Transitioning from Training to Street Deployments

Music. This is the Police Canine Training Podcast with Jeff Meyer. Join us for each episode to get real-world advice from canine professionals who have experience on the street. Each episode will focus on up-to-date information that you can use on the street. Spend about 30 minutes with us each week as part of your training day. Our goal at Police Canine Training is to make every canine team be the best they can be. Music.

Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Meyer. Today's show, we're going to talk about transitioning dogs out of a training environment and into street deployments. We're going to spend quite a bit of time talking about specifically patrol dogs and what patrol dogs need to maybe make their first apprehension and how you can transition out of a training field effect and into a street dog.

We'll also spend a little bit of time talking about a lot of the same types of philosophies, just a little bit different ways to get dogs that are detection dogs into ready to find real drugs on the street or do real venue sweeps and that type of stuff. So today's topic is going to be all about that. Before we get started, I wanted to talk real quickly about the Colorado Canine Conference.

Check out the page that I put up, coloradok9conference.com. I have some great instructors coming here at the end of July for our first annual Canine Conference. A little bit of classroom and a lot of scenario work and work of dogs. So we're going to limit the amount of handlers that we can come this first year just to make sure we get all the logistics right. So if you want to come, make sure you sign up early. Check out ColoradoCanineConference.com.

And it's going to be sponsored by Ray Allen. And Ray Allen is here in Colorado, and they're sponsoring this event, and they're also sponsoring this show. So today we're going to be talking about some equipment, some that I like to use, some that I don't. But any canine equipment you need, go to RayAllen.com and check out their equipment. What Ray Allen is known for is extreme quality in all of their equipment. So really any of the equipment we're going to talk about today,

you can get at One Stop Shopping at Ray Allen. And I really like their equipment. It's very good quality and quick delivery. And again, as I mentioned, Ray Allen is sponsoring the Colorado Canine Conference. They're sponsoring this show. They're doing that to support us. They really don't need the advertising, but they do a lot of stuff like that in our industry as an industry leader in equipment just to support our industry lots of different ways. So check out Ray Allen.

They're always good for new equipment, a lot of cutting-edge stuff. And then any of the staples you need, just check them out. So again, thanks to Ray Allen for both sponsoring this show and for sponsoring the Colorado Canine Conference. So tonight, what I want to talk about is transitioning dogs from a training environment and over into the street. The first caveat that I want to talk about is, you know, everybody understands the first time a dog is going to make an apprehension on a person.

A lot of times it doesn't go as well as what we hope. and there's some reasons for it and the first thing i really want to talk about is that as you're you know experiencing this and as you have your new dog and you are in a place where you know you've done a search or for however reason you've got you've met all your criteria your department policy is good you've you know it's a good deployment the suspect definitely meets graham versus connor you've done all you're in

the right spot and now your dog needs to go in and make an apprehension. So the first thing that really that I want to say is really at that point, because your blood's going to be pumping, if you've never, if you're a brand new dog handler and you've never been there before, you're going to be excited. And, you know, you put this so much work into this dog, you've selected him or helped select him or someone has selected him for you. You've done all the training.

You've probably, you know, for quite a few months have been training and now deploying them. And now here you are where you get to make sure that the dog is gonna be able to do the job that you want him to do. Meaning, make an actual apprehension on the street. For some people, depending on where you work, that might be a month out of training. Or it might be five years out of training. It just depends on where you work and how dogs are utilized.

But the emotions are still gonna be the same. You're gonna be pumped up. You're going to be concentrating probably a little bit more on the dog aspects than the tactics and sometimes on your own safety. So I want to encourage you to do some crisis rehearsal in your mind, just like you're taught to do with all kinds of things in police work. And just really think about, you know, if it gets to that point where my dog's

going to make contact and apprehend somebody, buddy. You know, what am I going to do? You know, what, what, what will I do? Am I going to call the dog off? Am I going to go cuff the guy? All those different things that you've practiced to do, but be ready for the mental part of it and really be, you know, start thinking, you know, understand that you're going to be in a very high level of, of excitement.

Even if you're controlled, it's just natural. It's, it's going to be a fairly big event, both for you and the dog. And if your voice tone changes, if you get overly excited, you might induce more of a submissive behavior to your dog, meaning that he might not go and apprehend him. If you're yelling his, you know, if it's, if his command is Stellan and all of a sudden in training, it's always been Stellan.

