Unlocking K9 Potential: Insights from Eric Stanbro

Hey everybody, today we're going to have Eric Stambro, who's another one of the instructors for the Colorado Canine Conference. We're talking about also transitioning dogs over to the street and just some other general things that we're going to be teaching here at the Colorado Canine Conference. So Eric's always fun to talk to and listen to because the guy's got a world of knowledge and is very expressive about how he talks about dogs and can really get out a lot of information pretty quickly.

And it's always a pleasure talking to Eric. So hopefully you'll enjoy the show. Before we get to it, we mentioned Colorado Canine Conference. Check out the website, coloradok9conference.com. We still have some spots available. We have people signing up all the time, but there's still room. So if you're interested in coming out, just get on the webpage, Colorado Canine Conference. There's ways to sign up and check out the hotel. Get a hotel room if you're coming from out of state.

The lead sponsor of the Colorado Canine Conference is Ray Allen Canine. And they're, again, Ray Allen's doing it, sponsoring this, mostly just to support our industry. Everybody who comes to this conference will already know who Ray Allen K9 is. So they're not going to be getting any more name brand recognition, but they are showing that they're out and about. And they are always helping out people like me, you know, between this podcast

and the conference I'm putting on. Ray Allen's a big supporter of what we do. So I appreciate that. And, you know, hopefully you'll go check out Ray Allen Canine, see what's new on their website. Their quality is, I always mention it, but their quality is real good. And then just the support they give us is outstanding. So rayallencanine.com for all your canine needs. And with that, let's get to the show and talk to Eric. 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. I have Eric Stambro with me today. Eric's going to be one of our instructors here at the Colorado Canine Conference. And if you've been listening to our last couple episodes, we've had some of the instructors on and we've been talking about the critical skills that we're going to work on at the conference.

So again, you know, the Colorado Canine Conference, I'm pushing not to do all the sexy stuff, the helicopters and rappelling off a wall or something like that, but instead, you know, critical skills that you're going to use every day, make your team your your dog better you better so one of the things we've been talking a lot about is transitioning dogs out of a training mindset and onto the street we spent a little time talking about the training end of it and i got eric on

here today because i want to see if he's got any additional ideas of what we've already talked about and then also that next step of now the dog certified and what do we could do now we're gonna we've got a handler how we're gonna treat that brand new team you know we're just gonna you know throw them out to the wolves or are we We're going to go out there and kind of show them, you know, like a mini FTO program or something.

So Eric's trained a lot of teams over the years and probably modified how they did their program, you know, through trials and tribulations that will kind of get into that, you know, how they ended up doing what they're doing and what he liked about it. So with that, how are you doing today, Eric? I'm doing really good. Doing really good. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. As always, I know everybody that comes on here is kind of busy. So this is kind of a last minute deal.

We threw a few texts together and you jumped on. So I know you got a lot going on, so I appreciate you coming on and also coming out here to Colorado in about two months from now. So we're looking forward to getting some of your knowledge. We have you scheduled. You're going to be our keynote speaker.

So the first day, we're going to have you address everybody and kind of talk a lot about, you know, a little of everything. So what do you have planned on that day? Yeah, I'm going to talk about. Removing conflict from your training and from your relationship with your canine. There's a lot of things that guys are doing on duty and off duty that cause some conflicts with their dog. And it's basic dog stuff.

Like guys get kind of in their head that there's no way that my badass canine working dog has anxiety. Oh, yeah. Actually, there's a lot of ways that your dog has anxiety because they're dogs, right? I mean, our canines are a little more highly motivated than regular pet dogs. However, they still learn the same way. They still have the same things that can bother them.

So I'm talking a lot about that. And it's funny when I talk about that stuff in any kind of a setting where there's more than a few people, you'll see handlers like elbowing each other. Like, that's you, dude. Hey, that's Johnny in our unit. That's that guy. And things that guys don't know, things I know I didn't know. I'm telling you that my second dog, Willie, would be in the back of the cruiser just for eight hours. My solution was to scream at him like a nut job.

So, shut up. And guys know then you have the dog, then they're barking. And then you have to yell at them to shut up before you key the radio. Go ahead. And so a lot of that stuff, had I known what I know now, I could have made the dog a lot more stable. And so getting into that and then going to talk about using the e-collar operationally a little bit different than a lot of guys are used to.

