Special Ops K9 with Shannon Krieger

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With that, let's jump over to the show. 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. Music. Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host Jeff Meyer. Today I have a new guest on and this is going to be a fun interview for me. Hopefully you guys will enjoy it too. So Steve Stoops, who was on the program, then he came out and he taught for us at the Colorado Canine Conference and he'll be with us again next summer when we do the Colorado Canine Conference.

Steve put me in touch with a friend of his that he's done a lot of work with, Shannon Krieger. And Shannon, you know, he's been around a little bit, but some people have heard his story and some haven't, but he's trained dogs for the military and some police departments and done a whole lot of stuff. So Steve put me in touch with him. And this is really the first time I've had any in-depth conversation with Shannon.

Got him on tonight. I thought instead of spending a lot of time talking to him before we got on the show, all the questions I wanted to answer would probably be stuff that you guys wanted to hear also. So with that, Shannon, how are you tonight? I'm doing well, Jeff. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I appreciate you jumping on.

I know it's a little bit later on the East Coast than it is, but I know you've been traveling all week, so it sounds like you're just out relaxing, and maybe we'll have a good time to have a conversation here. Yes, it is. Just spent a week with Steve in Tucson teaching a Spikes, you know, Canine Foundation detection course. So I am totally relaxed and ready to talk. Any time with Steve, it goes in dog years. it feels like seven times longer than it really is, right? Yes, it does. Yes, it does.

So I know we talked a little bit at the beginning. I mentioned that you've got a lot of work with dogs. So we'll get to your background, but I thought let's start now with, what are you doing right now? I think you're worth Homeland Security right now, aren't you? Yes. So I'm actually a digital forensic analyst for Homeland Security. And the interesting story behind that was there was a program created in 2013 called the HERO program. And HERO stands for Human Exploitation Rescue Operative.

Basically, it was the SOCOM Care Coalition and ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement, that put together a program for disabled veterans to do digital forensics and more child exploitation cases. One of the other founders of the program was a non-profit company.

The National Association to Protect Children. So we all got together there through the SOCOM Care Coalition, and I got an opportunity to do an internship, go through some digital training, some digital forensics training, and then go out into a field office and work for free for a year and hopefully have a job at the end of that year. And that's what I ended up doing, and that was 2013. I was part of the first class, and it ended up becoming sort of a career.

Sort of how the dog stuff fits into this is at some point or another, some guys decided that he could teach a dog to find some digital evidence. And I was sort of really interested in doing that. And one day I was sitting on my computer and I saw an email that said HSI was considering starting a tactical dog program. And I, you know, I was just like, I saw that. It was in an email header, actually. And I just kind of looked at that and said, well, shoot, I know how to do that.

I reached out to a couple of people. And this was around 2020, you know, 2020. And it was actually right before COVID and ended up talking to the right people and, you know, beginning a relationship. And the next thing I know, I'm advising on being a, you know, advising on how we can get our tactical dog program off the ground. And it was for me, it was basically like getting the band back together. Sure, sure. Because I reached out to all my old contacts from, you know, from earlier on.

Yeah. And we ended up, you know, going out to Kenny Lickliders in Indiana for our first.

First picking our first dogs and and we ended up with five really really nice dogs and we went out there and of course i called stoops and steve you know steve went out there in medicine we put on a tactical handler course for the srt guys that were involved in uh that's that volunteered for this program and we started out with you know four solid dog teams yeah and uh and it kind of ran from there and we just it just we ended up going into explosives detection and we ended up doing some

other things and moving into a forward direction and then you know i'm not sure how politics works all the time yeah somebody got a hold of some bad optics or whatever on the wrong bosses are here or the right boss leaves and our program got uh got shut down yeah but the the digital dog stuff kind of kept going because it became kind of the flavor of the month and i stopped working with a bunch of state and local agencies that actually have dogs and i do that now i got

a really good friend in the carterette county sheriff's office who's a detective who has a digital dog and we we go out on search warrants and he is doing.

A fantastic job with his dog he's got a lab which is you know okay but um but he's you know he's he's used the dog to find digital evidence so my you know i've been doing a lot more detection than tactical stuff in the last you know last couple years yeah but you know that's been it's for me it doesn't really matter as long as it could have reached my head i'm happy so to figure out you know to kind of bring everybody up to speed on how

you ended up being the the guy they called you know for this let's go all the way back and just kind of go over your whole history. So I know you went to school in Florida. Yeah. So I went to school in Florida State and graduated with a degree in economics. I played tennis at Florida State. And here's where, you know, one of Steve's embellishments comes up. Because I did, I guess, technically play professional tennis because I did play for money, but I wasn't very good. Yeah.

I certainly didn't make a living at it. Most of the guys that I was playing with were much better than I were. But I did, you know. Hey, you got to go. Play a game for some money at some point. I traveled Europe. It was an amazing experience. If you ever get the opportunity to do anything like that, whoever, do it because you worry about the consequences later because it kind of grew me as a person being out. I'm out there playing beer league hockey every Sunday night.

I'm just waiting for someone who needs a 58-year-old has-been who never was, you know. Well, there you go, man. You know, you're only as young as you feel. When I'm out there, I feel and look really, really old. So then after, you know, you're playing tennis, was the military on your radar or was that something, I mean, did you have plans all along to get in the military? Yeah, I did. So when I was in high school, I grew up out on the bayou in New Orleans, Louisiana.

