Starting and Maintaining a Training Group

Hey everybody. As usual before the show, I'm going to pay a couple of bills real quick.

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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.

I have a new guest today that most people probably have never heard of my guest today, but one of the big benefits I have that I get to travel all over the country and teach classes is I meet a lot of really well-known trainers and handlers, and then I meet even more handlers who I've never met before or even heard of before and really meet some fantastic handlers.

So for every person like myself that's out there kind of going around and training and doing stuff, you know, through social media and running it as a business, there's many, many, many more great instructors and handlers out there that are helping people in their own area or their own region and just doing it for the love of canine handling and not trying to build a business or anything.

And those are excellent resources that, you know, any area you're at, I guarantee you there's plenty of people that are around that will help you, you know, if you're a new handler or if you're just looking for a group to train with or something. So I was in Albuquerque about two or three months ago, and I went down there and I was teaching a class. And when the agency that set up the class said, hey, we've got a whole training group here.

I want to introduce you to the people that have set up this training group and kind of explain it to you how well it works. And I met Greg Martinez, who I have with me tonight. And Greg is going to go over his background and kind of explain how, you know, what he did in K9 and how long he's been a cop and all those kind of things.

And then basically, you know, how did he end up setting up a, a, a pretty large training group for the, the Albuquerque area that is, you know, they're doing really good work down there and it's all just for, you know, the benefit and the betterment of our profession. And there's, you know, no one is, is. Profiting in their pocket by it. It's just a lot of experience going in to help and maintain other agencies and then help and train new agencies.

So with that, I'll introduce Greg Martinez. How are you tonight, Greg? I'm doing real good and thanks for having me. Absolutely.

Let's just start from the beginning. Let's talk about how long you've been a cop and where you work at and talk about your canine career or your police career first, I guess.

Okay. Yeah. I started back with the local sheriff's department here in albuquerque back in 1987 as a reserve for two years and then i became full-time in january of 89 and i did became a canine handler in 1996 so i went to canine services class in 1996 with kevin i did that for 28 years in in seven dogs later until just this last december so almost a year ago and now i'm still currently employed going on my 36 years, just finishing up for my retirement benefits and all that. Yeah.

But no, no longer handling my dog. That's a, that's kind of amazing. Your dates line up exactly with mine. I started in 89 on the department and 96, I got my first, first dog. So kind of, kind of funny. So you had seven dogs, were they all dual purpose or what kind of dogs did you work?

Yeah, they were all dual purpose. So I did a combination. My first, I believe four dogs were patrol narcotics and then i went into the eod side of it with uh with the last three detector dogs and so they were bomb patrol dogs yeah bomb patrol dogs uh-huh everything in our department at that time uh and currently is uh dual purpose dogs and how many how many teams over the years i know the number of areas but generally how many teams do you guys run we were as high as seven

seven dogs And when I left the unit, we were down to five dogs. Yeah. Manning and everything else comes into play with that. Oh yeah. Yeah. That number varies a lot. And how big is your agency? Our agency is a little over 300 plus of sworn deputies. So that's actually, you know, seven dogs for a 300 agency, 300 person agency. That's a pretty good size unit when you start.

Yes. So, so it sounds like, I don't know, you know, I'm sure that it ebbs and flows also, but overall it sounds like you probably had decent support from the agency. Oh, absolutely.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And we had to have the agency support because there's, I think as, as you know, and everybody else knows if your agency doesn't support you you're just you're struggling if you even have one yeah yeah you don't support your training and your needs yeah and that support comes not you know not just in giving you attaboys but also like you said they they look sounds like they probably let you go to a lot of different training take care of your equipment needs buy dogs when they

need it yeah exactly and then like you know not i mean we were really lucky to have so we have Kevin Sheldon here and he, I actually worked with him on the street for 18 years. So when you get that advantage, when you got somebody who's local that does all this, it, it makes a big, big difference in your department. Sure. Sure. So when you needed, when you needed stuff, you had a resource right there because he worked with you at the agency, didn't he?