And now at that moment of crisis, almost you're barking, Stella, and you're screaming it at him, you might shut the dog down. So just be ready about all the mental parts of it. And we're not going to harp on that a lot, but really think through. And that's where scenario training comes in is put, put handlers and dogs in stressful situations long before that time and really get them used to having that stress.

And then finally, you know, most of these times, if it's, if it's, you know, a split second deal, it's a split second deal. But I can tell you from having a whole bunch of times where my dogs did apprehend people, you know, many, many, many times. There's usually a time because it's more of kind of a tactical environment where you can kind of slow it down oftentimes and really start thinking, should I deploy the dog or not deploy the dog?

Am I still right? And now more than ever, it's critically important, not just so you don't get yourself in trouble departmentally, but don't get yourself in trouble with your local DA or the federal cops or anything by using an unjust amount of force against a suspect. And I hear these stories a lot of times about the good old days when it was the Wild West. You know, I've been around 30 years.

It wasn't that way when I started. We still paid close attention to legal precedents, what the laws allowed us to do. So if there was some Wild West where crazy things were going on, I don't know where it was. So don't get wrapped up in these stories about the old days. We did it different because probably now old enough to tell you that in the old days, we still also paid attention to everything.

And before I even started handling a dog, there was a federal case where a police officer in the East Coast, and you can look up the whole thing, I could go over it all now, but she went to prison for using her dog incorrectly. correctly. So that was even before I started. And today, now more than ever, there's a war against all of the police officers. So now they're really, really trying to put cops in jail for even when they're, when they're correct.

So again, at this moment, when your dog's downrange or however you want to think about it, and your dog is going to make an apprehension on a person, If you have that time that you can just take a couple seconds to kind of look at it, look at the totality of everything and decide, is this really good or should I maybe call the dog back and buy us a little more time? Once we've bought a little more time, maybe the dog will go back in and make an engagement.

But don't get yourself in trouble. That's the first part of this whole podcast is don't get yourself in trouble. It's a tempting thing to do. And people would never understand why that could happen because they haven't put the work into selecting the dog, training the dog, working the dog that you have. And they're not going to understand the emotions you have about wanting to make sure your dog is capable of doing what you have trained him to do.

And you'll never know until he actually makes an apprehension on a real suspect. So at that point, Again, take your time. If this isn't the day for him to make an apprehension, it'll come again. And again, I understand some people will have two and three of those opportunities in their whole career. If you go your whole career and your dog never makes an apprehension, there's really nothing wrong with that.

I get that that could happen. And I would rather have that happen if the dog never needed to be used just so that you don't get yourself in trouble, get yourself sued, get yourself in more than that trouble. So, again, use your head here at that critical time.

Just like any other critical incident in law enforcement, you know, don't get yourself in trouble using a tool at your disposal if you don't need to because you're going to be second guest, third guest, and tenth guest to no end the way things are now. So now that's done, you know, now we're going to talk about getting the dog from training to actually make an apprehension. And I want to just talk about some of the things that I've done over the years

that have successfully done that. And I've seen many, many different ways. I know that there's, you know, a lot of people, they use like a newspaper bite. If you Google that and you'll see, you know, some of the Dutch people using these newspapers to transition the dog over. It's a great exercise. I have no problem with it. There's tons of different ways to do it. I'm just going to give you a couple of the ideas that I've used that I've been very successful training.

And a lot of dogs, training them up as green dogs and then putting them out on the street where they were making successful apprehensions on people on the street. And where I worked, we were a pretty busy agency and we had plenty of opportunities to apprehend people. So I've had a lot of experience, not just with my own dogs, but dogs I've trained, putting them in those environments. So the first thing might be a little controversial, but I'm going to throw it out there.

We're going to talk about it. But the very first suggestion I have to ensure that dogs, you know, aren't going to be training fixed is don't use bite sleeves. Don't use them ever. That's my advice. Now, I know there's a time with a very young dog that you can use a bite sleeve to develop his bite and get a better grip and a deeper grip. So if that's the case with a super young dog, so be it. I think that there could be a very much a time and a place for very young dogs.

