K9 Supervision and Handler Selection with Ron Cloward

Hey, everybody. Before we get to the show, let's talk about the Colorado Canine Conference.

Coming up at the end of July, so a couple weeks away, still have room for more teams to come. We've got a lot of teams coming from quite a few different states. So some people are traveling quite a ways to come to the Colorado Canine Conference. It's going to be a great event. It's some classroom and a lot of hands-on stuff. So bring your dog. We'll get a lot of reps in with all the dogs, all the different disciplines.

So whether you work a dual-purpose dog, a single purpose patrol, single purpose detector, whatever you do, we have classes, classroom stuff and hands-on stations for you to work at. So we're going to keep everybody as busy as you want to be. Kind of long days, but very much a working dog seminar. So call our canineconference.com for all the information on that.

We still have room. If you have a agency where your budget isn't finalized till July 1st, or you need to pay after July 1st, but you know you're coming, go ahead and send the registration in now and just indicate you'll pay after July 1st. So we make sure we save room for you. So the lead sponsor of the Colorado Canine Conference is Next Level Canine. So Tim Adams is coming up. He's going to bring dogs. So thenextlevelcanine.com for all the information on the company.

But it's a great event that you're going to be able to bring or selection test dogs. So if your agency needs a dog, you can come to a seminar and pick out a dog. He's going to have quite a few single purpose and dual purpose prospects. So Next Level Canine is the lead sponsor of the Colorado Canine Conference. So thanks Tim for coming and we're looking forward to having all the dogs here. Also. End of July, it's going to be warm. I keep talking about it, but agencies have to have heat alarms.

So if your agency doesn't have a heat alarm, contact me. I'll send you to a few different of the 501c3s that will help get heat alarms for you. You have to have one. Your agency should buy it, but for some reason they won't. I'll send you some directions to where you can get a heat alarm. But if you're going to get a heat alarm, get the acek9.com. It has cellular option. It has a lot of redundant features.

AceK9.com is the heat alarm, the only one that I recommend, and it's definitely the one that I think you should have in your car. So check out AceK9.com for your heat alarm needs. And then for your record-keeping needs, CATS is the record-keeping software that I recommend. CATS stands for Canine Activity Tracking Software.

If you go to CATSplatinum.com, and it's K-A-T-S platinum.com, you'll see all the information about how easy it is to navigate CATS and how easy it is to customize it for your own type of record keeping. All the stuff you need is easy to adjust in Cats. Bob Eden was the first one out of the gate with K9 Records Online, and he's still doing it today and just making it better and better every year. So check out catsplatinum.com for all your record keeping needs.

With that, let's jump over to the show and talk to Ron Cloward about canine supervision and handler selection. 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. Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Meyer. Today I've got Ron Cloward on with me. He's been on the show a couple of times. I'll have him go over his background real quick if you haven't heard Ron on the show before. But he's got a long history of training dogs, supervising teams and stuff.

So I've got Ron coming out in July to teach a supervisor class and a couple other classes also at the Colorado Canine Conference. So he'll be here doing classroom stuff and then doing some hands-on stuff. Ron teaches literally, he's got quite a few teams, I think well over a hundred teams under his supervision at his company. So very well-versed in canine stuff and then also with canine supervision.

So brought him on today to kind of talk about supervisors, how to select a supervisor, how to select a handler, dog, all those kinds of things. Ron does a three-day supervisor class and we're going to jam in a lot of stuff in the next 30 or 40 minutes, but just to kind of show you that there's more to supervising a canine unit than just getting a title. So Ron, how are you doing today? Doing good. Doing good. I'm actually getting ready to help put together more.

We had two of our grandkids graduate the eighth grade. So we're putting things together for a graduation party tonight. Oh, wow. Yeah. Eighth grade and then on to high school after that. Yeah, it's hard to believe that we've already got one in high school and teen grandkids and they keep us pretty busy. It sounds like it. And they're all in the area too, I think, aren't they? Yes, they are. Yeah. That's awesome.

And your business, if you want to kind of go down, maybe talk about your background real quick and then we'll talk about how much you got going on with your business.

Yeah, well, I did 28 years with the Modesto Police Department. And I was pretty much predominantly in canine my entire career, except for like the first couple of years. I would go out and decoy, but I wasn't able to work a dog. And I ended up the unit trainer as a sergeant and then promoted to lieutenant, was a commander of the program, the unit, and continued to train. I was one of those lucky guys that, as I promoted, they never took canine away from me.

And I got to train all the way through until I retired. So that's pretty much what I did throughout my entire career and kind of self-educated myself by going to a lot of different courses and training and, you know, put some things together. And then after I retired, I was going to just have a little hobby of maybe training a few dogs here and there and had no idea that it was going to blow up the way that it did.

