Selecting the Right Dog for Your K9 Unit

Hey everybody, we're going to do a show today talking about selection tests and some information about how you'll be able to do some selection testing of some dogs at the Colorado Canine Conference.

I've got a couple of my friends on the show today, so I'm looking forward to sitting down talking to them all about selection tests. Before we get to that, you as always got to pay a few bills. So I want to start talking about today to talk about Ray Allen. If you haven't checked out their webpage lately, just pull it up. You're probably sitting in your car listening to this and go to RayAllen.com. They always have new stuff on there, new equipment.

It's a fun page, you know, as dog people just to kind of flip through and see some of their new equipment. You know, everything on that page is going to be extremely good quality. It's already been tested. It doesn't just show up on the page. There's a whole process before they start selling it before it ends up on the webpage. So when you see it on their webpage, it's going to be quality equipment that's already been field tested and it meets the standards to be on Ray Allen's website.

So check out RayAllen.com for all your canine needs. And then also I want to talk about CATS canine software. So CATS is K-A-T-S and it's canine activity tracking software. That's Bob Eden's software. He's the first one to put canine record keeping on computers. So he's got a lot of experience doing it. The software is highly customizable and the customer service is outstanding. So if you sign up, you can get a free trial.

You can start playing with it and see if you can customize it the way you want. And Bob will take care of, you know, any customer service things you need. So check out catsplatinum.com for your canine record keeping needs.

And then I wanted to also talk about Kevin Sheldahl. He's down in New Mexico. His website is canineservices.com. You can also call him at 505-250-4576. So canineservices.com. So Kevin's in New Mexico. He does classes there. You can buy dogs from him, do the class right there, go through his whole academy, get certified, and then come home. Or Kevin will come to you and he'll do a class or a seminar or unit audits. And he also has an online class.

So check out canineservices.com and you can check out where to go to see his online detection class, which is a really cool class project that he's got put together. So canineservices.com or give Kevin a call at 505-250-4576.

With that, let's jump over and do the show with Brian Lawson at E.P. 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 a couple of my friends with me, which is gonna be a fun show because I've got Brian Loss and Adrian Peach with me. And they're the two who kind of talked me into starting this Colorado Canine Conference and they're doing a lot of the work to get it going with me. So ColoradoCanineConference.com, you'll see all the information. We've got a lot of great classes and a lot of really unique stuff.

And one of the unique things that we're going to do at the conference is we have a vendor coming and bring in dogs. So the Next Level Canine out of Las Vegas with Tim Adams, he's one of the sponsors of the show. You've heard me talk about him.

He's going to come up with a trailer full of single purpose like Labradors and some dual purpose police candidates as well and give people the opportunity to selection test however they want to, take the dogs around to stations and look at the dogs and have the experts look at them. And if you like the dog, you can buy them and take them home right then. So it's a pretty cool way to buy a dog if you need a dog this year, come to a seminar and, you know, get a lot of expert opinions.

In the seminar also, we're going to have Brian and Adrian are going to do a class for us on selection testing. That just comes from testing a lot of dogs themselves together. They train a lot together. The three of us are very much on the same page when it comes to dogs. So I brought them on today to kind of talk about what their selection test process is and kind of how they got there. So I'll start with Brian, why don't you do a little introduction for people who don't know who you are.

I'm with Arvada PD. We have a small unit. We've only got three dogs and been in canine for 25 plus years. So actually, I guess more like 27. So quite a while. And I've worked seven on the streets, seven patrol dogs that were NARC and patrol and we also do tracking for our department. And I'm also with the Colorado Police Canine Association, a member, a certifying official, and I'm also with the NPCA as an instructor trainer and a certifying official as well.

So I've been doing this for a little bit of time. And one of the benefits that I will tell other people is I may not be that smart, but I've made mistakes and I'll teach you not to make the same ones I did or tried to. Well, yeah, we've all done plenty of those. And you've traveled around quite a bit and done seminars, and you have a very vast background in all parts of police dogs. I have. I've been very fortunate in my department. When we started, you were given a dog and told good luck.

And there were some great things about it, but there were some of the flaws, I would say, is that one of the flaws was our trainer was kind of our vendor. So you really didn't have a say, even if there was problems. Yeah, yeah. And then we were also limited to just shepherds for a long time. Then we switched over to where we could have both.

And right when I came into the portion of being a trainer, and just a little before, we started going out to other locations instead of having just a single dog shipped to us. Yeah. So having gone from the old days, just like Peach here, where you didn't really get to pick a dog. It was just whatever happened to be there that was in your hand, to now actually picking the dogs for the drives and doing a selection test that we want to see those.

And then actually to be able to somewhat match it to the handler, but also knowing what our applications are, because we do a lot of tracking, various searches, and narcotics. So Hunt Drive is one of the big ones. I've been fortunate enough that other departments have sent me out to help test dogs.

So I've been very fortunate to see different vendors, learn different things, learn some tricks from the vendors, some things to watch for, and some things that, you know what, they'll help me out too. Because if you get a good relationship with the vendor, they will help you out as long as you treat them fairly. Absolutely.

And Peach, why don't we go over your background real quick before we get too deep into the dog part of it? Yeah, I work for a small agency in Metro Denver area. I've been a handler for 15 years now. I'm on my fourth dog. They've all been patrol, narcotics. Again, we have a smaller agency. We only have three dogs in the unit. And like Brian was saying, I'm on my fourth dog. My latest one is the only one that I've actually had the opportunity to select.

Everything up to that it was just handed to me and here's your dog and deal with it and go with it yeah but over the years you've also helped select a lot of dogs and looked at dogs when there's groups of people out buying dogs so you've seen quite a few dogs i know that i've been there quite a few times when we were buying dogs. Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things is that I've been lucky.

