Ep. 854: Dogs That Hunt Humans

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with former Chief Trainer and handler for the LAPD's K9 Unit Doug Roller. Topics discussed: Getting heavy into falconry; a calling to work with animals; joining the police department; what an apprehension dog is; desirable dog characteristics; prey drive; running into a friendly; smelling fear; bite ratio; when dogs pay the price; buying a protection dog; training tips; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:01Steven Rinella?

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• 2:24Steven Rinella?

  Joined today by Doug Roller, who was the chief trainer for LAPD, Los Angeles Police Department's K-9 Unit. Doug spent his career working with, this is a big important point, apprehension dogs. There you go. Meaning dogs that catch people. So, in the dog world, you got detection dogs, guns, drugs, whatever. You got tracking dogs, which could be used as like rescue dogs to track people lost out in the woods. But his career is in using dogs to apprehend folks. He was a handler for seven years, then spent 17 years as the head trainer, working with

• 3:06Steven Rinella?

  apprehension dogs. I met Doug, you know, a couple of months ago. Yep. I was at, I was with a friend of mine, Shane Yates, who's been on the show before. I was hanging out in a setting very similar to this, on a couple of couches in a living room. And Doug was kind of blowing my mind with this whole world of dog use and dog training that I was unfamiliar with. So, we're going to kind of recreate that conversation about just the intricate, very detailed, in-depth use of dogs that kind of blows your mind. Before we get into the police work, which is fascinating, man, and the training and

• 3:46Steven Rinella?

  all that, I want to talk about your background a little bit. We didn't talk about this when I met you. Right. But Corinne was telling me. That that you got one of your initial introductions to dog to working with, sorry, that one of your introductions, not even to dogs, what am I saying? You were uh into falconry.

• 4:08Speaker 06

  Oh, police work, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

• 4:10Steven Rinella?

  Train, I guess in training or whatever, yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's come up before when I've talked to people like, you know, they'll say like, you know, what drew you? I don't know, you know, you're raised and I was raised in a family that was very uh loved animals and and the outdoors and all that, did a lot of camping. And I don't even know how it happened, but I I guess I had parents also that, you know, did the right thing and allowed me to go directions that they saw, but that maybe was not instinctual, but just I gravitated toward that.

• 4:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 4:43Speaker 06

  And uh I remember getting my first falcon, it was a little tiny falconette that I bought at the pet shop they bought for me. It's a little from India, smallest falcon in the world, and I had it like a pet and it ended up dying on me because I didn't take care of it properly. But then I started reading, I got into all the books and I was very young at the time. And then um I got into birds of prey and and trapping them and catching them, got my falconer's license in California.

• 5:08Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really, huh?

• 5:09Speaker 06

  And I was a very young age, I was probably about thirteen, I couldn't even drive yet. But because I got so much into it, I was on the verge of getting my master falconer's license at a really young age, and then the fishing game got a hold of me. I don't know how that occurred. I think he just came over to approve my muse and my equipment and he said, hey, um, we need to rehab uh rehab birds once in a while that are injured or mistreated, whatever birds of prey, would you be interested? And of course, I'm a kid, I go, oh, yeah, that'd be great.

• 5:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 06

  So they started bringing me birds to rehab, you know, like.

• 5:39Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 5:40Speaker 06

  Cooper hawks, red tails, um, you know, sometimes a prairie falcon in that area. So that that actually fueled that. But then I got very much into it, I joined a falconer's club and I got really into falconry. And then some of my buddies in high school, we all got into it and and I got guys right now that I kind of lost touch with, but they're really into it. I mean, they're, I left it because I, my my life went in another direction. I got into police work, got into the dog thing.

• 6:06Steven Rinella?

  But you were you were tuned up on, trained up on, kind of like mentally trained up on working with animals?

• 6:12Speaker 06

  And I, and not only that, it was like being able to utilize an animal. In the, in the natural environment and hunt prey. There's something really neat about that.

• 6:21Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 6:21Speaker 06

  Like, there's certain, there are certain birds you, you go hunting with, you hunt from the fist. Um, you know, you, you, like a gosok, you're gonna, you're gonna, uh, uh, look for jackrabbits or bunnies or whatever, and you gotta have the dog appropriately trained, the canine, the bird appropriately trained for that. But then you also have the falcons, which are taught to hunt from the, the stoop. So you actually teach them to wait on you.

• 6:47Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 6:47Speaker 06

  There's involved like bird dogs.

• 6:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 06

  Birds dogs will flush the game. Your peregrine or your prairie falcon will come up and stoop down and take them out.

• 6:55Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 6:56Speaker 06

  Um, now these guys put transmitters on their birds and everything else because some of these stoops can last, go for miles.

• 7:02Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 7:02Speaker 06

  You don't wanna lose your bird.

• 7:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 06

  So you gotta track them down. There he is with the, uh, the duck or the grouse or whatever, you know, a mile away. So it's pretty neat stuff though, when you really get into it, at least for me it was.

• 7:15Steven Rinella?

  What, what made you, what was your decision process in becoming a cop?

• 7:19Speaker 06

  Uh, that's kind of, that's interesting too, because I had no, I had no, um, thought about being a police officer. I was selling real estate, I was nineteen, I was making a ton of money. I was doing, buying and selling, uh, foreclosure houses, fixing them up.

• 7:35Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 7:35Speaker 06

  Probably on my way to making a lot of money. You know, I had like rental properties and all this other stuff and I was.

• 7:40Steven Rinella?

  At nineteen?

• 7:41Speaker 06

  Nineteen, twenty years old. I had some investors I was working with, so, but one day, this buddy of mine says, hey, why don't you come on a ride along with LAPD?

• 7:50Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 7:50Speaker 06

  And I even lost track of this guy, but it was somebody I knew at the time. So he worked southeast, which is a, you know, the Watts area, very busy, very violent.

• 7:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 06

  And of course you, I rode with a sergeant. And I got hooked. I go, this is neat. This is like, I mean, for me, it just was really, you know, it was a, it was an adrenaline rush, dangerous. I'm seeing a world that I never was exposed to.

• 8:15Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  I mean, I'm upper middle class, you know, white boy, growing up in Southern California. Here I am and. In a really bad area.

• 8:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 06

  But I liked it. So for the heck of it. And you bring up so many memories, God. I was married to my first wife and she just didn't like that. But I went ahead through it. She did not think she was gonna be married to a cop. But I went in, I put in.