And now we're running a company that we go hands-on with about a little over 100 dogs monthly. So it keeps us pretty busy. and we're, yeah, pretty happy with what we're doing. I enjoy it. My kids keep saying, when am I going to retire? And I said, well, I wake up someday and it's not fun anymore. Yeah. So it's still fun right now. It doesn't feel like working for a living when you enjoy it. And the company name is Top Dog Police Canine Training, right?

Yeah, Top Dog Police Canine Training and Consulting. So if you're listening and you're up in really all over California and, you know, that area, I know you've got teams from all over the place. If you're looking for training or for a seminar or whatever, you know, reach out to Ron. I'll put your contact info in the show notes. Okay.

So in July, when you're out here for the Colorado Canine Conference, we have you doing a one-day canine supervisor course. I know that usually it's a three-day one. So in one day, you just kind of have to pack more stuff in and then in doing a 30 or 40-minute podcast, I know it's really just probably trying to hit some highlights.

So with that, with those type of time constraints, if you had, you know, 20 or 30 minutes and you were going to talk to a chief about a canine unit and what they were looking for with supervision, you know, what would be, where would you start with that conversation? I normally will start with their handler selection and what kind of handlers they're looking for, what they should do when they go to start selecting handlers as far as interviews.

Interviews you know the biggest problem i have with a lot of canine interviews and i get asked to sit in on a lot of them is the questions that we ask in these oral boards really don't tell us anything about the person's talents or abilities it's like you know why do you want to be a canine handler what does that really assess for us when we're asked a question like that so you know in the supervisor course i go through kind of an in-depth.

Selection process of oral board questions and what those questions should look like and putting together a two to three part question where it's a scenario and they have to tell us how they would handle it as a dog handler and do they capture all the information they should be capturing so it's normally it's a selection process of the handler is where i will start yeah with them and then you know once we get into that a little bit then we talk about supervision And, you know,

what I see happen there on a regular basis, I have agencies that, that we do training for that they come out to us twice a month for eight hour trainings that I haven't seen the supervisor of that agency for probably three years. Yeah. Which means they don't know if we're training dogs or having a barbecue and beer.

Yeah. You know, and so I talk about that, that you can't just shoulder tap a guy or a gal in the hallway and say, hey, you're going to take over the canine program tomorrow, which happens quite often. And, and then load them down with a bunch of other assignments that they can never come out and take care of the one that, in my opinion, probably creates the greatest liability for you.

So we kind of, I kind of go through those things first and then I'll move into dog selection because, you know, I tell them after we selected a handler, we've got a pretty good idea of what that handler will look like and what that dog should look like for that handler. Yeah. Because, you know, I always want to find out from them what they want from their program. They want a PR program, then, you know, we'll put together a PR program.

If they want a program that will be PR as well as we'll go out and work and do the job, then, you know, we plan it that way. Yeah, yeah. So I guess when we're talking about supervisors, the way I look at it, there's probably, you know, a few different types of supervisors. And some of it's based on the size of the agency. So some of the smaller agencies, by necessity, the canine supervisor, it's going to be an additional duty and they might have two or three canine teams plus maybe a shift.

I would say in a smaller agency, is it fairly unusual that they have a canine sergeant that is only canine? Do you see that very often? No, no, I don't. You don't see it. And like you just said, they usually are a sergeant that has a shift to take care of. And, you know, he may be, even have the FTO program. He may have the Explorer program. I mean, he's just, they never have just canine and a patrol shift, at least the ones I've dealt with. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, it's, I, you know, in an ideal world, canine would have its own supervisor, but, you know, that's not the world we live in. And so when you're a supervisor and you're tasked with a lot of those different things, if I was a brand new canine sergeant and I never handled a dog, never had a leash in my hand and told you, you know, I'm in that situation, I've got a shift and I've got canine and maybe FTO or something, and I came and talked to you, what would your advice be to me?

Just, you know, how to start and what should I be looking for and. You know, how do I do the best job in that situation? As a supervisor? Yeah. If I came to you and said, you know, I've never, never done this, but they just gave me, they just shoulder tapped me. So now what do I do? So, I mean, what I do is I tell them, number one, you want to get yourself educated into canine as quickly as possible. So you want to hit seminars and, you know, conferences and things like that

and start networking with other supervisors. I said, you know, the supervisor course that we do, the three-day one, they all get to network. We put together their email list so they can all communicate with each other afterwards. But networking is probably the biggest thing. And like I said, getting themselves some training.

Go to training be a be a present presence at training you know stand there listen to the trainer you know pay attention to what they're doing ask questions about what they're doing you know try to understand as much as you can about the program what i do find happens sometimes is these inexperienced supervisors will go in and they'll start making changes to the program and they don't know what they're doing and they and what their

changes are are doing is actually We count more productive to the program. So I tell them, don't go in there and make a bunch of changes and act like you know what you're doing because you really don't.

Go in there and be a support. Go in there and learn as much as you can and support the handlers, the dogs, the program. And then there'll be a time later where you learn some things. You might think to yourself, hey, why are we doing it this way? And you get that response. Well, we've always done it that way. Well, let's try something else. You know, I mean, and I told the captain years ago, cause he was my former canine surgeon. He said, he goes, why did you, why did you make that change?