Absolutely. Yeah. 18 years, me and him worked the same shift, same everything. So I had the advantage if I had a problem with my dog, it was just like, Hey, after supper, let's go work on this. And it was, it was very beneficial to me. I mean, I had a big advantage with a lot of people.

Sure. Because you get a, you know, when you, when you work with someone who's putting their hands on a lot of dogs, you just inevitably were going to pick up a lot of stuff, you know, even just from, from a conversation over dinner or something, talking about a dog maybe he was working with. And I'm sure you probably did a lot of stuff on the side with him and, uh. Oh yes. Put your hands on a lot of dogs over all those years. Yes. Uh huh. All the, all the extra training that we got in. Yeah.

Your agency pretty busy. I mean, physical apprehensions and dope fines and that type of stuff. Pretty commonplace, I think, in Albuquerque, isn't it? Yeah, it's steady. So Albuquerque Police Department has their own patrol unit. I don't know if they have any detector dogs anymore, but they do their own patrol stuff. We're the county that encompasses the city of Albuquerque, which is from Leo County. And we were kept pretty steady. So it's just like any place.

It's hit and miss, but we always had something to do. It's not excessive like it would be in a big city. Yeah, yeah. Of any, any big, like if you were just going to share a memory or two of the 28 years, a highlight or something? Probably, there's probably a lot of them. Sure, absolutely. And I'm putting you on the spot, so sorry about that.

Yeah, no, I, you know, it's kind of fun to reminisce because like my first dog, I remember finding one of my first finds was a rape suspect who had fled to Mexico and then he came back into town and broke into a traitor and we didn't know that until the dog found him inside the trailer and wound up getting not only a burglar, but a rape suspect. Nice. Another one was a homicide suspect hiding under a bunch of clothes.

Picked him up with the first dog. And then a lot of good things over the past years with all the dogs.

And maybe not so good things, like with my last dog that I have now, him getting stabbed in a SWAT deployment and the same dog almost getting drowned in another deployment. I mean, it was just, it's up and down. Yeah. And when we were there, you kind of talked about those. And I think there's a few things that, you know, that come away with on that. So let's talk about the drowning part of it, if you don't mind real quick, because I know you told me there was a few takeaways on that.

And I'd like to just touch base on that. Okay, I'm a what? I'm sorry. When the dog was almost drowned, you were telling me that there was a few takeaways when it was all done. Maybe anything that you had done different for training or anything?

I mean, the dog was definitely tested in that situation. Maybe kind of go over what happened on that. Yeah. So on this one, what it was is we had like running trail next to an open space right by our river over here, the Rio Grande River. And it's a really popular area. We had gotten a call about a suspect that was obviously homeless, but he was pointing a rifle at people and saying, pow, pow, and running back into the tree line.

And they got several calls on this, so we rushed down there, shut down the trail. We're starting to set up to start doing a search in this heavy brush area with my dog. When the helicopter from the city spotted him near the river loading up, and they could see the rifle on his backpack. As we started to close in a little bit, the subject took off running. We were able to get just ahead of him with a helicopter's help.

Dog was able to get target lock on him. I sent my dog. He went around the corner. I couldn't see him after that, but I could hear the helicopter pilot telling us that he was in a fight with a guy and they were in the water. So it kind of made us move up a lot quicker. Luckily, I had enough backup. I had a couple of off-duty SWAT guys that were there. Or I should say not on patrol, but they were actually working.

So, and if, and if, and enough backup, so we moved up very quickly and ended up fighting with a guy in the water. When they told me it was in the water, I was thinking, okay, here we go in the river, but it ended up being, our river was a little overflowing a little bit. So it was in the overflow. So maybe, maybe about a foot of water. My dog had grabbed him by the arm and he took the dog down to the ground. It was basically trying to get him off by drowning him.

Luckily he didn't, my dog didn't let go. and we were able to get my dog and get him in custody. So, but, and that was takeaway, takeaways on that. I'm just glad that we, we worked several different areas, including our bosque and all that. So nothing's unusual with the dog. Yeah. I mean, he was ready for, he was ready for a physical fight. Yeah. He's ready for a physical fight. And this is, and this, this was like four months after, you know, he recovered from a stab wound and everything else.

