Custom K9 Unlimited walks handlers through K9 certification prep, covering obedience, detection, patrol work, tracking, and article searches. The 5-5-5 drill (5 min on-leash, 5 min off-leash, 5 min corrective work) builds reliable obedience. Common failures: dogs untrained off-leash, handlers who can't read false alerts, and dogs possessive over articles.
Chapters
Good morning, good afternoon. Welcome to Custom K9 Unlimited Short Set. This week we're going to talk a little bit about how we can test the reliability and control of our dogs in different aspects of our certification process. We're going to touch on, you know, control and reliability, and that's a lot of what we're looking for during our certification. You're getting ready to come in for cert, we're going to be looking at, like I was saying before, control and reliability. And so some of those aspects, things that you need to be prepared for before you get here, is being able to control your dog in an obedience setting. A lot of guys don't do any obedience and then come up here and think that they're going to be able to off-leash certify with their dog in obedience. And that's what happens— is not the case. You pull that leash off the dog, he understands that leash is no longer attached to him, and he takes off. And so that dog takes off. And so, you know, practicing your off-leash obedience before you get here, doing your 5-5-5 Uh, which is 5 minutes of on-leash obedience, 5 minutes of off-leash obedience, and then 5 minutes at the end to correct any of the issues that you had, is a great way to practice before you come up here for certification. Because like I was saying before, a lot of times what happens is we just remove our leash and the dog has no control. And so that's one of the aspects that we're looking for in certification. Another thing that we've run into a lot of times you know, when guys are getting ready for cert, whether they don't have the explosives or the narcotics to run the proper sets that they need to run, or they're not running their sets properly even when they do have the proper training aids to do so. A good way to get ready for our detection portion of the certification is running some blinds, being able to read your dog when it's in odor, when it's not in odor, when it's negative. And being able to read that body language and the change in behavior that your dog exhibits. Because what happens is you come into certification and your dog just wants to play the game, win the ball, whatever it is, and he false alerts. You need to be able to read your dog before you get here for certification week, uh, to determine whether that is a true alert or whether that's a false alert. Getting ready for cert I would definitely suggest running some blinds, you know, run, run sets realistic to how they would be on the street. For our patrol dogs is once again that off-leash obedience section where we're oftentimes required for like an open area search or a dirty pat-down or something along those lines, and the dog has no control. No obedience the way that it doesn't have obedience the way that it should, and you end up with a false start or a dog biting somebody that it shouldn't have bit in a controlled training setting. And so training those variations of certification before you get here are great ways to avoid some of those issues that you may have. Moving into tracking, a lot of times what happens is either these guys have only ever been on live deployments, they've never been on a live deployment, or they're too lazy to train tracking. Lazy handler makes a lazy dog, especially here in this Georgia heat. You start out on these 90-degree days where tracking for the handler is a problem, it's going to be a problem for the dog. Running known tracks, understanding once again change of behavior, understanding how to cut properly, understanding what your dog looks like when it has a change in behavior are all different elements that you can use to be successful on a, obviously, a certification track as well as a real-world track. And so a lot of times guys will come up here and they haven't trained tracks all year and they think that they're going to come in, certify. Our tracks vary, you know, for different certification purposes. However, If you are coming up here tracking for the first time all year on certification and your dog hasn't tracked, uh, it's probably not going to be a successful track. And as we know, real-world tracking is a little bit different than training. And so you need to be able to train some of those different areas, whether it be a known track or an unknown track, so that you can start to read the different body languages that your dog displays while it's in odor. And then moving along, we also do some, uh, for certification purposes, we do article searches. Article searches, um, are pretty simple, looking for articles that could have been left behind by a fleeing criminal or a missing person, something along those lines. And it's very simple to train too. You can take any article that you have laying around your house, kids' toys, whatever that looks like for you that's just laying around your house, and throw them out in your backyard while you're at home not doing anything. And you can train, train articles relatively simple by yourself without having some extra people or anything like that. And so a lot of times guys will come up here and their dog doesn't know how to react to the article, they become possessive over the article, different variations. And so Being able to eliminate those issues before you get here for training or for certification are going to help you be successful. As always, if you don't already, like and subscribe. Any questions that you may have, please feel free to comment. You help the algorithm out. Stay tuned for Friday. We'll have the Source Podcast uploading by noon. Thanks for joining today's Short Set.
