Detector Dog Training and More with Eric Stanbro

Hey, everybody. We're back with another show today. Got Eric Stambrough on again.

He's been on my show a couple of times. I always enjoy talking to Eric. I think you'll like this show. We have a couple of pretty good topics that we go over in this show. And Eric will be out here in Colorado teaching at the Colorado Canine Conference again. He came last year. Everybody really enjoyed his class. He's going to be out here again at the end of July teaching here at the Colorado Canine Conference.

So if you want more information on the Colorado Canine Conference, check out the webpage, coloradocanineconference.com. But it's last week of July, and I've got instructors from all over the country coming. Should be an outstanding event. We're getting a lot of registrations in, but we still have some room right now. If you need to get in, but you're trying to go through finance, just let me know.

You can always register, hold your place in line, and then pay later, because I understand how financing is with some of the agencies at the time of year and stuff. So I'm happy to hold a spot if you're listening to this and you're just waiting to get the money and approved, but you know you're going to come, just go ahead and send in your registration now. So check out our webpage, ColoradoK9Conference.com.

Registration's on there and anything you need to help with from me or information, just reach out to me and I'll do everything I can to help you come out to this seminar. It's going to be a great event. It's a working dog stuff and some classrooms, so a little of both. We're going to do kind of long days, but we're going to get a whole lot in. One of the cool things this year is that we're going have an opportunity, you could do a long intensive day of urban tracking.

We got different experts in tracking coming and they're going to take over a big chunk of a college campus where you'll be able to go do tracks over all types of different surfaces. So those will be kind of long days and you can do one day and then do the other three days with the other instructors. So you can kind of check out their techniques and see where you're at with the urban tracking stuff. So it's a new feature this year that I'm really looking forward to.

So I'll have more information coming out on the web on that. But really good instructors doing that kind of stuff. So as always, I want to thank a few of my sponsors. So RayAllen.com is the place to go online for all your canine needs. RayAllen's basically got everything. So if you need any type of canine equipment, your first option should be RayAllen. Besides having everything, the one thing with RayAllen is that if they're selling

it, it's good quality. They just don't sell anything that's not good quality. For their bite suits, all their tug toys, you name it, they're only going to sell stuff that is top-notch, and they stand behind everything. So if you had an issue with it, you could reach out to them, and they'll make it right. So check out RayAllen.com for all your canine needs. Also, you know, the seminar's in the middle of the summer, and it's getting warmer, so the...

Heat alarm for your car that I recommend. Everybody hears me talk about acek9.com. So John Johnson's the owner and the inventor of that product. They do heat alarms and door pops and some other features. So check out acek9.com for your heat alarm needs. So make sure you're testing your heat alarms every week as part of your training day. It should be something that everybody goes through and maybe even everybody witnesses each other testing heat alarms on your training day.

Lots of different ways to do it, but just make sure it's part of your training day. And then finally, before we get to the show, I was going to talk about Tim Adams from the Next Level K9. Nextlevelk9.com is his website. Tim is the lead sponsor for the Colorado K9 Conference, and he's going to bring some dogs up to the seminar for sale.

So you'll be able to come up, look at some dogs. If you need a dog this year, you could make it a trip and get a dog and go to a great seminar and spend the week with the dog, take him around, have the other instructors evaluate the dog with you. It's a pretty neat opportunity, and Tim's going to be bringing dogs up here that you can purchase and leave with. And even if you aren't going to look for a dog this year, you can watch other people's selection test dogs, talk to them.

We're going to do a class on selection testing and really get some ideas on maybe if there's some other stuff you want to add to your current selection test. So it's another neat, pretty unique event that we have going on here at the Colorado Canine Conference.

All right, well, with that, let's flip over and talk to Eric Stambrough. Music. This is the Police Canine Training Podcast with Jeff Meyer. Join us for each episode to get real-world advice from canine professionals who have experience on the street. Each episode will focus on up-to-date information that you can use on the street. Spend about 30 minutes with us each week as part of your training day.

Our goal at Police Canine Training is to make every canine team be the best they can be. Thank you.

Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Meyer. Today I've got Eric Stambrough on here. Eric's been on here a couple times with me and I always enjoy talking to Eric. So today we agreed we were going to do a podcast and I kind of threw him a little bit of a curve ball because I know we're going to talk about a study they did in his agency and we're going to talk about that, a scientific study they did.

But I also, based on the last podcast I did and some of the comments I'm seeing on Facebook and stuff with about rewarding your dogs on the street, which led to some emails to me about some common questions I see with specifically NARC dogs or detector dogs in general.

So I shot Eric a text and I was thinking about it that all the conversations I've had with Eric over quite a while, we've always ended up kind of gravitated towards talking about patrol dog issues and e-collar stuff because we both teach e-collar things. We do it differently, but we bounce ideas off each other about e-collars and patrol stuff.

We've never ever discussed detection stuff and i did it purposely just to give him a heads up to kind of put his detection hat on a little bit so we could talk about it but i like to do a lot of these podcasts with trainers where we're just going to have a discussion you know and probably have to agree to disagree but we're going to talk about some narc dog stuff some detector dog stuff and then a scientific study that he was involved in that's got a lot of

really good information so how are you doing today eric i'm doing good man just running around like crazy today yeah it's But it's warming up there, isn't it? Yeah, it's beautiful today. It's 65, 68, but the sun's out. It's perfect. Perfect. Sounds good. Well, thanks for jumping on. I know you were saying you were out working all day already at the end of the day, but I appreciate taking the time. And I also appreciate you coming out here in the end of July.

We've got a great seminar that we're putting together. We're going to have a lot of people. Yeah, I can't wait. Most all the instructors from last year are coming back, and then we added quite a few extra ones. So it should be a good time, and we moved it up to Loveland, so we're a little bit further north than last year, but a lot of great resources up here, and it's going to be a really good time, so I'm glad you're able to make it out. Yeah, I can't wait. I had a great time last year.

Conferences are great. I teach at the regular classroom conferences. Those are awesome. But getting to do the dog stuff and fixing problems and helping people right there in front of them is amazing. And actually, based on the way the conference was last year and the way I ran my class, I've actually changed a couple things in my seminars.