• 8:42Steven Rinella?

  Like this caught her by surprise.

• 8:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, she just wasn't like, we are not going there type thing. Anyways, that's another story. But I put in for the application in September. And shockingly, I was accepted and I was already getting ready to go into a class in December, which is pretty fast. And yeah, the rest is history. So.

• 9:02Steven Rinella?

  And you got right into dog work.

• 9:04Speaker 06

  No, I didn't.

• 9:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  LAPD is a big department. At the time was about sixty five hundred cops. Now it's about ten thousand, but now they're. You're losing guys left and right for all the nonsense going on.

• 9:18Speaker 06

  So they get in a K nine unit with LA.

• 9:23Speaker 06

  K nine wasn't. There's a division in LA called Metro.

• 9:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 9:27Speaker 06

  Metro has SWAT, mounted unit. Um, A, B and C platoon and then K nine. But when I got on. Young, K nine was off doing their own thing. They weren't in a specialized unit.

• 9:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 9:40Speaker 06

  So. Back in the old K nine, there was. When it started like in the late seventies. By two guys, Sergeant Moore and a guy named Darnell, it blew up. I mean, a lot of departments in the, in the country had K nines, but LA didn't. And these guys were like the fathers of our K nine unit and they went out and researched, did a lot of work, got the unit going. And they were, they were housed out of West LA Division. And they wanted to be part of air support. They did not want to go to Metro. There was a lot of Eagle stuff going on. But as the unit grew with to like four or five handlers. These guys are getting into shootings like a lot, more than SIS, more than some of the other.

• 10:23Speaker 06

  Specialized units because they're, they're hunting down armed suspects all the time. And it was a lot of violence back then.

• 10:29Steven Rinella?

  The K nine handlers are finding themselves in more shooting incidents.

• 10:33Speaker 06

  Probably they were getting more shootings back then than any unit in the in the department.

• 10:37Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 10:38Speaker 06

  The department chief gate says, uh, you know, what's going on here? You know, we, we need to put this, this, this unit into metro. And, you know, there was always the perception, like, what are they doing here? The why, where, why are all these shootings occurring?

• 10:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 10:53Speaker 06

  You know, even back then, you know, are these guys a bunch of cowboys, whatever? But I don't think it was that. I think it was more like, you know, back in the late eighties. Um, it was a really violent time. It was like, you know, the stats, people talk about crime and where it is now. But back then, I mean, just as, as an example,

• 11:14Speaker 06

  there was about one of some of the years, there was a twenty two, twenty three hundred homicides in LA, LAPD alone. And now for the whole city. And now you're lucky to break a hundred, hundred and thirty.

• 11:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 06

  Look at the exponentially different.

• 11:29Steven Rinella?

  That's the thing about like crime statistics.

• 11:33Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 11:34Steven Rinella?

  Get manipulated so often. Like people have this perception that it's this perception that nowadays crime is so bad, but when you look at like crime trends.

• 11:45Speaker 06

  Hundred percent.

• 11:46Steven Rinella?

  It's really just not.

• 11:47Speaker 06

  It's not. They, they have even cops that I've worked with that are new. They can't even believe the numbers I'll throw out. The, the amount of searches that I did, for example, you know, in K nine, it just, you, you don't hear about those numbers. That's why our dogs were so for, for a, a training word, seasoned.

• 12:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 06

  They were so good at what they did because they had so much.

• 12:08Steven Rinella?

  Action in those days. Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 06

  But back to that, um, so when I put in for the unit for K nine, I put in for metro too. Because at the time they were in that crossroads, like they're going to bring you to metro first and then you get selected to K nine.

• 12:23Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 12:24Speaker 06

  Well, back then I was the last group of guys that came in straight from patrol. I was working rampart. Very busy division. And then I went straight to K nine. And then things evolved after that where you had to go to Metro, do about a year in Metro, and then be able to put in for K-9 or SWAT. And now they're called high-risk positions, where you actually get-

• 12:44Steven Rinella?

  K-9 is a high-risk position?

• 12:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, just like SWAT. You get more money, you get hazard pay, you get a take-home car. Because, you know, it's deserved, I guess.

• 12:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 06

  But that's that history of that. So, you know, I did, it was a process. I got in. And I got in pretty young. I got in less than five years on the job, which is pretty young for that kind of a year-

• 13:06Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 13:06Speaker 06

  In LA, yeah. I mean, guys in other departments, they might get in after a year or two, but in LA, it's a lot more competitive. The expectations are a lot higher, all that stuff. Good, bad, or indifferent.

• 13:17Steven Rinella?

  Yo. Let's jump to some definitions here.

• 13:19Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:21Steven Rinella?

  Explain to folks

• 13:25Steven Rinella?

  what an apprehension dog is.

• 13:27Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 13:28Steven Rinella?

  In that,

• 13:30Steven Rinella?

  like, juxtaposed to, uh, a detection dog, a tracking dog, like, explain that specific term.

• 13:41Speaker 06

  Well, in, where I, you know, my shop, our claim to fame, LAPD K-9. Now, within LAPD, there are several K-9 units that are separate from Metro K-9.

• 13:51Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 13:51Speaker 06

  So you have Metro K-9, which is the apprehension dog. The dogs that actually

• 13:57Speaker 06

  are taught to search, find suspects, and if needed, they'll bite them.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  LAPD still has a policy of find and bark, which not a big fan of. And, you know, I hate to say that, but I'm just not a big fan of it as things have evolved, and we can get into that later.

• 14:16Steven Rinella?

  Well, yeah, we gotta come back to bite and bark.

• 14:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's a big deal.

• 14:19Steven Rinella?

  Because that's like, people aren't gonna know what that means.

• 14:21Speaker 06

  They won't, they won't. And then it needs to be explained. But, that being said, that's Metro. And we have done some tracking in the past. We put a lot of time and effort into it. I did a lot of experimenting with the tracking dogs. It's very time-consuming, and it works.

• 14:36Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 14:37Speaker 06

  But the problem is, we just don't have the environment for that. You know, most of our searches, the vast majority are gonna be containments, like a perimeter search. You know, we lock down a block, two blocks, three blocks, or a building, or a warehouse, and then we systematically clear it.

• 14:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 14:54Speaker 06

  With numerous dogs sometimes.

