April 5, 2024 • 38 mins
In this episode, host Jeff Meyer stresses the significance of structured and regularly scheduled K9 training days. Jeff not only underscores the importance of consistency in scheduling the weekly training sessions but also highlights the crucial role played by K9 supervisors in ensuring successful training outcomes. Drawing from his years of experience, he shares valuable advice for handlers on how to engage their dogs productively in training and the significance of scenario-based exercises in refining their skills. This episode is an invaluable resource not only for handlers but also for canine supervisors and anyone interested to know more about the field.
This episode digs deep into how a well-structured training day can enhance the capabilities of canine officers. The conversation touches upon key elements like aligning skill levels, designing vivid training scenarios, and improving training venues for more productive sessions. Further, the importance of fostering a positive, collegial environment during training days to ensure team unity is stressed.
To contact Jeff Meyer email him at: JeffMeyer1@outlook.com
To see more about Jeff and the classes that are offered go to: www.Policek9Training.net
Thanks to this shows sponsors:
KATS K9 Record Keeping www.katsplatinum.com
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Fox and Hound Dog Products https://shopfoxandhound.com
Use Discount Code PK920 to get 20% off your order
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Trace Eye D Products https://trace-eye-d.com/
Use discount Code PK9TP for a free sample until April 15th
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Ray Allen K9 https://www.rayallen.com/
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For information about the Colorado K9 Conference https://coloradok9conference.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey everybody, before we get to the show today, I want to talk about a couple
of advertisers here that are supporting the show.
You've heard me talk for the last several shows about Fox and Hound.
So if you go to shopfoxandhound.com, you're going to see all the products that Fox and Hound has.
And like I've mentioned, obviously their bread and butter for their business
is going to be pet dogs, but this is a company that supports what we do.
(00:23):
So they want to help us through the Fox and Hound Foundation.
And when you buy stuff at Fox and Hound for
your dog even if it's your pet dog you're supporting other
police dogs so the Fox and Hound Foundation is doing
a lot of really good stuff and when you go to shopfoxandhound.com you click
the the give back mission and you'll see some of the stuff they're doing for
for our dogs for the police dogs so I think it's a great company they really
(00:46):
do support police dogs and support what we do and some of their products I've
mentioned their their kennel cleaner quite a few times. They also have a pad protection.
So I just saw recently on a forum, somebody was asking about a dog with slick floor problems.
Sometimes getting the dog's pads a little bit softer will make the pads on their
feet a little bit stickier.
(01:07):
And some dogs will feel a little bit better when their pads aren't all calloused
over and they're on those types of floors.
So it's just something to think
about. And they do sell a good pad protection there at Fox and Hound.
So a lot of products on there, the shampoo and everything else that definitely
will work for our dogs and make your dogs look a little bit better.
And maybe if it's the pad protection, it might even help them walk on slick floors a bit better.
(01:31):
But again, it's a company that I really support because they support us.
So shop foxandhound.com, check them out.
Also, I'd like to talk about Trace ID real quick. You've heard me talk about
them the last couple episodes too.
They have a wipe that you can check different areas for both narcotics and explosives.
So it'll check for trace amounts. That's hence the name, Trace ID.
(01:53):
And again, they spell it Trace ID, and it's Trace E-Y-E hyphen D, Trace ID.
It's a real cool product. So if you search a car or something,
don't come up with anything, you can take one of the wipes and check some different
parts of the car, And it'll just confirm that there is, you know,
there's been drugs in this car and it's a scientifically proven fact.
It'll just help your training records.
(02:14):
Same with explosives. If you need to double check something when you're out
doing a search or whatever, you can use one of their explosive wipes.
So if you go to their website, and it's trace-eye-d.com, so trace-i-d with the
dashes, trace-i-d.com.
Go to their website, and between now and April 15th, they're offering a chance
(02:38):
for you to get their product in a free sample.
So when you go to the website, put in the code for the podcast,
PK9TP, so Police Canine Training Podcast.
Put that in, and you'll get a free sample. So do that before April 15th.
No cost to you. You don't have to write a letter through your department or
anything and get a free sample sent to you.
And then you can see if it's a product you like and you want to maybe pitch
(02:59):
to your bosses about starting to stock it.
I think it's a cool product. So they've demoed it for me.
Check it out. TraceID.com.
Music.
This is the Police Canine Training Podcast with Jeff Meyer.
Join us for each episode to get real-world advice from canine professionals
(03:23):
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.
(03:45):
Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Meyer.
Today, I don't have any guests with me. It's just going to be me.
But I'm going to answer a question that I've gotten in a few different formats
recently, and I've talked about it to people over the years quite a few times.
And it's basically it's training days.
You know, if you have a training day, how do you structure training day?
(04:05):
What do you do to make the most valuable use of your time on a training day?
And, and just some ideas about training days. So first off, you know,
should you have a training day or not?
Now, if you are an agency where you have a dedicated canine unit and all you
have to do is train dogs and, and respond to calls and you all work the same
(04:26):
shift, then you, maybe you don't need a training day, you have the ability to do,
to just not answer calls for a little while and go train as a group together.
What that takes though is some discipline. So I've been in both where we had
training days and then we were in a period of time where the training days became inefficient.
I'm going to talk about how that happens to a lot of units.
(04:46):
So they became so inefficient that we just decided to train on duty.
And we had that ability because we were a dedicated canine unit.
So it was easy for us if there was no canine stuff going on that we could go
as a group and find a place in the city and train for a couple hours.
And it was a pretty efficient way to do it because we could get a lot done and
(05:06):
we were doing it in a short period of time.
But most people don't have that ability. Most everybody, I understand,
you know, you have other duties.
You're answering radio calls, you're doing other stuff, and you just don't have
the ability to just basically turn the radio down.
And we had a canine channel. We could listen to just that. And if they needed
a dog, they'd call us on just that channel. I understand that's,
(05:27):
you know, a very good luxury that a lot of people don't have.
So most people have training days. And when I talk to people over the,
across the country, one of the universal things is, is that a lot of times training
days are not very efficient.
So it depends on how things are structured. I'd say a very common training day
is on a Wednesday because that's an overlap day based on, you know,
(05:49):
10 hour schedules or 12 hour schedules.
But a lot of people, you know, if you use Wednesday for an example, it's a training day.
And if you're running two shifts, you have some type of day shift and some type
of night shift, then you want to get everybody together.
So then those hours have to kind of merge into something.
And that starts on the training day. That usually will start,
you know, sometime a little bit earlier for the night shift guys and a little
(06:11):
bit later for the day shift guys, some type of compromise.
And that day usually is going to be the, you know, the days dedicated to training.
Now I've heard a lot of different things where the training day is a little
bit shorter and then they get to leave, the people get to leave earlier that
day to take care of their, to compensate them for their dog care.
I'm not a big fan of that. I think a training day should be a dedicated day.
(06:33):
How many days should you have in a month?
That's really kind of schedule dependent. You know, if you have the luxury of
having four training days a month, then by all means, I would say have four training days a month.
It's excellent use of your time, keep all your dogs up and train better,
and gives you more time to go out and do scenario-based training when you're
(06:54):
not having to struggle with the basic skills.
We'll get to more of that in just a little bit. So basically,
you know, should we have a training day or not?
I think, you know, again, unless you're one of those unusual agencies that everybody
works the same shift and you don't have other duties, I think you should have
scheduled training days.
(07:14):
And ideally, it should be the same day every month or every week,
I'm sorry. And there should be four every month.
So you're getting plenty of training time.
So once you've decided you're definitely going to have training days, what's the next step?
How are they going to be structured? structured so the first thing that that
for most of you when you listen to it it's it's the way it works is your supervisor
(07:37):
is going to be involved but i can tell you from traveling around the country
and talking to a lot of people there's an amazing number of so-called canine supervisors,
that never go to a training day so if you're a canine supervisor go to your
training days i just don't understand i know that there's some canine supervisors
who have a lot of different duties So maybe you can't go to every one of them,
(08:00):
but if you, whatever your other duties are.
Your canine unit, if your title is canine supervisor,
I can almost argue with you that every other duty that is assigned to you in
the department does not hold the amount of liability to you through vicarious
liability as being a canine supervisor.
So going to a training day as a canine supervisor should be very,
(08:24):
very high up on your list.
That does a couple things. things. You can help structure the day because the supervisor's there.