He says, that was tradition. And I said, well, I've learned that tradition chokes progress. Yeah. And he, he just looked at me and he goes, really? He goes, where'd you come up with that? I go, I came up with it on my own because I've seen it happen. Yeah. I've seen it happen. So, you know, I, I try to tell him, you know, those kinds of things to help guide them along a little bit. And then they always have my number. Yeah.

You know, I did a canine trial this last weekend where I was a judge and the sergeant was up front on the trophy presentation and he thanked me for always being, you know, he's brand new as a canine sergeant. He thanked me for always being available by phone to, to ask questions. Yeah. And so you want to find that kind of resource. I don't, you know, I tell people all the time I'm not like a taxi cab driver where the meter starts running when my phone rings.

I'm more than, I'm more than happy to help people. If they have a question, they can call me and I'll try to help them out over the phone if I can. And I think that's because you're a dog guy. And it leads to the point I want to make is that, you know, like you said, if you're a supervisor and you have no background in canine, but now you're the supervisor canine, what you might not realize is that the canine guys work.

So to your point of, you know, you've got guys that you haven't seen the sergeant for three years. When they show up, they don't need a sergeant to tell them to train their dog. They're excited to train their dog. They work. That's one of the cool things I think about canine is that, you know, we'll have a big group of whether detector or dual purpose dogs, single purpose dogs, even at the seminar that you host, the Western States and Reno, there's way more handlers than there are supervisors.

And yet all the handlers are working constantly and they don't need to be told to work. If you're a successful dog handler, you like what you do and you don't need a brand new supervisor to come in and start telling you what to do. That's a pretty good way to kind of get on the outside really quickly. And, you know, same with, like you said, you're, you know, you're available because you have the passion for canines.

So, you know, I take phone calls. I, all of us in this industry work a lot and you don't have to get paid all the time. You know, it's a, it's a passion, but I think you've probably seen that too, where new sergeant shows up and they want to make sure everybody knows they're the sergeant right away when they've done fine without a sergeant at training for years. So, you know, how do you address that? Well, I tell them that, you know, again, I actually had that happen to me.

I gave the guy, we had two programs, patrol program, narcotics program, and then I ended up combining them. But I gave this new sergeant the task of supervising the narcotics. And you You were the lieutenant at the time? And I was the lieutenant at the time. And I told him, I said, don't go in there and act like you know everything about canine because you don't know anything at all. And all you're going to do is alienate these guys and you're going to lose the program.

Well, that's what he did after I warned him not to. And I ended up having to pull him out of the program. And the guys were ready to lynch him. And I was like, you know, we can't have this. I've got to have somebody that will manage the team and that they'll respect and work with. I mean, every one of the handlers came to me and we're just like fed up with the guy.

So that's what will end up happening is you'll take a, a good, strong team atmosphere and you'll destroy it. Yeah. And if you go in there and you just, you know, like wanted to like prove to everybody, you're the, you're the sergeant, you're in charge. You know, I mean, you can be in control of the things that you need to control, which your biggest concern as a supervisor should always be the liability side of everything. Yeah.

So if you see something that you think is a little bit on the egregious side that it's, you know, dangerous for the, for the agency, then that's where you would step in and say, I don't, I don't understand this. And I'm not sure I like what I'm seeing and question it and, and go approach it as you're trying to learn something. So tell me what we're doing and what we're trying to accomplish here.

And I'll tell you my concerns. Yeah. But if you just go in there and just like start telling them how to train and what to do, it's not going to work well for you. Yeah. You know, humility, humility will take you a long ways. Yeah. And that leads to, you know, the, the question of it takes a personality to be, you know, whether you're, it takes a personality to be a narc, it takes a personality to be a SWAT guy, and it takes definitely a personality to be a canine guy.

Is, do you think there's a personality to be a canine supervisor? Yeah. I don't know. I think, to be honest with you, I think any really good supervisor can be a canine supervisor. It does take somebody who wants to be dedicated and put out the initiative to be a part of the program and, you know, participate a little bit. But I think, you know, a good supervisor can be a good canine supervisor as well. It's, I mean, let's face it, we've got good and bad supervisors out there.

So, you know, and we're probably always going to have that. Yeah.

And I think, I mean, to me, I think the personality is a good supervisor. And I think, you know, the mark of a good supervisor is one who, you know, empowers the people that work for them as opposed to trying to babysit them all. You know, cops don't really like being babysat. No. No, they don't. So they've picked a handler and you tell them you'll come to some training and stuff. Is there like some specific liability concerns that they should be looking for?

Again, if we have a supervisor who's listening to this that is like, you know, that makes sense. But what should I be watching for there as a supervisor?