But the dogs that we're trained in law enforcement are older. You can still develop a better fuller mouth bite without a bite sleeve. But I hate bite sleeves. I think it makes for lots of problems. It makes for a lazy decoy, because all they'll do is kind of just present a bite sleeve. And you'll get a dog that obviously is going to be focused on just that bite sleeve. And the dog's going to be in a prey mindset, not in a fight mindset. So it's just a game.

And then to top that all off, if you have a dog that he'll bite the way that the sleeve is designed, it's to help them bite better. So you're going to get dogs that are going to be so fixated on the sleeve, it's going to be really, really hard to get them to properly release a sleeve. And then when you start teaching a dog to release that sleeve, you're working against so many instincts of the dog wanting to take this sleeve.

You used to slip it and now you're not slipping anymore. Now I got to open my mouth. So you're building in a lot of conflict by taking a piece of equipment that was designed to help a dog open his mouth better and bite deeper and firmer, and then continuing to use it long into his training. So I could, I could go on and on and do a whole show on why I don't like bite sleeves, but I can tell you that I never use bite sleeves, period.

I have a bite sleeve that it's got to be 25 or 30 years old and I could post a picture of it and it looks brand new. I simply don't use it. I threw it in my training equipment. I should maybe give it to somebody else who uses it. But, you know, the old, I'll just throw on a sleeve and do a quick thing. I'd rather not do training than throw on a sleeve and do something quick. I think they're that detrimental. I hate bite sleeves.

I think that they're going to cause you way more problems than they'll ever train a dog.

Dog and when your dog is in that moment of finally being able to apprehend a real person if all they see is a bite sleeve they're going to look for an arm and then when that arm doesn't have that v-shaped whatever underneath the burlap that you know would depend on what type of sleeve you're using when it doesn't feel like that and doesn't have that kind of cardboard feel under a burlap, the dog's not going to want to bite that. So I'm a proponent of not using bite sleeves ever.

All my training is done with either suits, muzzles, or a concealed sleeve just once in a while to proof the dog. And even those fake arms are a good alternative, but just not a bite sleeve. So I know a lot of people are going to shake their head and say, no, we always use bite sleeves and our dogs still bite on the street and it might be, but I think it's a hindrance. So to me, the first advice I give a lot of people is get rid of your bite sleeve.

It's just not going to, it's not going to serve you well over time. So if you're going to do training, either put on a full suit, take the time to set it up correctly or better yet, I've done a few shows on that. And if I get enough interest in this show, we'll do more, but better yet, put the dog in a muzzle and again I've done some shows on those and I could do another one if you guys want me to kind of go over muzzle stuff again but once the dog's up and running.

I'd say 60 to 70, 80% of his training should be done in muzzle when you're doing scenario work. Get that dog as neutral as possible in muzzle. And neutral means that when you put him in the muzzle, he doesn't change his behavior at all. He'll go back in the car, lay down, go to sleep, walk around in circles, whatever he does. If you put a big bucket out and the dog's thirsty, he'll actually dip his head in the water and drink out of the muzzle.

That's usually a pretty good indication the dog's very, very neutral in muzzle. I don't want a dog that when I put the muzzle on him, he knows he's going to go fight somebody and then five minutes later I'm going to take it off him. them. So start getting your dog very neutral in muzzle and then work the dog in muzzle. I have very few times when I'm problem solving for an agency that the dog did not engage.

And when I really see their training, it's very, very few times that they're doing a ton of muzzle training and the dog still wouldn't engage when he needed to. Most of those times when I'm, again, Again, problem solving in that scenario, most of those times it's agencies that do no muzzle training. They don't believe in it. They do a little bit of suit training and they do almost all sleeve training.

And they'll have a dog that went and ran next to a suspect as he ran down the street and the suspect never turned and presented the sleeve to him. The dog didn't know what to do. So muzzle training, you start in that same scenario. The dog will at least jump up and hit the suspect in the back. Sometimes they roll around for a minute and don't understand. You know, I need to, I need to actually bite this guy, but at least that'll get the suspect down.

