This seminar is presented by Terry Fleck, deputy sheriff and canine handler (retired) and author of the Canine Legal Update and Opinions for supervisors and administrators plus patrol, narcotic and contraband, explosives, tracking, search and rescue and accelerant dog teams. This seminar has been taught nationwide to over 21,000 students. Praised for reducing canine unit liability and increasing K-9 officer safety, this seminar has been updated and is now available.
This one day course will address the following issues:
Canine deployment issues
Canine policy
Report writing
Handler compensation Issues
Accidental bites
Canines as a less-lethal force
Extensive case law on canine applications
Canine training
Vicarious liability issues
Narcotic and contraband canine case law
Explosive canine case law
Tracking canine case law
The course will address the legal issues of canine usage, canine tactics, and the prevention of litigation.
TERRY FLECK
Deputy Sheriff II / Canine Handler (Ret.)
South Lake Tahoe, California
Terry Fleck, Ed.D,is a Deputy Sheriff II / Canine Handler (retired) in South Lake Tahoe, California. Terry has been in law enforcement for 27 years and has been involved with police dogs during that time. Terry has been a police dog handler and trainer for 26 years and has trained and handled three police dogs, patrol dogs cross-trained for search and rescue, narcotic detection, evidence recovery, cadaver recovery, avalanche recovery and tracking / trailing.
Terry is an expert in canine legalities. Author of the Canine Legal Update and Opinions for supervisors & administrators plus patrol, narcotic & contraband, explosive, tracking, search & rescue and accelerant dogs, Terry tracks and updates the canine industry on current case law and legal trends.
With a degree of Doctor of Education in Criminal Justice, Terry teaches Canine Legal Update and Opinions Seminars throughout the United States and Canada. He has taught over 21,000 canine handlers, supervisors, administrators, agency attorneys, prosecuting attorneys and risk managers nationwide. His classes focus on canine legalities, the prevention of canine litigation and canine tactics.
Terry is also an expert in canine tactics. He studies canine tactics and develops techniques to keep canine handlers safe, utilizing their dogs to maximum tactical advantage. In addition, Terry teaches several canine tactical seminars, including Defensive Tactics for K-9 teams, Tactical High Risk K-9 Tracking, High Risk Vehicle Stops and High Risk Vehicle Assaults with a K-9 Team, Chemical Munitions Deployment with a K-9 Team and Tactical Handgun and Urban Rifle Techniques for K-9 Teams.
Legal Update Registration Form.
Send to: Tarheel Canine Training, Inc., Legal Update Registration, PO Box 1694, Sanford, NC27330. For any questions, please call Jerry Bradshaw at 919-774-4152 or 919-244-8044. See below for the schedule of events on March 11, 2009. This seminar is limited to Law Enforcement Personnel ONLY. Pre-registration is required by March 4, 2009.
Name _________________________________________________________________
Hotel Rooms are blocked for overnight stays before and after the conference until 2 weeks prior to the seminar. Please contact the hotel directly and ask for the K9 Legal Update Seminar rate.
Schedule
Date: March 11, 2009
Time: 8am – 5pm (Check-in starting at 7am) Lunch from 12:00pm – 1:00pm
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.
Tarheel Canine Training Inc – Police K9 Decoy Seminar
Jerry Bradshaw, Tarheel Canine Training Inc., Instructor
Kingsport Police Department
Please wear comfortable athletic clothing that you would normally decoy in. I recommend wearing cleats or duty boots for outdoor work, and sneakers or duty boots for indoor work. Please bring water and keep hydrated. If you have your own suit, bring it with you. Thursday and Friday will be COLD! Dress warmly.
Wednesday January 14, 2009
7:30am – Meet & Coffee
8:00am – Introduction & Foundation Theory
9:30am – 12:30pm - Field Work –Training Area - Outside
The Decoy School is full for Kingsport TN and I look forward to seeing all of you that are registered there. Please note, I got this email from the host:
Jerry,
Just thought I’d let you know that the weather service is calling for really cold temps. Thurs. and Friday (highs in the mid to upper 20s and lows in the single digits to teens). Didn’t know if you’d want to send something out to the folks coming from out of state letting them know to bring some warm clothes.
Thanks,
Randall
So, bring your long Johns!!
Looking forward to seeing you all there! I will post a schedule for the seminar on this blog tomorrow before I leave to Kingsport.