Well, in your selection process, you want to make sure you don't have a guy or gal that has had a lot of IA or excessive force claims. You know, it's going to be something you want to look at. But, you know, then you look at the handler at a training or perspective handler training and you watch how they interact.

Are they acting like they know it all or are they, you know, a sponge on the sidelines trying to learn everything they can and they're listening and they're watching and they're asking questions and that kind of thing. You know, that's kind of what I would look for in somebody who's going to be a new handler. I don't want them to show up and pretend like they know everything. They probably are going to know very little. Yeah, yeah.

So if they come in there and you're acting like they know it all, then you probably know you're going to have a problem. Yeah. With a prospective handler. Yeah. What about for if they're watching the training and they're, you know, all experienced handlers and stuff, is there training or scenarios or stuff that, that they should be suggesting or watching or auditing or. Well, for new handlers, I recommend they go through a, a decoy school. Yeah. And I watch them interact and handle the dogs.

Um are they confident do they do they express confidence in what they're doing you know that kind of stuff and so because i actually had that with merced pd came through and they were selecting a handler and or yeah a couple of handlers actually and they had them come in and go through school and i had them pulling dogs out of the kennels you know working those dogs yeah that kind of stuff and so yeah so anyway long story short by the time we were

done the sergeant came and he said what do you think about this particular candidate and i said well he was probably the most confident out of all he handled the dogs really well when he pulled them out yeah so i said i really liked the guy and there was actually not any of them that i didn't like but yeah he was the one that stood out the most and then there was another guy that you know second kind of second runner-up kind of thing that he did really well as well. And so.

You know, that's how they selected their handle was off of that, that decoy school. So when you can do something like that and watch them actually working dogs and interacting with dogs, it gives you a pretty good blueprint by then of now we're going to go get them a dog. Yeah. And you know, what that, what's that going to look like? Yeah. I did a similar thing with the agency.

I was helping them pick bomb dogs. And I had two, when I was still working at two Labradors and they're both complete jackass high drive Labradors and brown one and a black one. And the guys were in there, the candidates were all in their class A uniforms with their captain and majors watching them. And we, I told him, you know, get the, I put them both in one big kennel and I said, and I just gave him some goofy task, you know, get the brown one out and play ball with them.

Knowing that when the door opens, they're both going to pop out and it's going to be complete chaos, you know, in the room. And, and it was just to see how do they react, you know, with these dogs jumping all over him and being, you know, out of control. And one of the guys that was high on their list, um, after about a minute got really, really upset, got pissed. And so these are Myers dogs. He can handle it and kind of walked away.

And the major looked at me and he thought it was a dumb exercise at first. And then when he saw the reaction, he looked at me and he was like, I almost gave that guy a dog. And I was like, yeah, he probably doesn't need one, you know, cause he was like really upset. And the guy, the, one of the guys who got the job, the caller came off the dog and dog was jumping up all over him, getting his uniform dirty. He just stopped and laughed and he's like, well, this isn't going well.

And it was like, actually it's going really well. You can be embarrassed, you know, you can be embarrassed in front of your supervisors and dogs will do that. And he, he, you know, he's, and now he's doing really well as a handler, so. Yeah. I mean, there's simple things that you can do. You know, we do a hands-on testing that I teach in the supervisor course too. And it's got to be the right dog, right? But we call them, there's a dog over in that patrol car.

You need to take a six foot leash and go get the dog out of the car. And then we'll tell you what to do after that. And so on the table, we've got like a bunch of different leashes and toys and tugs and different sizes and everything else. And you see them standing there and they're looking at it. And so they'll grab, you know, maybe a four foot leash and they'll grab a tug toy or a ball or a Kong or something like that. And they walk off over to the car.

Well, in one case, the dog, when he came out of the car, lunged up for the toy, ended up getting the candidate in the arm, missing the toy.

And of course everything went to you know hell lamb basket quickly and you know when i tell people this in the supervisor of course i tell them it was a simple test of can they follow instructions i told them a six-foot leash and go get the dog out of the car i didn't say anything about taking a toy yeah anything about it just said yeah then you'll be given instructions after that so you can find out really well like i said in that particular test if people can follow instruction.

As a dog handler in training, you've got to stay consistent and follow instructions, attention to what you're being told. Yeah.

I mean, that's all good information. Going on back to the supervisor, you know, so you're a new supervisor and you've selected the handlers or the teams are up and running and stuff. Is there like, what areas would you suggest as a supervisor who has no dog experience, should they be studying case law or watching the training or going to training or, you know, what would be some of the first steps a new supervisor should be taking?

Well, I mean, the first steps that they probably should do is, you know, I'll throw the plug in for him, but the Sheepdog Guardian has probably got some of the best stuff out there. I mean, when he took over Terry Fleck's stuff for liability, he.