I mean, the dog was just learning the hard way. He was, he's getting experienced the hard way. Sure. Sure. And I think one of the things, because I know we talked about it when we were doing the advanced patrol dog class down there, I mentioned, you know, I'm not, I don't, I always say, don't send your dog into water. You didn't send your dog into water. You sent your dog and the suspect took him into water. So it's different, but it's one of those things that exposure is good.

Like I, you know, sometimes we'll go out to a lake and we'll do water bites just for that exposure. Not even that, not even that the dog needs to go into water just for something weird to happen to him. And clearly, you know, whatever regimen of training you had, the dog, he's getting rolled around in mud and water and trying to be drowned and he still stays on a bite. And he's a fairly new dog. So, yes, the training had to be very solid.

You know, the dog obviously is genetics, but you can take a solid genetic dog. And if you haven't done the training and exposure, sometimes you're not going to work through, you know, and I appreciate, I think, you know, it was one hell of a fight. So I know that you downplayed it a little bit, but from talking and kind of knowing about it, that dog did a hell of a job.

And I think those are things that as we're training, even when we're done with the certification, that's where the training days, we can work through the critical skills and then start working on weird things and show the dog some of those weird stuff. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the biggest thing with our training group. So we try to make sure that we try to get as many pictures that these dogs see as much as we can.

So if we get one of these handlers, I get a deployment that's kind of weird or maybe not so weird, we put everybody through it. So that way these dogs all, nothing's new to the dog. Yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that. So, excuse me. So you're in your seventh dog, and then I get that idea that you're probably starting to eye on the finish line here.

So you made the decision to leave the canine unit, and you're back on patrol? Yeah, I went back on patrol, and it was a combination of just a certification with a dog on some EOD stuff. But luckily, I was able to keep the dog because he basically wasn't bought by the department as well, by the National Police Canine Foundation, which said, well, you know what? They're not going to be able to do anything with that dog. He's a patrol dog.

So I was very, very lucky to be able to take him with me. He's only five years old. And that's what kept me wanting to train. Yeah. And that's what I thought would be fun to talk about tonight is that, again, you know, I mean, it's cool because I came down there, a different agency had set up the training and you and I had never met. And then, you know, I meet people all the time and I'm standing there talking to you and I realize I'm talking to somebody with 28 years of experience.

And then when you started describing your training group, I wanted to kind of bring you on tonight and just pick your brain about, you know, that there's obviously transition when you leave canine. You know, I left patrol canine and went to detection to start a detection unit. And I had a, you know, I missed the fun action of going out and hunting bad guys. I'm sure you had that same adrenaline drop for a little while.

I did. I think the biggest thing about going back to patrol is when there's an incident where a key link can be used and I don't have a key link to use. That was, that was, that was probably the biggest. Or the hardest part I should say for me was that, but as far as the getting called out at one o'clock in the morning and freezing until, you know, 10 and all that, that, that part I can, I can honestly say I don't miss.

Yeah. And we have barricades here in Colorado that are, you know, I've been just maddened up there. Yeah. I've been called out one time when I got called out, it was 14 below when, when the barricade started. So I don't, I didn't miss that part, but I, I did, I did miss the adrenaline part of things. But I think, and I talked to a lot of people about it, I imagine like you, in a couple of months, you're kind of over it to when you're just kind of happy that the other dogs are still doing well.

And I kind of got, I got past it pretty quickly to where it was like, I have a new job and it's not as exciting, but I can still contribute and make, make it safer for the guys who are still out there going down range. And I think that's kind of where, where you transitioned into that mindset.

Yeah. And, and the, the whole mindset was, we got a lot of different agencies around here that are two, three dogs and they don't have the resources or the, or the money to, you know, hire a contract maintenance instructor to be out there with all the, all the time.