And I know that what I like about that subject is it kind of blends right in that when we're talking about critical skills and, you know, about, you know, making good decisions on the street, having the dogs perform as we expect them to perform without having, you know, real obvious failures because everybody's going to have some type of failure at some point.

But obviously, when you reduce some of this conflict that people don't even realize they're doing, we're setting ourselves up better for success. And, and it's people, people don't sometimes see the relationship between, you know, having a weird thing going on at home to a week later, having your dog running next to a bad guy, not biting him. And, but clearly I think there is, you know, it's kind of one big circle. I, I think you would agree to that.

Yeah. And, and, you know, most canines aren't sitting at a kennel at your facility.

They're at the guy's house, whether they're inside or outside. and and they think that the dog is in the backyard running in circles in their kennel because they're a crazy malinois well sure they're a high drive malinois and maybe it's a little goofy but that's because he's manic and he's going crazy and so it makes your life a little bit easier or even a lot easier you know i know guys that have dogs that are canine working dogs live in the house and their wives their wives are ready to kill

them yeah the dog just stealing her panties and shoes and laundry and tissue and food and never settles down. My last dog that I worked on the road, when I left to go train dogs in the Navy SEAL contract for Cobra Canine, I had to give the dog up and he went to a handler and he was in the guy's house and he just ran circles around an island in the guy's house just every minute while he was awake, running circles.

And they're like, oh, he's crazy. I go, yeah, now knowing what I know, that would have been an easy fix. Cause he was going crazy. Yeah, absolutely. So anyways, but that's kind of what I'm going to get in there. My whole, my whole idea with that class is to get guys to think like, crap, I never even thought about that. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I got that 10 by 20 kennel because I thought I needed a bigger space for the dog. And it turns out that that could be a big part of your problem.

While he's running around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and none of that means you're a bad handler. It just means that, that, that you've, you've learned a few things over all the dogs you've trained and, and you're going to share them with everybody. So, you know, when we all, you know, I think we all, uh, when you go around training dogs, we all see conflict in the best handler world's going to have some conflict going up and down the leash.

Yeah. And then my big thing is I really, at these things, especially in Colorado, it's going to be no bad days. I, if anybody works with me, I'm really going to work on them not being a bit by their own dog. Yeah. You know, you've seen it. I've seen the dogs that are turning on their handlers. Yep. Some multiple times I've had guys come to me that, that got bit like nine times by their dog and put in the hospital, like six of those times we got problems, You know what I mean?

And there's some things that we can do to, to help getting them going on the right direction. I'm not fixing their dog in two, three days, but I can make a huge step in the right direction.

Yeah so i see a lot of that too when i'm doing e-collar classes and you get some guys who are you know they're coming to the class because they want to learn e-collar but they're also coming because they're having you know a lot of times release issues or the dog come to the leash issues and and even though we didn't really plan to talk about that let's just hit on that just for a minute for me when i see these dogs that come to the leash a lot of times i can make a huge progress with them

by just showing them quit fighting with that dog and quit quit responding into that aggression with aggression and start and people i think you know when i when i was new.

That would have been oh the dog won and you know if he came at you then you're going to double it and you know keep having that fight going on all the time but sure seems like now you know i'll sometimes i'll ignore the dog but i'll do a lot of different things but i won't respond with aggression on most instances is that kind of what you're doing too yeah i i tell the guys listen you got to save yourself so if you have to you know

hang the dog up on the leash a little bit to keep him from destroying you. I get it. I'm not living with that dog every day. You're having to deal with this. However, one of the biggest things we do is I teach him all doing the corrections of the behaviors without using the e-collar, without talking to the dog so that you're correcting the behavior and the dog understands then my behavior got corrected so I'll stop doing that instead of.

The dog viewing you as this, this punisher and everything that comes out of your mouth is a punishment or a fight. And we select the dogs for that fight. Right. And, and here we are now that dog's like views you in a different way. And there's just a lot of different things, but talking, taking the talking out of it, man, that's, that helps so much.

