doesn't want to search a car and it's like, well, you're not rewarding him. It's not fun. It's not anything. So I like the idea of, of, you know, trust your dog. If he's, if he's alerting on odor and, and, you know, you haven't induced him, pay him. And if it turns out, if you can quantify, you know, exactly what it is, Hey, it was a bunch of stinky onions in the trunk.

Then I'll go get some stinky onions. I'll put them in a trunk and make sure it's not a problem, You know, but I think there's a hesitancy to trust your dog, you know, and I get it with body cameras and everything else, but I think it's important that if you have a good training program and you're out there working and your dog is, you might not do a final training.

But you can at least give him some praise, tell him he did a good job and tease him up on the way back to the car and pet him up and everything. And then, you know, if they, you know, whatever you do then, then if you end up finding real dope, take him back and run him by again and let him work it out. But I just, go ahead.

And that's exactly why we want to have experienced canine out, you know, caniners out there with these other teams, maybe younger teams that might have that, you know, that concern to have just from.

Them i've just got to be you know i'm not so sure what the thought and you need those experience guys hey you know trust your dog yeah it's gonna work out and you know you know kind of hold his hand through it and and in management too you yeah i i you know i'm not a big fan of of uh of guys in management who if it's a specialty you should have management that that's working that specialty yeah i know there's good managers you can have a good manager he can

manage anything thing he wants yeah i i get that but especially you need you need uh you need specialized managers who've actually worked in that unit before in some kind of capacity to to be able to support and help those guys because you know they you know they know what's what's needed and you know what's going on they know the you know the the hard the hard stuff that's going on out there absolutely absolutely and sticking with that same

kind of line of questioning in a you know an An average year, how many dog teams did you, you know, run through your program for, you know, for beginning teams? A year, when I was at the center, we were putting out 250 to 300 dog teams a year. A year. And in that, so you're cranking out 300 dog teams. And I'm just staying with that same line of questioning for a minute.

300 dog teams are out there. They're all having that same. Every dog has that little bridge between training and the street where they hesitate a little bit. How many of those teams in an average year were broken because the handler trusted the dog and moved on and maybe the dog did some weird things or whatever? I assume it was a very low number, if any, that you don't want to go on with

this. is that it's just a good example that, you know, if you could put 300 teams out on the street, if you're one team and you're working in a small area and you had good training, trust your dog. Yeah, the only thing that comes to mind, and it was a relatively small number, is on the dog's behalf.

Is is confidence because we need when you get to the checkpoints you get all those loud air brakes yeah and semis and the traffic noise i don't know how many checkpoints you've been through but it gets it gets pretty noisy and traffic uh picks up a lot and it's hot and some dogs you know you can't replicate that yeah that kind of environment in training and sometimes you don't find out about confidence issues until you get them to the field yeah and and you know you know then then

as soon as we get into the field the dog shuts down and you know what do you got you got a therapy dog after that yeah a dog that needs a therapy dog sometimes right yeah yeah so what was on the other end of the leash you know and you saw it from a you know from as a trainer all the way up to you know a very big big broad spectrum from your your management position were there some common things that would reoccur that a handler does xyz and causes you

know the same kind of problems because the handlers go out in the field and they you know yeah there was it was it was more on the side of the handlers afraid to do anything he's uh he's got his dog he's just graduated the school, he went through whatever type of ojt he went through successfully he trains you know you know twice a month, every two weeks but he doesn't produce he stays.

In the safety, the safe confines of his vehicle and he can't get in trouble, he can't be put in a situation where he has to make a decision.

That's what I've seen that was kind of disappointing to me, to see a wasted team right after training go out like that the guy's just I don't know if that was the lack of, their field training unit or lack of if they didn't have one or if they had a less than optimal people working that way or or it could have been just a guy just yeah i think there's a there's a personality there where i think you know that they're so worried that their dog might look

bad that they just avoid using them you know i've seen same guys there was a there's actually like an extreme example that was they had the county right next to us they had an officer that was murdered and it was on a Wednesday where lots of teams were training together and that call came out.

And when they, when they were all going up, one of the handlers in the County did a great job about, cause he knew all the teams and was like starting to, even though he was, you know, his, his rank was handler, uh, the, the.

Bosses there is they're setting this massive perimeter to look for this guy they let him kind of start setting things up you know because where he wanted teams and stuff and there was a team there that when he said hey do you want to go you know get your dog and do you know this street that handler said no not really i was like you're kidding me you know i was like everybody else was chomping at the bit to go find this guy and he said no not really and it was like man

get your dog and go to another zip code and another city, another, another state, you know? Yeah. Put them in, put them in the kennel and turn in your leash at the end of the day. And that, that guy was like that, you know, if it was a training time, he'd stand there and watch training and talk to people in the back and criticize it. Wouldn't get his dog out of the car then, wouldn't get his dog, but so it was a personality there, but, but, you know, he could always say how

good he was because the dog didn't come out of the car. And I'm sure you probably ran into that sometimes. Cleanest, the cleanest fucking handler that you got. Yeah. And the guys just, they, they tie, you know, their, their, their personality and their self-worth with that their dog, you know, will never fail. But I've been saying that all these shows I've been doing here lately, talking about this very subject is you're going to have failures.