And we lived on, we had a really big area in my backyard. And, you know, there's water and swamp and all this kind of stuff. And we, my friends and I would get a bunch of tennis balls and we'd all go out there and hunt each other. Yeah. So being, doing something, you know, that we thought was militant, that was always something that was on my mind.

And so when I finished playing tennis and realized that it was time for me to go do some 9 to 5 gig or do what I wanted to do, I enlisted in the Army. And I was probably 26 years old, 25, 26 years old, enlisted in the Army and ended up at a Ranger contract and went to 76th Ranger Regiment, 1st Battalion in Savannah, Georgia.

So when you enlisted, was the Army always your plan or –. Yeah i want to see yes it was it just got postponed because i was having a good time yeah yeah i get that and then was uh was ranger school what were you hope to do once you got in the army or was it oh yeah i grew up you know reading all the green beret yeah that's what i wanted to do was be a green beret yeah my uncle was a was a vietnam veteran a korean war veteran vietnam veteran father was in the you know the health service health

services so i grew up you know with a strong military relief and a strong desire to serve so you already had a yeah like you had a i guess my question is you you already had a background in the military you didn't you just fall into this you kind of had a plan already that when you get to the military i want to get to special operations i was going in i was going in the army at one point or another not really when i when i started traveling a bit and playing it it it got i actually had

a conversation with myself it was like okay we can only do this so long because i've got one other thing i want to do before you know before it all ends you know so absolutely i was going in the military no matter what and you know my father wanted me to you know go to ocs yeah and become an officer and and i i was i had already made up my mind and i was going to enlist to come a non-commissioned officer.

And do the things that i really wanted to do and you had so you had a degree so you could have went ocs if you wanted to right yeah oh yeah so i i when i enlisted i was an e4 so i was i showed up at the range of battalion as an untabbed e4 which is which for the spec 4 mafia is a bad deal you know a pride you're private with college so that you know they they think you think you're better than they are oh i can imagine so it was a it was a rough time for me initially and i imagine And you were

probably older than a lot of the people there too at the time. Oh, absolutely. You know, what do you think about, you know, how do you feel about 18, 19? You're really telling me what to do, old man. Yeah. I can outrun you. I can do more push-ups than you can, and I can probably out-shoot you. So let's just get this done. It was hard. Yeah. It really was. But I drank the Kool-Aid. Yeah. I wanted to be a ranger, and that's what I did.

And I spent five years in Savannah, started out as a private, and he was an E-4, became a team leader, went to ranger school, became a team leader, became a sniper section leader, and then, you know, became a rifle squad leader. And after that, you know, it was on to I wanted to be a Green Beret. And then I sort of was introduced to what SOCOM really was. Special Operations Command isn't just, you know, the Green Berets.

The Green Berets are part of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, but they're not, you know, the top tier. And when I figured out who the top tier was, I went to selection, in 1998, the beginning of 80 and 1998, and went through selection and was lucky enough to make it through. So the end of 98, I show up at Fort Bragg to just start my OTC class. And by 1999, I'm walking across the hall as a junior operator. So, you know, living the dream really is what it was.

So at that point you'd been, I mean, basically doing special operations type training for several years from the beginning of the army too how many years total was that at that point well so when you i enlisted in 93 so when socom the the.

Great thing about socom is that you know rangers green berets all these guys are all part of socom so the the pool that they like to pull from is they pull from the entire u.s army and actually the military but the ranger battalions are are one of the proven training pipelines that they like sure because you know six seven seven out of ten operators were in a rangers if you if they came from the army okay the large you know the range of italians are the last bastion of discipline and

young pipe hitters that that are out there and so that's where i came from it's a well-respected pipeline and um it's it's still strong the 75th ranger regiment is an absolutely amazing amazing organization so i just for like somebody like me you know i've been around a lot of you guys over through the dog world but i wasn't in the military so a question i that i kind of wonder was you talking about break down the numbers for me if you kind of can like i mean how many rangers are there

and then when you go to green berets that number drops do you know kind of roughly you know how how trying to figure like get my get my head on how hard how hard it is to go from ranger to i don't have any i you know we could probably come up with some higher math and figure out the number but that's so there are three. Ranger Battalions in the 75th Ranger Regiment. Those are the three, first one, two, and three. First Battalion is in Savannah. Second Battalion is at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Third Battalion is at Fort Benning. Now, there are some training regiments in the TRADOC, you know, the training doctrine people that call themselves Rangers as part of, but they're not the 75th Ranger Regiment. If you want to be a bat boy, you're going to go to 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Battalion. And you're going to get your tab, which means you go to Ranger school. The Ranger Regiment, you're not going to become an NCO in the Ranger Regiment without a Ranger tab. Okay. Period.

It's just not going to happen. So when you're part of the Rangers then and you want to go to the Green Berets, what is that? I don't know what the number is roughly. Is it one in a hundred that get to do that? No, no, no. It's probably more than that. I mean, again, if you're looking at training pipelines and who you want to go to do that kind of work.

The mission for Green Berets is a little bit different than a direct action group of young men like a range of battalion, but it's still highly specialized. So I had an opportunity to go to the Green Berets selection if I wanted to. And then once you finish that, you go to what's called the qualification course or the Q course. You know, you can get into that. You'd want to talk to a Green Beret or a Steak Eater to figure that out, because I didn't do that. I went to a different selection.

So I went for something that was what I would consider and what most people consider to be the tip of the spear, which was Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the unit, CAG, Combat Applications Group, the D-Boys, however you want to call. And how many...