And I think with Brian, one of the things that we found is that you have to go with someone else to go select a dog. You know, if you go by yourself, there's stuff that you aren't going to see and you're going to miss certain things.

And then, you know, they're going to see things that they like and you don't like and you're able to bounce ideas and bounce dogs off each other. So not only, you know, are we going to see select dogs for our own units, but for other units as well. So that's helped out and exposed us to, you know, the opportunity to see different vendors and select different dogs. And that's one of the advantages people hear me talk.

And, you know, I'm a big preacher on training in groups and have a multi-agency training on a regular basis, which you guys do. And that's one of those advantages that if somebody in your guys' training group needs a dog, everybody from the training group is there to kind of help pick that dog and see what they see.

Because there's so many idiosyncrasies when you're looking at a green dog that nobody knows the background of, that really anybody might see some slight behavior here or there and call it out and either test more or eliminate the dog or whatever.

But it's it's one of those reasons why you know i preach all the time about making sure you're you're not just being insular and only only training with just your unit brian let's go let's go to the class you guys have put together a class you've taught it a few times where did the class like where'd the idea of you guys doing a class come from and and what do you hope like when you do a i know you did it at western states in reno last year what do you hope when

you go do a class that people get out of it. You know, I think both Peach and I are very lucky, but, you know, it came at a cost because when we didn't have choices for our own dogs, you know, you were just stuck with the dog in front of you. And when we started going out, you don't realize it's very eye opening. And, you know, it's a great privilege because one of the things, the importance of selecting a dog is, you know, you're talking about a career for a handler.

But I work for a smaller agency like Peach. And so just the cost, since there's no real close vendors here, just the cost for you to go out, select a dog or test a dog. And if you don't find a vendor with enough of the dogs that you're looking for, your department is eating a couple thousand dollars.

And when we're talking, we're asking $12,000, $15,000 for a dog and then have to explain to them that, well, if the dog doesn't work out, it's $1,000, ship it back and then another couple thousand to go out. So we started seeing the importance of, man, go out there, see as many dogs as you can, get to know the vendors and those kind of things so that you don't want the people, I don't, and I think Peach is the same way, you don't want to be intimidated by the process.

No. You want to have enough information so that you feel either comfortable doing it yourself, or one of the things that both Peach and I advocate is find somebody in your area that you respect, you've seen their dogs and those kind of things. And if you don't know, all of us here in the canine industry really try to help each other out. And so I've done it on my own time. They just have to cover expenses. Peach has done it for me and I've done it with him.

And so we realized the importance of starting it off right. Yeah.

And, Peach, so when you do the classroom part, I know you guys have some videos and stuff. Those are just videos that you guys have kind of collected from doing a lot of selection tests. And then the videos in those, you're showing some of the good and some of the bad that you found. Yeah, so I think one of the things that we looked at, both Brian and I, and we asked ourselves, what do we wish that we knew about selecting dogs before we went out there?

So a lot of it is trial and error, a lot of things that we've come across and that we've done mistakes and everything like that. We wish that someone had been around to tell us these things that, hey, be aware of this or be aware of that. And so what we've done is these videos are obviously the good and the bad. You know, there's even, you know, one video in there where the dog chews through the lie. Yeah.

And, you know, it's a bonehead mistake that we weren't, you know, we weren't quick enough because it turns out the dog only had three teeth. We didn't think it would take that quick to get through the line. But it's just things like that that we, you know, even in down to equipment to bring with you or to ask and stuff like that. Just that's one of the things that we'll put in the class. And we're open to other people's experiences, too.

You know, in the class, we say, let us know what you think and what you've had to do. and even people who go out to select an out area get feedback just so that we can make sure, just help people out. Because like Brian said, it's a big expense. And our departments, when they pave us out, they don't know what we're going through.

They have no idea. And so they just think, hey, you spent this amount of money and you either ate, didn't come back with a dog, or you came back with a dog with this issue. And they don't quite understand. And so we want to help people avoid that. One of the things that Pete shouldn't mention that we put an importance on not only selecting the dog, but how to do the selection processes.

Peach can go into it, but he got tore up pretty good on a selection test where he ended up in the hospital for a couple of weeks. And it was things like the dog didn't have a flat collar. We didn't have some other things. And so Peach can go into that. But I mean, it's not only selecting the dog, but it's how to go about it. You know, now if I do a tie-out or Peach does a tie-out, there's two lines. Yeah. because. I think, Peach, how many stitches did you, or they stopped counting?

Yeah, they measured it. They stopped counting at a certain number. So they just measured the number of stitches, the length of them. And that was basically a dog that got away from you, turned on you. And then because the dog didn't have the proper collar, there was really no way to stop the aggression from the dog. And we didn't know the dog. We didn't know the vendor, the guy who was handled. Well, we knew the vendor, but we didn't know the guy that was there.

And so it was a learning lesson on that one. And obviously, you know, we make sure that that dog has the right collar on before we even get them out of the kennel from the vendor. And I think that's a good point to make right here is that, you know, whether they're bringing the dogs to you or you're going to look at them or whatever, safety is really important.

And this, it can get, you know, more than once I've had dogs, you know, come to leash at me because we're taking real strong dogs out of a kennel and then we're going to go work them and stuff. They don't know who we are. So at that point, really everybody's fair game. So it's one more thing where having that experience of dealing with, you know, how to handle the leash correctly and how to maybe calm the dog down a little bit before you go and unhook him from doing a cable tie.

There's a lot of small things that many of us have learned, you know, because we've had dogs attached to us at inappropriate times, you know. So those are, those are those safety things, you know, that, that I think in the class and, you know, we'll talk about when we're out on the field with the dogs here at the seminar, but those are those things that I think sometimes we get so excited about seeing the dog that we forget about some of the real common safety things.