• 14:55Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 14:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then, then you have the detection dogs, and for most departments, that's- For most departments, because of money and economics, they'll have what's called dual purpose dogs. That means these dogs also are apprehension dogs, but they'll also find narcotics or firearms or bombs.

• 15:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 15:15Speaker 06

  And, you know, you can't do more, more than one odor with one dog. And we can talk about that a little bit. Like, I can't have a dog that's trained to find narcotics, find bombs.

• 15:25Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 15:26Speaker 06

  No, can't be done. Shouldn't be done because it's just not, there's legalities of it. You know, what's my dog really hitting on? Um, that's why.

• 15:34Steven Rinella?

  So when you see a, if you're in the airport and it just happens to be, there's a dog day, there's a guy in the airport. That dog isn't looking for everything. That dog's looking for a thing.

• 15:45Speaker 06

  Yes, and there's, that's another whole discussion.

• 15:49Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 15:49Speaker 06

  They have what's called vapor wake dogs now, where the dogs are taught to just scan by people as they're walking and they'll alert on them. For maybe narcotics or maybe bombs, depending what he's trained for.

• 15:59Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 16:00Speaker 06

  But you're never gonna know. And, uh, you know, it's, it's funny because back in the nineties, early nineties, before vapor wake was ever termed. We were already experimenting with that.

• 16:11Steven Rinella?

  With what?

• 16:12Speaker 06

  With dogs that were taught to go ahead and, uh, detect odor by following somebody.

• 16:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 16:19Speaker 06

  Like an action. Instead of just pinpointing odor at a specific location, they were taught to find and follow. So a guy would be in the crowd walking, all of a sudden a dog would alert, show a body, a change of behavior and start following that person. And then you could have time to go ahead and do what you're gonna do.

• 16:36Steven Rinella?

  Um, man, okay, we got a lot of balls in here. Cause this is something I wanna talk about. Yeah. Cause when we talked before, you're talking about the difference between a dog whose nose is on the ground and a dog whose nose is in the air, but apprehen-

• 16:48Speaker 06

  So back to the apprehension.

• 16:49Steven Rinella?

  It's all stuff I wanna talk about.

• 16:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, like I said, you gotta keep guiding me here. So, cause there's so much that.

• 16:54Steven Rinella?

  No, there, this, it's, it's, I wanna talk about this stuff. But like, I first wanna just clarify like what you mean by apprehension and how it's different than a tracking dog.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  Right. In my world, now a tracking dog is an apprehension dog too.

• 17:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 17:06Speaker 06

  But, um, basically these dogs are trained to find and locate, whether it's tracking or air sending. To go ahead and find somebody and bite them if necessary, or not bite them depending on the circumstances. And we can talk about that, you know, a lot.

• 17:23Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 17:23Speaker 06

  Um, everybody's got different methods. Um, I train a certain method that's. A little bit unique, not as unique as it used to be. Um, because a lot of the, a lot of, uh, I think teams are catching on to the, when we search in LAPD and a lot of units that I work with now is with my business, I teach what's called off lead searching.

• 17:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  And we utilize this tool, this electric collar here. And some of your audience, I'm sure is familiar with it.

• 17:51Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. All my buddies that have the trained dogs.

• 17:53Speaker 06

  You got the Garmin five fifty or whatever they use and, and that's what we use primarily. That's what I like. But our dogs are taught to primarily air scent and find the suspect. You know, pinpoint the odor, change of behavior, bark at the odor, let us know the guy's inside that cupboard or that shed or whatever. Um, that's primarily what we do because of our environment.

• 18:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 06

  There's some guys like out here in Montana, they do a lot of tracking. They do both and, uh, they'll actually hit a track. And, you know, they might be in the track for a half mile or a mile and find the guy in some bushes in a creekside or, you know, maybe it tracks to a building. And then they turn into the, but they do apprehend too.

• 18:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 18:34Speaker 06

  So at the end of the track, they have a chance to maybe take the guy into custody with no force. Maybe he takes off runs, they send them on them, they take them down.

• 18:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 18:43Speaker 06

  I'm just giving you.

• 18:43Steven Rinella?

  So there's like a, there's like a fundamental difference between, I'm going to give you two scenarios. One is a scenario, you're in an agricultural, rural agricultural area.

• 18:53Speaker 06

  Right.

• 18:54Steven Rinella?

  And you know that a guy has gotten out of the car like yesterday, got out of a car and ran off through the woods.

• 19:00Speaker 06

  Right.

• 19:01Steven Rinella?

  That's scenario one. No one knows where he is now. Scenario two is he comes into this building. Right? Like, these are different.

• 19:10Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 19:10Steven Rinella?

  These are different dogs.

• 19:13Speaker 06

  Well, they'll, they'll do both.

• 19:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 19:14Speaker 06

  It's not a big deal. A dog can be taught to track with different commands even. Like, uh, one command might be, you have them on leash, you find out where the guy was last seen. Some guys, some guys might even do discrimination where they show a, um, a part, you know, a jacket or something the guy might've left.

• 19:31Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 19:31Speaker 06

  That's another thing we can get into. But generally speaking, they'll pick up a track and nose on the ground. And they'll go footstep to footstep, but they'll also do what's called trail. Because they're air sending at the same time, but they're taught to be, get their nose on the ground.

• 19:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 19:47Speaker 06

  And these dogs are specifically trained like. For example, if you're going to have a tracking dog, his nose needs to be trained on the ground immediately.

• 19:56Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 19:56Speaker 06

  In other words, if you take that dog and start teaching him how to air scent, it's going to be very difficult to get his nose on the ground.

• 20:02Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 20:03Speaker 06

  So that's got to be trained first because the dog's going to go, well, you know, if I want to go to A to F, I want to skip everything.

• 20:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 06

  Which is air sending. But with tracking, it's more diligent and the dog's got to learn to put his nose on the ground and follow footsteps. Crush vegetation, um, skin wraps are falling, you know, like on a curb or, you know, it's amazing how a dog will pick up on this stuff, but he's got to be exposed to all these different environments to be a good tracking dog.

• 20:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:32Speaker 06

  And it's got to be followed up on. But like I said, if you try to take one of our apprehension dogs that are trained to air scent, who they've been doing it for three or four years, it can be very hard to get them to track.

• 20:43Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 20:44Speaker 06

  Because they're not going to want to do it.

• 20:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 06

  Very difficult. So that's, that's a little bit of the training thing on that.

