In this monologue, AJ Vargas, CEO of Custom K9 Unlimited, reflects on 15 years of building the company. He attributes his purpose to his faith, describing it as the reason he is where he is today. Vargas outlines the core mission: delivering the highest‑quality canine training to produce "road‑ready" handler‑dog teams, not just trained dogs. He recounts past frustrations with vendors who sold subpar dogs and training, which inspired a client‑centered approach where dogs are offered based on the client’s needs rather than internal preferences. He emphasizes a culture of continuous improvement, striving to exceed client expectations in every class and interaction. The narrative conveys his dedication, passion, and commitment to excellence in the K9 industry.
Chapters
I'm AJ Vargas and I'm the CEO of Custom K9 Unlimited, and I'm here today after dedicating 15 years of my life and my career to building Custom K9 to where it's at today. And I say building it, it's a work in progress every single day. But I've surrounded myself with some great trainers and great people. I've had an opportunity to meet, I mean, great people around the world because of what I do. And I think the, the one word of why I'm here today, sitting here, is because this is where the Lord would have me. And I know for some people that doesn't sound like much or doesn't sound like that would be a valid reason to be where I'm at, but I can wholeheartedly say that that's why I'm where I'm at today. Why I actually started Custom K9 Unlimited, it's kind of the same vision that I have today as I did 15 years ago when I started it, and that was the fact that I wanted to provide the very best canine training possible. And I know that's a cliché and everybody in the industry uses that. However, we are truly dedicated to that, sometimes too dedicated to that. And although we have evolved as a company over these years, learned so much, and changed things to, to try to fit into that. At our core and in our heart, it really is to provide the very best training. Not just to get a student through training, not just to get a dog out there, but to truly get teams where they're road ready. To get dogs at a point where they're road ready when they go out there. And that dedication to each student pushes us each and every course. We often feel like we don't even have time to get everything in, but I was driven to that point based on what I saw us buying when I was buying dogs for my agency, based on the services that we had received from vendors at that time. Trying to be as nice as I can, It sucked. We were left with teams that weren't road ready. We were given training that was subpar. We were sold dogs, or attempted to be sold dogs, that would have never made it. And we knew that going to test them, yet there were still vendors trying to sell us dogs. So now we sell dogs, and I often tell people this that ask me, we don't sell dogs here. And they look at me funny, but I, but I say that because we don't. We have dogs that you can look at, we have dogs for sale, but it's always based on the client's wants, not my own, not our kennel staff's own, not our trainer's own desires or what we see in a dog. It really is in the eyes of the client, and we take that to heart. And if our clients are not happy, we're not happy. If there's things that we can do better, we strive every single class and every single moment to be better. And that dedication, I hope, shines through to everybody that we have an opportunity to provide services for.