And you can start, you know, encouraging the dog, at least he'll, he'll make contact with them. And I'll stop here real quick. And the reason I can describe a lot of these failures that, that happen, it's not from watching YouTube. It's from watching my dogs or dogs that I've trained. Cause if you do this for any length of time, you're going to have failures. And the two most common failures that are out there that I see are a straight runaway for a young dog because that's real difficult.

The dog's got to actually, you know, jump up and hit the suspect and bite them all at the same time. And while they'll do that in a bite suit on a field, those guys are moving at about an eighth of the speed as a suspect down a street with no big poofy suit on. So that's a very difficult thing for a dog to do.

And when you send your dog on a straight runaway the first time you better have a backup plan because it's not uncommon at all that the dog does not make an apprehension at that time and kind of chases them and maybe gets in front of them knocks him down somehow or something but all those videos on youtube that people when they post them online people get holier than thou about they either are ignoring that that happened to them or a dog they trained or they just haven't been around

long enough because it's happened to every dog trainer or it's just one of those things. And the second most common one is a dog that doesn't engage a passive suspect, usually prone under a bush or something like that. And they'll go and sniff them a little bit. They've never seen that picture. They've never seen a person like that. The suspect is smart enough to stay perfectly still. And the dog simply smells them, has a little bit of change of behavior and then leaves.

That could happen in a, like a SWAT environment, a minute, you know, maybe find somebody on a barricade that you've been... You've been searching a house for for a while, and then maybe find him under a bed and the suspect stays perfectly still. Dog looks at him and is like, well, he's not yelling and screaming and doing all the prey behavior that I'm used to. So I'm going to go look for the guy in the suit that's cracking a whip or has a sleeve on.

So again, those are the two most common failures. And when I problem solve with agencies, most of the time, a high, high percentage of the time when I do that, those agencies are not doing muzzle work. The agencies that are doing a lot of muzzle work and teaching the dogs to work well in muzzle, and at least, you know, the dog will make contact with the suspect. They're not the ones calling me because their dogs will then work it out.

So again, you know, there's, you can do the exposed sleeve all the time and hope for the best, or you can not use an exposed sleeve, do most of your initial training with bite suits suits, and muzzle. And then once the dog's certified, do most of your training in muzzle then and bite suits once in a while. And I think you're going to be prepared much better. So those are the common failures and those are some of the ways that I would fix them. It'd be, through the proper use of equipment.

Expose the dog in training to a hidden sleeve once in a while.

The problem with a hidden sleeve is we don't have too many decoys and I know I wouldn't either throw on a hidden sleeve and then run full speed down the street and not present my arm and make the dog come around in front and try and bite my arm because you know we're not sure what the dog is going to do at that point in a muzzle it's easy to do and the dog could then you know make contact with you so the problem with a hidden sleeve is you end up almost feeding the dog an arm and that's

the last thing that we want to do is start teaching those dogs that the suspect will feed the arm to you because they won't. So same with, I did a podcast a while back about don't make noise because suspects won't do it. Don't get in the habit of feeding your dog an arm because the suspects won't do that, obviously. So that's the problem with a exposed sleeve or a hidden sleeve. I'm sorry.

If you do too much of those, the dog is going to start doing, expecting, you know, you do bend over and feed that arm. But once in a while, just so a dog has a different feel, He's got a bite through a coat or something just so he's got to see it. I think a hidden sleeve is a great training aid once in a while. The same with those fake legs and fake arms. Now, if you can show that to the dog once in a while, let him see what that feels like as he does it.

That's not a terrible thing to have the dog do once in a while. But it doesn't replace, to me, doing more muzzle stuff and just getting the dog ready. So if you're not going to talk about the equipment part of it, what else can you do on the street to get your dog ready for that first apprehension? And that's where I talk to a lot of handlers about. Don't concentrate so much about getting the first bite and making sure the dog can do it.

Instead, concentrate more on getting your dog around suspects when it's appropriate. Dogs are a wonderful deterrent. So the more times you can get your dog near a suspect, And again, don't get yourself in trouble. So have your dog out when it's appropriate and within your policy and have him near the suspect. Let him smell that suspect because even from quite a ways away, that suspect's going to be putting out that enhanced scent or fear scent or adrenaline scent, whatever term you want to use.