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• 22:32Steven Rinella?

  This is Colin Coward from the Colin Coward Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability. All starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or a half ton Tundra to a Toyota's most capable and longest lasting trucks. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. For a great deal today to a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com Toyota. Let's go places. There's a thing you explained to me with the dogs you work with, the apprehension dogs is,

• 23:11Steven Rinella?

  what was the term you used where it's kind of almost seems like something from, from maybe more popular in movies and TV shows and the realities like, you show them like a hat, like the guy's hat, right? And the dog's like, got it, I'll go find him.

• 23:25Speaker 06

  Right.

• 23:26Steven Rinella?

  But you were explaining to me that, that the apprehension dogs you guys train with, they're smelling something very different.

• 23:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, we talked about that, I remember.

• 23:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's a thing and it's, it's true. It's a fact. It's been studied. There's a thing that when you're in fight or flight, you put off a certain odor.

• 23:49Speaker 06

  It's enhanced scent. Some people call it fear scent. A dog that has had, a police dog that has had numerous apprehensions will be seasoned on that odor. And it's, it's not, it's not race specific. It's not, it's something that the body goes through, you know? Noradrenaline, epinephrine, all these changes happen in the body when you're a fight or flight. You know, I think I was, it reminds me, I was watching a show once on boar hunting.

• 24:16Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 24:17Speaker 06

  And these boar hunters are out there. And they were talking about what they go through during a boar. In fact, I knew a guy, uh, one of the guys in the unit, Joe Vita, used to go boar hunting in Catalina.

• 24:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 24:28Speaker 06

  And hunt these things down on the caves, you know, back in the day.

• 24:30Steven Rinella?

  Catalina Island.

• 24:31Speaker 06

  Catalina Island. And he would carry nothing more than a three fifty seven with a little scope on it and go into caves and hunt them out. And I guess you can imagine the adrenaline and the fear at the same time that not only is coming, going on in your own body, but also is going on in the body of the boar. Because when he's cornered, he's in fight or flight too.

• 24:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 06

  So that's kind of what a suspect does. When he's in fight or flight, running from the police, he puts out that odor. And trust me, he does.

• 25:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you mentioned to me that this, you're like, you're dealing with people who this maybe is the most

• 25:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:06Steven Rinella?

  excited and scared they've ever been in their life.

• 25:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, we talked about it. I mean, I found guys after, and some of them weren't even bit. They were just scared, excuse the language, shitless.

• 25:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 06

  And they, they, they end up defecating on themselves because they're so scared from, especially if they're bit by the dog.

• 25:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 06

  And some guys aren't. Some guys are very aggressive. They're yoked up. They're, they're, they're seasoned criminals. They're prisoners, you know, prisoners and all that. And they take, they take anything like a champ. But this, this is what you want to do with a seasoned dog over a period of time. When you're training a new dog, you obviously can't, they've tried to. They can't bottle fear scent.

• 25:48Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 25:49Speaker 06

  There's companies that have tried to, and I've, I've tested them, experimented with them, and I'm not seeing it.

• 25:54Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 25:54Speaker 06

  So the best you can do, this is old school stuff, just kind of funny, but I remember when I was a brand new handler and I'm in the unit.

• 26:05Speaker 06

  And there was a guy named John Hall had his little dog named Liberty. Um, um. Rottweiler. We don't use Rottweiler anymore, but it was his only dog you bred. And the dog was still in training. And they're messing with me. And, you know, I'm a new guy. And he said, okay, we want you to hide over here and I want you to put this face mask on. Cause he's gonna go for your face. He's not gonna go for my face. But he wanted to put that fear in me.

• 26:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  So that when I'm hiding and we're doing a training scenario. The dog will supposedly maybe hit on me at being a little scared.

• 26:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  And it did get to me. I'm thinking, shit, I'm a brand new handler. I knew a little bit about dogs, did some dog stuff before I got in the unit. I'm like, this dog's a face biter, really? And you're hiding me? So just that kind of thing. It wasn't gonna happen, but he was trying to recreate that.

• 26:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 06

  But you can't. You really can't. You can only do it by finding real bad guys, really.

• 26:57Steven Rinella?

  So if one of these apprehension dogs is experienced. If I took, like, it's an outlandish scenario, but let's say you had someone that just was in a high-speed chase. Crashes a car, gets out of the car, runs. But all of a sudden, you could nab that person and put him in a lineup of a hundred people. And the dog walks past the hundred people. The dog's gonna go, this dude.

• 27:24Speaker 06

  He might.

• 27:25Steven Rinella?

  Has the odor, I'm interested.

• 27:27Speaker 06

  He might, but, you know, lineups are very strange when you're doing that. You know, you've got to have so much corroborating evidence usually, you know. It's like, uh. Yeah, you have to be careful on that.

• 27:42Speaker 06

  Relying on a dog for court purposes, just to discriminate on somebody gets you in a bad place.

• 27:47Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 27:49Speaker 06

  Not to get too much into the weeds, but there was a program. The sheriffs were using for a while and I'll keep the guy nameless, but he was running a bloodhound and he was claiming to do all this stuff. Dog can, you know, pick up on a drop of blood. A week old, he can hit that track. He can find that guy three miles away. Going through the streets of LA and all this other stuff. And I'm like, okay, wait a minute. You're making up stories. I didn't believe it. And I did some training, not with him, but some observations. The department wanted me to look into it. Robbery homicide wanted to look into it. And, um.

• 28:29Speaker 06

  I mean, I'll just say it. It proved out that I couldn't do it.

• 28:31Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 28:32Speaker 06

  But what what sealed it was, he put a guy in jail based on what he said the dog had found this guy. He was some kind of rape, shooting suspect. A middle Hispanic guy did, was already in jail. DNA comes out, proves that he's innocent. Guy did like five years, got a big lawsuit out of it. And that hurt that program big time.

• 28:52Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 28:52Speaker 06

  They based everything.

• 28:53Steven Rinella?

  That was like using the dogs, just the dog's sensory perceptions.

• 28:57Speaker 06

  Exactly. Without any cooperating evidence, the dog nailed them and it caused them a lot of problems.

• 29:02Steven Rinella?

  God. Well, let me ask the same. Let me ask the question in a different way.

• 29:07Steven Rinella?

  Picture that you have that same scenario. A guy is in a high speed car chase, bam, crashes his car, gets out of his car, runs all around, enters a house. The house is full of other people.