But luckily all, all the guys that I contacted to, to create this pack training is what I call it, where, you know, it started off with an old guy that I used to train with a long time ago, John Trevor Smith from, he used to come all the way from Gallup, you know, hour and a half drive, two hours every Wednesday just to get that kind of training. He always, he always had that drive to come get better training somewhere instead of trying to do it by himself.

So he was my first contact. I've known him for almost 30 years now. So he was my first contact. So you, you, you had basically, you, you had left K9, your work of patrol, Then you decided, you know, I'm going to put together a training group. And from the way I understand, agencies train together a little bit, but fairly informally. And you just decided, let's put this group together. Yeah. But it actually started off as, okay, let's find a group that,

you know, that way I can keep my dog going too. So I have some people to train with. And it turned into all the other agencies, you know, wanting to do it. So we continue it. So we're going on 11 months now to where we train every Wednesday.

It's a common day. I think probably across the country is a training day. We trained probably around the same time, four o'clock every Wednesday and different places. So I kind of helped set up the different places because I got a lot of contacts here in town for old buildings, abandoned buildings, schools.

I mean, we can get into different environments. And I think that's probably one of the most important things because when you're only training with a couple of people and you're real limited on where you go. Exactly, yeah. It becomes the same school or the same place every single time and you're doing the same thing. That's not training. That's just hanging out for a couple hours or whatever you do. Yeah, and people get into that rut. So you called John Trevor Smith and then he came on board.

Then you just started letting some other agencies know, hey, we got a training day here and just kind of threw out the invite to agencies. Is that how you did it? Yeah, that's how I did. So what I did is I made a few phone calls to like Luke, who's the one that set up the Senegal County training that you came to. And then, you know, Dave Portis out of Rio Rancho. So I got a couple of supervisors that I've known. Just they all went through canine services classes.

Although it's kind of funny because about 90% of our group is canine service alumni. Oh, okay. So that's how I know them all. I trained with them all. Also, I had all their numbers and basically sent out a group text saying, hey, I'm no longer running a dog with a sheriff's degree.

Department i want to continue training first training is going to be you know january 13th at state fairgrounds anybody who would like to come you're more than welcome to come and we'll do some dog training and it started there when we started i think 30 people showed up oh wow on the first day yeah on the first day so we just kept consistently doing that and then adding guys. Coming when they can because on base it's a lot different because they got to

load up a whole trailer full of dogs. Yeah. Yeah. It takes them two, three hours by the time they get there and load up the dogs and then bring them down and then go take them back. But we're getting, yeah, good participation from all the, all the agencies around here. And we're always open to help train anybody who, who really wants to train. And that's what I like is, and I see that every once in a while, but I think you're doing it in just a lot more organized ways.

And I think there's probably plenty of people who listen to this podcast that, you know, are either going to be leaving K9 or they already have.

And they want to stay involved and they're not really sure how, and they probably never thought about that. You know, they still have the same contacts. They still have the same friends. Just because you're not, you know, you don't have a K9 title behind your name anymore. doesn't mean you can't still go out and contribute and help the new guys and set up the training venues and all that. And I think it could be just people listening to this.

I hope it motivates some people who say, you know what, I think I'm going to do that and reach out, start calling some of their friends and say, let's put together a training day because that need is out there. There's some agencies that do hire contract trainers. There's other agencies who just train only by themselves, which I think is a absolute terrible idea. I think agencies everywhere should train together, you know, and with different, not, not even the same group all the time.

I don't, I don't think that the same four agencies should work together every single training day.

I think that the, those combinations should change and you should be exposing your training, your personnel and your dogs to new ideas, new areas, new, new training aids, new everything, you know, on a very rotating basis and it sounds like you guys have enough people involved now that you're going to new training areas and probably have no shortage of new training aids and decoys and people to jump in and set up scenarios and that type of stuff.