The way I'm doing, I realized at your conference that I could actually get more work and more reps out of the dogs because we had, you know, I had guys for a couple hours. And I was doing, I was getting the results that I was looking for within those two hours, way faster than I was at my seminars, only because I was, you know, taking my time at the seminars. Not anymore, dude, it's gas pedal on from the beginning.

And then the other concept that I use called the power of twos, where, where you correct the first thing and pay the second thing, which helps with creating, helping with your verbal out where you out and down so that the down becomes the thing that rewards them. And that really shined through at your show with, uh, one particular big Dutchie that I was working with, um, who was really, he would fail his certifications a couple of times.

And, and that down instead of, instead of the out being the focus, the down was the focus, dude, he, he, I got a message from him. He kept working on it after he left. And then he went past, I said, dude, that proof, my concept, I'm all over it now. Absolutely. That's where, you know, I mentioned it on here a lot of times. And just like you, you know, people like us are fortunate that we have the experience and now we get to travel around and work with a lot of different teams.

And I learned something every time I work with a team, I learned something new. And I, it's just a fortunate position to be in to, to kind of help people out, but also, you know, learn, learn new stuff and tweak our, our training methodology. Yeah. I always say nothing changes if nothing changes. Exactly. Guys are just repetitive. You got to mix it up. You got to do something different. Exactly. Okay. You've been trying, you tried this for two years. It doesn't work. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And the flip side of that is, is some people probably try too many things and they jump around, you know, it's like, you gotta, you gotta get a proven technique and give it the time to settle in and, and work it, you know, and some, not everything works on every dog, but you also see the people who, you know, want the, want the quick answer and they keep trying different things.

I agree. Yep. You know, and the funny thing is, man, when I'm working with a dog and I find myself trying to like working on a stupid little problem, you know, and I'm, I'm, I'm digging deep into all the things I know. Well, Hey, this rep, let's try it after like two or three. I'm like, I got to stop. Next thing I know, I'll try six different ways. This is a green handler. And he's like, I don't know. Yeah, I'm so confused.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Been there, done that. So, hey, so let's talk a little bit about detection dogs. And the reason, like I said, I did one last week. I had Gary Haddon on. We talked about doing fentanyl and parcel interdiction and stuff. And then in the conversation, we talked about, do you reward your narc dog on the street? And then I posted that on Facebook and some of the discussion groups.

And some people in there answering and stuff, but it's one of those questions where people are passionate about, and a lot of people from the emails I'm getting don't seem like they want to put their name on out there in the public discussion, but they've got a strong opinion one way or another, which is fine.

And I think it's an interesting topic, and it goes into the same problems that I'm sure you see too about how some dogs work well in training and not on the street and just some of those common problems. So let's start there with, you know, like when you're doing, you know, detection dog training and probably, you know, specifically we do a lot of narc dog training because that's, you know, kind of more of the place where people are having real world fines and bomb dogs.

So what kind of problems do you see regularly and how do you mitigate some of those problems. So real quick, just to back up, we, it's funny, we put out an episode of Working Dog Radio last week. It was just Ted and I, and I talked about fixing the heel and he talked about a variable reward system type stuff, but he addressed the rewarding and not rewarding on the street.

And, and to understand that you're not, when you don't reward on the street, which is cool, if that's your thing, that's what you want to do.

It's not because you don't know if the dog was right and going out and saying that in public is wild like you go to court because there are some certification bodies that will tell don't reward in the street because you don't know if he's right what so it's an interesting if they go look he gets on a little bit of a soapbox on it but, his explanation of why, why he does it is pretty good. But so anyways, let's hold on. Let's stay on that topic for a quick second.

How do you train your handlers? What do you tell your handlers to do? So my thing is if they're, if they're a guy who rewards with a ball, not a big belief. I'm not a big fan of, of the ball on the street. As a matter of fact, what I ended up doing it. So like we'll go train at the impound lot and Kansas City impound lot and there's 500 cars, but it's on blacktop. When we get to the car, we'll switch to a tug or something that will die right there.

Yeah, exactly. And I'm like, I kind of leave it up to the guys. You know, I would prefer, and listen, I came up through an era where you rewarded like a training every single rep.

Yeah and and to be honest with you there were times because we had say 40 20 30 40 dogs at training we'd have four or five hides out and we just ran four or five hot cars there was never dead cars you know then i i did a whole paradigm shift on that yeah i did too we're doing more blanks than than hot and so i had to change that and then i started i read and i've seen the evidence of the variable reward but what i really like to do and i tell people if you if you don't reward.

On the street that's awesome cool but it's because you're you're trying to articulate your change of behavior you're trying to pay attention to what the dog is doing when understanding that the that the change of behavior the mark that where they even self-mark whatever where they turn and lock up that's actually where the dopamine dump is yeah so like the reward is just extra the dopamine even dropped so i'm like there's no reason to do it it's all part of the variable reward system because you

know i don't know about you guys but we're not sniffing eight cars a night you know true anymore police agencies are so busy you know back in my my department canton every car is still doing 20 25 calls oh yeah yeah and and every dog too just doing dog calls like alarms and break-ins and all that other stuff nobody's pulling over cars for dope anymore except task force dude yeah and you know so my my thing is you got to understand why please don't don't think it's because well you're not

sure and and i used to i got to the point on my last two dogs i think when i was the trainer that i wasn't rewarding on the street if we found something we would put it back and rerun them and reward them i don't even really do that anymore. I just, I'll praise off and move on, you know, and because then you, you also get into the argument in court where you're, you're finding the odor of narcotics, not actually narcotics. So the guy's got to understand they just can't.

They just can't say it's because they don't trust the dog. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of guys, because I'm not sure what he hit on, but then you go search the car. That's, that's problematic when you get to a suppression hearing or something. So. Yeah. Like this dog I just finished today. His last day was today. He was, he was a retread. He, he had a previous handler, a handler quit, gave a new handler, real nice dog. I didn't really have to do a lot. I was just pairing up the handler with him.

But what we really worked on was, so like in certification today, there were seven vehicle hides.