Done a really great job yeah you know and and that would probably be that's usually one of the first places i send them is you know get into case law start paying attention to what's going on you know jump onto some podcasts you know because there's so many out there that you can listen to but i always tell them also when you listen to a podcast don't take it as that's the gospel what you're getting is a podcast and it's information that's being shared with you by you know

one individual and it's very it's their opinion yeah and you know based on their years of experience so you know take it throw it into your toolbox and then later on down the line start pulling things out of your toolbox when you think you need them and see if it is something that would apply or work for them so those are really the places i direct them to is to get that information like again like a sheepdog guardian i get it here i all

my trainers that work for me all get it We talk about new cases on a regular basis. We hear other cases come up. And, you know, Jason Massey is like, he's always coming up with a new case. And he's one of my lead trainers and coming up with something new and sharing it. And it's all good stuff. And you get people that are active in it like that. And that's what you want out of your canine supervisor, somebody that is going to jump on this stuff and listen to it, pay attention to it,

and then start watching your own unit and see how they're performing. Yeah. When I was a new handler, we had a sergeant who, he actually would assign us cases. You know, the internet wasn't super big at the time. This was a while back, but he'd find some cases and we'd have to figure out, you know, how to research the case a little bit. And they were all the, you know, the big cases and we'd find stuff.

And at training, you know, once, you know, when your turn came up, but every training day, somebody had to stand there and talk about a canine case.

And honestly I didn't really like it at the time because I was a new handler and wanted to go play with the dogs but looking back it really kind of set that foundation of this is important and we're going to spend time talking about it because it's also training it's not just getting the dogs out of the car all the time it was you know making decisions and stuff and I always thought it was a great exercise I always encourage you know handlers and agencies to incorporate that still,

yeah absolutely I think it's a great great learning tool I did it with our last school people. We only had three dogs in the class, so we were burning these guys up pretty quick. It was a detection school. And I cut them loose early one day because the dogs were showing a lot of, you know, they were starting to plateau on me a little bit. And I said, hey, we're hitting a wall here right now. They're not going to learn anything from here out. So I'll tell you what,

here's a case for you to go look at. Here's a case for you. Here's one for you. And then I want you to come back next week on Monday, and I want you to share with us what you learned or got out of the class. and it was great. I mean, they all came back with information and talked about it and shared it and, you know, it turned out pretty good.

Yeah, it's a good habit, I think, to start. So we talked about the supervisors that, you know, are tasked with other things, but there's some agencies that are bigger and they have seven, eight, 10, however many dogs and the supervisor only has canines.

So my first question would be, you know, when we start talking about really big agencies, what do you think is a good ratio for if you're tasked with only canine how many teams can't do you recommend that a supervisor can supervise as a canine team is you know ratios eight to one ten to one twelve to one you know i kind of i'll kind of put that into just even the training side of it i am okay with a one to eight ratio but nothing more than that yeah

so as a trainer i don't feel like I can really give a hundred percent to every team. If I've got 10 teams sitting there and I've got a lot of people with downtime because, you know, they're waiting for their opportunity to get a rep in. So one to eight is about probably about what I would recommend. Yeah. You know, I think that's probably something that you can operate probably fairly smoothly, but much more than that. I think you're going to have your hands full trying to keep up with it all.

Yeah. And I I would think one to eight on a supervisor's part of it and then maybe having some of the handlers beat the trainers to assist that with you would probably be…, something you would recommend, I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with you. Um, I just don't know how a supervisor could keep up with, you know, I mean, maybe they can, and maybe I'm way out in left field. Maybe they're doing a great job.

But for me, I just feel like, you know, from even the trainer's perspective, I'm one to eight is what I would prefer. And I think that's probably about right for even the sergeant and what they should be able to keep up with. So another question with a supervisor, either, no matter what your situation is, but you are the canine, your title is canine supervisor. How much involvement, so suppose I'm the canine supervisor and I've got a shift and I'm not working and it's Tuesday at 3 a.m.

And one of the canine guys gets a physical apprehension.

What how much involvement should that canine supervisor have at that point that ideally you know for ideally ideally but i know you can't expect this to happen but ideally my preference would always be that the canine supervisor is notified right away and if they're capable and able that they should go out and be involved in you know the use of force investigation or, you know, the post-bite stuff and all that kind of thing, get on it right away.

What I, what I did with my Modesto guys was that I didn't like, I came in one morning and ended up passing the chief in the hallway and he goes, uh, yeah, here you had, one of your guys had a pretty good deployment last night and I'm standing there with this dumb look on my face because nobody had told me nothing. Yeah. Right. And so after that, it was like, Hey, if you guys have anything at all, you get ahold of me. I want to know about it.

And I think that's the way it should be all the way around. I think we should always be in the loop of what's going on. I know it's probably unrealistic for me to say that they should always be the one to go, but every sergeant in that department needs to be, or supervisor in that department needs to be trained on how to do a use of force investigation involving a canine and what type of questions need to be asked. So that's part of my supervisor course.