One of the cool things I've always found about canine handlers is that you could
put 250 canine handlers out on a field during a training day without one sergeant
or command officer anywhere in the zip code.
(08:47):
And out of that 250, 240 of them would work all day long because we love what we do.
So we don't need a supervisor to come and motivate us what to,
how to do it or whatever, but a supervisor can provide basically the,
the support and maybe some of the administration stuff.
(09:07):
So if a supervisor is going to a training day every day, when they start getting
pushed back that, Hey, these guys have too many training days,
that supervisor should be able to say, no, we go to those training days and
here's all the stuff we do.
Here's what we're working on. Here's what, why it's beneficial.
And the supervisor should be heavily invested, not in just the,
the, the title of canine supervisor.
(09:28):
He should be invested in the performance of all the people under him.
And that starts with going to training days, supporting the guys,
seeing the equipment needs they might have.
There's just so many different things. So I've seen a lot of canine supervisors.
If they work a dog, then obviously they go to the training days. Right.
But I've seen a lot that don't work dogs and whether a canine supervisor should
(09:50):
work a dog or not might be a whole nother show. We can talk about that.
But if you're a canine supervisor and you don't work a dog, your duty still
should include going to the training day.
And when you're at the training day, you know, you don't just stand around and
talk to the guys about other stuff.
You should be heavily involved in what you're doing. You are a canine supervisor.
(10:12):
So you should understand, you know, how they train.
And talk to the trainers, figure out what's going on, ask some questions,
understand what the expectations are for the dogs to certify,
ask the trainers and the handlers, you know, how do you get from point A to point B?
Look at the dogs. Are all the dogs on the same plane? Are they all,
or is one dog struggling a lot?
(10:34):
And as a supervisor, then you can start figuring out, is this,
is it because the dog or is it a handler or is it a training issue or an attitude issue?
You won't know any of that if you don't go to a training day.
So it's amazing how many training or canine supervisors don't go to training,
or if they do, they're not involved.
So as a canine supervisor, you should understand what your guys do,
(10:59):
how they get there. You should understand the mechanics of training.
It doesn't mean you have to be an expert. It doesn't mean you have to go out and become a trainer.
It just means you should understand what they're doing. And the trainers,
as a unit trainer, if you're one of them, you should be able to explain in a
very comprehensive way to your sergeant how you're training,
what you're doing, what the goals are of the training.
(11:20):
So training supervisors go to training days. It's as simple as that.
But again, I guarantee you there's some guys who are listening to this that
are laughing because their sergeants never, ever go to their training days.
So when you're there as a sergeant, be involved. You know, besides learning
how they train and what they do and everything, put the suit on,
decoy a little bit, learn how to catch dogs.
(11:41):
You can help so much in the training day by becoming a good decoy.
When you're involved as a decoy, as those of us that are handlers,
and again, I'm speaking to supervisors, those of us that are handlers know that
decoy is the most important part of the training.
So when you're lucky enough to get a supervisor, even if they don't handle a
dog that is invested and will put a suit on and learn how to decoy correctly
(12:04):
and help out with all the training, then you've got one more extra decoy on your training day.
And that sergeant then gets to see all the dogs, gets to catch the dogs,
gets to understand how the dogs are working and gets the sergeant or supervisor,
whatever title, corporal sergeant, they're involved.
So the sergeants that I, or supervisors that I do talk to that do go to training,
(12:26):
the next thing I ask them is how often do you put a suit on and catch dogs?
And a lot of times I get a laugh and it's like an absurd question.
And I, but the units that I go to, and I see that the units are functioning,
you know, at a higher level and everybody's working working a little bit better,
those are usually the units where the supervisors are heavily involved,
(12:48):
whether they work a dog or not.
And they're supporting their guys by coming to training and,
you know, being involved and decoying and helping out and actually participating,
not just standing on the side.
When you're a handler and you have a supervisor who just wants to stand back,
you almost feel like you're under a microscope and that that person
(13:09):
is just judging you and trying to figure out if
you're doing a good job or not and not actually involved and as a
handler you start to think you know the person never gets involved he doesn't
know if i'm doing a good job or not so then it becomes a personality thing you
know if the sergeant likes some people they do a better job because of the personality
so if you're a supervisor i'll stop here but the bottom line is go to training
(13:31):
days and participate in training days.
Enough said on that, but again, it's worth repeating.
So what hours should the training days be? Figure out your common day,
the day that the schedules are a little fat with bodies, that if you're all
assigned to a patrol part of function,
then what will your command be able to let you go off?
(13:57):
So ideally, it'd be every week on a steady day.
That isn't possible. So, for many agencies, it's just not possible, especially now.
I understand, you know, every single agency right now is struggling with staffing.
So, these training days should be important, but it's not the hill to die on
where, you know, if your command says, you know, we're bleeding bodies here
(14:18):
and we can't even staff our patrol shift,
and then you start demanding, well, every Wednesday we're going to be gone for
10 hours and we're going to take the whole unit.
It, when you start doing stuff like that, then you start seeing canine units get reduced or go away.
So you have to be flexible with the senior command as to how the training day
is going to function, what the hours are going to be, how often or whatever.
(14:41):
Ideally, like I said, if you could do every week, that's great.
I know a lot of agencies right now are doing it twice a month.
If you can only train twice a month, that's okay. Just make the best of that time.
So you're going going to have to work with the command, figure out a schedule,
figure out what day everybody's going to train on and then figure out the hours.
A while back, I was doing a, uh.
(15:03):
Review of an agency and part of the review that was, it was not asked for as
part, they had different things they wanted us to specifically look at and that
the commands had concerns about with the agency.
But one of the things was not training days. But as we talked to every handler
individually, all of a sudden the training days became a huge issue.
(15:25):
And what it was, was they They had a supervisor who was very involved,
but he was also, as a supervisor, was trying to accommodate everybody's hours on that training day.
So they had a weekly training day, but the hours weren't the same.
And what it was was the supervisor was just trying to help out all of his guys.
(15:46):
But it had turned into, on the training day, some people came in at 10.
Some people came in at 1. Some people came in at 2.45 after they picked the
kids up from school, and it was kind of almost set-your-own-hours on the training day kind of thing.
And the training days really lasted from 10 a.m. to almost 10 p.m.,
(16:07):
and everybody worked a portion of those hours somewhere in between,
and they had a little bit of overlap.
There was no continuity. They couldn't really get going on the training when
they would, and the trainer worked different hours than some of the handlers.
While it was well-intentioned by
the supervisor, it was a big point of contention for all of the handlers.
(16:28):
And they were like, it just feels like a wasted day to us because we're not
actually training as a unit.
So when we pointed that out, it was an easy fix. They picked a time and that
became the training. Everybody shows up this day.
Which, of course, you know, could be a bit of a burden for some people,
you know, because you've got child care and you've got a life outside there.
But, you know, it's part of our job. And everybody who took this job as a handler,
(16:53):
you know, understood there was going to be some flexibility needed.
So with advance notice and start scheduling at a certain time and,
you know, maybe work out with everybody what time is going to work for everybody,
those hours should be set.
And with some flexibility, maybe you have a new training venue or something
going on where, you know, the whole unit's going to switch the hours that day.
(17:14):
But, but basically my point of all this is that a training day should be set.
If you can get it every week, that's great.
At least every other week is I would say the minimum.
And then those hours should be set at a time and the whole bureau,
all the handlers are going to work those hours, get everybody together.
Because especially if you have two or three shifts or people work in different
(17:38):
sides of the week, that training day is going to be the day that you can put everybody together.
Everybody can kind of talk about what's going on, some of their deployments,
good or bad, be in a real honest forum about what they want to work on that day.
As opposed to having, you know, a day shift versus night shift or first part
of the week versus second part of the week.
You know, we get little clicks, the training day should be a time where everybody
(18:01):
gets together and remembers that you're one solid unit and have that camaraderie
start, you know, from the rule call that day.
Spend a little bit of time talking about what's going on.
Catch up if you're working with people that you don't get to see,
you know, if it's been two weeks since your last training day.
Check on some deployments and maybe some detector dog finds,
(18:22):
whatever you need to catch up on.
But check in with everybody. And now the yin should be ran kind of by the supervisor.
So pick a day and pick the hours and then stick to it.
And then when you, once you've done that and you've got your training schedule,
a training day is a training day.
A training day is not the day that you go and get your car worked on or an admin
(18:45):
day where you're going to go get your radio fixed or go pick up uniforms across
town and show up two hours late.