People how soldiers were that i mean is that is that probably not going to ever give you that number i mean yeah i get that probably dumb question but let me just say there's not a whole lot yeah and a dumb question i was just trying to kind of think my point of the the question was, it was a difficult you didn't just land there you earned your way there and and had to work work your ass off to get to that point so in the class that i went we had like 300 dudes start out and i think maybe like

25 of us went forward yeah yeah so that and after that number dwindled in half again and it dwindles in half again or whatever so yeah that's not that is not a walk in the park yeah and that's that was i guess i'm asking number questions i'm just trying to get to that point that by the time you got done with that training and you were up and running in the team.

You'd been through a ton of training over those years and then what and you said that was about 1999 or so yeah yeah so I became a junior operator in 1999 and obviously I know that you know around the world you guys were probably doing some stuff but I I'm sure at 9-11 is when you guys really kicked off and got a lot busier yes yeah that is and so where this kind of leads into with the canine stuff too so when I was in high school I was I did a demo I

volunteered to take a bite at the sheriff's office when they were doing a capabilities exercise showing their dogs and that was the actual first time i'd ever been in a bite suit it wasn't even a suit it was a sleeve yeah and i just thought that was the coolest thing on a planet and it wasn't until and that was you know in the mid 80s 83 or early 80s and then once again you know 15 years later i am volunteering for a canine program that I got the

opportunity to do when I got to Special Operations Command. Two of the guys that I actually worked for, they were senior operators. Pat McCauley and Alan Miller, offered me an opportunity to volunteer for a program that wasn't even started yet. At this point, it was a proof of concept. And I just jumped at it because, Because, number one, I just, I sort of, when Alan Miller is one of my better friends, when he explained it to me, I just sort of got it.

And I said, you know what, this is exactly what I want to do. And I said, yes. And at that point, we had only, we only had two dogs as a proof of concept. And there were three of us at that, you know, again. So first it was Pat and Alan, and then it became me.

And and i actually ended up getting pat's dog and pat started to move on to doing other things and still maybe doing a little bit more of the logistical stuff and moving on to bigger and better things and this was all pre-9-11 so so at that time you were you were mostly training the dogs and kind of getting up to speed and just you weren't out deploying on real operations at that point yeah this is where i run into steve so i we ended up at kenny lick gliders and 99 90 yeah early 2000 we ended

up at vlk and i met steve there and started training with steve started going to seminars with steve i went to all of kenny's courses you know every course he had to offer i went to i think i spent seven or eight months out of one year at vlk and you know stoops was was in anderson which is you know not that far away so he's always coming up and he and i I started becoming friends. And then when 9-11 kicked off, things really got interesting.

We had a pretty good idea about what we wanted to do, but we really weren't doing anything operational yet. And then when 9-11 happened, everything kind of went too accelerated. I ended up in a helicopter crash and not being able to operate anymore. And it just sort of, Pat and Alan were kind of doing other things as well. So I kind of became the, you know, a temporary PM, temporary dog person. And sort of took the reins because I literally was in Iraq as active duty.

And the next thing, or, you know, the next thing I know, I'm medically retired.

And I'm working a dog. at that point you know after 9 11 0 2 0 3 0 4 is when our program really began to grow we we started off with two dogs and then went to three and then went to six and then you know ending up with 15 or 20 and at one point we had as many as 30 or 40 dogs at one time and the the The other thing was I was given marching orders in the early days, you know, around 2000, 2000, late 2001, 2002 became go find out who, what,

when, where and how and why about what we want to do and figure it out.

And for everything that I had seen and read and trained with. You know, cops were the best source of information for us. Yeah. Because they were doing what we wanted to do on a much more proactive, you know, higher level. And I'm not saying, I'm not trying to insult anybody, but we're looking at using dogs for direct action and hostage arrest. Yeah. Not just a building service. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be that, too, but it's going to be so much more.

And I went around, you know, all over the country and ended up meeting a bunch of really, really good men. You know, Lane Kreitzer from Utah. He was a big part of having my eyes opened. And, you know, and obviously I ended up talking with Wendell Knope first. And it was Wendell who introduced me to Lane and was, you know, ran in, didn't run into Dave Reaver, met Dave Reaver. and all the time I'm training with Steve. So around 2004, I offered you, when we were ready to expand our training core.

We're now in Iraq and we're now going, okay, we know what we want to do. We are pushing dogs forward. And let me ask you right there, at that time though, dogs were going out on deployments. Yes. So I imagine, and it sounds like it was kind of a work in progress. So they'd do deployments. You'd kind of take the good and the bad and figure out what you want to change at that point. Yeah, that's exactly what we did. We had an idea about what we wanted to do. Yeah.

These ideas about doing, you know, close quarters back with dogs and that kind of thing. Was starting to become a reality, and I needed help. Yeah. Because, you know, I was, at one point, I was the only person there. And we had all these meetings with all these, you know, muckety mucks.

Yeah. And SOCOM, and they were like, okay, you know, you need to grow. You need to expand. Yeah. And you need to include everybody. And it was Pat McCauley that said, well, we will share our template with Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, everybody, but we're not doing it for them. We're going to just focus on our program. And that's sort of what we did. I met with, you know, me and Pat, met with Bill Eikenberry from the Navy.