• 29:18Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 29:19Steven Rinella?

  There's, there's a whole apartment building, okay, whatever, that's full of other people. You guys are all there. The cops are there.

• 29:27Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 29:28Steven Rinella?

  What is the dog? Why doesn't the dog just run up to the first person in the house and be like, here he is, I got him?

• 29:35Speaker 06

  Well, what would we do on that? Cause we've had that.

• 29:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 29:37Speaker 06

  Many of those where we call him, he runs into a friendly.

• 29:40Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 29:41Speaker 06

  Or sometimes he just runs into a pilgrim's house, like a non suspect, totally innocent citizen.

• 29:46Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 29:47Speaker 06

  I can talk, talk all day about some of the crazy stuff we've had, you know? We've had guys run into a house. We know he's in there. We bang on the door, like some time has gone by and we says, hey, is everything okay here? And the, the, it's like a movie, right? The lady looks at you and goes, yeah, everything's fine. Everything's fine. And I'm like, oh.

• 30:06Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, just people listening, you're not, she's doing like a knot of her head.

• 30:10Speaker 06

  Right behind the corner with a gun on her. And she was trying to say, we're good, cause he's gonna kill her.

• 30:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 06

  He was, he was, guys, this guy's wanted for murder, so he's got nothing to lose. And we ended up catching him, but we basically picked up on her eye movements, like, okay, she scares shitless right now.

• 30:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  The guy's right there and we ended up. Um, we ended up trying to nail the house down and this guy bails out of a window, crawls up into a crawl space. He hides and we have to gas him out and. Yeah, we have to actually, we have to actually have to have to use hot gas. Because uh, we, what he did was, he was ready for the gas. He put a bunch of clothing on his face. He was taking it like a champ and hot gas is really hard to defeat. It's like nasty. You gotta be careful because you'll could burn down a house. What the SWAT guys finally did was they kept punching it in different parts of the ceiling. And he had corralled himself into an area where he wasn't getting hit. And then finally, they put the hot gas right where he was hiding.

• 31:10Speaker 06

  And then he screamed out, I'm coming out. So that's just another story, but, but yeah, um. You gotta be careful about discriminating like that and usually want to be safe and have um cooperating evidence and all that too. You're gonna put someone in jail, take his freedom away. You gotta be right.

• 31:26Steven Rinella?

  No, but I mean, what I'm trying to get at is what, how does the dog know that he's found the one he's supposed to find?

• 31:31Speaker 06

  Well, that's a good point. I mean, after you have, when you put a dog in training, obviously, he's just finding decoys. And that's a really good question. That leads into a lot of good training, right? When you're exposing a new dog, first you, you get your police dog that has all the right traits. You test them. You purchase them, you put them through the basic obedience and then these dogs have the aptitude to do what we're gonna do. And we could talk all day on that. But once that dog, um, before he hits the street, he needs to work in what's called the search team environment. So you might, with us, we have a point guard who's married up to the handler and we have a rear guard, two or three people behind us.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  And those folks play a really important part in the search. That's your backup. The point guard usually carries a, you know, uh, either a tube or a Benelli or a N A R. And he's married up right to the shoulder of the handler.

• 32:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 32:27Speaker 06

  So the dog has to get used to all this. He's got to get used to the team and some dogs aren't. You get them new. Some of these dogs are, they're edgy. They're ready to just, you know, bite anything and everything and you've got to socialize them and and make them right. Not all, but you've got to train them appropriately so they're safe to search with.

• 32:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 32:45Speaker 06

  So you have to teach them how to work within that search team cell environment.

• 32:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 06

  And you do that outside the search. You might just do a lot of ball work and playing and obedience with the team around you.

• 32:56Steven Rinella?

  I understand.

• 32:57Speaker 06

  The dog understands in low drive, when he's calm and cool, this, these are the guys I'm working with.

• 33:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 06

  You don't want to introduce that environment when the dog's at this level. It's like trying to teach a human how to do things when he's in a gunfight.

• 33:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 06

  The gunfight teaching starts way before the gunfight, right?

• 33:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 06

  You have to teach him how to shooting platform, how to operate the gun, calm and cool and collected. Slow fire, single fire, all that stuff. Same thing with the dog. Most of the learning is going to be done in a, in a low drive environments, the dog can learn. And then you start escalating and you bring in a myriad of other things so the dog can chain all those different environments and situations. And be able to perform at a high, you know, at a high drive level and still listen.

• 33:45Steven Rinella?

  And these dogs are tied to a person.

• 33:47Speaker 06

  Yes, for us and for the most part. I did a lot of military training, um, not as much as I used to. I had a big contract with the Marines for a while, doing all their, putting all their dogs on the e-collar. And, um, you know, God bless them. The, the way that, not the specialized units, not the SF guys or the Delta guys, because those guys are married to a dog for maybe the life of the dog.

• 34:13Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 34:13Speaker 06

  Seven, eight years maybe. But your basic military guy, um, he might just be working that dog for one to two years and then dog's going to go to somebody else.

• 34:22Steven Rinella?

  I see, yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 06

  And the dog is kennelled at home, uh, in a, in their kennel. I mean, in the, the, um, the camp kennel. So they, they, they go home every night. They come to the kennel and pick up their dog. Which really isn't that, that good of a thing because the bonding, you're lacking the bonding.

• 34:39Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:39Speaker 06

  You know, with a police dog and, and agencies, they take that dog home. And that dog is their dog. The dog learns that that's the guy, that's his master. The dog stays with him all the time, stays at home in his kennel, all that stuff. So that the bonding is a little bit better that way.

• 34:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 06

  And I think that the handler gets to know that dog intimately, you know?

• 35:00Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 35:00Speaker 06

  Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing because. What we always battle, we talked about earlier, even even with a police officer who's trained in canine, is they end up treating that dog like a pet. And you can't do that. And we have more problems with that. You know, and I I'm speaking to the choir, people are probably gonna listen to this podcast go, yep, yep, that's true. You know, you can tell a guy over and over again, he's a police dog. He's a tool. You can love him, you can cry if he gets killed, but you gotta treat him like a dog. And that's not a bad thing. It's just they're they're not a human. You know, dogs live for the, they live for primarily food, sex, love, and, you know, satisfying drive.