And everybody that works in a training group knows that there's always somebody
who always has something going on on that training day and they put in half
the time that everybody else does.
Then when certification rolls around, then all of a sudden they're panicked
and they want you to help them with their dog and certify. So again,
(19:09):
supervisors, trainers, you know, hold people accountable.
If you're fortunate enough to have a set in stone training day with training times,
then the expectation should be that that's not a day that you take off to go
and do something else or,
you know, I mean, things come up and we all understand that,
but it's not just a free day that you can make it when you can and then go do
(19:30):
administration stuff because, you know, you work nights and now you're working at noon that day.
So you get to go do some admin stuff or set vet appointments or whatever.
That's not a training day. So training day should be, should start on a,
on a scheduled day, a scheduled time and have a roll call with all the handlers
and supervisors present and go over that day,
(19:52):
you know, catch up from the last time you had met,
go over any new issues, department issues, schedules,
upcoming events, whatever deployments, you know, if there's been any.
Significant deployments, sit there and talk about them as a group.
That way, again, sometimes you get a day shift and night shift or, or other clicks.
Maybe somebody heard about a deployment, but they didn't get all the facts. So explain everything.
(20:16):
And if there's been a failure in a deployment, a dog didn't buy it,
or you miss some, some dope or something, this is the time to sit down and talk about it.
And the handler should explain, you know, here's what happened.
Here's what the dog did. Here's what I did.
Here's what I think the mistake was. And then as a group, that's going to be
a focus part of your training day is to, to to recreate that scenario,
see if any other dogs have that problem and work through it. Here's an example.
(20:40):
One time we were searching a house.
It was a barricade. We knew the suspect was in this house. We'd had contact
with them and we finally made entry.
We were going through the house nice and slow and my dog started working closet.
When we looked in the closet, straight straight up above in the closet was an attic space.
(21:02):
Well, the dog started working in the closet. This was a closet where these people,
I don't think had ever heard of the thing that we all call hangers.
So they just threw all of their clothes in a pile in the closet.
This is a pile of clothes that was probably four or five feet tall,
just dirty, filthy clothes. Everybody's been in those kinds of houses.
(21:23):
And I think they shoplifted clothes. And then when they were done
wearing them they just threw them in this closet so my dog
went in and he went up on this pile of clothes and then
right away one of the SWAT guys saw the attic
open in my mind all right the guy's in
the attic so the dog keeps working he worked the pile of clothes a little bit
(21:44):
but not a ton and didn't really try to dig through the pile of clothes you know
nothing so the decision was made we needed to get up into the attic and we cleared
the rest of the house dog kept working the the closet a whole lot.
When they wanted to put a ladder in the attic, they needed to move the clothes.
So they started pulling the clothes out while they covered the attic hole.
(22:05):
As they were pulling the clothes out, lo and behold, they see this suspect's
foot in this pile of clothes.
Now, before that day, I would have said all day long that if somebody was in
a pile of clothes, that my dog would have went straight in, dug through all
the clothes, and bit him.
This was a dog that had many, many street fines and apprehensions.
So biting wasn't an issue with this dog. dog, but the way the clothes were,
(22:29):
they were packed onto this guy so heavy and he was down so much.
The odor was in the closet, but definitely, you know, the whole closet was filled
and there wasn't, it wasn't like a reason for my dog to start digging through, through clothes.
And in fact, you know, like a lot of dogs, my dog at times, you know,
would bite, you know, couches or whatever out of frustration.
And we had worked on not letting him bite things.
(22:51):
So, you know, know, the training we had done would discourage him from just
tearing through a bunch of clothes.
And we had never ever set up a training scenario where we had somebody under
a huge pile of clothes and let the dog go work it.
My dog obviously didn't work him correctly, saw the guy's leg,
then we challenged him, the guy gave up.
(23:12):
So right away on the next training day, the first thing we did is we went to a school.
We found where the lost and found was, and they had had boxes and boxes of clothes.
We put decoys under clothes out in the open and we put them in closets and we
did it in a muzzle hide because our dogs would work well in muzzle.
And lo and behold, most of our dogs had a difficult time working a huge pile of clothes.
(23:36):
So it was me who had to explain to the SWAT guys why my dog didn't crawl through
the clothes and bite this guy.
But by going and being honest and open and saying, Hey, you know what?
It wasn't a a good deployment, um, in a lot of ways, cause I wish my dog would
have just, you know, found the guy instead of a SWAT guy seeing his foot.
But by explaining what happened and being open about it and when we set up our
(24:00):
training, all of our dogs ended up learning to work through that.
And it was a different scent picture for the dogs and a different picture for the dogs.
Once they started seeing that, it wasn't a problem. And over the next few years,
we had several finds of people wrapped up in blankets, on beds, different finds.
And once the dogs saw it, it just got better and better.
(24:20):
So that's just an example of, you know, when you go to your training day,
talk about, you know, any good or bad deployments and go over it and then start
setting those up for scenarios and make all the dogs better.
So next, you know, once you've got your training day set up and what you're
going to do, who sets up the training?
So in general, I think trainers should set up the training.
Obviously, it sounds obvious, but then again, you know, the flip side of having
(24:44):
supervisors involved is I've had some instances where supervisors wanted to
set up and dictate a lot of the training, but they weren't trainers.
So they really didn't have the expertise to do it, but they had the title that
would allow them to say, here's what we're going to work on today.
That would kind of cause some friction. So the trainers should be the ones who
(25:06):
set up the training and that should be based on needs of the unit.
It should be based on, again, if you have had some deployments or any issues,
if you're getting ready for a certification, if one of the dogs is struggling
with something, then the trainer
should know, you know, here's kind of what I want to work on today.
And then obviously a supervisor might say, Hey, you know, last time,
(25:27):
here's some things I saw.
So I want to make sure today I see, you know, good, clean releases from everybody,
for example, or something.
So the supervisor definitely would have input, but the trainers should be the
ones who are kind of setting up and and figuring out what you're going to do that day.
I would look at a trainer there, you know, as, as like a, uh,
an assistant coach, the one who are, you know, they're going to take,
(25:48):
you know, some of the guys off and work on certain skills on one side of the
field and, and, and really work on it.
Those are the guys, the trainers are the ones who know the mechanics and what,
you know, what we would need to work on as a team.
So trainers would set it up. But the bottom line is when you ask the question,
who sets up the training, it should be everyone. one.
So even if I'm a brand new handler and I've only been there for three or four
(26:10):
months, I should recognize what my dog needs and I should be able to go to the
trainer and say, hey, next training day, I want to work on tracking or I want to work on this.
I want to work on that and kind of bring something to the table.
So everybody should be involved in what are we going to do that day?
The trainers, as you know, you have the title of trainer, you should be the
one who's ready to kind of set up the training and dictate kind of how we're
(26:34):
going to train that day, what order we're going to do things in.
So when you're setting up the training and again, everybody's involved in it,
there's in my mind, there's basically two types of training on these training
days, their skills and their scenarios.
So I think a good structured training day is everybody should look at the skills
that we want to work on that day and we should be working on basic skills.
(26:58):
So say it, for example, if you're doing patrol stuff and you want to work releases,
then then set up, you know, some, some basic stuff that you think back to when
you first taught your dog to release a bite off a, off a decoy.
How did you do that? And run through and do those basic drills.
You know, if you watch a spring training with baseball, those guys are out on
(27:19):
the field fielding, you know, very slow grounders at first, and they're just
working on, on the real basics and the mechanics.
So we should all think about, you know, doing, doing our training days days
as basically like a sport and setting up some basic stuff at the beginning of the day,
just to kind of get everybody up and moving and limber and get the dog's minds
(27:39):
ready for that training day and just do some basics,
you know, whatever it is, do some basic obedience, do some group obedience,
do some, some just basic skills.
And that's something where the trainers should, you know, kind of have some,
some ideas of what we're going to do.
You know, we used to do some line obedience and different obedience,
you know, as a group and, and work on some, some bite stuff.
And when you're doing that stuff, the idea is that you're working on the basic
(28:03):
skills, you're keeping those skills up and very sharp, and you're also making
sure that everybody's on the same level.
So using the release as an example, if we're going to run 10 dogs today,
and as we're going through, one or two of the dogs just do not want to release,
then that's a time where we're going to stop and we're going to work release with those dogs.
(28:24):
And we're going to get everybody on that basic skill level. So,
you know, any, any chain is as good as its weakest link. And if you have a.