One of the biggest issues in police dog training is how the dog handles surprise attacks. If you are a police officer, you can know intellectually if you go into a particular place under a particular set of circumstances, that a surprise attack may be likely on your person, so you mentally and physically can gear up for the possibility prior to entering the situation. Unfortunately, too often, we assume our dogs should just “be ready” for such an eventuality if they have sufficient “courage.” They don’t have the benefit of our intellectual ability, so they rely on previous experience just like we make logical assessments. The problem is, a dog can get caught in the wrong frame of mind, and his defense mechanism might shift him into avoidance if he is not prepared in training. Too many dogs can get caught off-guard in a surprise attack scenario because they have not been properly prepared for it. Foundation training should include proper defense training basics, so the dog is capable of dealing with threat by becoming aggressive, but sometimes we forget to actually train a young the dog to deal with the shock of a surprise attack, even though he is courageous. As a police dog matures, he becomes familiar with contexts through his experience, such as dark buildings and area searches at night, where he may be taken by surprise, and the conditioning he has had to these situations in the past gear him up mentally prior to being deployed. However, a young dog straight out of the training academy needs continued training in these situations. Too often inexperienced trainers do a “let’s see what happens” and they do a surprise attack on a dog doing a search exercise in a dark room with slick floors, and on top of it they also throw some strange object at the dog or threaten him with it. The dog shows hesitation and maybe doesn’t engage and goes into a displacement mode (see Controlled Aggression by the author for an explanation of defense training and channeling methods: http://www.lulu.com/content/2317473), and the conclusion is drawn that the dog is perhaps not courageous. You can’t draw reasonable conclusions from bad training.
The surprise attack defense should be trained in a systematic progression. It doesn’t take very long at all for the dog to generalize to any situation and any distraction if a systematic approach is taken in the beginning. Behaviorally, we are simply trying to de-condition the dog to the surprise attack (suppress the startle reflex) first. Then, during the catch and drive, distractions can be introduced, that have already been trained in a more controlled situation, like on a back tie. Thus when the dog sees these on the surprise attack, he should be well used to them. These environmental distractions include: jugs of water, jugs with pennies or stones in them, sticks, large objects, water hoses, etc. The basic training progression I like to use can be employed as follows:
(1)Place the dog in a sit stay away (20’) from a hiding place, handler at the dog’s side, holding the dog on leash on an agitation collar. The decoy jumps out and agitates defensively, fades away from the dog and the dog is released into the grip. Decoy works the dog in channeling multiples before the dog is disengaged.
(2)Place the dog in a sit stay closer to the hiding place, decoy jumps out and agitates defensively, send dog earlier and earlier until the dog is being sent on the decoy standing still (not fading) but still agitating defensively. Be sure to change contexts often in the beginning so he knows that surprise attacks can come anywhere, and he is being set up for success.
(3)Place the dog in a sit stay away (20’) from the hiding place, decoy jumps out agitating defensively, slowly charging the dog, release the dog on the approach of the decoy. Decoy catches the dog and works in prey first. Decoy works the dog in channeling multiples before the dog is disengaged.
(4)Place the dog in a sit stay closer to the hiding place, decoy jumps out and quickly charges the dog defensively, dog is released ever closer to the decoy as he approaches. Decoy catches the dog and works the dog into a defensive drive after the catch. Slowly integrate the distractions in the drive, and variably increase the intensity and duration of the defensive drives. Decoy works the dog in channeling multiples before the dog is disengaged.
(5)Place the dog close to a hiding place, decoy charges the dog from the front, from behind, or the side, dog is allowed to release on his own into the charging decoy. The decoy works the dog in ever-stronger defensive drives (variable in intensity and duration over time), then proceeds into prey and channeling multiples before the dog is disengaged.
(6)If the dog can heel, heel around, and once in a while, have the attack come during heeling. Practice heeling past familiar hiding places with no handler attack. If you do too many handler attacks from heeling, the dog will anticipate the attacks and want to go to the hiding place and break heel position.
(7)Put the dog into search scenarios only when he is dealing with surprise attacks powerfully without searching. Then do simple search problems and lower the surprise intensity somewhat as we are introducing a new variable. Variably increase the attack intensity, and increase the difficulty of the search problems.
This kind of handler defense exercise will make the dog very alert to his surroundings. It is critical that the dog begin to be exposed to environments that are more stressful than his regular training area. For police dogs, these exercises should be done in and around buildings, parking lots, in dark rooms and in tight places, and these places should be introduced early in the process and varied a lot while you are still fading from the initial attacks. Attacks from behind doors will also get the dog used to looking around doorways for threats, and is a good initial step before teaching formal building searches if you haven’t already done that yet.