Shoes that suspect's going to smell different than other people your dog has been around and when you can get your dog to start paying attention to that smell you can just reach over and pet him give him like a watch command you know and show him i'm interested in that guy also and reassure your dog that guy is very interesting let's both watch him and then when the suspect's cuffed up and they start walking

him towards the police car there's nothing wrong with keeping Keeping your dog on a tight leash, 100% control, walking behind that officer with the suspect and let the dog feel, breathe some of that same odor back into his mouth and start smelling that. Again, that enhanced odor, like, all right, this is what a suspect smells like. Because suspects do have a smell. And once the dog starts understanding, all right, that's a cool smell. Dad's happy. I got to walk behind.

I even got to bark a little bit. that dad didn't really correct me. He just kind of held me back and petted me while I was barking. You're doing a lot of things there. You're letting the dog understand that's what a suspect smells like. That's a good thing. And you're using your dog as a deterrent. So the suspect understands there's a dog on scene. I'm not going to run. I'm not going to fight. I'm not going to do anything crazy.

Again, I keep saying it, don't get yourself in trouble. You know, make sure you're following the policies and everything, but it's a good time to maybe, if you can just have your dog out during in arrest situations. Same with, you know, if you've done a barricade and they didn't use the dog and they're bringing a suspect out of a house, they got to load him up, you know, into another car or something like that. You've been on the perimeter for a long time.

The dog has been neutral to all the cops that are walking by. You've been there for a couple hours probably. Now as that suspect's walking by, if you can be in an area when as they walk that suspect by, I, I won't really say much to the dog and when the dog gives a little smell, you know, in the area, you'll know that he's got a new odor in his, his nose. I'll just reward him. Hey, good boy. Good boy. That's a bad guy. And tell him, pet him a little bit. Start teaching him that odor.

I think people concentrate on running around chasing a bite and they sacrifice their tactics and sacrifice, you know, a lot of things thinking I need to get a bite as opposed to I'm going to spend a whole bunch of time getting my dog in odor of suspects. And the more times your dog can start realizing that dad or mom, you know, they really like it when I'm smelling suspects and pulling towards suspects, the better that your dog is going to be ready for that.

So once he's smelled quite a few suspects, then he's going to want to pull towards them. And that's a great thing. So once he starts pulling the end of the leash, he's not going to get to him, but he's going to pull me and I'm going to give him, you know, if you, if you give your dog an inch, he's really going to think, all right, that's really good. I'm pulling dad. had. I'm pulling mom.

We're going towards that suspect. So I'm not getting anywhere close to the suspect, but I'm letting the dog think we're going to go move towards him and you can pull me. It's the only time you get to pull me around is when there's an odor of a suspect and you get to pull me towards them. Very, very powerful for the dog to start understanding that the suspects are a good smell. I can bark at them. I can pull my handler to the suspect.

I don't really get to bite them, but I get to do all that stuff. The more times I get to do that, that frustration builds, the interest in that odor over and over. You're just building for that moment, whether it's in a week, a month, or five years, that the more times the dog has smelled suspects, he's ready for, okay, I know what the next step is. It's to make that apprehension.

And you combine that with doing a lot of muzzle training where the dog knows that when a person has no equipment on, I need to hit right into him, knock him down, and then try to bite him. Now the dog gets to do all that with no muzzle on, knows what he's doing because of the smell, knocks the suspect down, and hopefully makes that apprehension. So those are just some of the basic things I want to talk about. Don't concentrate too much on chasing the bite.

There's lots of documented times where officers get hurt and it's a very real thing because you're putting your dog into an area and into a scenario on the street where it's no longer a dog deal, but it's like, I want to make sure my dog can bite somebody. So I'm going to keep moving forward when you shouldn't. So don't chase the bite. Don't get yourself in trouble. I've mentioned that I think a couple of times, but it's worth saying, don't get yourself in trouble.

You know, just go out there, do the proper training.

Don't use exposed sleeves. That's my hard opinion. Changed my mind. You know, maybe, maybe there'll be some comments when I post this on social media, maybe someone's going to tell me I'm crazy and they're going to be able to present an argument why an exposed sleeve is a good idea. I haven't seen it in the the time I've been doing it. So don't do it. And then finally, you know, I've done all of that. Now you're in this situation where your dog knows there's a bad guy.