Bad team going out there, they're going to represent your, your canine unit.
So this is a time where you bring everybody up to those, that same basic level.
There's always going to be a different in skills and ability from handlers and
(28:45):
trainers and, and dogs, but everybody should have that same basic level and
be able to do the basics very, very well.
So start your training day, just doing some basics, doing something,
you know, where you're working.
If you're working on detection stuff this is a time where you're
gonna do some some basic hides work on
some different odors maybe you haven't put out and a lot
(29:07):
of those are going to be known hides we're working on skills we're working on
on the dog doing a search pattern at that time we're working on different stuff
like that we're not testing the dog so if it's an unknown if i put something
out and have you come and search it then that's just testing you and the dog
and we're not actually training.
So think about when you're doing whatever, if it's, you know,
(29:28):
whether it's patrol, detection, tracking, whatever skill you're working on,
you know, ask yourself, am I actually training?
Am I doing, you know, skill building here or am I testing?
And if you're testing in this part of the day, that's, it's just not what you
should be doing. You should be working on just basic skills.
And I like to get all those critical skills down, work through them.
(29:50):
I do a lot of e-collar stuff. If you've been to one of my e-collar classes,
you know that you'd probably have a, definitely do an exercise where you're
going to have everybody out on the field doing a whole lot of stuff together.
Work all the critical skills at once, get everything up and running.
And then for the next part of the day, you know, a lot of times maybe people
break for lunch or whatever.
Then the next part of the day, we're going to do scenarios. scenarios and our
(30:11):
age or our industry definitely
needs more stress type scenario training
stuff where handlers need to make decisions dogs are
under stress handlers under stress so if your
critical skills are up and they're working really well this is a time where
you can set up you know a couple of nice you know well thought out scenarios
and everybody should have a part in setting up scenarios so the first way that
(30:37):
happens is that when you're driving around your city you should always be looking at,
you know, the empty buildings or the buildings that are for sale or businesses
that you talk to and try and find different venues that you can go to.
So I had lots of luck over the years just calling realtors when I saw their
signs up on buildings and tell them, hey, you know, it's good for you because
(30:59):
you'll have cops in your building. We get to use the building.
Cops will be coming and going, you know, late at night. So we always had lots
of keys to different buildings that we could get in and out of.
I've seen a lot of agencies that print out signs from there.
They go to their, their sign department in their city and just says,
you know, this, this business is used at different hours for,
(31:20):
you know, by X department.
Canine unit, you know, so don't break in basically, but it, it shows the community
that, you know, for the sign in the window that one, there's going to be police
dogs in and out of there. So it's a deterrent.
And it also is a matter of pride for a lot of these businesses that it shows
that they're supporting the department.
I've seen several agencies who maybe they have five or six of those signs,
(31:43):
and once they get them out in the community, then they have businesses start
calling and saying, hey, how can I get a canine sign in my window?
And they have a policy, and they have them sign a release where if they damage
something, they'll fix it, but the department's not going to get sued,
those types of different issues.
And then I've seen several agencies that have a waiting list for a company to come on and get that.
(32:08):
So when they sign up, they'll tell them, hey, we're going to use your building
for three months, and then we're going to move on.
And part of it is that we get a key and alarm code so we can get in late at
night and use your building and then leave, and no one even knows we're there
other than the dogs and stuff. So it works really well.
But everybody should be out there, everybody in the unit should be out there
(32:28):
trying to find training venues.
When you have a lot of great training venues, use, then all of a sudden your scenarios get better.
So the scenario should be set up by everybody in the unit. Everybody should
be thinking of scenarios and these should be worked on on your training day.
And the idea of the scenario should be to challenge the handler,
challenge the dog, challenge both.
(32:50):
But they shouldn't be, you know, everybody loses scenarios and it shouldn't
be a competition to where I know that my dog will do really well on this.
So I'm going to set up the scenario to make everybody else look bad because my dog does well.
Shouldn't be anything like that. It should be, you know, based on,
you know, maybe you get a new business, you meet with the owner,
you walk through it, and then you see just something unusual,
(33:10):
you know, a weird hide, a weird place to, to put somebody, you know, set up something.
Then you can set it up and work everybody through it as a unknown hide,
you know, in a scenario, let people work it.
So everybody, you know, new handlers to the, you know, most senior handler is,
is responsible for finding training venues and setting up scenarios. scenarios.
(33:31):
So if you have that, you know, we had a list actually, and we just wrote it
down on our calendar and we knew, you know, that even though I was one of the
trainers, it went through the whole, everybody on the roster had to set up scenarios
and figure out where we were going to go.
And, uh, we, we would do that. We'd pick a day and we'd know,
you know, that Tuesday night at midnight, we're meeting here.
(33:53):
If we don't have anything else going on, we're going to meet here because one
of the handlers had a new building and they would go in and set everything up.
And then we get to go run new stuff.
So it should be a fun and enjoyable and challenging thing to do scenarios and do them in new areas.
So wrapping it all up, I just mentioned it, that a training day should be fun.
(34:13):
I mean, you should enjoy your training day. It should be a time of camaraderie
first, you know, where you get to see people that you don't see maybe throughout the week.
We all have a common interest. We're all dog handlers. We all are cops.
We love what we do and we love training dogs.
So I know that naturally, you know, schedules and personalities will a lot of
(34:35):
times form some, some clicks.
On the training day, that's a time we should remember that, man,
we're all fortunate. We all get paid a bunch of money to go out and play with dogs.
And then, you know, when we're, when we're not doing a training day,
we get to go deploy our dogs on the street, either for patrol or detection or
tracking, whatever it is we're doing.
So the training days should be a really fun time where you, at the end of the
(34:58):
training day, you should feel like, all right, we spent all of our time.
Time well, the department allocated, you know, eight, 10, 12 hours to us today.
And I feel like, you know, we really did the best we could on that.
And again, of course we're government employees, so we're going to take a lunch
and a break and all that stuff.
But when we look back, we should think, you know, that we, you know,
the dogs are a little bit better today than they were when we started.
(35:22):
And, you know, we had some good scenarios in, caught up with everybody and it
It shouldn't be something where you dread, oh, I got a training day.
So the units, when I travel around and I meet lots of different agencies,
the units that structure their training days, kind of what I'm describing,
I can tell them when I first start dealing with them. They have a different attitude.
(35:44):
When there's a lot of competition and a lot of dissension, those training days don't go as well.
So it's frustrating when you work in a unit that has a lot of dissension and clicks and and stuff,
but I can tell you that starting to structure good training days can start build
better camaraderie and get rid of some of that, that competition type aspect
(36:06):
and just build into a, you know, a very cohesive unit.
So hopefully this is some food for thought for everybody.
I get this question a lot about, you know, how should we schedule our training
days and what should we do? So hopefully these are all some, some ideas for you.
I just want to end up, you know, talking real quick about one of my other new
sponsors and Ray Allen. Ray Allen, everybody knows who Ray Allen is.
(36:29):
They're based here out of Colorado. They make great canine equipment.
And, you know, I don't need to say much more. I mean, if you've been a dog handler
for any period of time, you know who Ray Allen is.
But, you know, it's always good to go on their website, check out what they
have new, anything you need, Ray Allen has.
So one of the things I like to mention is a company like Ray Allen,
they don't need my advertising on this podcast,
(36:51):
but they come on here and they, they pay, pay a little bit of money towards
the cost of this podcast in order to support what I'm doing here,
which is also to support you.
So Ray Allen's a company that's supporting this podcast and I appreciate it.
Their quality of their items is fantastic.
So check out rayallen.com. Ray Allen Manufacturing is a, you know,
(37:14):
it's probably the oldest company that has been dedicated towards canine equipment.
So check out Ray Allen and they're going to be the lead sponsor of our Colorado Canine Conference.
Again, just another example of them just stepping up and supporting the cops.
So everybody in Colorado and most of the handlers that are coming to the Colorado
Canine Conference know about Ray Allen, but they're still going to step up and
(37:38):
support us just because that's what they do.
So it's a great company and, you know, definitely partners with us.
So check out Ray Allen. And as I mentioned, you know, the Colorado Canine Conference is coming.
So check that out. We're going to have a lot of great instructors. It's at the end of July.