And I actually developed this class for Aurora, Colorado, because Aurora had a unit that is assigned to just investigate all uses of forces in the department. And the guys that were doing it had never worked dogs. And so they had all kinds of questions, didn't understand it. So I put it together for them and I went out there and actually did it. Well, then I added it to the supervisor course when I realized that,

you know, hey, there's a lot of supervisors out there that don't even know this stuff either. Yeah. So it goes through a whole, I mean, I've got a question, a checkbox sheet that I give each supervisor that when they leave, they have this thing and they can check things off that they've done it as they go down. And it's really kind of a, I don't know, it kind of opens up the eyes of the supervisors on deployments and investigations.

So use of force by canine is not a standard use of force and there needs to be some training specifically for canine. is what you recommend. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's completely different than anything we do. And even that post, you know, post-bite interview and the types of questions you want to ask, um, I've learned from doing some of the expert witness cases that I've done that had we asked this question on the post-bite, we wouldn't be where we're at.

Like the guy's saying that he has, he didn't hear the announcement because he has poor hearing. But if you had asked them after the post-bite and got a statement from them. Hey, do you have any physical injuries, anything, impairments, visual, audio, anything like that? And they tell you no. Well, it's pretty hard now to come back two years later and say you couldn't hear them because you have poor ear. Yeah. So you don't think about those things until it comes up. And then you're like,

yeah, we should try to ask that question. Yeah. One of the agencies that I dealt with a couple of years ago, they had their handlers do all of the interviews all the follow-up and just put it all on the sergeant's desk and the sergeant would come in in the morning and read everything what's your opinion on that well as i think.

In my opinion the supervisor needs to be involved in the actual incident out there and and maybe even asking some questions of their own yeah to just get it to get it on paper um, Again, I'll reflect on a story years ago of a guy that wasn't a canine use of force, but it was a use of force and it landed on my desk as a lieutenant. And I had heard things about it that it was like a downright, you know, a heck of a fight. Yeah.

This cop was about to get his butt kicked and things didn't go real well for him. And I read the use of force and there was nothing in there about him, like almost losing the fight. Nothing in there about him being afraid or concerned at one point he was losing. I call him into the office and I said, hey, close the door. I said, man, this sounds like this was quite a battle. He goes, oh, it was LT. And I said, yeah, tell me about it. He goes, man, he goes, I got to tell you.

At one point, he said, I thought I was going to get my butt kicked. He said, I felt like I was losing. And he said, I got a little worried, got a little concerned. And I handed the report to him. I said, then go put that in the report because there's nothing in there about it. And so that's my concern is, is that if you just leave it to the handlers to do it, and then you read it the next day, you're going to miss the opportunity to, as in this case, you're going to miss

the opportunity to maybe make sure all the information is there and it's done properly. Yeah, yeah. And in the instance I'm talking about, they had called me because they had a couple of uses of the canine that they didn't really like. And then when they started reading the reports that, you know, the handler had started, you know, start to finish, more red flags started coming up that a supervisor probably would have seen the problem much early on.

Right. It was kind of not a, it was not an unbiased investigation at all. It was kind of like, here's what I did and it was great. And, uh, they, they bought off on it. So it was, it worked out in the end and most of it was an education thing for the handler. But I think, you know, a good use of force can, can also be a, you know, an education tool and, and develop a better team.

Right. Right. I see that in training records too. Because I work, you know, hand in hand with Bob quite a bit, Eden, and he's got cats. And a lot of my folks are on the cat system. I have the ability to go into cats and look at the training records and I can put trainer's notes in them. And I went in to look at some records and I was at training with this group the day before.

And I got ahold of the sergeant and I said, I got to tell you what this guy put into his training records and what actually took place are two different things yeah yeah and he was like really and i said yeah i said you know he made his dog sound like it was perfect in training and it wasn't so i said it needs to be corrected but this is a supervisor thing not a trainer thing yeah you know and so he was like okay i go you were there i said you saw it i

said you need to look at his record so and that's another thing that supervisors really need to pay attention to but they'll look at training records but if they're not at training they have no idea if those records are accurate or not yeah and so it's huge that they stay involved with it and you know know what's going on and making sure those records are correct and accurate yeah and then i guess one final thing you know i know we're throwing a lot of

quick stuff out here but and you and i've had this conversation and my feelings have changed over the years and we haven't talked about this for a while but uh what do you think of a supervisor or working a dog themselves? Well, if you'd asked me that when I got promoted to sergeant and I had my dog, I'd have told you, yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. But again, I'll, you know, I know I'm telling stories, but again, there were learning experiences for me.

And it wasn't a dog situation, but it relates to what we're talking about. And when we first got beanbag shotguns, the only ones that had them were sergeants. And we had a gal with a knife and she was by a tree and they had her surrounded and they were trying to talk her down. And I show up and I've got the beanbag with a less lethal there to use. And I've got probably 10 cops on scene. And I paused for a second and I looked around and we were in a court in a residential area.