So I'm sure there was times where, where you guys, you know, missed a tremendous amount of dope or something easy. And, and, you know, at the end of the day, you got, you got a dog and you got a human on the other end of it that the two have to work in concert and sometimes things don't go right. Yeah, a lot of people don't know for the dogs to be successful, odor has to be available.

And, and they've been doing compartments and hiding dope for a lot longer than we've had dogs out there, you know, trying to find it. So, so, you know, you know, it just could be the time that, that you get up there, you put your dog on the, you know, the middle amount of time that you do have to put your dog out. Cause you got to make a decision in, in, you know, like 30, 45 seconds as you,

as you put the dog around it. But if odor's not available, if you did a high cast and a scene that was productive was low, it happens. It doesn't mean that the handler's bad or the dog's bad or the team's bad. It's a dog. Things happen and everybody's going to have failures. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I like to stress is that if you do this for a long time, you're going to have your dog do some weird stuff that's going to embarrass you.

And if you worry so much about having that failure and your patrol dog not biting somebody or whatever, you're going to be in that analysis paralysis trying to think things through either before or after instead of, you know, there's a lot of times where I get calls and guys are asking me to problem solve. You know, a lot of times the answer is, you know, it's a dog. You know, we can try and figure it out, but we're not Dr. Dude a little.

We can't talk to them. And, you know, white dogs do some weird things every once in a while, you know, but I can't explain it. And what's even harder, it's, it, it could be the handler problem. Exactly. That's the last thing, that's the last thing a lot of handlers like to do is, hey, maybe I'm the, I'm the problem. Yeah. Maybe I didn't, maybe I didn't do a good search or maybe I didn't, uh, you know, pull them off odor or whatever.

And me, and me looking back in my career, you know, I, I didn't, I didn't realize this until like later in my career that, hey, maybe, maybe it's better if, you know, someone does expose holes in my game so I can do better. Absolutely. Maybe I can help someone else with the same kind of problem rather than be the, Hey, nothing gets by me. Yeah. Yeah. And be honest with yourself when you do something really stupid or, or make a mistake, you know?

And that's, that's just a growing thing, you know, and I think as a trainer or even just a senior handler, you have to, you have to lead that by example. And when, when you screw something up, when you have your training, they say, Hey, everybody, I want to talk about, you know, this didn't work right. And this is what I did. And here's what I think I did wrong. And let's recreate it here in training and make sure, you know, people don't make the same mistake.

Yeah, I think, I think, I think, I mean, you know, a guy who did a class on, uh, on all their mistakes of extracting a dog out of a kennel. Yeah. You got the video and the scars to prove it. But that was a good learning class. You know, I mean, you, you kind of laid it out there and, and showed step-by-step here's, here's what's right. And here's what wasn't. So. Yeah, this is what I did. And this is what, you know, what could we done? What could we do better? Yeah, exactly.

So, well, this has been good. I think it, it's just ties in more with, you know, again, what I've been, I've been doing several shows on this and, and it goes in with, you know, what we're going to be doing here at the Colorado Canine Conference. You're, you're going to be out here and, you know, we've got some classroom. I know you're doing a supervisor class, but you'll be out on the field doing a lot of detection dog stuff.

So, I mean, it'll be fun for, again, I mean, you, you've seen more dogs than I'll see in five lifetimes. So it's cool to have, I'm glad you can be out here and be able to, you know, work with some handlers. and just show them some of the small things that, you know. We're going to have large amounts of dope, large amounts of bombs. And you got some good instructors going out there.

Yeah, it's going to be a real good event. So go to coloradocanineconference.com for all the bios of all these guys I've been talking to. And still have plenty of room for signups. And, you know, it'll be a good time. So we're about two months away. So I'm glad that, you know, we're able to talk here. And I'm looking forward to you being out here pretty quickly. All right. All right, Rob. Well, thanks. And we will catch up to you real soon. All right, man. Thanks, Jeff.

All right. So that's going to wrap it up. I like talking to Rob. Rob, it's just fun to hear different perspectives from the same person. Like I said, he's from starting out with a leash in his hand to being the boss of everybody. He gets to talk to you from all different angles. So Rob will be here in Colorado at the Colorado Canine Conference. He'll be able to pick his brain for a lot of different stuff. Rob, Billy Holbert, and Ron Cloward are doing a full day of canine supervisor class.

So you got well over 100 years of experience between the three of these guys putting it all together. and putting out probably the best eight-hour canine supervisor class I've ever seen. So real proud to be putting that on. So if you're a supervisor, check out ColoradoCanineConference.com and look at the supervisor page, and you can sign up for that. It's a little bit cheaper, and it's one day on the last day of the conference. So Colorado Canine Conference for that.

And then I'm going to wrap it up again thanking Bob Eden for sponsoring this show. Catsplatinum.com for all your record-keeping needs. When you deal with Bob Eden, you deal with him directly. So catsplatinum.com, great, great program, very customizable and a big supporter of what we're doing. And that's why he's out sponsoring programs like this. So catsplatinum.com for all your record keeping needs and have a safe week. I will be back with you next week. Thanks guys. Music.