My whole class could be called yep yeah fixes half the problem it does yeah i i narrow in my class uh i narrow all the commands down to basically you know heal and go and it helps a lot just to yeah yeah i like it yeah so well that's good stuff i'm looking forward to the class it should be a real good one and then from there we're going to go out and do some scenario stuff and when we're talking about scenarios what we've been talking about a lot is is transitioning from the the street

or from training and getting on the street.

And we've, we've talked about that a lot. And I wanted to talk to you today about, you know, so the guy's certified and now what are you going to do? You know, it's his first night shows up at work. He's, he's got the certified dog. We can take this dog out and start deploying them. You're the trainer or the supervisor or just a team member or whatever.

What do you, what are some things that you learned over the years about, you know, what are we going to do with this guy for his first, you know, however many deployments? So if what I do is when I was the trainer in the beginning, I had to work a dog as the trainer and then, then it went back to being full time. So I wasn't on the road, but I would talk to the senior guys and go, Hey, you're on the shift with this guy.

I know, I know you want to, you want that, that apprehension, you want that search, you want this, that, can you, can you please mentor this kid and let him, if he gets there first, let him have it. Right. Yeah. Also, I tell them every call that, like, every, so you work, say you're working day shift and Sunday morning, that one doctor's office alarms goes off every single Sunday morning. Yeah. Right? And we've all had to deal with those. You're like, oh, yeah,

that's such and such. I know that every morning. Yeah. But get that dog out, get them on a long line, and get used to, you're just going to walk around and check the building that's not going to be broken into anyways, but you never know.

Know but that really helps you get used to leash management to begin with so you know you go through class and these classes seem to get shorter and shorter where everybody's just trying to get to that certification because of manpower and staffing and yeah not not everybody most people i think have moved away from the 16-week class that we used to get now there's some places to do and i applaud them and you're there those are those are unicorn units they're lucky true but.

So maybe the dog was pre-trained or was a green dog, green handler, and your department gave you eight weeks to get that done. Man, you are still not good at a leash. Yeah. So I'm really trying to get these guys to get out there with a 30-foot leash and get used to manipulating that and being smooth with that leash. So if I'm a senior guy, I come out and go, okay, I'll come to this alarm with you. Let's do this like we're worried about walking around and coming into somebody. buddy.

Plus guys got to understand you've got to have numbers, man. You got to have, yeah. Every time your dog gets out of the car that needs to be recorded because the people in your unit that are people in your department that don't like dogs, they use numbers against you. So yeah, I'm not saying pad your numbers. I'm saying, get your dog out and get them, you know, using that. But the big one is, and it depends on the, what I want to call it, the.

The attitude of your unit or the culture, we'll say culture. So at my old department, the one I retired from, we were busy. We were getting as a unit about a bite a week. So it was very busy. They're attached to the marshal's task force. Those guys are biting people all the time. Bite, bite, bite. So then you come out. You've been on the road five, six, seven years. You know what the canine unit is, right? How busy they are. They're leading the way. They're out front.

They're the first ones at the call. they're taking jumping into help and all this other stuff but then you start chasing the bites yeah yeah and and as a senior guy as a trainer i'd like to like you step and go hey hey settle down you're about to get killed like you almost did something really stupid yeah and so you have to kind of step back and see that and knowing it from from a perspective of somebody who did it I know I chased things in the beginning,

you know, my, and I've told this story a bunch, but my first dog who I, you know, I'm just a rookie handler. I didn't know anything that I didn't select her, but she was good. Now what I know from training, she would have been a, probably not selected,

but be washed out early. Yeah. She had 70 in three years, 70 failures to engaged seven zero jesus i don't know of any canine handler that i've ever heard of in the history of the world who's had 70 failures so that's how busy the department was how busy the city was you know i tased the first year like 15 people that she should have bit yeah and then there's like 10 20 more that got away yeah so i wanted you know and so then when i got my second dog who was already

on the street the handler had to go take a different position and that dog had like 50 bites when i got him i wanted that so bad yeah yeah and i my first several bites were legit reasonable legal and everything but i guarantee i sure tactics went out the window and i did stupid shit and yeah so i would rather see that like a senior guy step and go hey hey why did you just walk past eight rooms in that hallway just because you're hearing noise heard Heard a noise down the hall or something.

Yeah, and you're yelling, boo-boo, dog. You're worried about the dog. You know, the, what's that, uh, dog shouldn't dictate the tax tactics or tactics to dictate the dog use that type of stuff. Yeah. We don't want to forget police work.