Yeah, and that's the biggest thing too. A lot of us are the same, but what you do is you get a bunch of, even with the different agencies, what we'll do is we'll mix up personnel. So you're not always training with the same people, doing the same thing. And that's something that, It's kind of evolving over the last 11 months to how we can do this to make our time efficient so we don't have nobody just sitting around. And we always told them if you're sitting around, don't complain about sitting

around. Go start another station or something. Yeah. We try to get some stations going, and we try different methods, and we're still evolving on that to where depending on how many people show up, we'll break out into five groups. And if you're not running the dog, you're back up. If you're not back up, you're in a suit. Yeah. Or you're, you're the decoy. So always, always to keep it moving because the, the, the time is the biggest thing. I mean, I don't want to stay out.

I'd rather get, you know, a bunch of good training done in, in six hours. Sure. And then, you know, not very good training in eight hours. Yeah. And that's, and that's why, yeah, we don't, we don't take a lunch or whatever. It's like, bring your lunch, you eat on the go and let's, let's get this done because this is, you know, it's your dog, your responsibility and it's, you know, you deploy and it's going to be on you.

And that was another thing that I liked about training with a lot of your group when they had me down there was, you know, if you didn't pack a lunch, it was go hit a drive-thru, but we're going to still be here working, hit that drive-thru and come on back.

And it wasn't, you know, we've all had the canine training days where, you know, you meet at the roll call and you do that for a half hour and then you maybe drive to a training place and you do a little bit of half-assed training and then you go eat for two hours and run an errand and, you know, at the end of the day, you haven't done any training. And I see that, you know, and then when I travel, I, I can tell you the agencies, I can tell the first day which ones have training days like that.

Or when I got with you guys, I could see these dogs are ready to go because your training days are efficient. You know, you, you're jumping in and, and the, the mindset from, you know, the very first day for the new guys is this isn't an easy day. This is a fun day, but they're going to work. Yeah, exactly. And then it's kind of good too now that we got this separate training. So I call it a non-agency, non-sponsored. I'll have these guys, I'll call them up and say, hey, can you host a place for

training? That way we can mix it up a little bit. But that's exactly what I don't want is to be.

I'm not out there as a supervisor and I'm not supervising these guys. I can't issue any discipline and all that, but I can tell them.

You know the supervisors are real good at keeping with our guys hey we need to get this done you need to get this done yeah that's that's not on me so me me and john kind of facilitate what we're gonna do after talking to them you know it we're open to everything you know it's like okay you had this deployment with the guy in the closet he closed the door of the closet you had to fight you know use up a shield and do all

that so we try to just sure real realistic training but i think the The only thing is just trying to get everything, everything. Once we get started, we're going. Yeah. But it's just, it's just hard. And the more people you have, you know, we will average between 12 and 18 dogs a night. And I got 45 people on the list and that includes detector only dogs.

But it's, it, it is turning into a great resource for people that are just getting out of a canine class, just like canine services just finished their class three weeks ago. So we got three of them that are within New Mexico, one in town and two out-of-towners that are coming every Wednesday to train with us because now they can get the next step without having... Go around looking for a training app or everything else, we're available for them.

And another advantage of what I see that you're doing is, like you say, it's not really departmental. Now, most of those guys are on duty and maybe they have a supervisor there that, you know, they have some performance standards, but it's not just one agency running it. So you get rid of, you know, that issue.

It's not, it's not a certifying body. You're not going to call it a new organization and start handing out titles because that is just, you're not building a 501c3 where people have to pay dues and you have to you you know what i'm saying but those those are how a lot of times what you've done then evolves into somebody wanting to be the next you know whatever title they want to give themselves and then then it changes that whole dynamic but the fact that you know you got a good

healthy group that gets together every week And it sounds, I'm sure people haven't listened to, well, it's simple. It is simple, but you got to get going. And I don't see it that often. That's why I thought it'd be fun to kind of talk about and just maybe motivate some people to, even if it's not as, say, formal as what you've done.

But I really always want to stress that if you're listening to this and you train with just your own agency, then, you know, set a goal that in the new year you're going to start making phone calls. And by this time next year, you'll have trained with, you know, several other agencies on a somewhat regular basis because you just cannot stay in your own box, in your own agency all the time. Those agencies that do that, there's some good ones and they do good work, but they could do better work.

