Paul Bunker

Mr. Paul Bunker is the owner and Principal of Chiron K9 LLC, a canine consultancy company specializing in detection. He served over 22 years in the British Army as a Canine Trainer/Instructor/Assessor deploying on high threat counter-terrorist operations worldwide.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This class aims to enhance the capability of the Explosive Detection Canine team. This class will allow attendees to imprint their canines on TATP, HMTD, ETN, and urea nitrate in a progressive and controlled environment. The class will support all levels of canine proficiency on HME (green to experienced).

Clover Street

Decoying and developing dogs has been a passion of Clover’s and it has taken him across the country hosting seminars in decoy development for agencies and military units. Outside of work, Clover competes in Protection Sports Association and has been a certified trial decoy for the last two seasons.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

the purpose of this course is designed to be a tool to showcase utilizing a marker system to teach decoys how to reward appropriate activity from the developing patrol dog and safely yet effectively build the dog’s grip so they can return to their unit’s to become an asset.

Carlos Ramirez

Carlos is the founder and training director at CRK9 out of Ocala, Fl and a operating partner at Triple Threat Canine. He has previously served as the director of canine operations for a private contractor where he gained experience managing military and government contracts such as TSA, Border Patrol, NSA, Department of Defense, etc.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course covers an instructional breakdown of operant and classical conditioning which is crucial for successful development. Carlos will discuss how to develop skills with proactive and reactive dogs through properly timed cues and markers that will help patrol dogs develop exceptional technique, grip and drive while explaining how to be your dog’s battle buddy rather than his enemy during bite work sessions.

Michael Nezbeth

Michael Nezbeth is the Training Director and founder of Grassroots K9, an international training company that specializes in LEO canines. Michael is also the co-founder to Triple Threat Canine a company that offers seminars and workshops to LEO and civilians aimed at giving actionable training plans based on theory to practical applications. Michael began his career in the canine industry after graduating with degrees in Psychology and Criminology. His background has given him the ability to apply a theoretical and systematic approach to practical applications in canine deployments.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is designed to teach a systematic and meticulous program of progressively adding pressure in bite work. The frame work for this course is the utilization of Operant and Classical Conditioning by the handler and decoy.

Billy Sawyer

With almost 14 years of Law Enforcement experience, he started his career with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office where his assignments included Patrol and UC Narcotics Detective/Tactical Team 2. He was hired by the Longmont Police Department in Colorado where he joined the SWAT team and then K9. Billy is currently the supervisor/trainer for his department. Recently he teamed up with Brian Hempelmann, of Westminster PD, to start Bellator K9 to teach a broad range of courses to include SWAT/K9 integration, K9 Patrol Tactics, decoy courses, etc.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

High Risk Vehicle Stops (HRVS) with K9. Teaching dogs how to recognize the target vehicle and problem solve the entry to apprehend a suspect. This course focuses heavily on training you to properly fight around vehicles to increase your likelihood of survival. Handlers will learn the advantages of fighting/deploying from the correct position.

David Dourson

Dave has conducted countless canine nutritional seminars across the USA, Canada, Hawaii, Alaska and Great Britain for various divisions of the DOD, Homeland Security, USSS, Military, DEA, DHS/TSA, Intercom, State as well as thousands of State and Local PDs

Dave and John are recognized as two of the top, no nonsense, nutritional experts in the field teaching the Handler how to quickly identify deficiencies in their K9 partner.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

We will show you before and after pictures of working and sporting dogs that had a myriad of significant issues that were resolved by changing their diet. By the end of the class, you will be armed with the ability to look at your canine and see the effects of poor diet and what changes you can do to correct them.

MICHELE MAUGHAN

Dr. Michele Maughan is a contract research scientist and program manager with Excet, Inc. a Department of Defense Science & Engineering firm. Her primary assignment is supporting the Olfactory Sciences Program at the US Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM-CBC) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. In that role, Dr. Maughan conducts basic research on canine training aids, applied research developing tools to enhance Military Working Dog programs, and performs test and evaluation on stand-off detectors. Michele is also an explosives detection dog handler and currently training her second working dog.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This class aims to debunk many popular myths within the K9 industry with irrefutable evidence and data. We will also take a deep dive into best practices of how to handle and store your training aids and review some of the latest and greatest K9 R&D projects @ DEVCOM.

Eric Stanbro

Eric Stanbro is the owner of VanEss K9 Academy, and co-host of the Working Dog Radio podcast. He has been handling and training police K9's for the past 17 years. Eric trains K9 teams from all over the US and is constantly evolving his training system. Eric has become an expert in scenario based training as well as different ways to employee the use of the e collar in K9 work.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

E-collar conditioning without conflict for the military or police service canine.

Alison Simon

Dr. Alison G. Simon is a chemist with over 10 years of experience in canine detection research and 4 non-working dogs of her own. She is currently a contractor with the federal government and Auburn University through her company AGS Forensics, LLC as well as an adjunct professor at Oklahoma State University. Her research focuses on the analysis and development of canine training aids with the goal of creating safe, scientifically-validated aids.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Dr. Simon’s lecture will start with a discussion on odors of explosives, focusing on factors that may affect canine detection of various targets. After that, the discussion will be led by questions from the audience to ensure that participants get the information they need to help their dogs be as successful as possible.