Exactly. Exactly. And I think the dog. Did you like when you were still on the street with the dog or did you have your senior guys, did you have them leave their dogs in the car sometime just to be the good cover and kind of do a training training program on those when you could? Yeah. For us, it was, it was kind of a gentleman's agreement. First dog there. That was their call.

But we would you know especially when i was a trainer at the beginning so the the trainer had the trainer was always a full-time trainer when i took over they wanted me to try it as a handler and they had tried it before and we were just it just didn't work out because they wanted me to do firearms and a bunch of other things yeah and but i would show up and guys got a new dog and like i had a new dog and one of my other guys had a new dog at the same time and i'd gotten a bite he didn't

and then he's you know so i'm like listen i'm not we're not chasing these bites but get out here get this to work yeah so yeah leaving him in the car was was a good was a really good idea now the one thing i wish i would have done that i didn't really do until late in the career as a trainer because i hadn't really learned it was doing like a working on like bounding tracking where one dog tracks for a while until he either loses it or smokes out yeah and then and then

you're you take over we never really did that where the the next the other handle would drive ahead and pick up a spot and i'll be honest with you i learned it from our podcast working dog radio we had a lady from san bernardino california she was she was a member of the department but just did search and rescue with her dog and it was i was like holy crap yeah man like Like, we're an inner city, but we go out in the county all the time.

And there's a lot of times when I have to down my dog because he's destroyed, like smoked. Yeah. So, things like that would be, are pretty neat. Yeah. But I'll tell you the one big thing that I really, so like today, I had a group of handlers from an agency north of here at my facility. And we just, we're doing maintenance training. And these guys are all on the street now. They're all doing pretty good.

My thing with them, guys, is I try to take part of each of those training sessions and do the weirdest environmental crap that I can think of on the spot. And then something that's related to like an actual type call out. Yeah. So that I know you're never going to have this where a guy's playing a piano with a Michael Myers mask on covered in a sheet.

That's not the point. Exactly. Right. Exactly. So as you know, when the dogs get out of class, they went from full speed all day to in the car mostly. Yeah. Out of the car two, three times a shift. Yep. You know what I mean? So I think they probably can start to lose it. You're like me. We worked in a busy inner city area and I always felt bad for the guys that, that had a real nice dog and they graduate and they work in an area where they might get a bite every two years. Yeah.

Those people worry me like that worries me, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's tough to keep the dog up and not get into it. You know, just a low of a training environment and then the dog's not ready, you know, when it's time. Cause they don't really get seasoned by, you know, fighting up bad guys. Yeah. I don't know if you did this. I would try as much as I could to kind of come out during a shift and park my car and tell the handler where I'm at, where the car is. Come find me.

And it's cool, man. It sounds great. And it works. But like everybody else now, they're like, yeah, I'd like to do that. But I'm going call to call to call to call. Yeah, we were fortunate because we didn't have to answer calls. And we did a lot of that. I made sure all the dogs. I'm a big advocate. We could have dogs being very neutral and muzzle and being able to search and fight and do everything in muzzle. So that opened up a huge training venue, the entire city.

So I'd find an alley, and usually it was an alley that had some junkyard dogs in it and filthy, nasty alley, and do the same thing. I'd tell the guys, hey, start on the south end and come find me. And sometimes I'd be in an abandoned yard or sometime right in the alley or something. and quick little, you know, fight, or maybe not a fight, maybe just an indication on one side of the fence and praise the dog off, you know, so he wasn't getting crazy about, you know, having the muzzle on.

But it was, you know, I'd have the handler park somewhere away from my car, I think what you're saying, so there was no pretext to the dog that this is a training day, and it was a great way to get the dog used to working in our environments.