• 35:45Speaker 06

  And you have to look at them in that respect. And if you don't, um, you know, you gotta establish that hierarchy, I guess we talked about earlier. Yeah. And if you don't do that, you have problems, especially with these dogs. You know, they're, they're up there. You know, you wanna get a dog that's got that high drive and has all those traits for police work. But if they're not handled appropriately, you can turn that dog into a nasty dog, you know, and it's not the dog's fault. It's the way he's been handled. Yeah. I mean, coming up on the leash, bodying the handler, bodying search team members, these are all the things that happen in dog training. And it's usually a human problem. Mm hmm. You know, usually it is.

• 36:25Speaker 06

  Some dogs, you know, come out of litter, they're just too alpha, they grow up very dominant, and they're not the kind of dog you want. You know, like when you're selecting a dog, especially as a pup, you're looking for the dog, if you were looking at a litter, you don't want that alpha dog, you maybe want the number two or three dog in the hierarchy, because he's gonna be easier to manage. Yeah. You know, you don't want the, you know, number eight dog that's got no drive whatsoever and, you know, hides in the corner and all that. But you do want that dog that's got that, that drive and that alpha mentality, but, you know, you'll get some dogs in the litter that they're kicking all the other dog's asses all the time. They're like, they're just relentless. They, they don't get along with any. Mama's always correcting

• 37:10Speaker 06

  that dog to leave the other dogs alone. Probably if, if you're looking at a Malinois or a shepherd, probably not the great, the best dog for police work.

• 37:19Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 37:19Speaker 06

  Well, because you're gonna see that same thing happen.

• 37:21Steven Rinella?

  Too aggressive.

• 37:21Speaker 06

  He's gonna try to dominate you.

• 37:24Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 37:24Speaker 06

  And some of these things, like I said, they're, they happen over time. Like you talked about your pit bull thing. Some police, some K-9 officers don't handle the dog appropriately. And next thing you know, I've seen God dogs come out of training and he was a great dog, great team. A year later, I get a call from somebody, hey, so and so, this dog just ate him up. I go, what happened? I don't know. But then I get out and watch him. I'm like, okay, I can see what's going on here. You know, you're not, you didn't maintain the alpha. You didn't, in, in a fair way. You know, it doesn't mean about kicking the dogs, but it means that the dog has to understand that everything comes through you. Like I live through you. I get water from you. You feed me,

• 38:07Speaker 06

  you keep me alive. And you also make him earn everything, especially the dominant dogs. You know, like little things like, and at home, you know, the way he, dogs have to be consistent. You can't treat them one way at home and then go to work and treat them another way. Because they're not gonna, it's gotta be very consistent and structured. The dog will respond accordingly. So it's little things like, you know, you go to put him in a police car, put him on a sit, open a door, car. So you're telling him what to do. He comes out of the car. You open the door, you make him wait, come to your heel. Because he's not gonna wanna wait. If you've done car deployments where the guy, the dog is sent out of the car to go and deploy and catch somebody,

• 38:52Speaker 06

  we do a lot of that. Um, that can cause reactions that you don't want. He might just pop out one time and go bite the wrong person because there's no structure there anymore.

• 39:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Makes, makes sense.

• 39:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 06

  So you really have to, in everything you're doing, you gotta really treat him like, like a dog.

• 39:12Steven Rinella?

  Walk me, walk me through, if you can think of a memorable apprehension, walk me through an apprehension process.

• 39:19Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, God.

• 39:20Steven Rinella?

  Something from in the field, you know?

• 39:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I've had some really good capers. Um, but we talk about the fear scent. There was a time I was a, I was a handler and I wasn't a trainer. I was new in the unit. And we had these cops, I think in seventy seventh, um, they were ambushed. They were deep in seventy seven, they residential neighborhood, probably taking a report call or whatever. And while they're getting in their car, guy pulls up, cranks off a bunch of rounds, blows out the back windows. The cops are okay, but I help call. So they set up a two block perimeter and of course, this is when we were transitioning over to use utilize SWAT as our backup. So the policy was if we have that kind of a high threat, we have to use SWAT as our search team members. Which is fine, you know, because they're trained at that high degree and they've got the weapons and all that stuff.

• 40:09Speaker 06

  And but, but they're also working with us now, so they have to do canine tactics and not SWAT tactics, which is another conversation.

• 40:16Steven Rinella?

  Cause this dude shot at these cops.

• 40:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 40:19Steven Rinella?

  And then he runs off.

• 40:20Speaker 06

  He runs up.

• 40:20Steven Rinella?

  And you know, within two blocks where he is.

• 40:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, they had the containment up, they had the airship overhead and we have a lot of resources, which is great. It spoils us because the airship, our airships are the best in the country. I mean, the way they can operate and communicate and use their FLIR system, you know, the, all that stuff. They're just, they're golden. And even back then, this, you're talking a long time ago, this is like twenty years ago. But anyways, the guy bails out, he's in the containment and I start doing my, we do, we're starting a systematic search. And what, what I mean by that is we have like a one block, let's say. And it's a long block, it's in deep seventy seventh and we have a team on each side. We have a team here and a team here. I'm searching over here, we've got SWAT personnel with us and what we want to do is we want to hopscotch.

• 41:07Speaker 06

  So one team searches the yard and then pushes, next team does the same thing and then pushes. But we don't want to be back to back because of crossfire.

• 41:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 41:16Speaker 06

  So we want to make sure that we're safe, but at the same time, we don't want one team to get too far ahead. Because you want to keep pushing the guy one way and these suspects are very savvy. I mean, they'll, you'll, we used to interview all of our suspects after we would catch them.

• 41:31Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 41:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, we, we brush them off and treat them really nice because we want to get info. We'd find out all kinds of stuff like where did you run? What made you put down? Why did you move? All these things.

• 41:42Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 41:42Speaker 06

  We put it in our head as far as, you know, tactically, how do these guys?

• 41:46Steven Rinella?

  Like you do like an exit interview?

• 41:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, almost. And, you know, I used to be mad at some of the handlers. They were new and they're treating a suspect like a jerk, you know, which is fine. I mean, it's, you know, maybe he's a wanted suspect or whatever, but let's think about, let's think ahead here. Okay? Ask them, you know? And they'll tell you. And what they try to do is if one team gets too far ahead and they're glancing over the fence and they're watching the airship at the same time. And they know that if that airship orbits at a certain point, he's, he's going to be out of view. And he, he'll say that during the interview. And he says, that's when I moved. Then I hit again. Cause they're trying to escape. Some guys will just put down. The old suspects, when I came on a unit, used to just run and put down.