It is critical to remember, that if you change the dog’s environment that will add its own defensive pressure, and you will be working with somewhat less of a defensive margin. The decoy should be aware to read the dog’s body and grip, and work to increase the dog’s confidence in these exercises, and the general defensive pressure builds up in scenario-based exercises. As a rule of thumb, always expect that the dog will likely have a problem, so you as the handler and/or decoy are prepared if the dog shows difficulty handling the defensive pressure of these scenarios, and you can slide into prey, or drop to the ground during the fight to increase the dogs confidence. A poor decoy will just keep on coming and cause terrible damage to a young dog in training. Use an experienced decoy who can read a dog and make adjustments. Be sure to discuss the training scenario before actually doing it, and discuss what might go wrong, and what the decoy is to do if something does go wrong. This is pre-planning.
When catching the dog in the handler attack, decoys should be careful not to position their hands too close to the target area. There should be an opening for the dog to come to the shoulder (if you train inside bites), especially when first training the dog with fades. The dog’s momentum will initiate the decoy to absorb the dog, and the decoy should not spin the shoulder away from the dog as he enters.
Police K9 Decoy Seminar - Westwego Louisiana (New Orleans) - January 21, 22, 23 2009
February 2009
Law Dog Conference - Las Vegas NV - February 23 - 26 2009 (TK9 will attend as a vendor)
March 2009
K9 Legal Update Seminar with Terry Fleck - Baltimore MD - March 11, 2009
Police K9 Decoy Seminar - Montgomery TWP PA (Philadelphia) - March 24, 25, 26 2009
April 2009
Police K9 Magazine HITS Conference - April 20 - 23 2009 (www.policek9magazine.com) - Jerry will speak on "The Power of Reward" in Police K9 Training.
Military and Police K9 Seminar - LGK9 Sao Paulo Brazil - April 25-28 2009 ( www.lgk9brazil.com.br )
May 2009
Police K9 Decoy Seminar - Paducah KY - Elite K9 Sponsor - Date TBA (www.elitek9.com)
Summer 2009
Police K9 Seminar - National Association of Security Dog Users of Australia (NASDU) - Date TBA www.nasdu.com.au
If your agency is interested in a seminar, please contact Jerry Bradshaw at malinois_jb@mindspring.com Seminar slots for the hosting agency are free, and there is minimal cost to hosting a seminar on Police K9 Decoy, High Risk Deployments, Advanced Detection, or using E-Collar for Ultimate Performance. Jerry is also available for custom designed seminars.
Over the next few posts I want to discuss 5 New Year’s Resolutions for Police Dog Training. Today I will discuss the first two:
Establish Goals
Break Down Training into Steps
Train from the result to the start (Back Chaining)
Anticipate Outcomes and set up for success
Use more Reward, and Compel Efficiently
Establish Goals
Too many police dog handlers fail to establish goals, whether for a training session they are about to begin, or for a more medium term goal such as the dog indicating on a high find deep in a building on a building search. As a handler you need to take control of your training program and understand why you are doing a particular exercise in a particular way. You should set up training to achieve specific, defined goals. Don’t just set out drug hides to run the dog on without regard for difficulty or objectives you may have in training. In every session you should be working on particular skills, such as the alert, or the searching behavior, or ignoring distractions you set up such as food or novel odors to proof the dog’s odor recognition. Training record forms set us up for lazy training: We fill in drug odors and amounts, and rate performance. Don’t confuse your records with training goals. Know what your dog needs to improve upon, and note it in the narratives, and then set up training to directly address those weaknesses. Set up training to reinforce strengths as well. You should be able to state your training goals with your dog for every skill set he possesses at any time. If you can’t do that, start thinking about it so that you can. Write down everything you want your dog to be capable of doing (within reason) and set those as long term goals. Then decide how to break each goal into a set of manageable training steps you can consistently train.
Break Down Training into Small Steps
Let’s say a dog has an issue you are addressing in training. Say the dog is having trouble with the bark alert in the building search. If the alert is the problem, we need repetition of the alert to train and condition the response we want. So set up your session to address that specific issue. Having the dog search a giant building for one alert opportunity is inefficient and lacks focus, and is poor training planning because it fails to break down the training to focus on the issue your dog needs to have addressed. A simple search problem which will not tire the dog out and an easy find is what we want to create so we can concentrate on training the alert behavior. As the alert behavior becomes a habit, we can slowly make the search problem more complex, and if the alert maintains, we add further complexity. I hear so many times how handlers have been “working hard” on an issue and the dog isn’t responding, but working hard and working smart are two different things. You can dig a ditch with an icepick, and yes, you will work hard at it and it will take a lot of time. Training must be goal oriented, and the session must be focused to achieve those goals, and this is accomplished by breaking the problems down into small manageable concepts and training in a progression, step by step.
Terry Fleck Legal Update Baltimore MD
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