He's interested in the bad guy. He's pulling towards you. And now there's a, you know, say, come up with whatever scenario, you know, it's, it's somebody that is maybe in a garage and you've made all the announcements, you know, through all the different times they've decided, you know, that maybe a supervisor has is it decided, you know what, we want to send the dog under all that junk to apprehend this guy and end the situation.

So if you get in that situation and you've done all this other stuff, my final piece of advice is that when possible, when it's a good deployment and when it's tactically safe, most of the searches and most of my apprehensions over the years were all off lead. We didn't use on these searches very often at all. We were fortunate we did everything off lead. I know a lot of agencies, it's always on lead, so this will work fine with you.

But when it's safe and you're in that situation, the dog's never had any street experience, and you're going to send him now, all the boxes are now checked and the decision is made, let's let this dog bite this suspect for all these reasons. When you're in that situation, if possible, if you can kind of fish that dog out on like a 15 or a 30-foot lead, let that dog drag you to the suspect. Now, there's lots of limitations to that. If there's too much stuff,

we don't want the dog getting caught up. There's a whole lot of things like that. Maybe it doesn't work. But if it's possible and you can stay, you know, in a tactical advantage and you can just kind of let that dog pull out, you're doing a lot of things because as the dog is pulling towards the suspect, he's building drive. On your body cameras and everything else, you can stop the dog halfway, give another couple of announcements, give that suspect an opportunity to surrender.

Imagine if the dog's halfway across the yard and you're behind cover. Even if the suspect says, okay, I see the dog come and I give up, you're not out anything. Even if the dog hasn't made contact with him, that dog understands, whoa, that was cool. This guy gave up. The dog's going to be going crazy. You can and really praise your dog up. If the suspect decides that he doesn't want to give up and you keep letting out that leash.

That back pressure from the leash and almost that umbilical cord from the handler to the dog is going to give that dog, he's built his drives by pulling, he feels a little more confident. Very, very few dogs in that situation will not make good contact with a suspect, even if they have very little or no street experience.

And when they make that contact, contact that back pressure is going to make that dog really want to bite hard hold on one time and then you can decide what you want to do so when it's feasible and the dog has very little experience using a long line to kind of fish the dog out is has been a very successful thing that i've really taught a lot of dogs and once the dogs have done that once or twice then taking the dog off a lead and letting him make contact on his own is easy but a

lot of times when you take a dog on his own he's in a backyard all by himself he has no lead on and he goes under a bush or something and he finds a bad guy that's a difficult transition for a lot of dogs we buy social animals we want dogs that are social so it's not going to be super easy so you know do some crisis rehearsal again to be mentally prepared and do some crisis rehearsal and, When I send my dog and the guy's running down the street, if the dog doesn't

make contact, here's what I'm going to do. You know, recall the dog and, you know, keep a perimeter on the guy. Whatever you want to do, but be ready for a failure in case it doesn't work. And also be ready, you know, that if my dog goes under a bush and I see a strong change of behavior and then he comes back out, be ready to think, you know, is there someone under there? Is there a reason why he left him?

You know, let's kind of look at this a little bit better. or don't just assume, well, he went into the bush, I saw a change of behavior, and now he's back out, nothing was there. With a new dog, you have to verify it with a more experienced dog, do something. But don't be surprised if you've never had an actual apprehension. Don't be surprised when things don't go as planned on the street. It rarely does. And again, we buy these social animals that don't want to bite every human being they see.

So it goes to reason, stands to reason that a lot of times they're not going to be, you know, the dog that as soon as they find a bad guy, they bite them right away. They need to transition. There's lots of different people who teach different ways to do it. So I just thought I'd throw out a few of my ways instead of focusing as much on teaching the dogs, you know, to bite all these different feelings and all that.

I focus a lot more on getting the dog around real suspects and doing a lot of training beforehand so hopefully that that gives you guys some ideas I certainly welcome questions and debate on on this it's a subject that a lot of people have you know lots of different opinions about I can just tell you those are things that worked for me with many many dogs to get them from training environments into street deployments a lot of that same stuff is going to apply you know

when you're doing detector dogs so you know if you've only used your own dope and your dog's always been on your dope. Don't expect him to go bang the bad guy's dope in the trunk of a car the first time he sees it. He's going to have a change of behavior and it's like, well, that's not our dope. That's not our, it smells kind of like our dope, but it's different because of all these different factors.