And if they, if it's a really large agency that has the resources and the training and they're really doing well just by themselves, then shame on them if they're not sharing it with the smaller agencies. Or I see some smaller agencies that, that. Could use some help and don't go out and they're worried about, you know, for whatever reason.

So that brings the mind, the other part of your group, somebody shows up and they're just either a lousy decoy or they have a lousy dog or they have bad tactics or something.

There has to be a way you kind of work with those people. And has that been a problem or stuff that you've had to work through as a group?

It hasn't been a big problem but every every dog is different every i i learned every handler is different their character i've been doing this a long time and i deal with the people in the street so i i kind of understand their we all have the same cop mentality but we all have different personalities so we we we know who needs the help and the ones that come up and ask for the help are probably the the easiest to help because they're they're looking for

some of these other ones you You know, if they don't think they have a problem, but we can see a problem, we address it right away. And that's the one thing about being non-departmental. I can, you know, me and John Trevor, we can just go up there and say, hey, you know what? Your dog shouldn't be doing this. We need to work on that. You know, your dog's in muzzle. He shouldn't be taking shots at people that are walking around him because you're going to be in a SWAT situation or something.

You're going to be in a situation whether he's in muzzle or not, your dog needs to pay attention to what he's doing. So we, we, we see the issues like that and we bring them up and we work on them because it's, it's their responsibility, but it's our responsibility to, to point it out to them. Sure. Something we see. Sure. And then in the same thing, you know, like I, I still work my dog as much as I can. Like, yeah. Yeah. I think when you had the discussion, the, the trainer's dog

is always the least. Yeah. And I, and I'm actually working on that, trying to get him more and more. Because our goal is to make sure that we could certify any day at any time. Yes. That's the ultimate goal.

And I don't want this training group and I don't think anybody in it wants to be average. Yeah. We want to be the next step train, the next advanced train. We want to give these dogs the best chance to work and be successful. Yeah. So if you had some, because you guys are a working group, I witnessed it myself.

Have you had some either individuals or teams you know agencies that showed up that hung around for maybe one or two training nights and then kind of faded away because maybe they didn't want to put the put the effort in no but we do we still we still have the inconsistency of 100 i don't expect everybody to be 100 percent of the time but i i expect the effort there and we we've addressed that so when we see people laying around or what

i call sidebarring so you get a group or agency see that just go to the side and kind of gaggle. Yeah. I don't like that. It's just like, okay. And that's, that's why we try to move everybody around to where, you know what, don't, don't complain about anything because you, you have a choice. You don't have to be here. Yeah.

And if, if your agent or your supervisor is making you be here, well then you, you, you talk to your supervisor because we're, we're here to train and you're going to, you're going to get what,

what you put into it. Yeah. So now that you've been doing this now for about a year and you have, you know, a good group and it's, you know, I'm sure it'll change over the next couple of years, a little bit here and there, but when you look back over the, you know, almost three decades of, of doing training on duty and training nights and all that, I'm going to suspect that this is probably some of your most enjoyable training days.

Absolutely. You know what, it's, it's really nice to go when you got a bunch of guys who want to do stuff and coming up with ideas and, and stuff that you never thought about so i'm open to anything i mean there's i i got in in a mode to where everything was always the same when i wasn't able to train outside our group yeah but now that that i got a bunch of different agencies different different ideas different everything and even probably more

advanced training in this last year than i've had in a lot of years yeah being a handler because i can do it on my time on you know when i want i don't have to do a request i don't have to do anything I just take them off and go and go yeah and you know this year we've had four advanced classes and to include your. E-collar class and, and, you know, stuff we learned from you, we incorporate all the time. I mean, yeah, because it's beneficial as we, we never thought about it.

We never, you know, we were never taught that way. It's a different way of teaching, but you know what, it might not work for all the dogs, but if it works for, for even one dog and we, we fix a problem, then that's worth it. Exactly. And that's why I like, you know, being, and, and, you know, the other thing that you mentioned a few times is that, you know, if it's a big group, you got to break up into groups and keep it manageable.