He ran two blank cars and then boom boom boom and we just praised off every hide and then rewarded the last time it took us literally two minutes to get through seven hides yeah and because i had nine dogs where we got to move but it doesn't affect him he hunted harder and harder and harder absolutely and i think a praise off is a is rewarding your dog you know and i think yeah but i think the where i get in where i where i kind of get stuck is you know the people who,

do like what you just described though. The dog will hit, they'll just walk the dog back to the car. I've had guys tell me, well, I don't want to say good or bad because I don't want to influence the dog, but the dog hit it. Then they search the car, find the odor, bring the dog back out, and then let the dog hit it. And then they pay him and do whatever. So I had a guy one time, he was telling me how his dog didn't search well on the street. And in training, he did really well.

So we finally went and we had an undercover car who took that. Did a traffic stop and the dog came out and he did not look like the same dog. He was flat, was, was uninterested. And I thought, well, maybe it's a traffic noise. So we did all the normal stuff. So we ended up finding a quiet parking lot and the dog still, you know, every time we did just a traffic stop, he came out flat.

Well, then I said one time, it just dawned on me. I said, well, go dig through the car, act like, you know, you're talking to me for a little while and then bring him back out. Well, the second time the dog was on fire and he had, he had learned that, that, you know, the first time nothing good happens. So I'll wait till the second time. And the dog had just pretty much shut off.

So I'm just not a huge fan of, you know, I love the idea of a variable reward, especially if you're using a marker, but I, I've talked to a lot of people in just the last couple of days about this because of the podcast. I'm just, I think the dogs, I don't like changing from training to the street.

And especially like you say, when, you know, I've had that's, that's, you know, if you don't trust the dog enough to, to at least praise him off or something, I don't think that's, I don't think that's probably the best way of doing things. No, guys are terrible at praise offs, man. They're really, the one guy, he might hear us, it's okay. Cause I was making fun of him today. I go, every time you say you praise that dog, it sounds like you're going through puberty.

I'm like, give, give me something, make it exciting, You know, because when you do it right, so say you're training and you're working multiple cars, you praise them, pull them off that car, right? And you're praising them up. They are on fire for that next car. And they're like, well, shit, maybe I better work harder.

And so then, but when you watch, if they pay attention, if you do what I did today, you do seven, you know, seven in a row. So you do the blanks, you do seven in a row and bang that last one. And when they get the toy, they just nonchalantly walk back to the car. Yeah. Like, they come down. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, that anticipation. So I never, you know…, I rewarded on the street. I think the last, my last, I can't remember. I'm old, man. I can't remember. It was a while ago.

So I'm trying to remember the last, my last dog. If I did, maybe, I think maybe I did some, he was in a, he was actually still an aggressive alert dude. And that, that was in like 2013. That was terrible. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know, but I never did the whole go back up and run them, you know, because that also begs the question why? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I just think, and I mean, that's, that's a common thing, you know, and I, and when I showed that handler that, you know, his dog, dog understood the difference, you know, I don't think he believed that, you know, and I, anybody over trains with me always hears me talk about how, you know, my, my opinion is dogs are government employees and they're going to be the laziest, do the, the least amount they need to do. And if, if they know the first one is a, is it going to be a pass?

They'll do a quick pass and sit and wait till they, they get the fun one. And, and I, I think, I think it's a, it's not a hard thing for a dog to figure out. I do know a guy too. And I don't really like this on, on a, on a court standpoint that does where, you know, the dog can see him when he's, he's looking at the car, he can see him. He goes around the car with his toy and like, like he said, and fake, and fake hides it on a, on a traffic stop, on a real, real stop.

Then goes and gets the dog and brings him out and runs him. And he says, cause then the dog is always hot, always super, you know? And I'm like, I just think you're setting yourself up to get twisted up in court. If an attorney knows any way to trick you. Yeah. I think that that's. I think so too. So go now to go back to my original question, what are some common detection dog issues that you see when you're helping, you know, agencies?

So what I'll see is dogs will come to me, guys will come to me. Maybe they're coming to the facility to train and I haven't seen them in a while, or maybe I've never seen them. And the dog just, and the dog's maybe been on the street for a little while and they just seem kind of stale where they're, they're going through the motions and you'll notice it. They'll find the odor. You can tell, right? Yeah. And then they, they look back and they move off though. Yeah.

And when they're going a little bit, they're just kind of looking back at the guy and like, they're super hot on track and they're super hot on everything else, but they're just kind of going through the motions.

And you're like yeah man he started doing this not too long ago and i'm like this like he's he always been this way i didn't train him i don't know i really haven't seen this dog and they go no man he used to be kind of hot now but it's always the same they're kind of nonchalant about it and you'll see them they'll walk odor yep i've you know i've been told over the years that there There are dogs that, you know, will, will work shit hot, but they like some dope over others, for example.

And like, maybe they're not real crazy on meth. They'll, they'll get that odor, leave it, go search around and then come back and reward and alert on it. Because they prefer something else. I don't know if that's true. I think that's somebody, it might be, but they're completely guessing because the dogs don't tell you. But so what I find with those dogs, and I get people that message me a lot, probably like you do. Hey man, I got this dog.

Let me show you a video of him. And he just, he's out for a walk, really. And I, and I know this is a thing that you do a lot. And I started doing this in the last few years is I tell him, okay, let's go back.

Let's put out dope and let's start paying the sniff yep as soon as that dog head snaps and sniffs bang toy comes out banging yeah somebody else can throw it you can throw it your timing's got to be perfect though boom right in the thing and they're like oh okay and it startles the dog and and then they're like when they ask they'll say why i say you have to make the hunt and the odor the more valuable yeah like it used to be valuable then eventually

just getting the toy and like you said it's almost like the government workers yeah they're like i'm just gonna go around here and i'll do something i'll turn around and look and he'll throw it at me you know yeah the handler becomes too much of the being involved and then it's not it's it's not the odor or even the hunt you know and i we'll talk about that and i'll talk about a little bit of tracking with that too but that's one of

the bigger mistakes i've been seeing, not mistakes, things, issues I've been seeing lately. When guys come to me, I'm like, boy, this dog's put me to sleep. And generally it's, it generally you're going to fix that by just going back and doing a lot of hunting, I assume. Yeah. Hunt and pay, pay that, that sniff. Yeah. As soon as they, as soon as they hit it. And then we talked in Colorado that you pay the sniff for a long time during training. I do. I do.