So I'm glad you guys are, are stressing that part of it. Yeah, I mean, like Pete said, we go, we take certain equipment with us. I don't count on a vendor to have a choke chain, certain things like that. So we always take one of those with us. And there are other things that we'll show in the class. I'm not going to go into the whole detail and Pete won't either.

But those are things that before we even get started. And we put together a little bit of a scoring list that we take with us and we'll do the scoring, but we also video it so that we can look at it a little bit later. That's where we got this compilation of all these videos. And the nice thing is, is that like, like she said, we don't know everything or there may be something we haven't seen, but always being willing to, to see.

And then the big part about the class is just getting them an idea of what to do and then to not be uncomfortable with it. Yeah. And it's one of those processes that it's, I mean, everybody's got their own way of doing it. And you mentioned one other thing that I just want to reiterate that educating the command of the department before you ever do the trip that, hey, the dog might not be there. We might not come back with the dog. We're not going to take the wrong dog.

And also preparing them that sometimes the dog looks good when we test them. And for whatever reason, when we bring them home, they're just not the same dog. So I always try to make sure that I stress a lot that, you know, there's a chance we might have to exchange this dog. Because I've seen departments hesitate exchanging dogs that should be exchanged because they just don't want to deal with the wrath of the administration.

That is mad that they spent the money, you know, to get the dog and now they got to ship it back or whatever. And I dealt with that myself a few times, you know, when I was still working and I'd get accused of buying dogs plane tickets because we were shipping dogs back and forth.

And it's funny because whether you're a large agency or a small agency, all the agencies have money to an extent and a couple thousand dollars to ship a dog back and get the right one is really a minimal expense in the grand scheme of things when you're going to work this animal for probably, you know, six to eight years at least and, you know, get better results out of a better pairing.

Yeah. And I think one of the things that we talk about and one of the things that, you know, the question and answer portion at the end of the causes is that we don't want to sit there and slag off on vendors and stuff like that, but some we've had better experiences and some we haven't. Everything from, you know, the testing of the dogs, whether we're able to take them off site you do there etc just things that play into it then of course.

You know, the warranty process and then how easy it is to return the dog and how good they are. And because that to us is, well, that's, it's a huge thing because, you know, if they make it easy and you have to return the dog, it seems to go a lot smoother with the administration. But then if they, you know, if vendors fighting you, then you have to go to administration and explain that.

And it, it, it makes it look bad when you go back a second time or the next time you need another a dog and I, hey, can I have this amount of money? And they're like, well, you spent a lot lost time and you can go smoothly. I don't know if I'm allowed you to do that again. Yeah. And not only that, I think one of the big points, you made two points there. One is don't be afraid to go there and come back empty handed because if you

go there with the sole intention of getting a dog, you may get the wrong dog. Yeah. So, you know, when you go out there and you do all these things, yes. And I think the other one that we all have to look at in the canine world and trainers especially, you have to put your ego aside because you may select a dog. I can tell you, I selected a Dutchie who was not quite a year old. I mean, it should have been a clue to me that he passed every part of the test with flying colors.

And about six weeks into the academy, all of a sudden, you could see everything just clicked. And this dog turned into a holy pistol where he was going to eat everybody. So putting the pride aside and saying, you know what? I wasn't wrong. He just changed out a little bit. And it's more important that the handler be safe. And you're talking about like an agency like mine and Peaches. Like mine especially, you may only get one dog because they have that rotate.

So I don't want to make this a miserable career for that guy. Yeah. Yeah. I just see, and I think we've all seen that, people that are very reluctant to exchange a dog. And I'm all about it. If it's not the right dog, you know, I always, I know all the vendors personally. And whenever I'm buying dogs for, you know, any project I'm working on, I tell them all, you know, we're friends, but this is a business deal.

So I pay the retail price and I, you know, I expect to have the exact same customer service. And when you set that in advance with the vendors, it's usually not too big of a problem. And also, you know, check the reputations of vendors with handlers who bought dogs there. And the one thing I always want to hear about is from handlers who had to exchange a dog with that vendor and see how they were. because there's some big vendors that it's a no questions asked.

If it's not the right dog for you, bring them back. They exchange them immediately. And there's some other big vendors who everyone will tell you the same story that you got to get lawyers involved in everything else and they're not worth dealing with. It's either they stand behind their dogs or they don't. Because most of these dogs, like the one that you're talking about, Brian, didn't work out for you. It probably worked for somebody else for whatever reason.

And a strong vendor with a good business will be able to figure out how to make the dogs work. They're not going to just go out of business because they have to exchange one or two dogs out of the many that they sell over the year. But let's back up before we actually look at a dog on the field. How much emphasis do both of you guys put on understanding, if you want to call it dog psychology, or the behaviors.

Like if you're taking somebody to look at a dog, Do you spend some time first talking about, and even showing maybe the videos you have, showing them, here's what the behaviors we're looking at, and here's the psychological profile of the ideal dog that we're looking for? Do you guys start that way? We, we, sometimes we take people with us, you know, we'll take, if we're lucky, we can take the hammer so they are part of the process.

And yes, we'll go through that because drives are important and hopefully they'll understand them. And if not, while we're out on the field, for sure, we're explaining what we're looking at.

But I mean, we, we definitely feel that all those drives and traits that we've learned about over the years is something that we very specifically look for in our test sure yeah you know i don't know if we get quite in depth down to the psychological behavior of the dog but we just need to make sure you know if it's for someone else what they're looking for and what their agency wants and then you know how they're going to handle

it and then we'll talk about okay then if that's the requirements then well this is what we're going to look for in the dog and this is why we're doing this kind of testing because this is what we're hoping to see or not to see. And then, you know, I'll explain the score sheet and how that's going to show up and how we think it pertains to deployments on the street. Yeah, yeah. And when you get to a vendor and everything's good, they tell you, you know, they'll either help you with the dogs.