We met with a bunch of the Rangers from the Army and all this other stuff, all these other guys. We met with some of the Green Berets that began their programs, and we kind of shared with them what we did well and what we did poorly and didn't do anything for them, but, I mean, helped them through the stupid things that we could. Sure. You know, they had to go out and get their own people. They had to go out and

find their own Steve Stoops and their own other guys. Well, I imagine you were plenty busy just standing up your own program. Oh, absolutely. It was 24-7. For me, being injured, and in 2004, I ended up medically retiring. And, you know, it was like, you know what, dude, you're not doing anything anyway. Why don't you just stay here with the dogs and do it? And you've got the background to kind of bridge the two together at that point. Well, and that's kind of what we did.

So, you know, and once we hired, so I asked, I offered Steve the job first. And Steve was still a cop and he hadn't put his full 20 whatever years he had in so he wasn't ready to take the position so we had another guy from Colorado that that we were also interviewing and courting and doing this and training with and we ended up offering him the job and I don't have permission to say his name so I just say you know the guy from Colorado but he was the first trainer that we hired.

He accepted it. He came to the unit first. It was him and it was me. And then a few months later, Steve shows up. He accepts the position because he was doing some stuff with the State Department. And once he retired and he ended up coming to work for us full time. So there were three civilian trainers that we had. We were each aligned with what we would Considered to be a canine team. And a canine team consisted of three or four dogs and three or four dog handlers.

So that each one of those teams, and not like a dog team like we think a dog before them. So that's kind of the matrix if you're looking at it. You know, Stoops has got four guys. I got four guys, and the other guy has four or five guys. And we each have four or five dogs plus floats plus dogs in training. And, you know, all of this is going on, you know, within a two-year period. And we're building a kennel facility for everything at the same time. And that was all in the States here, right?

Yeah. And wars are going on, and all of this stuff is happening. Guys are deploying guys are doing this and doing that what was what was what was the with the operators that that you know because the dogs were kind of new and i imagine when you're going through all that training we talked about earlier years and years of training probably didn't have a lot of dog stuff in that training if any what was how did so then and i know you know just.

Our mindset as cops or military people you know we sometimes get a little stuck in our ways so So was that an uphill battle to get a lot of the operators to embrace the ideas of taking this dog out on an operation that wasn't part of their training before? Yeah. Oh, no. It was, yeah, absolutely was. And, well, so here's the great thing about SOCOM, and I always say this.

SOCOM really reinforces and wants people to think outside of the box and do different things and prove them and make sure you're doing everything correctly. And you know not just status quo so one of the first dog teams for one of the other you know units was for we asked for volunteers so out of you know three squadrons we got you know. And maybe, you know, half of what we were looking for, because the other half, you know, sort of gave us the finger and said, you know, this is not going to

work. We don't want any part of it. You know, a lot of it was, too, because, you know, we had worked. We'd been to Israel a couple of times and have watched what they were doing and some other things like that. And it's like, I don't want those dogs running around biting me all over the place. That's ridiculous. So it was an uphill battle. Sure. And we were trying something that, to my knowledge, really had never really been done to the level that we were attempting to do it.

So, yeah, it was really tough. So can you, I don't know if you can or not, but can you tell me, you know, give me an example of maybe one of your early successes that started getting some of the operators to say, hey, I want a dog on this? Because I'm sure. Sure, I can do that. So here's the recipe, right? If you want any program to last, you have to have these three things minimum. Number one, you have to have support. You can't do anything without support.

Number two, you have to have good people. And then number three, you have to have timing. And that timing is that catalyst that's going to bump you up to that next level when you are plateaued and have nowhere to go. So we were hitting high. One of the squadrons was hitting a high-value target. And a dog cleared a stairwell and went up the stairs and around the corner and ate a machine gun. And there was two operators right behind that dog following them up the stairs.

Had that dog not been there, those two operators probably more than likely would have been shot up. Killed, I can't tell you, but certainly would have probably been shot. And that loss, you know, was that catalyst that we required that really said, okay, some of the guys were now like, look, oh, I get it now. Yeah, yeah. And it's not just a matter of cannon fodder.

Sure, absolutely. What we're talking about is a canine giving a human soldier just that nanosecond, that split second, enough time to either save his life or to rethink his current position and do something different that will save his life. Yeah, yeah. And that was really the thing that sent us, you know, basically going up there. You know, and we had some bomb, we had bomb dogs too, and we were fine in IEDs.

If you're not finding IEDs in Iraq in the early days, you know, you just want to look at, you know, because they were just everywhere. But that kind of thing was the successes started to build. And it got, I, the one day, and this was after, you know, this was a few years down the road, 2007, 2008, when it was a really bad war years for us. You know, people were getting killed. People were getting shot.

And a couple of the guys, a couple of operators had mentioned to me that they didn't want to prosecute a target without a canine. That's how I knew we had made it. We became institutionalized at that moment.

And we already were. But that was one of the bigger comments that I could ever, that any trainer could ever receive. I don't want to go out there without a dog. And we did have, you know, we had a lot of losses. And, and these losses are what pushed us to do different things. So we didn't make the same mistakes twice and the, the, the training TTPs and the, you know, all of, all of the things that we were doing were based off of this. Yeah.

One of the requirements for being a trainer for us was that you were going to deploy, you were going to go forward. And, and what that meant was you were going to go forward and solve some dog problems. Because you couldn't solve them back in the United States when the dog team was doing the work overseas. That just wasn't possible.

And we were able to get real-time intelligence and seeing what issues were, and they would send whoever the trainer was, Stoops is overseas, hey, I'm talking to him basically every other day. Hey, this is what we're running into, try this, try that, got it, and solve the problem.