ColoradoCanineConference.com. and finally i've been talking a
lot about bob eden bob's been around forever and he's
(38:01):
got his cats canine activity tracking software
program so kts cats platinum.com so
if you again if you've been around for any period of time you've heard of bob
eden maybe read his books seen him doing some training and then most everybody's
heard of cats so if you're not using cats you can get on there and get a free
trial see what all the different features and and see if you like it so So his
(38:25):
customer service is excellent, very responsive,
really good program. So check out catsplatinum.com.
All right, well, that's going to wrap it up. Hopefully a little bit of food
for thought for you guys.
If you have any questions or have a subject that you want me to talk about or
people you want me to interview, just reach out to me.
My email is in the show notes as always.
(38:45):
And this program today was based on a couple of emails I got,
just people talking about training days and setting them up.
So hopefully it helps everybody.
You guys stay safe and I will be back with you next week.
Hey everybody, before we get to the show today, I want to talk about a couple
of advertisers here that are supporting the show.
You've heard me talk for the last several shows about Fox and Hound.
So if you go to shopfoxandhound.com, you're going to see all the products that Fox and Hound has.
And like I've mentioned, obviously their bread and butter for their business
is going to be pet dogs, but this is a company that supports what we do.
(00:23):
So they want to help us through the Fox and Hound Foundation.
And when you buy stuff at Fox and Hound for
your dog even if it's your pet dog you're supporting other
police dogs so the Fox and Hound Foundation is doing
a lot of really good stuff and when you go to shopfoxandhound.com you click
the the give back mission and you'll see some of the stuff they're doing for
for our dogs for the police dogs so I think it's a great company they really
(00:46):
do support police dogs and support what we do and some of their products I've
mentioned their their kennel cleaner quite a few times. They also have a pad protection.
So I just saw recently on a forum, somebody was asking about a dog with slick floor problems.
Sometimes getting the dog's pads a little bit softer will make the pads on their
feet a little bit stickier.
(01:07):
And some dogs will feel a little bit better when their pads aren't all calloused
over and they're on those types of floors.
So it's just something to think
about. And they do sell a good pad protection there at Fox and Hound.
So a lot of products on there, the shampoo and everything else that definitely
will work for our dogs and make your dogs look a little bit better.
And maybe if it's the pad protection, it might even help them walk on slick floors a bit better.
(01:31):
But again, it's a company that I really support because they support us.
So shop foxandhound.com, check them out.
Also, I'd like to talk about Trace ID real quick. You've heard me talk about
them the last couple episodes too.
They have a wipe that you can check different areas for both narcotics and explosives.
So it'll check for trace amounts. That's hence the name, Trace ID.
(01:53):
And again, they spell it Trace ID, and it's Trace E-Y-E hyphen D, Trace ID.
It's a real cool product. So if you search a car or something,
don't come up with anything, you can take one of the wipes and check some different
parts of the car, And it'll just confirm that there is, you know,
there's been drugs in this car and it's a scientifically proven fact.
It'll just help your training records.
(02:14):
Same with explosives. If you need to double check something when you're out
doing a search or whatever, you can use one of their explosive wipes.
So if you go to their website, and it's trace-eye-d.com, so trace-i-d with the
dashes, trace-i-d.com.
Go to their website, and between now and April 15th, they're offering a chance
(02:38):
for you to get their product in a free sample.
So when you go to the website, put in the code for the podcast,
PK9TP, so Police Canine Training Podcast.
Put that in, and you'll get a free sample. So do that before April 15th.
No cost to you. You don't have to write a letter through your department or
anything and get a free sample sent to you.
And then you can see if it's a product you like and you want to maybe pitch
(02:59):
to your bosses about starting to stock it.
I think it's a cool product. So they've demoed it for me.
Check it out. TraceID.com.
Music.
This is the Police Canine Training Podcast with Jeff Meyer.
Join us for each episode to get real-world advice from canine professionals
(03:23):
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.
(03:45):
Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Meyer.
Today, I don't have any guests with me. It's just going to be me.
But I'm going to answer a question that I've gotten in a few different formats
recently, and I've talked about it to people over the years quite a few times.
And it's basically it's training days.
You know, if you have a training day, how do you structure training day?
(04:05):
What do you do to make the most valuable use of your time on a training day?
And, and just some ideas about training days. So first off, you know,
should you have a training day or not?
Now, if you are an agency where you have a dedicated canine unit and all you
have to do is train dogs and, and respond to calls and you all work the same
(04:26):
shift, then you, maybe you don't need a training day, you have the ability to do,
to just not answer calls for a little while and go train as a group together.
What that takes though is some discipline. So I've been in both where we had
training days and then we were in a period of time where the training days became inefficient.
I'm going to talk about how that happens to a lot of units.
(04:46):
So they became so inefficient that we just decided to train on duty.
And we had that ability because we were a dedicated canine unit.
So it was easy for us if there was no canine stuff going on that we could go
as a group and find a place in the city and train for a couple hours.
And it was a pretty efficient way to do it because we could get a lot done and
(05:06):
we were doing it in a short period of time.
But most people don't have that ability. Most everybody, I understand,
you know, you have other duties.
You're answering radio calls, you're doing other stuff, and you just don't have
the ability to just basically turn the radio down.
And we had a canine channel. We could listen to just that. And if they needed
a dog, they'd call us on just that channel. I understand that's,
(05:27):
you know, a very good luxury that a lot of people don't have.
So most people have training days. And when I talk to people over the,
across the country, one of the universal things is, is that a lot of times training
days are not very efficient.
So it depends on how things are structured. I'd say a very common training day
is on a Wednesday because that's an overlap day based on, you know,
(05:49):
10 hour schedules or 12 hour schedules.
But a lot of people, you know, if you use Wednesday for an example, it's a training day.
And if you're running two shifts, you have some type of day shift and some type
of night shift, then you want to get everybody together.
So then those hours have to kind of merge into something.
And that starts on the training day. That usually will start,
you know, sometime a little bit earlier for the night shift guys and a little
(06:11):
bit later for the day shift guys, some type of compromise.
And that day usually is going to be the, you know, the days dedicated to training.
Now I've heard a lot of different things where the training day is a little
bit shorter and then they get to leave, the people get to leave earlier that
day to take care of their, to compensate them for their dog care.
I'm not a big fan of that. I think a training day should be a dedicated day.
(06:33):
How many days should you have in a month?
That's really kind of schedule dependent. You know, if you have the luxury of
having four training days a month, then by all means, I would say have four training days a month.
It's excellent use of your time, keep all your dogs up and train better,
and gives you more time to go out and do scenario-based training when you're
(06:54):
not having to struggle with the basic skills.
We'll get to more of that in just a little bit. So basically,
you know, should we have a training day or not?
I think, you know, again, unless you're one of those unusual agencies that everybody
works the same shift and you don't have other duties, I think you should have
scheduled training days.
(07:14):
And ideally, it should be the same day every month or every week,
I'm sorry. And there should be four every month.
So you're getting plenty of training time.
So once you've decided you're definitely going to have training days, what's the next step?
How are they going to be structured? structured so the first thing that that
for most of you when you listen to it it's it's the way it works is your supervisor
(07:37):
is going to be involved but i can tell you from traveling around the country
and talking to a lot of people there's an amazing number of so-called canine supervisors,
that never go to a training day so if you're a canine supervisor go to your
training days i just don't understand i know that there's some canine supervisors
who have a lot of different duties So maybe you can't go to every one of them,
(08:00):
but if you, whatever your other duties are.
Your canine unit, if your title is canine supervisor,
I can almost argue with you that every other duty that is assigned to you in
the department does not hold the amount of liability to you through vicarious
liability as being a canine supervisor.
So going to a training day as a canine supervisor should be very,
(08:24):
very high up on your list.
That does a couple things. things. You can help structure the day because the supervisor's there.
One of the cool things I've always found about canine handlers is that you could
put 250 canine handlers out on a field during a training day without one sergeant
or command officer anywhere in the zip code.
(08:47):
And out of that 250, 240 of them would work all day long because we love what we do.
So we don't need a supervisor to come and motivate us what to,
how to do it or whatever, but a supervisor can provide basically the,
the support and maybe some of the administration stuff.
(09:07):
So if a supervisor is going to a training day every day, when they start getting
pushed back that, Hey, these guys have too many training days,
that supervisor should be able to say, no, we go to those training days and
here's all the stuff we do.
Here's what we're working on. Here's what, why it's beneficial.
And the supervisor should be heavily invested, not in just the,
the, the title of canine supervisor.
(09:28):
He should be invested in the performance of all the people under him.