Yeah. And I wasn't doing it. Like I was paying the sniff early, and then I would kind of drift off of it, but after you and I talked, and you gave your class, and I'm like, man, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I pay, and then throughout their working life, I pay the SNF, I mean... I don't, I mean, I don't have an exact number, but I would say generally 60% of the time I'll pay the sniff. That way it doesn't, they don't get that board thing. The hunting is fun.

They're looking for that odor. I think there's sometimes we get that disconnect when we, they hit the odor, then they have to cognitively start thinking about going to a final response that we've, we've conditioned them to. And it kind of, that dopamine is now drained back out of their little pea brain and it's, it's back to being the government employee. You know, this, this is what I do every day. So I've, I, that took me a long time to, to really wrap my head around paying on a sniff.

And once I started doing it and I saw the results, I really, I like what I see when we do it a lot. Yeah. I can't remember from us talking or listening to your show.

Are you a, a staunch train final response guy no no i'm a i like i mean i i use i i'm very much a marker guy so i think you know the nice thing about a marker is you can mark that whatever behavior you want at any any part of it but you know i do have you know obviously i'll train a train final response but obviously for me you know the i'd rather see that very definitive change of behavior and, uh, and, and see the dog, you know, work to the odor.

So, and how about you? Yeah, you know, I, I started doing it, you know, I was always, dude, I was, I used to call it the Van Ness stare. I would get this because that's my business name, Van Ness canine. I would get the, the dogs, boom. And then just stare, never look back, stare, stare, stare. Cool, man. It's, it, it worked. It was cool.

But then I can't remember who I was talking to about it. And I just started, they started saying, you ought to try to think about paying, you know, getting the dog's natural response, that head snap. A lockup where they kind of lock up and, and I'm like, well, explain it to me. And they're like, yeah, that's the natural response. The dog then can't fake that. Yep. Exactly. So what that starts to do, then it starts to eliminate any kind of false response that you're getting out of the dog.

And because they can't fake it, they're not actors. They can't, but they can sure as shit fake a sit and, and solicit a response out of you. So I was like, well, let me mess with it. So I started messing with it, dude. I love it. And now the only time that I put a TFR on a dog is if they're just not getting it, maybe they're a little dense and you gotta, you gotta close that loop on them.

Yeah. That's the only time I do it. So now anyone, it doesn't matter if you're Joe Schmo, 65 year old, 70 year old woman. Grandma, whatever, And you're on the jury and you're watching that an idiot can see, Oh shit. I bet it's right there. His ears popped up. He got his tail got stiff. He's just standing there pointing at it. But we as humans get into this, the routine of gotta sit, gotta sit, gotta sit, gotta sit. I kind of don't really like it anymore. I just like doing the thing.

And if we're doing what you're saying, paying the, paying the sniff, you can't get, you can't wait on the, you know, Unless you put a TFR and you're paying the sniff and they're racing, you know what I mean? I think then you're risking some problems, but that natural response, I absolutely love it.

And do you have an issue when you're doing that? Because I haven't done that a lot. I've done it with a few dogs because in my training, I let them pick what their final will be. So once we've done a lot of sniffs, then we'll just wait them out. And usually they'll start, you know, we've already taught them the game of give me something. And so usually they'll sit, stand or stare, and then we'll pay that right away and kind of start showing them that.

But a couple of the dogs I've done it with, just that kind of stare and that natural one, a few of them, it deteriorated into them, then aggressing the odor. And have you had that be an issue? I'm trying to think. I had a dog. So I use boxes for imprinting, right? Old school boxes. And I had a dog. He's over in Indiana. His name is Jack. He was hardcore. He was such a pain in the ass with grabbing the boxes and he would throw them, literally throw them.

And then, so I ended up having to do really, really work that marker and indirect with him. I'm still more of a direct reward guy. I like the indirect. I don't mind it, but I'm just better. I'm not as good at it, if I'm being honest. I'm better at the other way. But I had to start working a lot of different things to get that dog to stop aggressing the odor. But he was one we had to put a sit in.

But you got to be quick. Bang, you got to pay him. And then you got to – so now the sit is what gets a reward, which is always a slippery slope.

But no, and I do find that those natural alert dogs, every once in a while if you're not rewarding them quick enough they'll say it at least they'll be like yeah figure this shit out yeah and then when they sit you pay them now they have a sit yeah that they figured out yeah without you yeah and those for me end up being more reliable like it's less likely at least in my mind that they're going to do a bs sit because i never told them to you just did it and you know odor told you to do

you know odor got you there and then you you did a sit So I paid you, but I'm not sitting there telling them sit, sit, sit and smacking their ass. So I think, I think that keeps them a little more reliable. If you're going to do a final response, then, you know, emphasizing what that final response is all the time. Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah. And you know, when you, some of these dogs, when you import them, you get them in and you got to start training like in a week, like we're on a time crunch and they don't know sit. Yep. So then you try to teach him sit at the box because you're trying to kill and then you're getting bit. Yeah. And it's a whole thing. You get some of them Hungarian dogs coming down. They will tag the crap out of you trying to force them into a sit.

Yeah. And so it's just my whole big thing anymore, man, is I'm just trying not to fight dogs. Yeah. I'm trying not to start that relationship off. Who are you? You don't know me. I just got off this plane. Yeah. And you're shoving my ass into the ground. Yeah. Yep. You know, so I just find that natural response works out. I like it. I just really like it. I'm going to play with that some more. I like the way you describe it, so definitely play with it some more.

You'll notice that it starts to eliminate that soliciting because they can't fake it. I've yet to have a dog that can fake a change of behavior. Yeah.

I'm still going to convert you over to being a marker guy. I'm going to try. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I need to come and take a class on it, to be honest with you. I, yeah, once I, once I start doing it, it's one of those things where I can't imagine going back to not doing it, but so are there other common issues you're seeing with detect, detector dogs with their performance?

I'll throw one out while you're thinking that handler dependency, you know, the dogs, dogs, you know, even, even the ones who search well, I see it where it's like, again, they're government employees. So I'll search the shit out of something when you tell me to. And if you're not directing me, I'll just stand here. And I see that quite often.