Yeah the other thing was just trying to figure these dogs out when Steve and I first started doing this and there were a couple of us that were just you know well let's we're gonna sit in a room with a ball and a dog and a bunch of people and we're gonna work it out yeah how do we use these dogs to where they're not biting everything in the room you include the good guys yeah and when we initially started.

We wanted these big killer dogs, these big man-stopping, big German Shepherds, big Malinois, big Dutchies, you know, that would just, I mean, to the point, if I would describe them today, how we bought them, then I would say they were unstable. Sure. Today, I would say they were unstable because that is not what we needed and what we wanted. And that progression, you know, that progression came from a lot of bad results.

Yeah, and I think that's a similar progression that, you know, a lot of agencies might, and, you know, trainers have definitely, I've changed, you know, I used to want that too, and now I've seen enough dogs that you don't have to have that personality and still have a good, strong dog, so.

Well no so you know i i told this i think the last time i talked to somebody about this is like so picture this picture about 14 or 15 detainees and picture a group of green suitors with guns and helmets and it's stuffing everybody into a black hawk and then let's let's do let's do one better let's put a dog in there with them yeah yeah yeah that that could be pandemonium oh yeah.

And so and that was that was sort of what drove everything was so so uh special operations command is operator centric everything revolves around the operator without their dominus vobiscum yes we want you you're not going to last yeah so having the input from them and and having operator dog handlers was paramount to be able to kick this uh this program forward and into a higher gear and to keep striving to you know to go to that next level over and over again yeah and uh the the issues

that we ran into became manning issues because operators don't grow on trees, So the dilemma became, do we take operators and teach them how to handle a dog? Or do we take proven dog handlers and teach them some advanced soldier skills? So that became another proof of concept that we had to do to figure out if we could expand our program because we were running a demanding issue. So which of those worked better?

Well, like I said, if you're at the unit, an operator handler is always going to be better for you. However, when we started calling it like a direct support dog handler, so we went out and recruited a bunch of MPs because, as most people know, Lackland Air Force Base is the canine country club for the entire military. So all of the dog stuff comes from them. So I went on a recruiting trip around the country, around the world, and recruited a handful of the best MPs that

I could find. We ran them through a selection process. We ran them through a PT thing. We ran physical fitness. They took the whole mental stuff that the operators are selected to. And we picked about five or six direct support dog handlers that were actually MPs. And our first group, maybe there were four of them, I think. And they were all really solid dog guys. They really were. One of the first ones that I had, his name was Will Race, and he had a Mal.

And his very first deployment was kind of a cold drink from a fire hydrant because we were in Western Iraq. He goes out on his very first operation, his very first deployment, and gets shot. Jeez. Ha, ha, ha.

Welcome to the team it wasn't it was or he gets it's a pretty ends up with him and his dog get a purple heart you know he had blown up or got you know ricocheted or something but it was kind of like a welcome to SOCOM kind of thing and and he you know he sucked it up and turned around and was a had a really good career had a lot of apprehensions found a lot of a lot of IEDs and did some really good work well and the reason I ask that question is because I see that a

lot you know on the civilian side i see some guys who are really excellent swat operators and then when they want to get into the dog business i think there's a personality for swat guys and i think there's a personality for dog guys and sometimes it's not the same and i think sometimes i've seen some of some of the swat guys i've seen some that do fine but i've seen quite a few that sometimes struggle being a dog handler because it's just different

you know the dog will embarrass you and the dog's goofy and you got to kind of have a different personality to to work with a dog that sometimes i don't see some swat officers being able to do that so i i would imagine maybe that was a challenge that you would have especially starting a new program yeah i mean and and that was a heartbreaker when you did actually have an operator that did want to be a dog and learn he was whore. I mean, that's a heartbreaker. You know, that's a waste.

I called that just what a waste because, you know, we need the credibility at the planning table. We really do. Our other thing was, so we opened it up also to all of the guys that come through the program or come through the unit looking to become an operator and don't make it. Some of those ones, you know, were some really capable soldiers. And we offered them, you know, a chance to come out for the dog program.

And we got, you know, half a dozen to a dozen really, really good, you know, Green Berets, Rangers, dog guys, and ended up having really good dog careers. And that was really kind of our pool where we picked people from, you know, because not everybody, you know, you can be the greatest person on the planet and still just not come across the hall.

Just it's just not for you and the worst thing is that somebody else is telling you that it's like look this is just not for you so yeah you know this time and nobody tells anybody anything as far as why you don't make it yeah that that's there's no fun there so we would look at these guys and reevaluate them and make them offer you know what if you've got an invitation to come back here instead of we you know waiting two years why don't you just stay here and be a dog guy yeah And we would run

them through a school, put them, assign them as a direct support dog handler to a saber squadron. And now they're off and running and gunning with the boys and they got a dog on their, you know, on their head. Yeah. And that was just another way that we did to deal with the Manning crisis, you know, because we had to keep our numbers as high as we could.

And the real bad dog years between 2000, or war years between 2006 and 2009, we had a lot of canine casualties. I think one deployment, we lost six dogs. Yeah. You know, and that, you can't just... But on that deployment, yeah. No, no, but I mean, you lost the six dogs, but how many soldiers were saved on that? I mean, well, there you go. I mean, you, you can do the tricky math. We know it's at least one, probably more like a handful.

Yeah. And that, you know, that, that is worth its weight in gold. And that's, that's the reason why we had them. Yeah. You know, the reason why we had them is canines are a combat multiplier. That is what they are. And we learned early on that the dog has to fit the plan. You can't make a plan around the dog. And see, I like that saying you said, because it seems like, again, my background, working with civilian SWAT teams, they always want to go the other way.

