Tarheel Canine

Hi Jerry,It was great seeing you again at the K9 Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada this past March. In January of 2006, the Bensalem Township Police Department (PA) approved the purchase of my new drug dog and I met with you to chose my new partner. I saw a lot of great...

“Buying a bite suit for your K9 unit can be an intimidating proposition because it is, aside from the dog and the vehicle, the most expensive single piece of equipment out there, and there are many options. The basic suit styles you can choose from are the Dutch...

“For many who are new to competition obedience training, the only exposure to obedience will have been what was presented in their basic pet training school. That normally consists of a very traditional negative reinforcement and positive punishment process of...

Becoming an Expert Handler or Trainer By Jerry Bradshaw, Tarheel Canine Training, Inc. In 2010 in a blog for the Harvard Business Review, work performance guru Tony Schwartz wrote that a minimum of 10,000 hours of deliberate concentrated practice is necessary to...

Summary:  Canines trained on pseudo-explosives could not reliably identify the genuine article (and vice versa). When it comes to teaching dogs how to sniff out explosives, there’s nothing quite like the real thing to make sure they’re trained right. Date: November...

Roll Call Video Advises Law Enforcement to Exercise Extreme Caution DEA has released a Roll Call video to all law enforcement nationwide about the dangers of improperly handling fentanyl and its deadly consequences.  Acting Deputy Administrator Jack Riley and two...

“Breischaft, a retired police detective and entrepreneur, recently launched a new company called Stealth Vigilance that offers drug detection services to private schools, parents who may suspect their child is using drugs, or businesses that want to make sure...

Drive Neutrality There are times in training where we need to not just cap drive temporarily, but reduce the dog’s arousal in prey to a lower level. In the sport of PSA (Protection Sports Association) for example, decoys are present on the obedience field. In PSA 1,...

Dispatch alerts the K9 Unit that a homeowner sees a man fitting the description of the suspect in a nearby liquor store robbery: Caucasian, male, jeans, red baseball cap, and running into his barn from the direction of the robbery. Perimeter has been set up, and...

If you think about it, it’s kind of a dirty trick to take a species that naturally chases moving objects, eats whatever it comes across, bites to argue, and then announce all these as behavior problems.” Jean Donaldson Understanding systematic desensitization is...

Train within a system  The Electronic training collar (e-collar) is not a problem solver device. There was once a time when trainers slapped on the e-collar before certification and meted out hard corrections to “clean up” a dirty dog. Those days should be long past....

Teaching both the building search and the area search exercises is a staple of all patrol dog training. The building search consists of a “cold” start where you can roll up to any building and send your dog in for a search without any indication from the subject that...

Suppose you roll up on a scene—perhaps there’s been a robbery or a violent domestic—with a fleeing, unsearched felony subject, and as the K9 unit, you are being called in with your dual- purpose dog to perform a track for this felony suspect. As you arrive, people are...

Training a dog to do any task requires a system by which we can apply both the consequences of reinforcement and punishment (operant conditioning) and proper associations (classical conditioning). These concepts must be put into a simple and effective training program...

Many K9 patrol vehicles are outfitted with an automatic door release. The door release is controlled by a button on the K9 officer’s duty belt, and if an emergency situation arises, or the officer needs to have his dog come to his aid, or just come to him for a...

Police K9 Magazine In part 1 of this two part series of articles we discussed proofing the “alert” and suspect encounters in the building search as well as area searches. We discussed issues related to finding the subject out in the open vs. in hiding and many...

When beginning bite mechanics with green dogs, it is crucial to choose the right equipment. Many trainers jump right onto a bite suit with the dogs, and I think rushing onto a suit is a mistake with most young green dogs in the first weeks of a class. A good bite suit...

Buying Green Dogs Now & Then The landscape of buying green dogs for police work has changed dramatically over the last decade. Eastern Europe has supplanted Holland as the primary supplier of dogs for police and military uses. Though the world’s largest police dog...

K9 Cop Magazine It goes without saying that a police dog must be able to take pressure. Pressure comes from a number of sources for a working K-9, such as its environment, its adversary (decoy or suspect) and also from the handler. Pressure is equivalent to stress and...

K9 Cop Magazine It goes without saying that a police dog must be able to take pressure. Pressure comes from a number of sources for a working K-9, such as its environment, its adversary (decoy or suspect) and also from the handler. Pressure is equivalent to stress and...

Transitioning among the various skills your dual- purpose K9 possesses is a crucial aspect of in- service training that is often overlooked. As you probably know, too many agencies are still stuck in certification-exercise-based training and need to move toward a more...

Patrol dogs encounter suspects of all kinds. They can be passive, aggressive, standing, seated, or prone on the back or belly, or partially obscured by brush, blankets, sheets, and may attempt to fend off police dogs with any type of object. We will look at two simple...

In this story, the name of the dog has been changed to protect the innocent. One of the things I see when I do seminars for police and military units is that training often falls into a rut where what’s easy to do becomes the norm. In-service training often turns into...

One of the mysteries of dog training seems to be how to get a reliable level of off-leash control in your police dog. As a veteran seminar speaker, I have trained all around the world with police K9 handlers and trainers who have seemed to struggle with this mystery....

Using bite suits in training police K9s is to a certain extent taken for granted. However, the proper use of the bite suit is often in question, unless a K9 unit has had proper instruction on this piece of equipment. Let’s not forget, just like hidden sleeves, visible...

Buying Green Dogs Now & Then The landscape of buying green dogs for police work has changed dramatically over the last decade. Eastern Europe has supplanted Holland as the primary supplier of dogs for police and military uses. Though the world’s largest police dog...

It goes without saying that a police dog must be able to take pressure. Pressure comes from a number of sources for a working K-9, such as its environment, its adversary (decoy or suspect) and also from the handler. Pressure is equivalent to stress and what this means...

One of the mysteries of dog training seems to be how to get a reliable level of off-leash control in your police dog. As a veteran seminar speaker, I have trained all around the world with police K9 handlers and trainers who have seemed to struggle with this mystery....

Having just returned from teaching an advanced narcotics detection seminar I thought I would share some observations that could help make any narcotics unit more successful. Once your team is trained and certified, in-service training needs to be focused on...

Detection Training By Jerry Bradshaw & Aaron Kemp  After WWII and the successful use of canines in the war, training protocols for military dogs were developed and written. These protocols were largely based on compulsory principles, employing force, physical...

Skill Transitions in Dual- Purpose Dogs Transitioning among the various skills your dual- purpose K9 possesses is a crucial aspect of in- service training that is often overlooked. As you probably know, too many agencies are still stuck in certification-exercise-based...

The Importance of Realistic Scenarios in K9 Training Patrol dogs encounter suspects of all kinds. They can be passive, aggressive, standing, seated, or prone on the back or belly, or partially obscured by brush, blankets, sheets, and may attempt to fend off police...