So understand that to get a, like a drug dog ready for the street, one of the best things you can do is train him on lots and lots of different agencies, training aides. And then when that dog's in training, if somebody in your agency makes a seizure of drugs, you know, if it's possible, if they've got them in the office and they're processing or something, if you can run him by the drugs without, you know, getting near him and hurt the evidence.

If you can do that and let the dog smell those drugs and mark it and move on and pay the dog, start showing him that it's, you know, it's all. You know, it's all heroin. It's just going to smell a little bit different based on how, you know, where it is and start showing the dog the common odors that you're training him.

It's going to go a long ways. For the bomb dogs, that's even more important that you train with lots and lots of agencies and expose your dog to many, many different training aids.

We don't find a lot of bombs on the street, luckily. so you need to expose him to as many different training aids of of the odors that you're training on as possible that way the dog doesn't just get used to finding your own training aids and it's the same with guns you can train a gun dog on the street every time you know if you have a gang unit or a proactive unit that's out there taking guns off the street when possible ask them him, you know, hey,

leave that gun in the glove compartment of that car. Let me have my dog find it. And you're going to see, for whatever reason, even a gun dog needs to find a few bad guys' guns before they really transition over and understand, all right, guns are guns. And there's a little bit of a lag time with, you know, whether it's a detective dog or a patrol dog of transitioning over to the street.

So, you know, understand it's a real thing. People who say it never happened to them. I don't know. It happens to just about everybody I know who's trained a lot of dogs. What, you know, again, whether it's patrol or detection. So those are just some ideas I have, and I just wanted to kind of talk about it. I've been seeing more people kind of talk about it on social media. I'll say one last time, don't get yourself in trouble.

It's this, this profession is ripe right now with a lot of people out there that it's attacking us as dog handlers and and attacking us as a police officers. So don't be the guy who screws up police canine for the whole entire country. By being out on a video doing something you shouldn't do, and don't be the guy who we have to send money for your criminal defense because you're trying to do something that you shouldn't have done to begin with, maybe.

So, again, don't get yourself in trouble. Enough said on all that. Hopefully, you guys get some ideas on this. Reach out to me. Email me. My email is always in the show notes. And ask questions. Give me some examples or some things maybe that happened to you, and maybe I can help you with them. or if we get enough feedback, we'll do a whole other show talking about this very subject. That's going to do it. I want to wrap up again by thanking Bobbing with Katz.

Bob is one of my lead sponsors. He's been around since I started this podcast, since I switched over to this new podcast. And Katz is an outstanding record-keeping software. So check out katzplatinum.com. They have a free trial. You can kind of make Katz exactly how you want it. There's so many different ways that you can change stuff around. So catsplatinum.com for all of that. And finally, TraceID. I've been talking about them for a little while.

Last week, they did a free sample offer and they extended that right now. So if you want to go to. Traceid.com so it's trace e-y-e dash i'm sorry trace dash e-y-e dash d trace id they spell i-e-d e-y-e-d trace id and check them out they'll give you a free sample of their product and their product i've been talking about it's real cool tear the the product open it kind of looks like a little hand wipe basically rub it on any surface and it will test for that substance that you're testing for.

So if your dog hits on a car, hits somewhere on a package, maybe at a postal sniff, you don't recover anything, you know, check it with the trace ID and you can double check whether or not there's some residual of a, of an odor on there. And it's a trace amount of the odor. Same with for the bomb dogs. It's a, it's a really cool product. So most everybody I know that at least goes to the website and you check out traceid.com. Then all of a sudden you realize, I was like, oh, that's pretty cool.

And now with the free sample that you can get through this podcast. So go there, use the code PK9TP. So Police Canine Training Podcast, PK9TP. Put that in there. They'll send you a free sample. You get to check out all their products and decide if you like it or not. And then once you like it and you've done it, then it's easier to do all the paperwork and requisition new equipment. Because I know that can be a pain for everybody. So, again, thanks to Trace ID for sponsoring the show also.

Thanks, everybody. I appreciate you listening to this. I welcome feedback on this or questions. I'm always available. So stay safe out there and have a good week. Music.