Yeah, and the other big thing for groups is –. Buying into the culture of training and training day is not just a day to not be on shift yeah you know i mean so that you want to show up because when i took over as the head trainer he'd kind of gotten that way because we're we're an agency we had can't remember if we had in my career we had 12 dogs seven dogs nine dogs six dogs it was you know then we had seven for the longest time that's where they're at now and it

kind of got that way kind of got training kind of got robotic and maybe you would do like one thing and then go to lunch yeah and then one thing and then go home and i was and the guys were happy with it right yeah i was like oh man like this is this is it so when i took over i really started wanting to try to change that and then everyone bought in so that it was tell me what happened over the weekend or tell me what happened let's try to reenact that as best you can you know

because of equipment yeah that type of thing so it takes it definitely takes a buy-in and i get it guys are tired you know the handling like we were saying we didn't have to we didn't have to handle no accidents no report calls nothing like that we were doing anything that could be violent so we did go to domestics yeah and what we call trouble calls fights and stuff and then all like alarms anything that could be breaking anything think it'd be a dog call,

but still that was 25 calls a shift per guy. And so they get there on training on Wednesday and they're like, they're beat up, man. They're tired. I get it, but it definitely because when you're a new guy in the unit, in class, you're just focused on making it through and get certified. But now we need you to be a part. You're here.

I'm sure you're the new guy. I might bust your chops a little bit, but, We need you to buy in and tell us if you make a mistake, tell us, you might be the only dog working that night and you missed a guy hiding under a bed. Well, come on, man. We got to know about that. Exactly. And was it the dog or you or a combination? And, and cause I think a lot of guys to this day, I think guys cover up, you know, failures of their dog, no matter what it is.

And man, you got to bring those to the group because you know, that's how everybody gets better. And that's how you fix your own dog. Cause again, anybody listening to this, that, that has done it for a long time has had some failures. It sounds like you've had, your dog had the world record of them. Yeah.

You know, one of the things, one of the things that you're talking about culture that, you know, talk about, you know, helping the new guys and stuff in our unit, we ended up having a really good group on one of our shifts that we, you know, I, I, I tried to, you know, as a trainer really tried to make it. So, you know, we're, we're one team. And whether my dog gets a find or a bite or whatever, it doesn't matter. It's our shift. Our group is going to be successful.

We're going to go out there and do an area search. And if there's four or five of us, we might leave a dog or two behind. We'll cover each other. If we had a new dog, we're trying to give that dog the best odds of finding the guy. And that comes from some experience because when I started, I think like what you were alluding to, when I started, I had a tremendous amount of luck. And man, every time I turned around, I was getting a body with my dog every time. And I, I was pretty proud of that.

And I was proud of the number of, you know, apprehensions I had and stuff. But at the same time, when I look back, you know, I think of, I think of some of these pretty hot calls that my tactics were terrible because I want to make sure I got a yard or two ahead of, you know, somebody else to make sure that I found, I found the guy and dumb way to do business. And luckily, you know, I never got, got myself or anybody else killed.

But when we switch that mentality to, you know, let's just make sure all the dogs are good. It, it sure helped with, with, you know, transitioning out of training and it helped with, you know, like, like you said, if you, if, if somebody was working alone one night and they had something weird, there wasn't as much competition. So it was fine for them to come and say, man, I screwed up last night. This is what I did.

And it, it really opened up, you know, the communication. communication so a lot of these things are culture related it's you know i think that's kind of what you're saying too yeah oh yeah for sure and and here's this is a word to the trainers out there and so if you're a trainer of your unit or whatever maybe you're a handler and and or maybe you're like me and i was full-time doing the training and things like that you're probably the oldest

guy or one of the oldest guys there but it doesn't matter you need to be at training first first, and you need to leave training last. When you go, if you have food at your place, you need to let your guys start eating first before you eat. You need to lead from the front. You need to get in the suit. You need to take somebody, not all of them, of course, but you need to do things. You need to then also delegate some things to some other guys and go,

hey, we're going to run back-to-back scenarios here. Can you please manage that one?

Yeah, yeah. that because then the guys it's really weird man and i'm sure you've seen it this weird thing where the trainers try to hoard information and gatekeep things and they don't teach the people coming behind them and it's like do you not care about your program and your unit don't you it should be seamless maybe the guy coming in behind you make some changes cool great but if the culture is right if you set things up and you showed that guys

behind you so one thing that was different Different from me than a lot of other trainers that I've had to deal with is they're not used to large group training and they don't know how to manage and run. So everybody gets two, three things before lunch, two, three things after lunch. The dogs are tired. Everybody worked. Everybody got things in there because there's too much BSing, standing around talking. And then they struggle with.