Donny Meece

Donny is currently working his third dual purpose Police K9 named Pedro. He has a decade of S.W.A.T. experience and has worked two of his K9 partners as a member of the CPD SWAT Team. In 2011 Donny graduated from an intense 12-week trainers’ course at Shallow Creek Kennels under the instruction of Mr. John Brannon.

In 2013 He left the CPD and began working for Shallow Creek Kennels in Sharpsville, PA as a fulltime lead trainer. While at Shallow Creek Kennels Donny had the pleasure of training K9 teams from numerous Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies. This time at Shallow Creek allowed Donny to expand his knowledge and skill by training hundreds of green, pre-titled and titled dogs.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

BUILDING TACTICAL OBEDIENCE

It has been said that Obedience is the foundation of all other K9 work. That saying is forever true. However, there are different levels of Obedience. In today’s fast paced and dangerous environment it is not enough to have a “certification level” of obedience only. The essence of K9 tactical obedience is to have down range (off leash) control over your Dog while operating in a heightened state of drive. Having off leash control will allow the handler to safely and methodically search for dangerous suspects who have a tactically superior advantage from a position of cover and concealment.

• REQUIRED EQUIPMENT:

• Duty Gear

• All K9 gear

• Rewards

AJ Vargas

AJ Vargas, Chief Executive Officer of Custom Canine Unlimited started his career in Law Enforcement in 1997 where he spent years gathering experience and training. Working in assignments such as supervisor, special operations, patrol, K-9 Handler, and Departmental K9 Trainer. He has now been training dogs for over 20 years. In this time he has trained hundreds of dogs and thousands of handlers. AJ has received over 2500 hours of specialized documented training with countless hours of experience. which he has injected into his core business model. His dedication to the core values; Integrity, Professional, Team, and Family, has proven to ensure Custom Canine Unlimited always remains consistent in its operations.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Top 5 Distractors for Detection Dogs and How to Train Past Them: Using theory and hands-on training in a deployment setting, this class will take an in-depth look into the top 5 distractors detection dogs face today on deployments and teach the student how to beat them. Learn the why to implement the how—taught in the field to maximize lead time.

Angel Landrau

Throughout his tenure at Lackland AFB, Angel worked closely with the US Army’s veterinary behaviorists, helping to develop and implement training protocols which have been essential to the health and welfare of the MWDs in all stages of training, and assigned personnel.

Angel’s extensive knowledge and unique skillsets are representative of mentor guidance and his continuous drive for education by way of exotic, marine, and domesticated animal training seminars, media, as well as his own personal experiences gained with military and civilian law enforcement working dog programs, and countless companion animals and their owners that he works with. Lastly, Angel has continued to learn and develop his dog training IQ as an intern with the Canine Training Academy in Colorado. He continues to study, train, and instruct dogs and their handlers in detection, tracking, and trailing disciplines.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Problem Solving and Creative Solutions for Detection Dog Issues: Identify and address through collaborative discussion and practical application, common training issues faced by detector dog handlers and trainers.

David Adebimpe

With over 30 years of combined experience as an organic chemistry professor, the administrator of a NSF Center of Research Excellence, a visiting scientist with British Aerospace, NIST, Eli Lilly, and NASA, and as a government contractor to the US Air Force & Navy, he is a subject matter expert and world leader in combining scent-engineering and mammalian olfaction with the development of scent-detection training aids and practical tools that enhance the olfactory capabilities of operational search-and-detect K9s.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This class will lead us through a fascinating odyssey of scientific fact, experimental data, video clips, and 20 years of MWD-proven research to (i) explain the fundamentals of olfaction; (ii) to explain the theory of odors; (iii) illustrate how an industry-wide misunderstanding of scent training aids (odors) has unknowingly resulted in the generation of scent detection dogs with these 4 operational limitations in detectability; and, (iv) will provide insights on how such limitations can be avoided.

This is a scent detection class covering the most fundamental and impactful, revealing the underlying science of our profession, and recommended as a not-to-miss class for the modern scent practitioner.

Brady Smith

Before Brady was a canine handler, he spent more than 7 years as a medic, sniper and assaulter with a crisis response force. He regularly prepared and deployed to hostile areas with the crisis response force. The crisis response force’s primary focus was direct action targets where he spent countless hours planning, training, and preparing for direct action targets. After becoming a canine handler, Brady deployed as a canine handler and medic to support the crisis response force where he carried out combat operations in hostile environments. Brady has vast experience, with a canine and without, in close quarters battle, displaced combatants, site exploitation and tactical medicine.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

the K9 TCCC Course includes experience and evidenced based hands-on scenario training with the North American Rescue K9 First Aid Training Mannequin, in addition to instruction on the following topics:

Basic K9 Anatomy & Vital Signs

Penetrating & Blunt Force Trauma

Heat Injury Treatment & Prevention

Gastric Dilatation Volvulus

Practical Dressing & Bandaging

Canine - First Aid Kit Contents Emergency Medical Preparedness & Planning