I looked around and I had three guys with long rifles pointing directly down into the court where there's home. Yeah. And I realized that me standing there with a beanbag shotgun meant that I was not doing my job as a supervisor because I can't supervise and be a part of the incident. And so that being said, that's kind of where I take it when it comes to supervisors working a dog. I know there's, you know, on the East Coast, there's a lot of that to go take place.

I don't recommend it. I think that you've got to be a supervisor. You can't supervise if you're a part of the use of force or the potential use of force. And I think when you and I have talked about that a long time ago, I was on that same page. Now, the reason that I changed my mind a little bit on that is because, and I just want to get your opinion on it. I see so many crappy canine supervisors, you know, to be quite honest, just guys who don't really have much passion at all about canine.

But they're either, you know, they're doing it to build their resume. They're doing it so they can get another assignment, you know, get to SWAT or to get to, you know, something else. And they're just kind of passing through that. And my travels that when I'm training with a unit and the sergeant has a dog, a lot of times I see someone who's got more passion about canines. So I think there's a balance there.

And I don't know, you know, how you think about that or what, you know, what you see when you're traveling and see, see different agencies, the ones that have a dog, do you see any better supervisors, you know, because they're, they're a little more invested? I, I mean, I haven't seen it. I think what it comes down to, and I'm completely honest with you, Jeff, I think what it comes down to is selecting

the right supervisor. Sure. And in most departments, there is no selection process for the canine supervisor. It boils down to you get shoulder tapped in the hallway and i hear it i mean i've literally had i don't know we've been doing this advisor course now for what uh 14 years or so up in tahoe and i've had you know probably hundreds of supervisors come through there and i would say in every class 90 of them in the class were all are all shoulder shoulder tapped they know nothing about

canine. That's why they're there. They didn't ask for canines. They had no desire to go into canine, but now they've been given the assignment. And I think that's where our problems come in, where you're talking about is the lack of a proper selection of the canine sergeant.

Because a good canine sergeant, you know, or a canine sergeant that's good will make that program do nothing but blossom. But the one that is checked out and isn't it training, and I've got, you know, I've got some of those right now. They don't know what's going on. You can see the guys kind of, guys and gals kind of struggle a little bit. Oh, yeah, yeah.

They're, yeah, they're trying to look for, you know, I mean, I'm given my, myself and my trainers are actually giving them advice and ideas on how to move, keep the program moving forward it should be coming from the supervisor as a team i love it when a supervisor is there and he sits everybody down before we start training and they have kind of a team meeting and they talk about things and then we start training i love it when that happens because it tells

me that he's got buy-in to the program and the he you know cares about what's going on so yeah um but again the ones were you know i actually just heard this from a group of handlers not too long ago said i said you know hey i'm kind of disappointed having a senior supervisor well you know he's been kind of checked out lately yeah and uh you know we think he's probably you know gonna move on and take a different assignment

in the department and end up with somebody else and so that happens a lot yeah and it comes down to just picking the wrong person selecting that you can select the wrong supervisor you can select the wrong handler you can select the wrong dog. And when you do all three of those things, you've screwed up your entire program. Yeah. But that's why I think, like I said, I used to think the same thing about, I just didn't like supervisor working dogs.

But in my travels, you know, a lot of times when I find a supervisor that has a dog, sometimes it's like maybe the whole unit's dual purpose dogs and the supervisor has a single purpose dog, or sometimes it's dual purpose, whatever. Just in my opinion, those, a lot of times those supervisors are more involved because, you know, they are coming to training, they're working their dog. They like, they like the canine unit and they like what they're doing and stuff.

And it's just one way to kind of keep, you know, good people involved, you know, and the agency I worked for, if I'd have promoted, it wasn't like yours. If I'd ever promoted, I'd have been out of canine immediately and in a district.

And I just think that if, if some of these agencies have the option of guys working their dog, getting promoted and continually working a dog sometimes that you know makes for a better supervisor yeah i mean it's the same thing with handlers these departments have this this concept of they work one and done kind of thing and i'm like why would you do that you've got all this time and experience wrapped up in this individual and now you just

want to boot them out the door and hand it over to somebody brand new and they've already proven that they'll give you everything they want yeah. I also will tell them, but there are those that don't give you that a hundred percent and you don't want to give them another dog. So allow the person to put in for the assignment again. And if this guy is a cancer or gal's a cancer, you'll be able to remove it during that process. But, you know, don't just say they're one and done.

No, you can put in for it again. You'll have to test for it. And this is why you're going to test for it. And, you know, we want to make sure that it's the best person. But at the same time, you know, if this person is bad for the program, this is your opportunity to move on and get somebody new. It shouldn't be automatic either way.

No. Yeah, I agree with the one and done. I've been, that was going away and lately I've been hearing quite a few agencies going back to that. I don't see the logic in it. Yeah, I definitely do not understand it. I know a lot of chiefs. It's like, well, we want to give lots of people to get that experience and learn something new.