And, you know, some of the vendors just let you take the dogs off and do whatever you want. Some of the vendors want their personnel to handle them. I never get offended by that because, you know, it's their dog and they don't know where, maybe they don't know us. and they want to protect their dog, make sure that nothing crazy is going on. So, but as long as they'll cooperate and do the tests we want, I really don't care about that. But when you're there, you're at the vendor, they've told you,

we've got this many dogs you're going to look at. You go out on the field. Most of us all start with, you know, like a cable test. What are you looking for right off the bat? You know, they're bringing the dog out of the kennel and they're walking across the field. Are you starting to look at the dog at that point? Well, let's go back. I now start a test and Peach and I are on the same. We start with the environmentals before we put a dog in any of the drives.

Yeah, good point. So we'll try to get to them. And a lot of the vendors have got their own places and those kind of things.

But before i put a dog out on a cable the way we've kind of devised it is we're testing some of the environmentals in the hunt drive before we put them into that huge paid prey drive because, we all know that once you've gotten a dog a little jazzed up he might be a little bit more than he would be normally sure so before we even go to that portion of it we're usually looking at the environmentals and we're testing hunt drive

before that as well just so that okay we know the true DNA of the dog before we jazz them up. And I think, you know, Jeff, if certain vendors, they'll say to you, hey, listen, this is the list of dogs. This is where they're at. This is their kennel. And you can actually go grab the dogs, which is a little scary to begin with. But you can at least see the dogs from the get-go. And I like to see them even before the guy brings them out. Yeah.

And so you can see how they're going to be in the kennel before you've done anything with them. And, you know, obviously, you know, the thing is, you see the dog and kennel, that's how he's going to be in the car and that's how he's going to be at home or anything like that. You can see, you know, if he's trying to kennel fight with the other dogs next to him, then we're going to take that into account.

So right from the get-go, we'd like to see as much as possible before you even start the quote-unquote testing portion of it. Yeah, and that was the point I was trying to make was that, you know, the testing, I think some people get hung up on the actual test part of it. But there's a whole lot of observations you can make. And I agree with you.

If I can go down in the kennel and get the dog out myself, and you're right, some of them, you go down there and you're looking at them and they're trying to eat you through the kennel. A lot of times I just figured that's just not the dog for me because the dog knows the game. You know, they're at the kennel. They know there's a training field down there. They know there's going to be somebody with equipment on.

They've been doing that for a couple of days to a couple of weeks, how long they've been there. So the dog that just simply is so amped up and wants to eat everybody that's coming near the kennel with a leash in their hand. A lot of times I think those dogs, I mean, yeah, can you work? I'm sure. But if there's another one that's a little more balanced and is showing me that he's a little more clear headed, I'll probably move on to that one.

And it doesn't make me a wimp because I don't feel like wearing this dog. It makes me a guy who's worn a dog or two. And, and I feel like it's just not worth, you don't get the juice out of the squeeze on some of these dogs when they start out like that. Cause absolutely nothing has happened yet other than I've walked up to the kennel and now the dog's losing his mind.

A lot of times when we take those dogs and we do get them leashed up and get them out on the field, what I've found is a lot of those dogs are actually the ones that won't handle much pressure. So the real calm, balanced, stable ones. And I agree, you know, I look at their kennel, if their kennel's a mess, if they've crapped in the kennel and ran around in it, I don't want that dog in my house. I don't want him in my car.

So, I mean, and it's nice when you're at a big enough kennel that you can start, you know, and they have enough quality dogs that you can kind of get a little bit more particular, you know, so. Well, you know, like you're talking about, one of the things that we, and I think you were on the trip with us to Europe when we talked to one of the vendors over there and they'll look at a dog in a kennel.

And if he's doing the spinning in that, they're like, this dog is going to be doing that in his car. So how much energy is he going to be having when we go to take him out?

He's already half unloaded. so I mean it's and then once you take the dog out of the kennel he's not one will be walking behind just to see if he's reactive to other dogs you know the one like he said trying to to fight other dogs on the fence and like in this day and age you're paying enough for a dog that you don't need to put up with those things you know go on to the net exactly and and again that dog knows he's going out on the field to do what

should be the most fun in his entire world and if he wants to slow that process of getting out to the field to do the fun stuff to fight with the dog at the fence, it tells you pretty much all I need to know about his mindset at that point, how distracted he is about dog fighting with other dogs. You know, one of the things, too, when you go and see the kennel, you can also, like you said, the dog crapping in the kennel, but you can also see the state of the kennel at itself.

And because, you know, I can't help but be a little prejudiced against the vendor if the kennel is just disgusting. Absolutely. And the dogs don't look healthy and everything like that. I'm like, okay, well, now I know that the quality of the product that they're giving me and how they care much, how much they care about it.

And, and I'll, you know, I'll, it'll be a fact that won't say, Hey, I'm not going to take this dog because the vendor doesn't take care of its, its own property, but it's going to be a case of, oh, well, I'm going to keep that in mind next time I'm collecting a place to go. Exactly. Exactly. It just kind of shows the state of their operations.

And another intangible thing that I'm kind of getting at too, is whether it's a single purpose, like a lab or something, or a dual purpose, there's an attitude that, you know, I mean, we've, we've all seen it, you know, just that happy dog.

That one that, you know, when he's first presented with, you know, us, if it's by a kennel staff and they're bringing him out to show us a dog or whatever, I want a dog that is balanced and happy and social and, you know, like ready to work, not being intimidated by people around. And I mean, there's plenty of times I've seen even, you know, a dual purpose candidate look like he's very intimidated.