And, you know, so, I mean, I think, again, I just want to congratulate you because I think from, from being around a lot and seeing a lot of different training groups, I was really impressed with what I saw, you know, just a well-organized training group. The fact that, again, it's not any type of association, titles. Any of that, there's no egos. It was really just a bunch of agencies that were training together.

You guys were, you and John were kind of leading the pack, getting, you know, moving stuff along and, you know, being the organizers of it.

But it definitely, you know, I can tell for the agencies in your area, and I know that not all of them are taking advantage of it, but the ones that are, definitely it's a big advantage. And it's fun to go down and, you know, again, when I'm traveling along, you know, I went down there to teach a class. I didn't really expect to, you know, meet you and start and being, you know, just that, you know, happy to see what you've put together in just one short year.

And I hope this, just somebody listening to this, you know, relatively short podcast maybe takes away from it and thinks, you know, either I'm leaving soon or I've already left. But, or I'm just, uh, I'm halfway through my canine career, but I'm going to start putting some training days together because you can do that too. But.

Training groups are super, super important. And I'm just going to wrap it up by asking, over the years in your agency, did you guys often train with other departments or were there periods of time? I know like with our agency, we were somewhat insular when I first started. And then over the years, we got really good about working with most of the local agencies. And those dynamics would change when you're around a long time.

Some supervisors and departments change here or there. and they don't allow their people to leave or whatever, but I would assume it was probably similar for you. Actually, the opposite. So we couldn't have a lot of, so a lot of agencies would reach out and there was a lot of, we didn't have a consistent schedule when you're trying to, you know, when admin didn't understand, hey, this is a training day.

We're not going to, you know, do three warrants that morning just because everybody's working.

And you know but we we we never had a group this big never never had a group this big and that's that's one thing i realized when we had this group is that we we missed out on a lot back then yeah and the the biggest thing if i can add just is is the resources that you gather when you got a big group like this because i can i can make a phone call to all these different communities around it and i have contacts to everybody including our uh we have uh two of

our corrections dogs or jail dogs up here if i have a jail question i can call them and they get me an answer yeah let me give you a quick example we had we have an atf handler that's working a gun casing dog she got she got called out last week to assist in a homicide that happened on our downtown where the subject ran off in the middle of downtown and they didn't know where he went and they didn't know if he left any evidence so they called her for a little bit of help she knew that up there

in sanival county They've been doing a lot of the urban tracking. So she put out in the group text, hey, is there anybody who can help me out with some tracking and some evidence search? It didn't take two minutes and we had, you know, Centerville County and Valencia County and everybody. Hey, we'll head right down there. And they went down there to go assist her. So it's a big resource. So I know that, hey, if I need some, you know, I need a gun specific dog,

I can, I can make, give a call to her and she'll come down. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys, are you using a group text to keep, uh, you know, for. Yeah. So yeah, we got a, like a WhatsApp and I call it the PAC training net. Right now, I think I got 46 people. I just added a fire guy that's doing detection for accelerants.

And I, and I guess I, one, one word of caution on that, that I guess question, I know over time, sometimes when we try and use a, a group text thing or something, someone would abuse it. You know, it was like, we're going to use this to talk about training days or if we have a mutual call out and then someone would put something stupid on there or something, you know, and then. Yeah. And we, we, we monitor that too. And it doesn't take me, if it, if it gets a little.

Little silly what i can do is i can just i go in the app and i just delete them yeah so you know hey you're no you're no you're no longer you're no longer going to be receiving texts or you can't put any text but yeah these guys are real these guys are real professional so you'll see on our app it's it's updated information uh training information training classes that are coming up besides what we're doing if i need to put on the app hey i'm ready for the next dog

i'm hiding up here in a tree come get me yeah you know yeah that kind of stuff but everything's professional on it and we use it just for that because i totally understand yeah you get get it can get a little out of hand oh yeah yeah we had we had one that they tried and and it was going off all day long just because there were so many people on there and people telling jokes on it which didn't offend anybody but it was like i'm tired of hearing my phone

beep all the time and looking at it so yeah i mean i think figure out a communication you know whether it's an email chain or i like group text if everybody's uh diligent about it make it because we actually ended up having for our bomb dog group for quite a while. We had one that was simply for call-outs. So that was it. No one was supposed to get out in there.