• 42:31Speaker 06

  But they got very savvy because they knew K9 was going to search at LA. So then they started trying to break the perimeter. And tried to find holes in the perimeter, like a unit wasn't paying attention on the perimeter. He's looking, he's doing a peak C. He says, okay, I got time. I'm going to jog over to the next block.

• 42:48Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 42:49Speaker 06

  You know, these things would happen. We developed, you know.

• 42:52Steven Rinella?

  So these dudes get savvy to how to, how to avoid a dog?

• 42:56Speaker 06

  Unbelievable and how to escape and all that. So we're pushing this guy, we're pushing, we're pushing. So I'm starting over here with, I think the backup guy was Ray Doyle, good guy, SWAT guy, big guy. And we're pushing this guy. I get about the third yard and my dog comes out and I'll mind you.

• 43:13Speaker 06

  And I know it sounds cliche, but I had a great dog. He was like, I mean, even the guys in the unit, they said, there was times when I got in one shooting and that's another story where the handler actually says, hey, look, my dog's not getting anywhere. He says, bring out your, bring out Kino. Your dog will do his magic. So anyways, back to this story. We're pushing, we're pushing and also my dog's exits, exits, exits the yard. And his nose goes up. Now tactically, you don't really want to do this. I don't teach this. You want like, even if your dog gets odor, you don't want to miss anything. So you keep pushing. Cause you don't want to take a chance of bypassing a yard.

• 43:50Steven Rinella?

  Got it, got it.

• 43:50Speaker 06

  He might, he might okie dokie you or fool you or whatever. It's just not good, but my dog was just telling me he's got odor. I mean, he's like a fishing line. I mean, he's got so much change of behavior that I'm, I'm, I'm using the collar. To call him back and applying pressure on the collar, the e-collar right here. Cause he's got so much drive to just want to blow past these yards. So I look at Doyle, I go, look, he's got something down the street. I'm going to go with it. Airship, follow me. So we pass about five or six, seven yards and he's just sucked in. Goes into the yard, dives into a bush and he's on this guy, just taking care of business.

• 44:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 06

  And guns out, laying over there and Doyle's on top of the guy. All excited about taking him into custody. And I'm yelling it on my says, hey, I go, come on back. I gotta call my dog off because I do what's called verbal outs. I'm a very big proponent of that. We can get into that later. It's safer. It's tactically more safer. A lot of guys will do what's called choke off or hard outs, but then you're, you know, I don't like that. So, but I can't call him off until Doyle gets off him. So I literally grab him and then I call Kino back to my side, take him into custody. But Doyle goes afterwards and says, that was awesome. Your dog got that guy eight yards away. That the fear scent that I'm talking about.

• 45:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 06

  At that time, Kino probably already had a hundred apprehensions. You know, at that point, so he was well seasoned.

• 45:19Steven Rinella?

  He just knew that smell.

• 45:20Speaker 06

  Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, he was just, you could tell. I mean, and a lot of K9 guys will tell you that they just know you're searching a yard and all of a sudden, you get about four or five yards in it and the, the adrenaline kicks into you. And the whole hunt thing's happening and you can see your dog alerting, we're on, we're on my track. Or sometimes we'll say, hey, We'll get a hold of the other unit on the backside of the search and I'll say, hey, my doc's picking up a lot of odor. I think he's on your side. So you're getting close.

• 45:49Steven Rinella?

  Yo, I got it.

• 45:50Speaker 06

  Things like that.

• 45:52Speaker 03

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• 48:09Steven Rinella?

  what prevents the guy

• 48:12Steven Rinella?

  from shooting the dog

• 48:15Speaker 06

  well yeah that's a good point i mean you know that's another whole story you know what prevents a guy from shooting you know I think you have like two or three different kinds of suspects okay one of them you have a suspect doesn't give a shit he doesn't care if he dies suicide by cop it's hard to work that kind of guy because you know you can do the best tactics in the world and he's just gonna take you out we've had cops get killed because of that then you have the other guy that wants to survive you know but he'll hurt you if he can yeah so if you drop your tactics and he gives you an opportunity he's gonna hurt you but if you overwhelm them with good tactics you know I used to I teach this and I got it from a sergeant many many years ago is a great sergeant

• 48:59Speaker 06

  jack or passed away a little couple of years ago it's a great sergeant and he had a thing he called the tactical clock and when you have everything at even at 12 the suspect is always ahead because he has to be he he can be he can be proactive he can shoot you without any cause or whatever cop can't do that he's behind the clock because he has to be reactive he's got to wait and see what happens yeah you just can't go out killing people yeah it's not like a military operation you know where they're and that's another story but you know what I mean yeah there's laws and rules and policy and you have to adhere to that so it puts you behind the power curve so the only

• 49:41Speaker 06

  thing you can do is to have tactics that are overwhelming so the suspect's gonna say hey I might take that guy out but his back is gonna kill me yeah you know the the rear guards are gonna get me yeah whatever because the way that we work and we do everything off lead which is great because when a dog works off lead and he's not restricted with a long line like a lot of departments do and they're great dogs don't get me wrong and I've worked with them all the time but I've been asked to actually do merry classes with guys that do long line tactics. And I go, well, you know, I don't do that. I don't teach that. Everything you do is off lead. When a dog works off lead, that dog offers you reaction time because he's way out ahead of you.

• 50:23Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 50:24Speaker 06

  You know, he's within range to see, but reaction time is everything. You know, with a long line, you're restricted 20, 30 feet. And the dog is always on the line. And the land is getting tangled up on stuff and it's getting wiped out. And plus the dog can't work right either. When a dog is working offline, um, especially when he gets good at it, the magic really starts happening. Cause you're using, totally using the dog's natural instinct to hunt.

• 50:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 06

  With no restrictions. And he also knows through time that dad's going to direct me into odor. It's, it's up to me to expose my dog to odor. It's up to the dog to listen and trust me that if you follow my direction, I'm going to leave you to, lead you to the promised land.

• 51:08Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 51:08Speaker 06

  And when you get that connection, the dog performs really well. I mean, any guy will tell you a seasoned dog is like gold. I mean, because it takes so long, um, to get to that point. It's just a lot of training and meticulous.

• 51:21Steven Rinella?