Yeah. And what happens, I was talking about this today. So I was standing with the evaluator who was, who was doing the class and the dogs come from various vendors and various trainers and they have different styles of doing the detection. And several of them were, you know, check here, check here, check here, check here. And they're, they're guiding. We, and we did that. I did that forever. Oh yeah.

Blocked them so they couldn't move until they. check the seams throw my leg out and oh yeah and and so what's happening now is besides it does create that handler dependency and if the guy is a little slow the dog sometimes will be like this is weird i'm just gonna sit yeah you know if you're hammering your dog like really hammer them a lot on obedience where you make them sit all the time especially before they start

sniffing the car when things get weird to them or frustrating they'll just sit because this is good. Nothing ever happens to me when my ass is on the ground. Yeah. But what guys have got to be careful with now, again, judges know nothing about dogs, nothing. And defense attorneys know nothing about dogs and prosecutors know nothing about dogs. But the defense attorneys, I started noticing suppression hearings are starting to go off of this cueing.

They heard an attorney talk about it the queuing so the more you're involved in the search the more you give an attorney to get a judge in the suppression hearing to go huh that makes sense yeah that does look like and flipping live pd holy crap there were guys on live pd you could hear those sick. What are you doing for dope? Problems for all of us. Yeah. So I just really like to, I really like to let the dogs, you know, get out and work.

Every once in a while, maybe I tell the handler, get them restarted, you know, just, and like if we're working at the impound lot, impound lots are tough because the, the cars are in rows and when the dog comes around, say the, say you started on the, the back passenger door and as you're coming around to the around the front they might hop off to the bumper on the next car yeah it's just a thing so the handler's got to get the dog

back in but step out of the way when they're getting back into work then there's no there's no evit or no ammo for the attorney to go you directed that door you did that right i i watched you you bumped the leash you said something You're you, the other one is you touch the car. Yeah. And that's, and so they, you know, and so I, I rather you just stay out of the way and then you're not a part of it. Then the odor and the hunt is what matters.

Nobody. And you think about it, man, when we're tracking, we're not standing next to the dog pointing at the ground. Exactly. You're behind them. Let them, let them do the work. And they know what to do. Just stay out of their way. Yeah. Sometimes the dog's like, oh shit, I forgot you were back there. Uh, you know, so that, uh, I, I try to convert guys if I can, not these guys today. I think then they trained their hour and a half away from me.

So, but I can, I do give them, I go, Hey, that dog sucked the pain off that car. You did not need to actually show him, but it's just from the vendor and the train. That's their style, the blocking. Yeah. But that blocking style is gonna, it's gonna get guys caught up. Yeah. It's just not, I do, when I have guys that I see that dependence, I do a couple of things. One of the first things I'll do is just if we're in a room, I'll just have the handler turn and face away from the dog.

And I'm sure you've seen it too. I've seen dogs where they'll go, they'll end up being easy hide. They'll go bang the odor and then turn around and when the handler's not looking at them, they'll run to see the front of the handle to see their face. And it's like, he's looking for a cue. Oh, I'm really good.

No, you're not. Cause he's, he's, and then the next thing I'll do is I'll, I'll put the handler out in the hallway and, you know, where maybe through an angle or a window or something, we can watch the dog and I'll let the dog go in and have to hunt. And when he hits the odor on his own, we'll mark it, you know, and the dog comes out like, wow, I did that without you.

And we just start building that independence back. But it's interesting just on those baby steps, how many dogs, when we send them into a room, they won't even hunt the room without the handler there directing them. And it usually picks up pretty quick once we do some shallow hides and start building into it. And I did it at a seminar last fall and we ended up, it was at a facility where they had cameras in all the rooms.

So it was pretty cool. And we ended up sending the dogs down a hallway about, and they do about six rooms on their own. And then they'd go in and, and either pay a, preferably market on a sniff, but someone waited till a final response. And then they'd. Most of them used a marker and would give their mark word, and then the dog would come back out and run down the hallway. And it made, when we did cars the next day, a lot easier because the dogs started just searching a lot better on their own.

I'll give you a fantastic thing that I think I got it from Cameron. It's about handler influence, and some guys don't believe. They're like, ah, my dog doesn't give a shit what I'm doing. So what we do is we'll put the hide, say, in a desk, right, on one side of the room. Then we have the handler start on the other side of the room and cut the dog off a leash and give him the command and then just stand and stare at another object. Yep. A clean, just stand and stare at it.

The dogs usually don't go deep enough to find the odor on the other side of the room, right? They'll just keep, what are you looking at? They'll keep going over there and many of them will false alert. Absolutely. I saw a dog sniff. He was so confused. He sniffed the handler's foot and alerted at his foot. He was just so confused and said, and then if I think they're going to, if I think they're about to false response, I'll have the, you know, just move, just pivot.

And when they pivot and look at, they started looking at the other thing and move around. And then also you'll see them go all the way around to the other side of the room and they'll sniff the article or, you know, where the dope actually is and then leave it and run back over and look at the handle. Yep. Yeah. Like, am I right or wrong? And then you know you are too involved. Yeah, yeah. And then maybe we got to do what you were just talking about.

You know, we got to, now we got to take you out of this, man, because it's wild. I watched, I did this with a group of guys down in an office building where we had two rooms that connected, right? There was a door in the door. Yeah. I put the dope in the furnace in the one room, and then I had the handler stand in the other room. It was completely empty and just stare at the wall.

And i watched dog after dog go in there's no there's no target for me to sit in this room they would go in find the dope and leave it and go back and look at the guy and then go back to the dope like like lassie yeah jimmy fell in a well timmy right going back and then all i had to do all i did was i had the handlers pivot 180 and stand in the doorway and look at the furnace and the dogs immediately went over and i heard it yeah i'm like guys and i think

that's a lot of that is created by the blocking method. Oh yeah, I think so. The presentation method. And so if you're listening to this and you're wondering, do I influence my dog? Try that drill. Exactly. You might get your feelings hurt.