And just, here's how we do things, and now make this dog do this. And it's like, dogs don't do that. So change your human tactics a little bit.

Well you can change the human tactics but it's all it's it's it's the flow becomes much easier if we can if we can change the dog because well the guys don't want to change you know they don't want to change anything and that's that's the horrible part so we want the dog to fit the plan as as best we can we can't make it fit you can't put it you know a square peg round hole and when And we became. You know, we got really lucky with a lot of the TTPs that were coming out of the war.

And the call out was the biggest one that was tailor-made. Or let me just say this. A dog was tailor-made for that because it was an escalation of force. We're going to give the bad guys a chance to vote. And then we're going to do some things. And a dog was part of that.

And it was an integral part. and and it it they became extremely popular when when you heard gunfire and you heard canine over the radio i think one of the other things that's worth talking about is the advancements and everything else that you know all of the services that go with that dog for example the equipment the equipment you know had to, It had to move forward with the dog, with the vests, with the cameras. You've seen some of these Gucci eyewear and earplugs.

There is some really cool stuff out there. I don't know how practical that is operationally, but I do know that the guys had sunglasses on their dog from time to time because when you're running around helicopters in the desert, brownout is a real beast. Sure. But for vet services, it was huge. And I imagine that was an integral part of the program, getting vets over into the theater and working on the dogs there.

Thank goodness. So the military is really, really good about having the MPs because they're bond dogs and stuff like that. They are really good about having vet services. So most of the bases, and even some of the more secondary bases or alternate bases, have some sort of veterinary service there. And we came in, and some of our vet techs, Laura Miller being one of them, she was the senior vet tech.

She came in and created a whole program to where when a dog was gunshot or blown up or whatever, the dog would get on the helicopter, and he would go exactly where the human soldier would go. The human soldier would go left and the dog would go to the right side. And there was a whole canine surgical center set up for them. And a lot of times when, you know, soldiers weren't injured, you would see cardiothoracic surgeons doing surgery on dogs next to vets, assisting and things like that.

Because they wanted to help the dog. Who doesn't want to help dogs? Yeah. One of my coolest experiences was when it was 2009, we were in Mosul, and one of the dogs got shot. And all of the MPs had heard it. And no one asked them. They just brought all six of their canines out of their kennel to the hospital to assist in the transfusion. Oh, wow. And that's the kind of support that when you start making these relationships and opening up, hey, this is what we're doing.

We want to share some stuff with you. It was just straight up networking. And that was one of the things that all of the trainers did. I mean, when I got overseas, I went straight to where the EOD guys were. And I wanted to know what they were finding in our area of operations as far as IEDs. What did it look like? What was their makeup? How were they being implemented? All of that. And they opened their books to us. They opened up. It was like a shopping center

for me. I literally would go in with a shopping cart and say, let me try that one, that one, and that one. And I would use those as training aids because they made them safe and said, you know, here, well, you know, you can have them.

And, you know, we trade stakes with them and, you know, hey, come on over and let's have a, you know, let's just sit around and have a conversation and figure out how we can help each other. Yeah, yeah.

I bet that, I mean, the experiences that, you know, from there had to just be, you know, I could pick your brain for years, you know, what would be, you know, a couple of examples of, did you have like any preconceived notion in the beginning that when you were done, either about how to train a dog or the capabilities or, or what that, you know, some big things that you changed on?

Um so what what one of our one of our biggest things was how do we we always knew we wanted to use the dog for direct action that was the whole reason why we were you know pat and alan and myself this was this was our main reason and alan alan miller like i said earlier he's a really good friend of mine he and i had multiple conversations about how do we go about doing. And really, it became a whole SWAT thing. It's like, okay, let's just, in operator terms, let's look at it like this.

We are looking at advanced SWAT stuff, and how do we put a dog in it? And, okay, so who's doing it? So let's go find out who's doing it and ask them. And then steal whatever they have and make it better. And that's actually how I met Lane Kreitzer. He took me out with him. And, you know, all of his handlers are SWAT guys. And he's a SWAT guy. And, you know, when I saw him do what he was doing, and he was in Colorado and watching what they were doing, when Steve was a SWAT guy, And we started to

sort of, you know, I mean, it was just really we had this outline. We take a bunch of notes. We have an outline. And we look and scrap some stuff and put it back in. And we slowly started to see, okay, I think we can do this. And Steve and I would literally sit in a room, like I said, with a couple of tennis balls and a bunch of guys with guns and some dogs. And we would roll the ball. And the dog would go in. And the guys would follow. of who goes first.

Does the guys go in? No, the dog goes down the hall first. He goes, where is he going to go? How are we going to control him? Do we use electricity? Do we use a red light, a laser? All of these things began to come into effect of how we can do it. But our initial introduction to what Steve called the CQB dance was just that.

Roll the ball, follow the ball, pay the dog. you know that kind of thing and a lot of it was it was most of you know a lot of muscle work and things like that yeah because we don't want people getting bit and some of the guys there were there were a couple of them that.

Thought of an idea about maybe taking some axe spray cologne and spraying your leg with it and teaching the dog just to that axe is good yeah you know i mean that's the well you know and i want to tell that story to people a lot of people kind of laugh at me but that is what we did we we there was no stone that we did not not turn over to figure it out did that work to a degree or it did work I mean, because it makes sense. In the end, the whole, yeah.