And there's a difference between kind of that aloof and not social and the dog that just seems like maybe he's a little scared because there's people around. We've got a couple of dogs, the dog that we got together that for my agency, that's just kind of an aloof dog, doesn't really care about people petting him. But when he's in drive, he's fine.

So I start kind of trying to read the dog long before, and I like your point of doing environmentals first, but I start looking for those kinds of things long before we ever get that dog in drive, because it's going to tell you a whole lot about what you need to know.

Well, and you brought up something that we've learned as well, is talk to the kennel hands. They've had their hands on them. And too many people go and say, I'll take this dog, and then I'll sit there and say, Like, hey, can you give me a little history here or, you know, anything I need to watch or ask them, hey, you know, when you get a list from a vendor, any particular one that catches your eye.

And it may be that it's a very friendly dog and they like it, but they've been at least spending some time with that dog more than you are. And a lot of times if you just talk to them, they're more than happy to help you. Yep. And most of them won't volunteer it, but they will give it to you if you talk to them and ask them.

But then there's the other side of that coin, too, that if you have the person who's running the kennel and they're there to sell you a dog and they'll tell you, they'll bring the dog and I'll be like, hey, look, I don't want to prejudice you, but this is your dog. This is the one you're going to take. Yeah. And then you see that dog and you're like, really? No. No. So, you know, I have to remind myself and say, hey, look, they're salesmen, too.

And they're going to sell us what they can get away with selling us.

But so you know you're going to take everything with a grain of salt and and where that information is coming from yeah yeah so in the environmental stuff you're just basically looking for just a dog that can handle all the different environments the surfaces the noise the light and dark rooms just and you're just looking for a confident dog going through different environmental testing i assume yeah because you most of our dogs come from europe So a lot of them have never seen the end doors,

you know, select floors and all those kind of things. And I've seen dogs that you've, you know, I can work them through this and that, but you just don't know when that's going to pop up. Yeah. In a real world environment, in a bad situation where you don't need something like, hey, I've got to work this dog through select floors or what else are they seeing? Separated metal. Oh, absolutely.

And dark rooms just because dogs aren't used to going to them so you're checking the confidence because like we said before you're spending all this time and money so most departments are trying to cut back on their academies and training time so i need to make sure that whatever i've got is the best that i can start with yeah yep and there's a difference when you're doing those of a dog that maybe just has a little hesitancy that you can work through and then a dog that as a problem.

And that's one of those things that it just takes some experience to kind of read the dog a little bit and understand, you know, it doesn't look great now, but this isn't going to be a big issue or, well, let's look at that again and maybe put that dog away because he's not the one for us. Yeah, you know, and you mentioned something, Jeff, earlier, you know, when the dogs come in from Europe, you don't know how long they've been there.

You know, if these dogs have only been at the vendors a couple of days, these dogs have been through a horrendous, life-changing incident, getting on the plane, whether they're doped or not and stuff like that. And so you got to take that into account that sometimes when you're testing them, the dogs may be at the lowest you're going to see them because they're still recovering. Yeah, exactly. And so you got to take that into account along with everything else,

obviously. Yep. Very good point. And the key he said there too is one of the things in a testing that you're going to watch in a dog is its recovery.

Because you're going to find lots of things that it's never seen. You might see that hesitancy you talked about, but then their recovery, and let's learn this, is something that we do watch for in the dog. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don't mind, you know, some dogs reacting to things. It's just do they recover and get right back to work right away. And then, then, you know, it's not going to be too big of an issue most of the time. What do you do for the hunt test then?

So we'll just do the, the different facets of it. You know, basically it's not whether the dog's going to find the ball that's out there. We just see how long he's going to search. And that's the goal and see what he's doing during the search.

You know, obviously we'll take, you know, we'll take the ball, go out there, simulate putting it out there, put it out there, hide it, let the dog go on a long line, depending, you know, if we're lucky enough that it's in a fence in an area, you can let the dog run its lead otherwise you go on a 30 foot to see what he does hunting for that ball or whatever the toy is you know is he going to stop and he's going to sniff he's going to piss on something he's going to lose interest you know

we were at a vendor one time that the fenced in area was right next to the camel and it was actually dog brian's dog now that he has we did the hunt test and these dogs on the other side of that fence were going ape and this dog didn't care about them yeah and he just hunted for the ball and obviously that was a huge huge thing for us a huge positive for the dog and then we'll just you know we'll time how long that dog takes you video the whole thing,

and and from beginning to end obviously and then we'll see how long the dog hunts for when he loses interest. And to them, they'll go on the score sheet. But one of the things too, when we do this hunt test and part of the reason we video it is we'll sit there. And I remember when you were in Denver with your patrol dogs, you guys loved higher scent dogs. Yeah.

You know, for area searches. Well, for us, since we do a lot of narcotics and tracking, as I'm watching the hunt test, I'm looking to see if this dog is more visual or if he is going to go to ground, you know, so that I can watch. You know, some of those dogs will instinctively start tracking where you'd gone and hunt for it. Well, that's from my department and peaches as well. That's something that we're going to mark on that sheet. Like, okay, this is a great low-nosed drive dog.

And then we work it that way just to see how they go. And like we said, you know, obviously we all think the same when it comes to the hunt, how important it is. Because if he's not going to hunt, he's not going to hunt for the man. He's not going to hunt for the dope. He's not going to hunt for anything. Exactly. Exactly. And I tell you, I think some people, I talked to somebody not that long ago that they're a single purpose patrol.

So they said, we don't do much of a hunt test. I was like, well, you're missing the very most important thing. Cause you know, they were only thinking, well, we only do a hunt test for detection. That was like, no, dog's got to hunt for all of them have to. Well, and then we'll go and we'll fake the hide. Like we're throwing it down and then come back and we'll just let the dog search. And we usually time it. We're usually like three to five minutes.