Those are the kind of training things, though, you know, on that note, you know, if you're, if you're hearing stuff like this and, you know, I know you've seen it, we've all seen the guy who only wants the training day to go well, training days should be, you should get your feelings hurt and be surprised on some things, you know, because otherwise you're not, you're not expanding.

So, you know, I like throwing out ideas like that and I hope people who are listening to this are excited to go to their next training day and set it up and run the whole unit through it and see. It's not a contest, just see which dogs do it and which dogs don't and then get the whole unit up at the same speed. Yeah, you know, you want to really ruin their day. So start with that and then go to the door popper exercise in a muzzle where the handle is on the ground

and the dog will nuke them. You have ruined it. Yes. Absolutely i guess let's talk about that real quick some people don't know that but most of the time when uh you know if you're we will set that up and uh the handlers on the the ground and the attackers on top most of the dogs will come out and and hit the handler first and, it's good it's good for people to see that and you know try that on your training day tonight if you haven't done it because it's good for people to know because

i'd hate to have somebody hit the door popper tonight thinking that the cavalry's on the way and then all of a sudden they feel the dog attached to their own leg. Yeah, the dog's going to pick a winner. You're losing. Yeah, they're a pack animal, so. Mm-hmm.

So I think we've kind of hit some of that stuff pretty good. And then let's talk about this study that you guys did in your, your agency. That was a lot of good information. Yes, it was pretty cool, man. We, I, I completely forgot we did this until like yesterday. I thought about something. I went, Ooh, I'm going to talk to Jeff about that. So this was probably like, I want to say like 2016, 2017, something like that.

We have, we have a guy, he's retired now. he was at the police department and he owns a company called crash tech and his name is eric brown he is one of the leading crash investigators in the united states like beats troopers all the time cruiser accidents where the trooper did the accident they 100 sight the cop we used eric used to beat them non-stop nice right he is he speaks at the northwest institute as their guest speaker a lot of times he is freaking amazing so

he's got all these gadgets right yeah so he said let me try something so he comes out and we set up we set up a start cone and then we put another cone at 30 feet i think it was and then maybe 90 feet and then the decoy at about 120 feet 150 feet something like that and we started the dog in a down at the starter cone and then he had sensors put up and he had camera and then he had a drone and the drone was i don't know all the measurements he was doing with the drone yeah and this

is in 2016 17 drones were relatively yeah but he's he's out here flying this drone and what we would do is our goal was to figure out when is the dog at his fastest and when does he bring the most force and is it breed specific is it dog specific is it whatever. So we, we ran, we did it for two days. We ran probably 40, 30, 40 dogs through it.

I remember the one day I did, I caught 17 dogs in a row and, I noticed when they would get to me at 150 feet or wherever I was, I was like, man, I'm going to get murdered over again. The catch was pretty normal. It wasn't bad. Yeah. And mouths, big shepherds, small shepherds, duchies, it didn't matter. And so we did it, everybody from a stop. And then we did everybody where they had about a 10 or 15 foot head start and he would start the timer at the start cone.

Yeah. and we noticed that every single dog and this was universal it didn't matter who the dog was didn't matter breed malinois shepherd age nothing every single dog hit their top speed and their top pressure at 30 feet really every single one 30 feet they started slowing down at that 60 or 90 by the time they get to me at 150 feet significantly less force than at that 30 foot mark and so i was like that's crazy so we ran it you know we ran two entire test groups 100 of

the dogs were exactly the same and it didn't matter if they got that head start and then we timed it it was still 30 feet that was still the map they they started slowing down a little bit and the only ones that was a little different are the dogs that slowed down maybe maybe i don't know if we just worked recall and they were anticipating that yeah and then they picked speed back up yeah they were hitting you at that 30 foot speed because they had slowed way down and picked

it up at 30 feet out so my thing always with that was what i concluded on that is if possible try to get that dog within 30 feet of that bad guy when he's running yeah if you want if you want max force to to deliver that hit that's going to knock him down and eliminate. You know, the other problems that come along with that.

Well, and I think there's a training element to that too, because I know that, you know, we've had some dogs that were, you know, hard, hard-hitting dogs, and we've always, you know, we usually instead doing a long runaways, we'll move up a little ways, just to save the dog, you know, so he's not jamming his neck.

But in thinking about it, a lot of times I think we probably would move up to 20, 25 feet away, you know, so we were probably setting the dog up to be at his maximum instead of staying 50 or 60 feet away where he's slowing down. Yeah. Cause we, yeah, we used to do the same thing. They would do a recall, right? Yeah. Cause in Ohio it's 120 feet. So then we would jog about, you know, almost most of the way in and take off running.

Honestly, we were probably just giving the handler a break from running down the field, but let him get a hit. And then after we did that study, I'm like, nah, man, just send them on the, on the one 20. Yeah. That makes sense. It's going to be a little bit easier. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. We had a guy one time, one of our handlers blew his knee out.

So a guy from occupational health came out and he just wanted to watch what we were doing, which I didn't like the idea because I thought, you know, maybe this guy's going to make rules for us that make no sense, you know, but it was, they're the ones who pay the bills. So we, we, we didn't, we didn't get asked if he could come. We told he's coming and he was a, he was a pretty good guy and he had a video camera and he was, and he had one of the traffic guys come with their speed gun.

So he wanted to know what the dog weighed and, you know, the dog, the dog that we were using that day was pretty steady all the time, right at about 25, 26 miles an hour. He was not, not, not, we had, we had a few that were a little bit faster than that, but he was real steady at that. But he was a decent sized dog and the guy, you know, filmed it and everything.

And then he set his table for a while while we were training and he's doing calculations on how much pressure, you know, the, or how, how much, you know, force the dog would hit you at it, you know, for a 75 pound dog coming this speed and all that. And he ended up standing up and he's like, you guys do really stupid shit. And he said, there's a, there's nothing I could do to, to make it safer. And he's like, let's just say I was never here. He's like, cause this makes no sense on paper.

That's hilarious. Yeah. so i was glad he did it that way as opposed to he could he could also said don't do this anymore so, but it was interesting that is do one year we were at this this local kind of canine competition that we still go to we go to every once in a while and one year they wanted to try a hard dog fast dog type yeah so they their their plan was to laser use a laser and laser the dog when he's coming in.