And that starts with going to training days, supporting the guys,
seeing the equipment needs they might have.
There's just so many different things. So I've seen a lot of canine supervisors.
If they work a dog, then obviously they go to the training days. Right.
But I've seen a lot that don't work dogs and whether a canine supervisor should
(09:50):
work a dog or not might be a whole nother show. We can talk about that.
But if you're a canine supervisor and you don't work a dog, your duty still
should include going to the training day.
And when you're at the training day, you know, you don't just stand around and
talk to the guys about other stuff.
You should be heavily involved in what you're doing. You are a canine supervisor.
(10:12):
So you should understand, you know, how they train.
And talk to the trainers, figure out what's going on, ask some questions,
understand what the expectations are for the dogs to certify,
ask the trainers and the handlers, you know, how do you get from point A to point B?
Look at the dogs. Are all the dogs on the same plane? Are they all,
or is one dog struggling a lot?
(10:34):
And as a supervisor, then you can start figuring out, is this,
is it because the dog or is it a handler or is it a training issue or an attitude issue?
You won't know any of that if you don't go to a training day.
So it's amazing how many training or canine supervisors don't go to training,
or if they do, they're not involved.
So as a canine supervisor, you should understand what your guys do,
(10:59):
how they get there. You should understand the mechanics of training.
It doesn't mean you have to be an expert. It doesn't mean you have to go out and become a trainer.
It just means you should understand what they're doing. And the trainers,
as a unit trainer, if you're one of them, you should be able to explain in a
very comprehensive way to your sergeant how you're training,
what you're doing, what the goals are of the training.
(11:20):
So training supervisors go to training days. It's as simple as that.
But again, I guarantee you there's some guys who are listening to this that
are laughing because their sergeants never, ever go to their training days.
So when you're there as a sergeant, be involved. You know, besides learning
how they train and what they do and everything, put the suit on,
decoy a little bit, learn how to catch dogs.
(11:41):
You can help so much in the training day by becoming a good decoy.
When you're involved as a decoy, as those of us that are handlers,
and again, I'm speaking to supervisors, those of us that are handlers know that
decoy is the most important part of the training.
So when you're lucky enough to get a supervisor, even if they don't handle a
dog that is invested and will put a suit on and learn how to decoy correctly
(12:04):
and help out with all the training, then you've got one more extra decoy on your training day.
And that sergeant then gets to see all the dogs, gets to catch the dogs,
gets to understand how the dogs are working and gets the sergeant or supervisor,
whatever title, corporal sergeant, they're involved.
So the sergeants that I, or supervisors that I do talk to that do go to training,
(12:26):
the next thing I ask them is how often do you put a suit on and catch dogs?
And a lot of times I get a laugh and it's like an absurd question.
And I, but the units that I go to, and I see that the units are functioning,
you know, at a higher level and everybody's working working a little bit better,
those are usually the units where the supervisors are heavily involved,
(12:48):
whether they work a dog or not.
And they're supporting their guys by coming to training and,
you know, being involved and decoying and helping out and actually participating,
not just standing on the side.
When you're a handler and you have a supervisor who just wants to stand back,
you almost feel like you're under a microscope and that that person
(13:09):
is just judging you and trying to figure out if
you're doing a good job or not and not actually involved and as a
handler you start to think you know the person never gets involved he doesn't
know if i'm doing a good job or not so then it becomes a personality thing you
know if the sergeant likes some people they do a better job because of the personality
so if you're a supervisor i'll stop here but the bottom line is go to training
(13:31):
days and participate in training days.
Enough said on that, but again, it's worth repeating.
So what hours should the training days be? Figure out your common day,
the day that the schedules are a little fat with bodies, that if you're all
assigned to a patrol part of function,
then what will your command be able to let you go off?
(13:57):
So ideally, it'd be every week on a steady day.
That isn't possible. So, for many agencies, it's just not possible, especially now.
I understand, you know, every single agency right now is struggling with staffing.
So, these training days should be important, but it's not the hill to die on
where, you know, if your command says, you know, we're bleeding bodies here
(14:18):
and we can't even staff our patrol shift,
and then you start demanding, well, every Wednesday we're going to be gone for
10 hours and we're going to take the whole unit.
It, when you start doing stuff like that, then you start seeing canine units get reduced or go away.
So you have to be flexible with the senior command as to how the training day
is going to function, what the hours are going to be, how often or whatever.
(14:41):
Ideally, like I said, if you could do every week, that's great.
I know a lot of agencies right now are doing it twice a month.
If you can only train twice a month, that's okay. Just make the best of that time.
So you're going going to have to work with the command, figure out a schedule,
figure out what day everybody's going to train on and then figure out the hours.
A while back, I was doing a, uh.
(15:03):
Review of an agency and part of the review that was, it was not asked for as
part, they had different things they wanted us to specifically look at and that
the commands had concerns about with the agency.
But one of the things was not training days. But as we talked to every handler
individually, all of a sudden the training days became a huge issue.
(15:25):
And what it was, was they They had a supervisor who was very involved,
but he was also, as a supervisor, was trying to accommodate everybody's hours on that training day.
So they had a weekly training day, but the hours weren't the same.
And what it was was the supervisor was just trying to help out all of his guys.
(15:46):
But it had turned into, on the training day, some people came in at 10.
Some people came in at 1. Some people came in at 2.45 after they picked the
kids up from school, and it was kind of almost set-your-own-hours on the training day kind of thing.
And the training days really lasted from 10 a.m. to almost 10 p.m.,
(16:07):
and everybody worked a portion of those hours somewhere in between,
and they had a little bit of overlap.
There was no continuity. They couldn't really get going on the training when
they would, and the trainer worked different hours than some of the handlers.
While it was well-intentioned by
the supervisor, it was a big point of contention for all of the handlers.
(16:28):
And they were like, it just feels like a wasted day to us because we're not
actually training as a unit.
So when we pointed that out, it was an easy fix. They picked a time and that
became the training. Everybody shows up this day.
Which, of course, you know, could be a bit of a burden for some people,
you know, because you've got child care and you've got a life outside there.
But, you know, it's part of our job. And everybody who took this job as a handler,
(16:53):
you know, understood there was going to be some flexibility needed.
So with advance notice and start scheduling at a certain time and,
you know, maybe work out with everybody what time is going to work for everybody,
those hours should be set.
And with some flexibility, maybe you have a new training venue or something
going on where, you know, the whole unit's going to switch the hours that day.
(17:14):
But, but basically my point of all this is that a training day should be set.
If you can get it every week, that's great.
At least every other week is I would say the minimum.
And then those hours should be set at a time and the whole bureau,
all the handlers are going to work those hours, get everybody together.
Because especially if you have two or three shifts or people work in different
(17:38):
sides of the week, that training day is going to be the day that you can put everybody together.
Everybody can kind of talk about what's going on, some of their deployments,
good or bad, be in a real honest forum about what they want to work on that day.
As opposed to having, you know, a day shift versus night shift or first part
of the week versus second part of the week.
You know, we get little clicks, the training day should be a time where everybody
(18:01):
gets together and remembers that you're one solid unit and have that camaraderie
start, you know, from the rule call that day.
Spend a little bit of time talking about what's going on.
Catch up if you're working with people that you don't get to see,
you know, if it's been two weeks since your last training day.
Check on some deployments and maybe some detector dog finds,
(18:22):
whatever you need to catch up on.
But check in with everybody. And now the yin should be ran kind of by the supervisor.
So pick a day and pick the hours and then stick to it.
And then when you, once you've done that and you've got your training schedule,
a training day is a training day.
A training day is not the day that you go and get your car worked on or an admin
(18:45):
day where you're going to go get your radio fixed or go pick up uniforms across
town and show up two hours late.
And everybody that works in a training group knows that there's always somebody
who always has something going on on that training day and they put in half
the time that everybody else does.
Then when certification rolls around, then all of a sudden they're panicked
and they want you to help them with their dog and certify. So again,
(19:09):
supervisors, trainers, you know, hold people accountable.
If you're fortunate enough to have a set in stone training day with training times,
then the expectation should be that that's not a day that you take off to go
and do something else or,
you know, I mean, things come up and we all understand that,
but it's not just a free day that you can make it when you can and then go do
(19:30):
administration stuff because, you know, you work nights and now you're working at noon that day.
So you get to go do some admin stuff or set vet appointments or whatever.