Otherwise, if you needed help on a call-out for something, and it worked good for a while, but it for some reason kind of dissipated a little bit. But always good stuff to think about, you know, just the organization of it. But overall, you know, probably hasn't been terribly difficult. It sounds like you had the idea, started reaching out and then started doing some training.

So, and you're keeping the whole thing, you know, simple. Yeah, exactly. And then, and if anybody wants to start a training group, just remember just to, to ask for help, look for your experience handlers, retired people and all that. I bet you they love, I mean, they don't want to be forgotten. So call them out and let's.

Yeah, that's an excellent point. Great way to wrap it up that, you know, there are probably some, some guys who left even four or five years ago that But when you reach out to them and say, you know, come join, you'll probably get a good response because there's a lot of guys who have cycled through that have a lot of knowledge that maybe didn't stay involved for any different reason or maybe they're ready to get back involved. So really good point. Really good point.

Well, this is good, Greg. Just like I said, I want to bring you on and just put down some food for thought for people of different ways they could train. You know, group training is, I think, you know, when I look at the hierarchy of needs of a canine unit, training with other groups and other agencies is way, way at the top of those needs. And I think it gets overlooked.

So ideas of ways to do it and simplify it and also other ways to stay involved just, you know, for the love of this great profession and the betterment of it. You know, it's admirable. So thanks for what you're doing down there. It's a, I saw with my own eyes that it's good work and you're definitely making a difference. Yeah. And I, and, and we, we definitely appreciate you not, not only coming down, giving the class, but, uh.

Keep doing your podcast because it's information that everybody can use. We might not use some of the stuff because it doesn't pertain to us, but it's always good information to know. If you keep reaching out and looking for new information, it can't hurt. Sure. Yeah. That's what I just tried to throw out, some new ideas. So I appreciate the feedback on that. So thanks again, Greg. Thanks for coming on. Anytime. Thank you. All right. That's going to do it for the show.

I want to final talk about catsplatinum.com. I talk about it on most of the shows. Obviously, training records are important. If you're going to keep your training records, keep them right and make sure that you can get all the data you need out of those training records for either court purposes or if you need to do reports. So catsplatinum.com is the record-keeping software that I recommend. Bob Eden runs the company. He was the first one doing record-keeping software.

Highly recommend catsplatinum.com. It's very easy to customize, make it your own software. Works quite well. So check out catsplatinum.com. And if you need anything, just email Bob Eden. And his email's on the website there. He'll respond. He's an excellent customer service, and he'll walk you through how you can get the most out of the product to make sure it's working well for you. So thanks, catsplatinum.com, for sponsoring the show.

Also, Ray Allen Canine. Ray Allen Canine is here in Colorado. I've dealt with him for many, many years. The thing that I always mention is their products are absolutely some of the best made. So when you buy something from Ray Allen, you're going to get a quality product. It won't be on their website. It won't be for sale until it's been quality tested quite a bit. And then if you buy it and you have any issue, reach out to them and they're going to stand behind all the stuff they sell.

They're an outstanding company, lots of different products, pretty much anything you need for your working dog, Ray Allen is going to be able to help you get it. So check out Ray Allen Canine for all of your working dog needs. And then finally, Kevin Sheldahl is down in New Mexico. We just talked to Greg down there from New Mexico. He mentioned Canine Services several times in the show. Canine Services is doing a lot of training down in New Mexico. They supply dogs.

They do classes, a lot of different stuff. And Kevin goes all over the country. He does workshops. He does audits. He's a wealth of knowledge, as Greg mentioned several times.

So check out canineservices.com. k-9 services.com or give kevin a call at 505-250-4576 i'm sure he's if you need something he'd be happy to answer the phone answer your questions and then maybe find out if you know you need to have him come out and help you with your unit or do an audit or something so canineservices.com out of new mexico with kevin sheldon thanks everybody be safe. Music.