Not one person could get that dog on their laser. It turns out cars are easier to laser than a dog. Imagine that. Yeah, it was weird. They couldn't get, they're like, Gavin, I thought I had them. I'm like, you did not. Not even close. Like beep, red lines. It wasn't working. We've done it a few times with just a regular speed gun and have it set up, but it's always fun to do.

I just thought of another little detection trick here. Not trick, but little thing Cause I was just doing it with these guys. So when we like doing vehicles for you, I'll just use vehicles as an example. What you start to find is that the dogs will, if they, if they're the kind, like if you're the kind that come up and do a sit and then you tell them, you know, sook or whatever, and they explode out of the sit and they'll skip the first 25% of the car or more. Yeah.

A, I wouldn't sit them at the front. I would, I would just walk up and tell them to search. A couple of things I also do with those dogs is I don't start them on a headlight so that they have a straight shot. I start them in the middle of the hood or the trunk or the side of the car. Guys, if you're on the side of the road and the wind is coming from left to right, there's, you should, you can start on the passenger side and pitch the

dog like it's a wall, pitch them into the side of the car. We don't always have to start at the front or the back. Yeah. And you'll find when he goes in, and he'll go straight into the car and then he'll make a turn and he'll, you can just kind of windshield wiper that side if you wanted to. And then, you know, there's no, nobody, nothing that says you have to have the car done in five seconds. But if you typically keep seeing your dog doing that, start, start where it's a little bit more flat.

And then in your training, we get into a habit. I know guys will be like, yeah, that's me. Where once we get a dog on a car, we always want them to search three quarters of the car. Start them in the front and we'll put it in the A pillar on the passenger side and they go all the way around, all the way around. So like you know they're like, well why am I really going to work until I get around to this other side? This is where it is.

So then what I start doing is I start putting the hood right in the grill. Or the high. Right in the grill. Right there. And they're like, oh shit, that's here. Yeah. Okay, cool. And then that starts, so if you're getting a dog who's skipping parts of the car, skipping half of the car, put hide there. Yes.

Like immediately make him run into it. Or if he's the kind that turns, say from the passenger side around the trunk and he goes wide and doesn't really step it, put that bitch right on the corner. And then move it to the middle and then move it around. Don't get, get out of the habit because we are creatures of habit. Get out of the habit of always making it, the dog searching, you know, 90% of the car before they find it. That's a great point. You see that a lot.

The other thing I do, especially at the beginning of doing cars, I really try to be intentional with the hides. And I really try to put them, you know, like in between, you know, on the sides of the car, you know, like not past the front or back wheel. And the reason I do that a lot is because I, what I've seen over the years is that, you know, if you do a front grill hide or something like that, that is easy.

Some of the dogs, cause they're government employees, they want to go do the easy part. And what I'll see is they'll skip the side of the car cause they want to spin around and get up to the easy hides, you know, the, the, and they'll, they'll hit those sooner. So I try to instill in them at the very beginning that, you know, these are productive areas and, and, you know, do kind of harder hides in the middle, you know, of the car, as opposed to getting to the corners.

That way they're not trying to race around the next corner is every time they see it. And it kind of slows them down a little bit. I've had pretty good luck with that too, just keeping them. Cause I see the same thing where they, they want to just, explode out and they're not working for the first 25 feet. Easy, every scene. The other thing I notice is I like to put a magnet box up inside on the up in the wheel well, up on the leaf spring or something. Dude, you do that once or twice.

Those dogs will jam their head in every wheel well, which though, for bomb dogs I think is important. I think it really is important for bomb dogs to get their head in there. The funny thing too is a bunch of you guys out there listening, you're dying for the day when dope dealers start hiding dope in gas caps. When that day comes, when that day comes, your dog is going to nail it, dude. It's funny. I have a rule when I'm training people, no gas cap hides ever.

Because I figure it's too easy. Dogs are going to check it anyway. And then there's also gas odor there. So I just, and we did a cert one time and one of the handlers that I trained. The guy who set the cert up did a gas cap hide. Well, the handle, I mean, the dog's banging it. The handler wouldn't call it. And he goes back and goes, we can't do gas cap hides. I said, well, it's a cert, you know, they can put it where they want. Yeah. I do one, one and every cert, I do one gas cap hide.

Yeah. Um, it's just, it's easy. We can go through it. They're going to, they're going to search it. But what I've noticed, what I do now is I put meth.

I always put meth in there because I find the dogs really got to get their nose on that yeah you got to get up on it so it's a legit fine sure um but then my guys all know i tell them during class i'm like listen if you're working this car and he's just not hitting anything and he keeps skipping the gas cap there's going to be one gas one but if he keeps going to all the gas caps after he found it that is also not correct Yeah.

Good stuff. Sometimes, sometimes Jeff, I do like to do some easy stuff. Absolutely. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I just, uh, I, I, I think that, you know, whether it's a new dog or a training day, you know, with a bunch of experienced dogs, I think one of the, you know, talk about mistakes that people make with, especially detection is especially dope detection is especially dope detection on dual purpose dogs.

Guys want to get training sheets to show that they've got their three, four, five odors, whatever it is. They're going to get a fine for those training sheets and then go on and do the fun stuff, which is the patrol stuff. And they're not putting their hides out with any type of intention.

It's just a matter of it's not really training. It's just running through the motions, let the dog get his nose on it, does whatever he does, mark it down on the training sheet, and then move on and go do patrol stuff. And I think when, if you're going to do detection training, set your hides out with, you know, intentionally with, with a reason behind it and, and you've already set it all up.

So let's take a few extra minutes and actually train, train a little bit instead of just going through the motions. Yeah. You know, we're lucky, you know, cause I still, I still have access to the impound lot. They're real nice to me about it. I actually signed an agreement a bunch of years, like 2019 to use all the stuff and I'll go there and we have a row with 50 cars.

Nice. And I'll put one So we have, there's like 500 cars in the impound lot But each row has like 40-50 cars I will put one hideout. And then if you want good training records, you know, 50, 50 blank cars, one hot one, that's more valuable, I think. Absolutely. You know, in today's day and age. Oh, I agree. You know, there's a lot of times we'll have, you know, I might have six, eight dogs on a maintenance training day and we do one odor, but they search like eight rooms.