We'll cut it at about that time. So again, it's not about them finding it. It's how long are they willing to search without me having to step in. So we'll do that where there is no toy just so we can see what the hunt drive is on the dog. Yeah, and I think it's good to note that point too. I think all three of us are on the same page that I don't want the dog that keeps coming back to me to ask for direction.

What should I be doing? I want the dog that ignores me and just goes out and keeps hunting and does his own thing. Those handler-dependent dogs, when they start showing it to you then, you're going to fight that your whole career with that dog. And then one of those things that we found as well is we will put a toy at a certain location, let the dog go get it, and then we'll go simulate that.

And we're testing the dog's trainability and memory. If he goes right over and checks out right away, I'm going to know that I'm going to have to be careful with my training because just, hey, this is a memory dog that's going to be checking every drawer. But that's also a sign of its trainability, right? So that's something we also score as well when we do those fun tests. And with the hunting like we do with every other portion of the test,

we don't overstress the dog. If the dog's at the point that he's not hunting and he's done, we don't push it. He's done. Yeah. This is an opportunity for the dog to show you his behavior. It's not to even either pass or fail a dog. It's just to let the dog show his behavior and the numbers will be the numbers. Yeah. You know, even when we do the courage test portion, if you see, you know, the dog is not going to handle it, we're not going to shut a dog down. No. Yeah, exactly.

You know, just because, you know, it doesn't matter how many dogs we've got left. If that dog's not going to do it, okay, we're done. We're going to be good to the dog. Exactly. Put them up happy. Yeah, we never want to do any harm to it. And if there's anything else for the vendor, we're at least giving that dog some training.

One of the things that i wanted to point out on the hunt test that you and i have talked about it and peach and i have talked about it too is when the dog does do the locate i'll want if that dog just looks at me and goes hauling butt to its own corner and i'm like okay that might be too much independent that he doesn't want me to yeah and i ran into that with a dog that we selected and, it was a constant struggle and then the other one is is if he comes back or

would bring him back on a long line, and he's like, okay, am I going to fight him for the toy every time? There's, like we said, especially for, if it's a single-purpose odor dog, why do I want to have to have that conflict? Exactly. Because that cuts down on your training time, and it also cuts down on the dog bonding with you. Exactly.

So, from the hunt test, then you go out on the field, and you want to start checking the dog's bite. What do you do at that point?

Yeah you know when it comes to the bite itself i you know we all check that but it's more just testing the courage of the dog you know we like to see if the dog will settle we'd like to see if on the back tie to see how he's going to be you know it's going to show whether or not the dog is is nervous you know we had one dog that we we back tie and we try to set it up that we have a camera there that there's no people around and that the camera can catch it to see what the dog's doing.

Yeah. You know, there was one dog there that, like I said, chewed through the line pretty dang quickly. And then there was another dog that was just peeing on everything. And then the longer we left it, he just became more and more nervous and just wasn't had nothing to do with the testing. So that's the first portion we'll, you know, write itself to see how the dog's going to settle. Sure. And that doesn't have to be more than a few minutes. Yeah.

We're not talking, you know, sometimes it could be two to five minutes, but you'll see the dogs that start twisting themselves up and they just get more and more and you're like, that's a dog that's going to have some problems with capping itself. Yep, exactly, exactly. And then, so the dog, you know, once he settles in on the long line, you approach the dog. Describe what you do then. So it's funny because I've seen it, you've seen it.

And, you know, it used to be we would go straight at a dog. But one of the things that we'll do is we try to come at the dog with something unusual that they haven't seen. It'll show the dog's DNA, so to speak, in recovery as well. And one of the things we do is we start walking up to the dog with a large sheet in front of us. Because all these dogs, more and more of the vendors have seen this now, and they might. I've had a vendor say, oh, you know, do you want your sheet?

When I came back and I'm laughing, and he goes, yeah, we showed it to him. And, you know, the funny thing is, we showed the dog this just so it's a very unusual picture. Yeah, exactly. Walk up to the dog to see if he's going to back off or is he just going to sit there. And if you start seeing him backing away without putting a whole lot of pressure on him, And that tells me, okay, this dog is not going to handle unusual situations.

But then I'll come up and then I'll sit there and I'll get as close as I can. And if he starts leaning forward, then I'll just lower it and let him see who I am. And you can see the recovery or, oh, okay, I've got this. Yeah. You know, so everybody thinks it's this kind of big, you want to charge out. And some of the times we've done that before where it's a big dog and now learning

that this is just part of what their confidence is. that they're going to be willing to throw something in their arsenal that they haven't seen before. And like I said, a lot of these offenders don't do that type of test. And all it is is us testing is recovery from something unusual. Because even if they back off, when I drop the sheet, if they're like, oh, here you are, and they come right out, then you're like. Okay, that showed me that it just needs to work.

And I think the key is, like you said, it's a lot of these dogs have seen stuff. So the people who cable a dog and then they put an exposed sleeve on their arm and then they get a whip out and they sit there and crack a whip until the dog's barking and going crazy and then approach him and let the dog bite the exposed sleeve.

That's not a test. Not in my book anyway. You're not really, you're not seeing anything because most of those dogs, when you give them an unusual situation and you haven't kicked them into that crazy prey drive with the whip and exposed sleeve that's visual, you're going to get a whole lot of different dogs, different reactions. Yeah. And, you know, the thing is, is that we don't bring out the sleeve until near the end.

And, you know, cause we'll go from the sheet test that will then just, just approach as a human, you know, and you're doing it slowly. You know, you're going to see how this dog's going to react. You're going to try to kick him into some different drives to see how he's going to do just with a plain human approaching him and challenging him. And see what the dog does at that point. And then later on in the test, when we bring the sleeve on, the dog does bite.