And then on paper, when you write it down, it's like, okay. But then the whole house smells like that after about five minutes. And, you know, putting, you know, like headlamps on the dog's chest, that became real popular because some of these rooms where we would put red light, you know, red light headlamps on the dog's chest just to give them a look. Just to give them some kind of extra something. Yeah, yeah. And we attempted all of that, and it worked.

Then, you know, laser pointers became really popular where you could just send the dog wherever you wanted from any positions. Yeah. So we did that, and it was, you know, we're sitting in a dark room with a beach ball and throw the beach ball, shine it, let the dog do it, you know, just keep doing it over and over and figure it out. And then we did. We used food reward as something to help us. That wasn't a primary reward system, but we tried everything. We did it. I mean, we used electricity.

We brought who we considered to be e-collar guys. We brought them in, steal from them, and then send them on their way and say thank you. We had Craig Patton, Mike Deal, Armin Winkler. So we had everybody in at one point trying to figure out, you know, trying to figure out. Take a little bit from everybody. Yeah. And how we can make it work. Sure. And we really, when we started, when it started working for us.

It it really it almost began to run itself yeah and then you know everybody now wants a dog from holland and you know now it becomes a you know a stroke of luck when you to try and find his you know five or six really good dogs on one by trip yeah and that was really where stoops shined for us because he he had relationships prior to even coming to the unit and and his ability to to to test the dog and see the dog for what it for what we were looking for it it was

it was phenomenal we had some really really really good good dogs yeah and once we started with dutch kmpv and we you know you you know what kind of dogs those yep those are some pipe hitters you know yeah they're They're probably mean at some point in their life because they're so mistreated. The 90 and 80 and 70-pound mile became the 50 and 65 and 60-pound mile. Much easier to lose, yeah. Yeah, it was easier. And that whole progression was just so much fun.

And I was involved in it for about 11 years. and when I left I went to Afghanistan in 2000 late 2010 and came back and I was like yeah came back and told the program manager that was there I was you know part of the kennel process for the last decade or so and I was like man I had enough I'm done, I put a fork in me. I was able to leave, you know, on my own and wasn't forced out. I was treated extremely well. Loved every moment of it. Missed it when I left. Sure.

But it was just time. Yeah. It was time for me to go. It's good to leave when you still have gas on the tank. I tell this to everybody. The best time to go is when you're on top. Yep. I agree. Don't wait for the slide to go down. Yep. Leave when you're on top. I agree. You'll fill up. Yeah, when I retired from the police department, I had the best job in the department. Everybody wanted my job, and I was enjoying it, and it was like, good time to go, you know.

Perfect. The worst thing you want to do is be pushed out or make a mistake. You know, because we were dealing with, there are some guys that got hurt that, you know, that shouldn't have been hurt because of a bad canine trainer or because of a training thing. Yeah, yeah. And that was horrible. Oh, yeah. But on more than one occasion, I had operators walk up to me and thank me. Yeah.

And that was the biggest reward I could ever receive. Yeah. Was just, look, I don't want to do this unless there's a thought. Sure. Because he was awesome, and we're going to miss him, or I hope he gets better, and that kind of thing. Well, and if you hadn't done it right to begin with, it would have been a passing thing.

You know they would experiment with a little while and then they would have said dogs aren't for us you know maybe for other people so so it's a testament to doing things right that that was the, that was the nail in the in the coffin for us was you know the proof was we were around yeah and it's still around yeah and that was my last question is is it still up and running in a similar vein that it was or.

So the footprint is obviously the footprint is different because, you know, nobody's deploying it. And I sometimes have issues with things about what I hear. And it's, you know, when war is going on, we had so much. And for you to have so much and do so little, shame on you.

So if you have so much, you have to keep producing. yeah and i'm not saying that it's not being production it's not being productive i'm not saying that at all but i'm not there anymore yeah so i'm really not you know i'm not i don't have my finger on the pulse yeah i used but i'm coming back into the dark world i'm happy to be here i'm happy to start working you know with guys again yeah and share share the knowledge and share the stuff that we did

that really made a difference and that's you know that's one of the the things that, you know, let me wake up everything is, you know, if we can help somebody. And, you know, even find that piece of digital evidence, find that bag of dope, I don't care what it is, just to make yourself, keep yourself valid. Yeah. You know, that's a great thing. But not just valid, keep yourself at a high level. You know, that's what I want to

do. So Steve also told me that there's one thing I need to ask you about. You and your dog met President Bush. Yeah, we did. He said, I need to ask you about that story. Yeah, this is a cool story. So this was like right after 2000. This was like early 2002. You know, he came to the compound, and I got to meet Condoleezza Rice and all this kind of stuff.

Because she said yeah the old man's gonna potus is gonna want me because of the dog and i was like oh great yeah okay thanks just the dog he doesn't want me he wants to be arco yeah uh you know my feelings were hurt for about you know breaths yeah but so we did this i was in a little bird accident i was in a little bird crash and we did this capabilities exercise you know a few months later I still don't have the use of my left hand, and I'm riding in a little bird with Arco,

and that was the first time I'd have been in a helicopter, the same kind of helicopter that I crashed in, you know, just months before. And we're flying around, we're flying around, a squirter runs out, jump off the helicopter, send the dog before the helicopter lands, you know, that kind of gooky stuff. And I didn't have the strength to take your dog off. He wouldn't listen to me because rotor wash. and things are blowing up and gun fires everywhere.