Okay well you're still allowed to do that by having them test yeah but if you're going to if you're going to wash this individual out this is your opportunity and somebody else new can do it so anyway so yeah we're on the same page on that and really you know most these agencies a canine position is an at will position and these agencies should have the wherewithal to say this just isn't working out you know we're gonna give your dog to somebody else and find you a different assignment and yeah

no i i agree with you that's a that's another thing that i tell supervisors as well i don't know what your program is like or where you're at but you have to have the authority to to run your program and make a change if a handler is.

Like i had a handler that was physically abusing his dog and i didn't know it yeah i saw the dog would shut down and i couldn't figure out what was going on the dog was fine when i was around but he wasn't so good when i wasn't there well it was because the handler was was physically abusive to him when i wasn't around but he was the dog felt safe when i was there yeah and i didn't i caught him actually physically abusing the dog one day at training i stepped

around the corner to look to see who was waiting on deck and it was him and he put the boot to his dog and i saw him do it and he looked up at me and his face just went white and he knew what was going to happen i said yeah i said go get the crate out of the back of your truck. Put your dog in the crate and you're done. Yeah. And actually I didn't say your dog. I said, put our dog in the crate and you're done.

And they were like, I had sergeants in the class or supervisors in the class say they could never do that. And I said, you have to have the authority to make that decision in situations like that right there. Yeah. There's going to be others where you're going to need to do a lot of documentation to boot a guy out of an assignment like that. Something egregious like that, yeah. Absolutely. You need to have the authority. They said, no, we would never have that authority.

I'm like, well, it's something you need to fix because you need to have the ability to fix that problem right away. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, this has been good stuff. Like I said, I know it's going to be real quick on this. And then the one-day course that you're going to do here at the end of July is going to be kind of fast, but there'll be a lot more information. And then you do the three-day course around the country, and I think you do it every year in Tahoe.

So if people like this, you can come out to the Colorado Canine Conference and get eight hours of this, along with we've got Rob Lucason helping you and probably Billy Holbert. So three kind of different perspectives and a ton of information. And then, like I said, you do the course. Are you doing it this year in Tahoe again? Yeah, we just did it first week in May. Oh, okay. And then the next year we'll do it again. And then actually we're looking at doing one over on the coast.

We've been asked by an agency over there to come over and they'll host it. So we'll probably, my wife's all about that one because she likes to go to the ocean. Yeah. So there's plenty of classes out there for canine supervisors, you know, and Ron's got some really good ones.

He does it in Texas and everything. So, you know, if you're a canine supervisor listening to this, or if you're a handler and you want to forward this to your supervisor, you know, it's always a good idea to get some different perspectives. So I appreciate, you know, coming on today and I'm looking forward to seeing you here at the end of July or out here in Colorado. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I didn't get to make it last year due to work

stuff. And I almost had that happen this year. And I said, no, no, I can't do this to you. I wrote a Jeff. So I said I had to make some adjustments. Well, I appreciate that. We just signed another big contract, and I asked them to get started on it as quick as I could because I wanted to keep my commitments. Well, I did have to pull out of hits this year. Oh, no. I don't have time, and I just gave up my booth. I just can't do it. Yeah, I get that being busy. But you'll have a good time.

Right now, I think we've got 70-something signed up. So it'll be a good group and a lot of good instructors. So plenty of room still, if people are listening, you can still sign up and, uh, you know, come out and meet Ron and a bunch of other good instructors. So thanks, Ron. I appreciate all your time and I'll see you in just a couple of weeks, actually. Sounds good, Jeff. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. All right. That's pretty good information from Ron. I appreciate him coming on.

Let's wrap up today with a talk about Ray Allen Canine. So you hear me talk every edition of the podcast about Ray Allen Canine. I just helped him in the process right now of helping an agency start a canine unit. It was really easy to pull up Ray Allen Canine, go down the list and just click all the different stuff that the agency needs.

The person that I'm dealing with doesn't have any experience with canines, so needed to know specifically which leash, which collar, all the different equipment to buy for their new teams. So it made it real easy because Ray Allen has everything. So check out rayallen.com. And if you're in that same position, you're starting a unit, you can get everything all in one stop. If you have an experienced canine unit or you've been doing it for a long time. Jump on the webpage and dig around.

And if you're like me and you like, seeing what their new stuff is. They've always got new quality equipment. So rayallen.com for all your canine needs. And then finally, I want to talk about Kevin Sheldahl. He's down in New Mexico. He runs canineservices.com and it's k-9services.com. And Kevin sells dogs down there. He's always got some dogs on hand. He does classes. So you can go there and do the classes. You can get the dog and do the classes or Kevin will come to you.

He's got online courses that you can check out. And he also has different auditing programs that he can come and do an audit of your unit, do a custom course. So kind of a little of everything Kevin does in K9. So check out canineservices.com or give Kevin a call at 505-250-4576. Thanks everybody. Music.