Kingsport TN……..

I couldn’t be happier with how the two decoy seminars went off. The TN group was interested and attentive, despite the frigid single digit temps….thank god for the building at the Ammo Plant!

Overall, a lot of well selected high quality dog, some were just in an academy and some were on the road for some time. Many of the usual issues with strong dogs – which we dealt with by using a balanced approach of reward and compulsion, with emphasis on the reward component. Many attendees were amazed by how much this one simple change mattered in getting these strong dogs to come around to releasing and calling off.

Attendees had a lot of opportunity to jump in and learn how to get their dogs releasing quicker, redirecting, and calling off. We also emphasized civil aggressin, and using the decoy as an instrument of operant conditioning in training the building search alerts…..

Thanks to Kingsport PD and Randall Gore and Kevin Hite especially for their hospitality.

Wedstwego LA…..Det. Sgt. Shawn Edwards accompanied me as a co-instructor. Great hospitality and amazing food was a highlight of this trip.

Another great group of people who were receptive to some new ideas, and some new takes on some familiar training procedures. With this group we emphasized human focused aggression, and developing the dogs defensive side to bring out aggression on passive subjects…..

There were also a number of well trained dogs that by having the decoys learn some new skills such as out techniques, and redirects and call off drills, showed marked improvement in how they performed….

Special thanks to Ronell Mason of Westwego and Mike Davis as well for their hospitality. Look forward to coming back to Louisiana for more training.