Yeah. You know, just a little more realistic. Yeah. And it's training. It's not just going through the motions. You know, and I see guys do that for, you know, even patrol work, whatever it is, bomb work, whatever, but don't, don't go through the motions, actually set training up with a purpose and have a goal in it and, and make it valuable. I mean, we're getting paid, paid money to play with dogs. Let's do it, you know, in a kind of a way to, that is actually productive too.

One of my favorites, dude, is I'll put, so we'll have say an office building and there's, there's a bunch of cubicles and desks and offices and I'll tell them, okay, there's two heights.

Go up there and we're not even going to come in the building you go up there come back and whisper to me where they were and please don't tell the other guy yeah right but what i do is i set my phone up in there to record you sons of bitches are walking around church and drawers while their dogs on the other side of the room working and i'm like is it a team sport i guess every time cheating bastards every time well both ends of the leash are government employees a lot of times so Yeah.

They're embarrassed. They don't want to come out and go, I couldn't find the other one. You know, I tell guys this all the time, especially when it comes to vehicles on traffic stops and everything like that. It is better to miss dope. Absolutely. Then a false alert be set case law. It is bad. That's why I like those guys on live peed eagles. Oh God. Or, or, or putting their dog into a sit. Those, some of those dudes are right here in Ohio and they were popping the leash with it.

I'm like, dude, that's not worth it. No, it's not worth it. It screws our whole industry too. Same with the. It's not that dope dealer's first and only time he's transporting dope. Exactly. Exactly. And the same with some of the cases that it's like, is this the hill you want to die on? I look at some of the cases that they're appealing and pushing and it's like, that It should have never went anywhere. Let's make that case go away because we don't want a case law from it.

And it's, it's interesting, you know, when you read all these cases, especially all the ones that are coming through now, but the dog's trespassing or touching the car and we're losing those. So, you know, I, I'm surprised that people want to push some issues sometimes. I mean, I'm all about, I'm all about fighting the good fight, but some of these aren't, aren't the, aren't the ones we should be fighting. Yeah. We just interviewed Mike Kimesik. He comes out next week.

And he was saying that, I asked him, you know, what do you see in trends coming up and what do you should be watching? And he says that trespassing thing, in his opinion, is going to become more and more of a thing. Yeah. I talked to him too about it. And, you know, you'll have to train your narc dog like a bomb dog. Just don't touch stuff. And it's, you know, does it make sense? No. But if the courts are telling us that, then we're going to have to adjust to it, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. There's still, I forget what circuit he was saying, if it was Indiana maybe, I can't remember where it was, that just reaffirmed that, no, it's not trespassing. They reaffirmed it in the previous cases. So not everybody's doing it, but you never know. It's a trend for sure. And it's a surprising trend, but it is what it is. Well, this has been good. I'll actually keep these around about an hour, and I think we have a lot of good information.

And I appreciate the time. I know you're probably ready for a beer after a certain dogs all day and then standing here doing this. No, now I got to go to jujitsu, dude. Then it'll be, then it'll be time for a beer. Yeah. Yeah. I'll crawl out of there. Well, thanks Eric. You know, nice talking to you and I'll, I'll talk to you before then, but I'm really looking forward to seeing you in a few months out here in Colorado.

I appreciate it, man. I'm, I'm always, I'm always happy to support you and what you do and learn from you and learn from the guys out there. It's such a, a great conference. I really hope that it just keeps growing because the training is good. The people are cool. The venue is amazing. Colorado is gorgeous. And, and everybody there last year worked. Yeah. They were there. This is a working dog conference. So yeah. Yeah. Nobody was there just to be

off the ship. No. Everybody was putting in work. Yep. And that's kind of what we want. If, uh, if you want to mess around conference, pick another one, but this is a working one and, and people like it. People like coming here and getting some good information. So it'll be a good time. So thanks again, Eric. All right, buddy. I'll talk to you.

That's going to do it for the conversation here today with Eric. I appreciate him taking the time to come on and taking the time to come out in July. You know, he'll be out here in July for our seminar. When I called him last year, he was one of my first calls that I made to an instructor and I barely was able to explain what kind of seminar it was and he jumped on board.

Eric just likes to train dogs and likes to help officers and that's what we're looking for in our instructors that are coming out here. Nobody's getting rich on this seminar. The instructors are just coming out basically on their own time and out here to spread the knowledge and help some officers get better and safer. So we're looking for those types of experience. And Eric is that type of guy in spades.

So I appreciate him sharing the knowledge today and spending basically a week of his time out here in Colorado. So thanks again for him being on the show. And I want to wrap up with a couple more of our sponsors. So you hear me talk about Kevin Sheldahl all the time. He's down in New Mexico. He runs a company called Canine Services. And as I always say, Kevin can pretty much do everything in canine. So if you need a unit otter, you need a class, or you want to go down to New Mexico, do a class.

And now he has a neat feature that if you can't get to Kevin or get him to come out to you, you can go on Learberg videos, and I'll put the link in the show notes here, and you can do an online course for Kevin. So he's got an online detection course with a lot of videos and quite a few hours of training right there online. So not quite as good as doing it in person, but it's a great substitute if you don't have another option.

So if you're an agency that can't bring an instructor out or you're too far away or whatever, check out the links in the webpage. It'll take you right to the online course that Kevin has. And hopefully, you know, there'll be a great resource for you. And finally, I want to wrap up, you know, we talked a little dig into about narc dog stuff. And whether it's narc dogs, patrol dogs, search and rescue, bomb dogs, it doesn't matter. You need training records.

Training records are important. And the training record company that I recommend is CATS Software. CATS is K-A-T-S and it stands for Canine Activity Tracking Software. Bob Eden is the proprietor of that company. First person to put records online in the format that he did. He's been around the longest.

He's very much an expert in record keeping and can help you develop a great system of record keeping his system is extremely flexible so you can adjust everything in there and make it exactly what your agency needs so check out cats platinum.com and you can get a free trial there you can always reach out to bob for more information hired everybody that's going to wrap up the show everybody have a safe week and i'll be back next week with another edition. Music.