What we're looking for there is just to see how the dog's, not so much how the bite is, but if there's any medical issues. You know, we tested the dog once, but we liked the dog. But then we took the bite on the sleeve, and we noticed this dog is not biting on the one side. And it turned out that the teeth were all jacked on that right side. And that was going to cost us an additional $4,000 to $8,000 just to replace those teeth.

So, yeah. So, the bite itself, you know, like, Jeff, you can work on the bite, fix the bite. So, the sleeve and I get it, we don't put a huge… I agree. But there's still agencies to this day that, you know, will throw a sleeve on, take a bite or two when the dog's in prey drive and call it good and say, yep, that's a dog for us. And then they wonder, you know, when they're having other issues because they haven't really even tested the dog in the hunt or any of the other stuff.

Well, that's what we've talked about. I think one of the things that you want to, if you ask Teach and I what we want people to take from the class, one of the most important things is you're checking the dog's DNA. You're checking to see what's there before you even start. because the sheet recovery and all these things are what are showing what the dog's confidence level is, what his aggression level is, and his recovery. So that's a crucial portion to us. I agree.

I agree. And with education, I'm not going to say vendors play tricks, but a smart vendor gets dogs prepared to do well on the tests they believe that dogs are going to be on. That's just part of the business. I think with education and when you understand that when you start isolating tests that will isolate drives, then you can really, you know, there's no tricks.

You're just getting that dog down into an environment where you're able to kind of read his mind as to how he feels about different situations. And then you can make a much more educated decision. You know, decision on which dog you want when you start looking at several different dogs. And one of the things I don't know that we pointed out is the key to this whole stakeout, for us, the importance of not having the dog's handler there.

They can be over to the side, but seeing the dog in its true nature, unsupported, because I understand vendors want to be there, they want to handle their dogs, but when they're sitting there and they want to handle the dog through this whole portion, then I know I'm not getting a true read on a dog. So that's one of those things that when we do these, that we try to have the vendors understand this is, we're not going to hurt your dog.

We'll tell them what it is. And then they can be right there beside us when we're on the corner watching. But we need to see the dog's capabilities. Because, you know, Jeff, you know, to go back on your previous point, you know, you can't train genetics.

Exactly. And so one of the things that we have, we have a video where we had a dog that had been on the street a couple of years and we'd seen this dog have some issues and and we just you know we put this dog through a portion of this test and this dog had been on the street three years two years two years and he had actually had one or two bites but they're all you know prairie driven bison but we were seeing issues in training we back tied the dog and had someone come up and do

the portion of the test and and you see in the video that people who don't even have never seen a testing before don't know a lot about dogs they see the way that this dog reacts and they're like yeah that that's not good yeah yeah and as i said this dog had been through training been through all these things but he just didn't didn't have it and this that portion small portion of that test showed that the dog just didn't have the genetics yeah i helped an agency was

kind of the same thing that same story you know the dog was had crappy bites once or twice and then failed several times. And then when I went, I said, you know, they wanted me to get an opinion. So I did a cable test on the dog in a new environment when no one was around and we videoed it and they were shocked because I, with no pressure, I could have ran this dog off easily. And they hadn't seen that part of him.

And when I talked to them about why they ended up getting the dog, they went to a vendor and the vendor would not let them selection test.

They only got to stand there and watch the vendor demo the dog and i was kind of surprised because i was like that's not that's you know not not ever going to work so if you if you don't have the opportunity to actually do your own test and the vendor just wants to do a show and tell it's probably time to go and find a different vendor because they yeah agreed we agree with that so one of the things though too that we'll talk about since you talked about a dog on the bike.

So that's the very last portion is we'll either come out in a bite suit just because a lot of the vendors have told us, hey, they've never seen a bite suit. Okay, we'll come out there. We'll let them take a bite, show them a little bit, and then see if they get comfortable.

But then the other part of that is we have somebody that the dog doesn't know who could be the possible handler next come up to see if that dog is comfortable with somebody beside them, behind them, or they're going to come on that person. And the nice thing about that is you're going to read a lot about where the dog's eyes are, you know, those kind of things as you're even nervous, kind of looking back. So that's one of those, how's the dog going to match up with somebody new?

But we're not doing it just throwing them out there right away. So the dog gets to get comfortable, and then you introduce them. Sure, sure, in a fair way. Because, again, this, you know, our goal should be that we're just going to evaluate the dog, good, bad, or indifferent.

Front we're just going to evaluate them not to try and go through as many dogs and fail dogs you know or or pass a not a good dog one question i have is is when you guys have been buying the dogs different you know together or whatever have you ran into the vendor who you know you because most of the time even whether it's environmental the hunt or whatever you're going along and you just see a red flag that it's like i'm just not gonna deal with it when

you tell the vendor hey this you know let's put this dog away maybe had vendors give you flack about that like you know you're wrong let's keep testing this dog if you ran any of that. I haven't known personally, but they do kind of give you this look like, oh, you're an idiot. You don't know what you're talking about. But hey, if you're that dumb enough to put this dog away, oh, well. And it's like, okay, well, we're buying the dog. I haven't had it that bad.

No, the funniest thing you'll have is if the vendor is there, they're trying to play-by-play it or sell the dog, and they'll try and gloss over, oh, that's just this. Okay. And you know, they know that by the end, I mean, if, if I see enough, I'm stopping right there and I'm like, okay, it's just not my dog, but you will have some vendors, you know, Pete was talking about a guy who came out and said, this is absolutely the dog you want. And it was from a very large kennel.