Managing that so i mean i got lucky because we had our department and then 20 other dogs from other agencies or 30 other dogs from other agencies in our group and it's still that way so you become really good at that you guys are a large agency just in yourselves, so there's a skill set to it yeah but as that trainer man you can't be sitting in the office toking and joking yeah well well and put the rookie in the suit or some

bullshit yeah and and And supervisors need to make sure that guys are going to training and that's not the day to go take care of your uniforms and get your car polished or anything else. It's training day. And I think one thing too is, and you probably see it too when you're out doing some of your classes, is I'm getting to the point where at the beginning of my classes I tell people we're not going to have any folding chairs out on the field.

Because we need to be out working dogs and getting ready. And it seems like the first day of class, a lot of times it goes really well and everybody's bringing dogs out quick or working them and everybody's engaged and listening. And then, you know, by the second day when it gets kind of tiring, all of a sudden someone breaks out a folding chair.

And then you got a group of people who are really interested in the training and another group who are all sitting around in their chairs waiting for their turn. But they're not, you know, a lot of training isn't just having a leash in your hand. It's about being with the group and seeing the other dogs and hearing what people are talking about.

And I like to kind of foster that same environment that you're describing where people are busy and they're there and you can have the new guy set up a scenario and run a scenario because you learn something when you're, when you're doing that too. So I like that theory.

Yeah, and it's just, you know, little things like that. And if you're the trainer, if you can, try to be watching as many of the reps, as many dogs as you can. Yeah. The one thing that you and I both have seen, because we're both on the seminar circuit, is that that's important to the people that hire you is that you're there, you're watching, you're not on your phone, you're not sitting back, not paying attention. I've had it brought up to me several times, like, dude, you watch every rip

of every dog. I go, you're damn right I do. Yeah, I'm here.

Right exactly so if you're listening to this and you want to get out on that, seminar circuit or maybe you're out there taking take an inward look and see what you're doing yeah also are you just getting guys started and then kind of stepping back and in you know toking and joking and bullshitting with the with the dudes and and it's easy to do but that's like me i don't in my seminars we don't break for lunch i i tell guys bring some food eat or if If you need to go get something,

go get something. I have a banana power bar. I got work to do. Yeah, we're going to work. Yeah, I like that. And that's what I'm looking forward to here is everybody I'm bringing in is, you know, they all have the same mindset for the seminar that it's going to be, it'll be a lot of work. It'll be fun, but it's going to be long days and a lot of work and hopefully get a lot of good stuff in.

Yeah. Yeah, and the other big thing in the units is this is a big training day thing when it comes to going on the street, when guys are on the street is if you're in your unit and the guy has a dog that you don't think is maybe cut out to do it, you've been a handler for a while, so maybe like six, seven years in there, five, six years, and you're kicking ass.

And this guy goes out with this new dog who's only ever seen, you know, basic stuff or some scenarios, but don't shit talk that guy's dog, help him out or go to the trainer and go, I was on that call and that dog wanted nothing to do with searching the house. Maybe it's an issue between the dog and the handler. Maybe he's doing something goofy, but don't shit talk the dog. That's a great point. That's a great point. That's a great point.

Cause when you're doing that, you might be thinking that you're, you're making yourself look better because you look better than that handler, but to all the cops in your department, you're just making the whole canine, you know, look bad. Cause you know, we're as good as our weakest link. And I think that's a great point. You see that a lot.

So yeah, yeah, and then if you're like I want to re-emphasize the point you brought up earlier you gotta you have to be, honest with yourself and the dog and if he's Don't you know like me when gina would have misses they're like man What I thought I thought for sure she was gonna bite there and i'm like, yeah Well mercury is in retrograde You know, the light wasn't perfectly right and everything. It's just excuses dude. Yeah, you're embarrassed. Yeah, right.

I then figured it out, and I started begging for help from the brass.

The handlers tried to help me. The trainer, eh, kind of, but he had other things going on. They weren't going to spend any money to replace the dog. There's a whole big political bull crap with me why they didn't do it, but I was putting in writing to them, like, I'm going to get killed.