That's not a training day. So training day should be, should start on a,
on a scheduled day, a scheduled time and have a roll call with all the handlers
and supervisors present and go over that day,
(19:52):
you know, catch up from the last time you had met,
go over any new issues, department issues, schedules,
upcoming events, whatever deployments, you know, if there's been any.
Significant deployments, sit there and talk about them as a group.
That way, again, sometimes you get a day shift and night shift or, or other clicks.
Maybe somebody heard about a deployment, but they didn't get all the facts. So explain everything.
(20:16):
And if there's been a failure in a deployment, a dog didn't buy it,
or you miss some, some dope or something, this is the time to sit down and talk about it.
And the handler should explain, you know, here's what happened.
Here's what the dog did. Here's what I did.
Here's what I think the mistake was. And then as a group, that's going to be
a focus part of your training day is to, to to recreate that scenario,
see if any other dogs have that problem and work through it. Here's an example.
(20:40):
One time we were searching a house.
It was a barricade. We knew the suspect was in this house. We'd had contact
with them and we finally made entry.
We were going through the house nice and slow and my dog started working closet.
When we looked in the closet, straight straight up above in the closet was an attic space.
(21:02):
Well, the dog started working in the closet. This was a closet where these people,
I don't think had ever heard of the thing that we all call hangers.
So they just threw all of their clothes in a pile in the closet.
This is a pile of clothes that was probably four or five feet tall,
just dirty, filthy clothes. Everybody's been in those kinds of houses.
(21:23):
And I think they shoplifted clothes. And then when they were done
wearing them they just threw them in this closet so my dog
went in and he went up on this pile of clothes and then
right away one of the SWAT guys saw the attic
open in my mind all right the guy's in
the attic so the dog keeps working he worked the pile of clothes a little bit
(21:44):
but not a ton and didn't really try to dig through the pile of clothes you know
nothing so the decision was made we needed to get up into the attic and we cleared
the rest of the house dog kept working the the closet a whole lot.
When they wanted to put a ladder in the attic, they needed to move the clothes.
So they started pulling the clothes out while they covered the attic hole.
(22:05):
As they were pulling the clothes out, lo and behold, they see this suspect's
foot in this pile of clothes.
Now, before that day, I would have said all day long that if somebody was in
a pile of clothes, that my dog would have went straight in, dug through all
the clothes, and bit him.
This was a dog that had many, many street fines and apprehensions.
So biting wasn't an issue with this dog. dog, but the way the clothes were,
(22:29):
they were packed onto this guy so heavy and he was down so much.
The odor was in the closet, but definitely, you know, the whole closet was filled
and there wasn't, it wasn't like a reason for my dog to start digging through, through clothes.
And in fact, you know, like a lot of dogs, my dog at times, you know,
would bite, you know, couches or whatever out of frustration.
And we had worked on not letting him bite things.
(22:51):
So, you know, know, the training we had done would discourage him from just
tearing through a bunch of clothes.
And we had never ever set up a training scenario where we had somebody under
a huge pile of clothes and let the dog go work it.
My dog obviously didn't work him correctly, saw the guy's leg,
then we challenged him, the guy gave up.
(23:12):
So right away on the next training day, the first thing we did is we went to a school.
We found where the lost and found was, and they had had boxes and boxes of clothes.
We put decoys under clothes out in the open and we put them in closets and we
did it in a muzzle hide because our dogs would work well in muzzle.
And lo and behold, most of our dogs had a difficult time working a huge pile of clothes.
(23:36):
So it was me who had to explain to the SWAT guys why my dog didn't crawl through
the clothes and bite this guy.
But by going and being honest and open and saying, Hey, you know what?
It wasn't a a good deployment, um, in a lot of ways, cause I wish my dog would
have just, you know, found the guy instead of a SWAT guy seeing his foot.
But by explaining what happened and being open about it and when we set up our
(24:00):
training, all of our dogs ended up learning to work through that.
And it was a different scent picture for the dogs and a different picture for the dogs.
Once they started seeing that, it wasn't a problem. And over the next few years,
we had several finds of people wrapped up in blankets, on beds, different finds.
And once the dogs saw it, it just got better and better.
(24:20):
So that's just an example of, you know, when you go to your training day,
talk about, you know, any good or bad deployments and go over it and then start
setting those up for scenarios and make all the dogs better.
So next, you know, once you've got your training day set up and what you're
going to do, who sets up the training?
So in general, I think trainers should set up the training.
Obviously, it sounds obvious, but then again, you know, the flip side of having
(24:44):
supervisors involved is I've had some instances where supervisors wanted to
set up and dictate a lot of the training, but they weren't trainers.
So they really didn't have the expertise to do it, but they had the title that
would allow them to say, here's what we're going to work on today.
That would kind of cause some friction. So the trainers should be the ones who
(25:06):
set up the training and that should be based on needs of the unit.
It should be based on, again, if you have had some deployments or any issues,
if you're getting ready for a certification, if one of the dogs is struggling
with something, then the trainer
should know, you know, here's kind of what I want to work on today.
And then obviously a supervisor might say, Hey, you know, last time,
(25:27):
here's some things I saw.
So I want to make sure today I see, you know, good, clean releases from everybody,
for example, or something.
So the supervisor definitely would have input, but the trainers should be the
ones who are kind of setting up and and figuring out what you're going to do that day.
I would look at a trainer there, you know, as, as like a, uh,
an assistant coach, the one who are, you know, they're going to take,
(25:48):
you know, some of the guys off and work on certain skills on one side of the
field and, and, and really work on it.
Those are the guys, the trainers are the ones who know the mechanics and what,
you know, what we would need to work on as a team.
So trainers would set it up. But the bottom line is when you ask the question,
who sets up the training, it should be everyone. one.
So even if I'm a brand new handler and I've only been there for three or four
(26:10):
months, I should recognize what my dog needs and I should be able to go to the
trainer and say, hey, next training day, I want to work on tracking or I want to work on this.
I want to work on that and kind of bring something to the table.
So everybody should be involved in what are we going to do that day?
The trainers, as you know, you have the title of trainer, you should be the
one who's ready to kind of set up the training and dictate kind of how we're
(26:34):
going to train that day, what order we're going to do things in.
So when you're setting up the training and again, everybody's involved in it,
there's in my mind, there's basically two types of training on these training
days, their skills and their scenarios.
So I think a good structured training day is everybody should look at the skills
that we want to work on that day and we should be working on basic skills.
(26:58):
So say it, for example, if you're doing patrol stuff and you want to work releases,
then then set up, you know, some, some basic stuff that you think back to when
you first taught your dog to release a bite off a, off a decoy.
How did you do that? And run through and do those basic drills.
You know, if you watch a spring training with baseball, those guys are out on
(27:19):
the field fielding, you know, very slow grounders at first, and they're just
working on, on the real basics and the mechanics.
So we should all think about, you know, doing, doing our training days days
as basically like a sport and setting up some basic stuff at the beginning of the day,
just to kind of get everybody up and moving and limber and get the dog's minds
(27:39):
ready for that training day and just do some basics,
you know, whatever it is, do some basic obedience, do some group obedience,
do some, some just basic skills.
And that's something where the trainers should, you know, kind of have some,
some ideas of what we're going to do.
You know, we used to do some line obedience and different obedience,
you know, as a group and, and work on some, some bite stuff.
And when you're doing that stuff, the idea is that you're working on the basic
(28:03):
skills, you're keeping those skills up and very sharp, and you're also making
sure that everybody's on the same level.
So using the release as an example, if we're going to run 10 dogs today,
and as we're going through, one or two of the dogs just do not want to release,
then that's a time where we're going to stop and we're going to work release with those dogs.
(28:24):
And we're going to get everybody on that basic skill level. So,
you know, any, any chain is as good as its weakest link. And if you have a.
Bad team going out there, they're going to represent your, your canine unit.
So this is a time where you bring everybody up to those, that same basic level.
There's always going to be a different in skills and ability from handlers and
(28:45):
trainers and, and dogs, but everybody should have that same basic level and
be able to do the basics very, very well.
So start your training day, just doing some basics, doing something,
you know, where you're working.
If you're working on detection stuff this is a time where you're
gonna do some some basic hides work on
some different odors maybe you haven't put out and a lot
(29:07):
of those are going to be known hides we're working on skills we're working on
on the dog doing a search pattern at that time we're working on different stuff
like that we're not testing the dog so if it's an unknown if i put something
out and have you come and search it then that's just testing you and the dog
and we're not actually training.