So, I mean, literally it took a lot, well, it took a lot, what seemed like an eternity to take the dog off, you know, to choke him off because I didn't have to use my left arm. So we get into this line, this, what we call the dog and pony show, you know. We get in this line and President Bush walks up and he's got a Secret Service detail and I've got a .45 in my chest holster. I've got an M4 slung, and my attack dog's sitting right next to me.

And the Secret Service guys are rousing their mind because they're not sure what's going to happen. And the president walks right up to me, shakes my hand, and starts talking to me. And then he drops his left hand down or his other hand, let's go at me, and grabs Arco by the ear. Oh, God. And he starts petting him. And the conversation that Alan Miller and I had, the other dog handler, was what happens if we bite the president?

You know, and we, we thought about it for about a second. I looked at Alan and I was like, dude, that would give us legendary stats. So I'm just going to let the dog do what the dog is going to do. You know, subsequently, he did not invite the president of the United States. You know, I will say for a brief moment, I was a little sad, but you know, at the end of the day, everybody's happy.

Yeah. but that was really I got a neat picture and that's not much name to fame I'm still waiting for Hollywood to call me, yeah I hear that he was super nice really interested in the dogs really had a caring attitude towards all of us and I appreciated the opportunity to be able to do everything that I did that's cool different. Attitude or just, you know, all the different presidents that we've had come through town when we had to work the different times when they're in there.

He was always, like you could set your watch by his schedule because he was very much a businessman and kept things going and very personal. So I met him again a second time. He came to New Orleans when he, you know, he was whatever they were doing. This was around 2000, right around 14 or 2015.

He was in new orleans i was i was working at hsi at the time out of the hsi office and and i reached out to some of my buddies in the secret service and some people because he was coming to new orleans and there was a group that was going to meet him at the airport so i grabbed the photo that i had i i was able to get on to that little entourage of folks and i was down there with the u.s attorney and some of the fbi guys and some of

the other it was sort of interesting to sack the special agent in charge of HSI get invited, but I did. And that was sort of like a big deal. But I went, I walked up to him and I shook his hand and I started talking to him and I told him, I said, yeah, you know, I prosecuted Gecko and he looks at me and he asked me how I felt. And then he goes, he was like, Todd, we were just talking and I pulled the picture of him petting my dog. And he goes, I know exactly who you are now. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, he was super, super nice. And his assistant on the other side, because I really wanted him to sign the back of the picture. Yeah. And I think he probably would, but they told me don't do anything like that. You got to keep the thing flowing. Yeah, yeah. But I got a picture. I've actually never even seen it, but I do have a picture with him. And I attempted to walk off one time. He grabbed me and he pulled me back. He said, hang on, you can stay for a few more seconds.

Oh, well. and you know he asked me how I was feeling and that kind of thing. That's cool. Yeah it was really it was look as a soldier, When you're in the Army and you have a president, he's your president. Yep, exactly. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who it is. Yeah. It's the president. It's the office. Yep. It's the title. And he was my president. Yeah. So that's when I served him, to be able to go back and meet my president after the fact was another cool thing. Absolutely.

I was very happy to be able to do that. That's cool. Well, it sounds like it's kind of come full circle to this point. I'm glad you're back in the business and training dogs again, and you're kind of out doing some training and everything.

So it's a great story, and I'd like to get together with you soon and maybe do some training. I'd like to pick your brain with some dogs out on the field, and plenty there to learn from you. Oh, I hope so. And right back at you, too, because if you have something cool, I'm going to steal it and say it's mine. Absolutely. It's like any other good dog trainer. from the corner and tell somebody, look at this what I just thought of. I'll be around the other corner seeing what I did.

Well, wow, Jeff, man, look, I appreciate, you know, I appreciate being able to talk to you, Eric. Absolutely. It's been a fun show, so I appreciate the time. Oh, my pleasure. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. All right, that's going to do it for the show. I appreciate Shannon jumping on and getting on the show. I want to end the show, as always, thanking a couple more of my advertisers. So Ace Canine and Cats Platinum, I mentioned at the beginning of the show.

Then also we have Kevin Sheldahl. He's down in New Mexico. Kevin sells dogs and also does a lot of training. So if you need any type of training, either there in New Mexico, he does classes, or he can come to you and do seminars and do audits and all kinds of different training. So check out k-9services.com for Kevin Sheldahl or just give Kevin a call at 505-250-4576 for K9 Services. Finally, I want to talk a little bit about Ray Allen. I talk about them every show.

And what I always have to mention is, you know, the quality is outstanding of Ray Allen. So I'm training in a new department right now, and they were looking for a bite suit and kind of went down the list of different options. And when you look at Ray Allen's options on bite suits, they have all kinds of different ones. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the super heavy-duty, poofy suits, which a lot of people don't like.

But if you have a newer decoy and you need one of those, they have that, all the way down to the competition suit. So you can get any weight suit that you want, different cuts, lots of different options. and whatever suit you get, I can guarantee you're going to have that suit for a very long time. I've been around for a very long time and I can tell you that for whatever reason, the quality of Ray Allen suits, they just don't seem to wear out.

So I've had some Ray Allen suits that I've had for more than 20 years in our agency before I retired and the suits were still fine. So check out RayAllen.com for all your canine needs, but maybe this might be a time of year for maybe Santa will bring you a new bite suit And if you're going to get something like that at the beginning of the year with a new budget or whatever, check out RayAllen.com for that type of stuff. Thanks, everybody. Have a safe week. Music.