And I mean, we were maybe a few minutes into it and you're like, no, not even close to what we're looking for. And then he's kind of looking at kind of, he kind of did kind of, Yeah. Yeah. Cold shoulders after that. Yeah. But we ended up, or they ended up getting a really nice dog from there anyhow. But you know, it's like they can't help themselves. Yeah. They are trying to make a living. Absolutely. Yeah. But it's not what they tell you, it's what your eyes see.

That's what counts. And that's where it goes back to, you know, if you haven't done this a lot and your task is the new trainer, the agency or whatever, and you haven't done it a lot, make sure you reach out and find somebody to go with you and kind of walk you through. Through it because it doesn't have to be an adversarial relationship with the vendors, but I'm not going to count on the vendor to give me all of my answers either.

No, you have to, sometimes you'll see, you know, even in the videos we have, we're watching the dog, you can hear the vendor in the background trying to, oh, that's awesome. Look how great that dog did there and everything like that. You have to almost tune them out. Yes. Yes, you do. Yeah. And again, that's why we take score sheets. And then that's why we videotape it. Because you'll see certain things, you know, like on a tie out, if the dog's licking his lips before you even do anything.

Or their eyes are they looking one way or the other and peach is right when we go together, it's so much more balanced if you have that capability it's great but i can tell you looking at the videos afterwards too you're like tip and you know like a couple days if you can afford at least two days so that you can step away and look at the videos at the end of day one and then you can go back and say hey look i like this dog but i saw something here that that i don't, I'd like to see again.

If you have the opportunity to do that, it's great. He's got a good point. I think the big thing is allow yourself two or three days if you're going to go through a bunch of dogs, because if you rush it, then you're really doing yourself a disservice. Yeah. And then sometimes dogs look better one day and not so good the next and for whatever reason. So I think you're right. You're making a big investment and you've invested the travel costs and all that.

So another hotel night to stay and relook at dogs the next day shouldn't be an issue for your agency if you've educated them correctly. So on the class, like I mentioned, we'll do some classroom stuff here at the Colorado Canine Conference, and then we'll go out to the field.

I think we've kind of figured out what area we're going to do it at, but you guys will be set up with the vendor and the trailer, and people can do your, you know, if you come and they want to buy a dog, they can do their own selection test. They can watch you guys do some selection tests and talk about them. And it'll be a kind of a group exercise where other people can say, Hey, you know, here's the test I do or whatever.

And I know, uh, Tim from a next level canine is pretty open to, uh, you know, as long as it's not a thing that's going to get one of the dogs hurt, just letting the dogs get worked and, and tested and, and played with.

So it should be kind of a fun time i don't i can't think of another seminar where you can go and do the whole seminar plus maybe buy a dog and take it home with them that's pretty i mean when you were talking about it and we talked about it one i respect the vendor that's willing to put himself up sure because you've done other dog show or dog seminars where vendors are like we're not really gonna bring a dog out and that kind of thing yes.

And then two, I mean, some of the vendors will come to you with a lot of selection of dogs. And I know Tim has done that. That's a really big benefit because you know the dog hasn't been in this place before. Yeah. And you know that he's pretty confident he wouldn't have traveled that far with him. Yeah, they're not going to bring a bad dog to you, not intentionally. And like for us here, you know, we have altitude, the air is a little drier.

So it's nice to have a dog that, you know, is going to be in our environment, you know, They're coming from another place. So when you can get a vendor who does that, it sure is a big bonus. The one thing I'm looking forward to, you know, like Brian and I have put this class on a couple of times, but we've never been able to do the classroom portion and the hands-on portion the same.

And that's the thing that I love about the seminar is it's a working dog seminar that you get to sit in there, listen to the classes, and then go out and work your dog in certain scenarios. And now we get to do this, actually teach the class and, well, put the class on and have Tim with us to be able to get his side of it on the vendor side of it during the classroom portion and then actually go right and see the practical hands-on portion of it, too.

Well, and that's just, I mean, the benefit of this seminar, I mean, talk about a unique experience. You're seeing a dog, you want to take it around, you take him to somebody like Mike Nesbitt to do the decoy work to see if you can build him. You go to Howard Young for exposure for different things. Then you go to Stanbro, and he's like, oh, I've seen all these. I mean, you want to talk about getting almost a mini academy in.

What a great athlete. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It should be a really good time.

Well, I think we've gone over a lot of this, and I think it's a good taste of what the class is going to be. So if you want more information about all this, it's at thecoloralkanineconference.com. And I think we'll wrap it up with that. So I appreciate you guys jumping on today and going over it. And we'll keep getting things ready for the seminar at the end of July. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate you having us on. Absolutely. Thanks, guys. All right. That's going to wrap

it up. You heard us mention several times Next Level K9 with Tim Adams. So thenextlevelk9.com or give Tim a call, 801-358. 0 1 2 0. He's the lead sponsor of the Colorado Canine Conference. As we mentioned there, he's been up here in Colorado several times in just the last five or six months, bring in trailers full of dogs. And a lot of the agencies here have taken advantage of his great customer service and found really good dogs to start their training with.

So check out the Next Level Canine or give Tim a call at 801-358-0120 and thank him for being the sponsor of the Color Canine Conference. And also, like Brian said, it takes some of these vendors probably don't have the... Confidence, I would say, to come up and bring a trailer full of dogs in front of a whole bunch of people and let everybody test them. So I appreciate Tim helping us out with that. And finally, I want to wrap up with acecanine.com. It's summer,

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I've used a few different ones, but once I started using acecanine, I never looked back. So acecanine.com for all your heat alarm needs. You can check out of the webpage and John Johnston, the proprietor, will do anything you need to do to help you get it installed and working correctly outstanding customer service from acek9.com thanks everybody have a safe week we'll be back next week. Music.