Like, today, we chased the guy down from a track, and i got into a fight with him and he was fighting me over my gun and my dog was running around in circles wrapping us up in the 30-foot leash yeah can i please can i please have a different dog or whatever and they're like nope yeah crazy crazy yeah so just guys got to help each other man and the ones i feel bad for brother are the guys that are a single dog unit and they They don't have really anybody near

them or they got to drive a long way and their training gets canceled because they don't have enough guys. Yeah. Yeah. And they're, those dudes are struggling, man. Those guys are struggling. They are. And it takes a lot of commitment. And, and I've talked to some of those guys just like you have. And, and I think some of them rest on, well, where I work, there's really not that much crime, but hold on. Cause someday, someday some bad-ass dude's going to do a chase and crash in your little town.

And, and you'll be the one who's, who's out there searching for him. So, So I never liked seeing that, that attitude of, you know, well, I don't work in a high crime area. Yeah. You're doing a job that, that you have a high likelihood if you do it for a long time of being in some pretty violent circumstances, even, even in the small areas, it definitely happens. Every town has crazy people. Every town has mentally ill people.

And when they get there, they're going to call you because that's what your job is. So I've, you know, I've retired in November of 18, which is crazy for me to think about how long ago that was. but I was just ran into a buddy of mine that I got hired with who's still on the department. And he said, now everyone they deal with is mentally ill. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not getting any safer. That's for, for damn sure. No. Well, this is all good information and, you know, I'm looking forward to your class and think that it's going to be kind of more of the same, but, but in person, you know, we can talk about all we want, but it's going to be a lot more fun to get handlers with their dogs out, out on the field and, and come up with some of these crazy, you know, stressful scenarios that you're talking about.

And, and it's designed to make people better, not to make people fail. And it should be, it should be a whole lot of fun. And the weirdest ones, I tell people, feel free to wager, but don't wager on your dog because he's going to do something stupid. But I'm really looking forward to it. I like the format that you come up with, the class and the work. I like it. And I'll be honest with you, I'm really looking forward to Colorado that time of year.

I've only ever been to Colorado once, and it was in September. It was beautiful. I bet it's just as nice. It'd be a little bit warm, but it's a beautiful state, so it should be a good time. So I'll be lathered up with sunscreen. That's the bluest guy I've ever seen in my life. Oh yeah. 350 days of sunshine a year here. So can't complain about that. Yeah. I think we have 50 days. I don't know. It's not much. The few that we don't, you guys take from us. So right. Yeah.

Well, perfect. Thanks, Eric. I appreciate your time. No problem. Thanks for having me on. Look forward to seeing you. All right. All right. Well, that's going to do it with the talk with Eric Stambro.

So I'm looking forward to Eric coming out here to the Colorado Canine Conference. As we mentioned, he's going to be our keynote speaker. So the first day, he's going to do a long block of instruction in the classroom, and then we'll follow that up immediately that night going out and starting some scenario stuff based on what he's talking about. And then each day, we're going to have a little bit of classroom and then a lot of hands-on stuff with the instructors. So it should be a good time.

ColoradoCanineConference.com. Still have spots available if you're interested in coming. Just shoot me an email. I'll help you get registered or get you in the hotel or whatever you need so check that out and also I want to end today thanking. Canineservices.com. That's Kevin Sheldahl. And Kevin's been doing basic and advanced canine training for a long time. So you can do courses with Kevin in patrol detection, explosives, narcotics, human remains, guns.

He'll do workshops with SWAT stuff, you know, canine and tactical integration, advanced patrol. I mean, you name it, Kevin can do it. If you have some specific needs, Kevin will put together a class specifically for you and your training group. So check out Check out canineservices.com, k-9services.com, or give Kevin a call at 505-250-4576, and you can either go see him in New Mexico or he'll come to you. So check out all the stuff that Kevin is doing there at canineservices.com.

And then finally, I've been mentioning quite a bit, Cats Platinum. So check out catsplatinum.com for canine activity tracking software. It's Bob Eaton's canine software.

He was the first one to do it. it's highly customizable so push a button and you'll get your reports exactly how you want them get everything you need for court or for your admin or for whatever so you know you got to do training records everybody has to do them we all know that so when you do it make sure that you also have a way that you can extract all the information in a real professional and efficient manner so cats does that in spades so and the customer service through bob is

outstanding when When you call them, you talk to Bob directly. So catsplatinum.com for all your record keeping needs. Thanks, everybody. Music.