So think about when you're doing whatever, if it's, you know,
(29:28):
whether it's patrol, detection, tracking, whatever skill you're working on,
you know, ask yourself, am I actually training?
Am I doing, you know, skill building here or am I testing?
And if you're testing in this part of the day, that's, it's just not what you
should be doing. You should be working on just basic skills.
And I like to get all those critical skills down, work through them.
(29:50):
I do a lot of e-collar stuff. If you've been to one of my e-collar classes,
you know that you'd probably have a, definitely do an exercise where you're
going to have everybody out on the field doing a whole lot of stuff together.
Work all the critical skills at once, get everything up and running.
And then for the next part of the day, you know, a lot of times maybe people
break for lunch or whatever.
Then the next part of the day, we're going to do scenarios. scenarios and our
(30:11):
age or our industry definitely
needs more stress type scenario training
stuff where handlers need to make decisions dogs are
under stress handlers under stress so if your
critical skills are up and they're working really well this is a time where
you can set up you know a couple of nice you know well thought out scenarios
and everybody should have a part in setting up scenarios so the first way that
(30:37):
happens is that when you're driving around your city you should always be looking at,
you know, the empty buildings or the buildings that are for sale or businesses
that you talk to and try and find different venues that you can go to.
So I had lots of luck over the years just calling realtors when I saw their
signs up on buildings and tell them, hey, you know, it's good for you because
(30:59):
you'll have cops in your building. We get to use the building.
Cops will be coming and going, you know, late at night. So we always had lots
of keys to different buildings that we could get in and out of.
I've seen a lot of agencies that print out signs from there.
They go to their, their sign department in their city and just says,
you know, this, this business is used at different hours for,
(31:20):
you know, by X department.
Canine unit, you know, so don't break in basically, but it, it shows the community
that, you know, for the sign in the window that one, there's going to be police
dogs in and out of there. So it's a deterrent.
And it also is a matter of pride for a lot of these businesses that it shows
that they're supporting the department.
I've seen several agencies who maybe they have five or six of those signs,
(31:43):
and once they get them out in the community, then they have businesses start
calling and saying, hey, how can I get a canine sign in my window?
And they have a policy, and they have them sign a release where if they damage
something, they'll fix it, but the department's not going to get sued,
those types of different issues.
And then I've seen several agencies that have a waiting list for a company to come on and get that.
(32:08):
So when they sign up, they'll tell them, hey, we're going to use your building
for three months, and then we're going to move on.
And part of it is that we get a key and alarm code so we can get in late at
night and use your building and then leave, and no one even knows we're there
other than the dogs and stuff. So it works really well.
But everybody should be out there, everybody in the unit should be out there
(32:28):
trying to find training venues.
When you have a lot of great training venues, use, then all of a sudden your scenarios get better.
So the scenario should be set up by everybody in the unit. Everybody should
be thinking of scenarios and these should be worked on on your training day.
And the idea of the scenario should be to challenge the handler,
challenge the dog, challenge both.
(32:50):
But they shouldn't be, you know, everybody loses scenarios and it shouldn't
be a competition to where I know that my dog will do really well on this.
So I'm going to set up the scenario to make everybody else look bad because my dog does well.
Shouldn't be anything like that. It should be, you know, based on,
you know, maybe you get a new business, you meet with the owner,
you walk through it, and then you see just something unusual,
(33:10):
you know, a weird hide, a weird place to, to put somebody, you know, set up something.
Then you can set it up and work everybody through it as a unknown hide,
you know, in a scenario, let people work it.
So everybody, you know, new handlers to the, you know, most senior handler is,
is responsible for finding training venues and setting up scenarios. scenarios.
(33:31):
So if you have that, you know, we had a list actually, and we just wrote it
down on our calendar and we knew, you know, that even though I was one of the
trainers, it went through the whole, everybody on the roster had to set up scenarios
and figure out where we were going to go.
And, uh, we, we would do that. We'd pick a day and we'd know,
you know, that Tuesday night at midnight, we're meeting here.
(33:53):
If we don't have anything else going on, we're going to meet here because one
of the handlers had a new building and they would go in and set everything up.
And then we get to go run new stuff.
So it should be a fun and enjoyable and challenging thing to do scenarios and do them in new areas.
So wrapping it all up, I just mentioned it, that a training day should be fun.
(34:13):
I mean, you should enjoy your training day. It should be a time of camaraderie
first, you know, where you get to see people that you don't see maybe throughout the week.
We all have a common interest. We're all dog handlers. We all are cops.
We love what we do and we love training dogs.
So I know that naturally, you know, schedules and personalities will a lot of
(34:35):
times form some, some clicks.
On the training day, that's a time we should remember that, man,
we're all fortunate. We all get paid a bunch of money to go out and play with dogs.
And then, you know, when we're, when we're not doing a training day,
we get to go deploy our dogs on the street, either for patrol or detection or
tracking, whatever it is we're doing.
So the training days should be a really fun time where you, at the end of the
(34:58):
training day, you should feel like, all right, we spent all of our time.
Time well, the department allocated, you know, eight, 10, 12 hours to us today.
And I feel like, you know, we really did the best we could on that.
And again, of course we're government employees, so we're going to take a lunch
and a break and all that stuff.
But when we look back, we should think, you know, that we, you know,
the dogs are a little bit better today than they were when we started.
(35:22):
And, you know, we had some good scenarios in, caught up with everybody and it
It shouldn't be something where you dread, oh, I got a training day.
So the units, when I travel around and I meet lots of different agencies,
the units that structure their training days, kind of what I'm describing,
I can tell them when I first start dealing with them. They have a different attitude.
(35:44):
When there's a lot of competition and a lot of dissension, those training days don't go as well.
So it's frustrating when you work in a unit that has a lot of dissension and clicks and and stuff,
but I can tell you that starting to structure good training days can start build
better camaraderie and get rid of some of that, that competition type aspect
(36:06):
and just build into a, you know, a very cohesive unit.
So hopefully this is some food for thought for everybody.
I get this question a lot about, you know, how should we schedule our training
days and what should we do? So hopefully these are all some, some ideas for you.
I just want to end up, you know, talking real quick about one of my other new
sponsors and Ray Allen. Ray Allen, everybody knows who Ray Allen is.
(36:29):
They're based here out of Colorado. They make great canine equipment.
And, you know, I don't need to say much more. I mean, if you've been a dog handler
for any period of time, you know who Ray Allen is.
But, you know, it's always good to go on their website, check out what they
have new, anything you need, Ray Allen has.
So one of the things I like to mention is a company like Ray Allen,
they don't need my advertising on this podcast,
(36:51):
but they come on here and they, they pay, pay a little bit of money towards
the cost of this podcast in order to support what I'm doing here,
which is also to support you.
So Ray Allen's a company that's supporting this podcast and I appreciate it.
Their quality of their items is fantastic.
So check out rayallen.com. Ray Allen Manufacturing is a, you know,
(37:14):
it's probably the oldest company that has been dedicated towards canine equipment.
So check out Ray Allen and they're going to be the lead sponsor of our Colorado Canine Conference.
Again, just another example of them just stepping up and supporting the cops.
So everybody in Colorado and most of the handlers that are coming to the Colorado
Canine Conference know about Ray Allen, but they're still going to step up and
(37:38):
support us just because that's what they do.
So it's a great company and, you know, definitely partners with us.
So check out Ray Allen. And as I mentioned, you know, the Colorado Canine Conference is coming.
So check that out. We're going to have a lot of great instructors. It's at the end of July.
ColoradoCanineConference.com. and finally i've been talking a
lot about bob eden bob's been around forever and he's
(38:01):
got his cats canine activity tracking software
program so kts cats platinum.com so
if you again if you've been around for any period of time you've heard of bob
eden maybe read his books seen him doing some training and then most everybody's
heard of cats so if you're not using cats you can get on there and get a free
trial see what all the different features and and see if you like it so So his
(38:25):
customer service is excellent, very responsive,
really good program. So check out catsplatinum.com.
All right, well, that's going to wrap it up. Hopefully a little bit of food
for thought for you guys.
If you have any questions or have a subject that you want me to talk about or
people you want me to interview, just reach out to me.
My email is in the show notes as always.
(38:45):
And this program today was based on a couple of emails I got,
just people talking about training days and setting them up.
So hopefully it helps everybody.
You guys stay safe and I will be back with you next week.
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