  Like the more experience he has, the more valuable he is.

• 51:24Speaker 06

  Like you're like, you're, you're like one, you know, you can read your dog. You know exactly what he's telling you and, and you can trust him. So like, let's say, um, you know, there's a bunch of bushes over there. And my dog will come in, a, a trained dog will usually hit the corners all by himself because scent has a tendency to bleed off into the, the perimeter of the yard.

• 51:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 51:46Speaker 06

  So you want to, you want to hit that perimeter first and then detail the rest of it. So it's a, it's a, it's a science and it's an art. You want to allow that dog to hunt and self-discover as much as you can, but you also want to do it systematically. So he doesn't miss anything.

• 52:01Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 52:02Speaker 06

  Cause sometimes, you know, you, a dog may not get deep enough. Disciplined handlers will make a stake, mistakes and they'll miss somebody because you didn't get his, your dog on odor. You can't blame him on him because let's say you're doing a, a warehouse and you're not getting him deep enough into the rooms.

• 52:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 06

  And scent plays a, you know, scent is not.

• 52:23Speaker 06

  Scent can be very finite sometime depending on the environment and not, the dog might have to get his nose right on the edge of that door. And then boom, you know, he alerts.

• 52:31Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 52:31Speaker 06

  Change of behavior, starts barking at the door. Okay, guy's behind that door.

• 52:35Steven Rinella?

  So you, so, so you direct the dog's pace?

• 52:38Speaker 06

  Yes. Yeah. You don't want to over-direct him, but you also want him to hunt, but he has to listen. And that's a whole training thing, you know, there's, you know, this e-collar helps a lot. This e-collar is magic because I can reach out and communicate with my dog twenty, thirty, forty feet, thirty, forty yards away.

• 52:56Steven Rinella?

  How, how do you, how are you communicating to the dog?

• 53:00Speaker 06

  With commands and stuff?

• 53:01Steven Rinella?

  Like, if you go into a warehouse, how are you communicating to the dog, I want you to go in that room more?

• 53:06Speaker 06

  Oh, good point. Um, but like, let's say tactically, let's say if I'm entering a warehouse that maybe has an L shape to it, big warehouse, and you want to let your, you do your announcement.

• 53:20Steven Rinella?

  Which is what?

• 53:22Speaker 06

  Um, it could be a lot of things, but with us, it might be like, you know, this is LAPD K-9, we're doing a K-9 search, uh, we know you're in there. If you don't want to get hurt and bit, come out and surrender yourself. You've got one minute to surrender.

• 53:33Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 53:34Speaker 06

  Come out with your hands up, follow the light, follow my voice, whatever.

• 53:37Steven Rinella?

  And you mentioned the dog, and you mentioned getting bit.

• 53:39Speaker 06

  Yes, you tell them all that. In fact, now it's really anal, I mean, back in the day, uh, you know, now we have to record it. The units on the perimeter, like in an outside perimeter, they have a pre-recording in Spanish and in English.

• 53:52Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 53:53Speaker 06

  Then it's got to be time stamped and all those rules have to be followed so that, you know, you make sure like the guy, I never heard an announcement, that kind of thing.

• 54:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 06

  You need to do your due diligence.

• 54:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 06

  And that all takes time. So, but we battled that because now that we have to do all that, when somebody requests the K-9, airships overhead while we're en route, they get all that done.

• 54:13Steven Rinella?

  It's already done.

• 54:14Speaker 06

  Yep. So when we show up, boom, boots on the ground.

• 54:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 06

  So because at first we're getting there, it's like, okay, we're 20 minutes into this thing. We haven't even kicked off yet. And time is of the essence in a search. It's not like a barricade where a guy's in a building. You know, when you may have a containment in a block, but that suspect has freedom of movement.

• 54:32Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 54:32Speaker 06

  And that'll get you every time. He has freedom to move, fortify his position, relax, you know, maybe get into a friendly house. Or even a, or even a non-friendly house, which they try to get into. So you want to start putting pressure on them as soon as you can.

• 54:47Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 54:47Speaker 06

  So, um, I lost track. What was I talking about?

• 54:50Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, I was asking about when you go into a warehouse, how are you communicating to the dog like, no, no, no, go check that room more.

• 54:57Speaker 06

  Right.

• 54:57Steven Rinella?

  Don't worry about that room. Like, how do you?

• 54:59Speaker 06

  And we'll do that. Sometimes we have to do that because there's scent problems. We might recognize something through experience that odor is going to play funny. Like, we might want to turn all the air conditioning off.

• 55:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 06

  Because it's going to suck up odor, do weird things. You know, scent does weird, like, a lot of guys will be hiding in this false ceiling like this.

• 55:17Steven Rinella?

  Oh, they do?

• 55:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, sometimes in buildings. And what will happen is the, the scent picture down here could be totally different than up there.

• 55:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 55:26Speaker 06

  So my dog may hit at the corner over there, barking up a storm, crawling up the wall. Okay, guys, guys up there somewhere, but guess what? He's over here on the other side. Cause scent is coming down there for some reason.

• 55:38Steven Rinella?

  I got you. Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 06

  All you can do is use the dog as a tool. Okay, I know I got odor. And then it turns into, okay, I'm going to put my dog up. We got a hand surgeon now because the dog does as much as he can.

• 55:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 55:50Speaker 06

  Makes sense.

• 55:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 06

  So we get a lot of capers like that. Um, but a good dog, um, will pinpoint, isolate odor, and you have to give him time. You'll see him. You know, a, a new dog might take longer because he's working out that self-discovery thing that we talked about. But a good seasoned dog, he'll, he'll bounce back and forth and boom, he's right in the corner of that door or that dipsy dumpster. Or we found a lot of guys in trash cans. We've gotten some major shootings in trash cans.

• 56:19Steven Rinella?

  Guys like to hide in trash cans.

• 56:20Speaker 06

  Love trash, at least in LA, or crawl spaces. Yeah, they love crawl spaces, you know, the Ray's Foundation.

• 56:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 06

  And, uh, it's hard because it's a hard scent picture. But when your dog finds his first crawl space find, he'll never leave a crawl space like that again.

• 56:36Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 56:37Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, he'll be, he'll be checking every crawl space forever. It's like something happens with that scent picture.

• 56:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 56:43Speaker 06

  Cause that's what dogs learn by. They learn by pictures and, and chaining events, right? So the more pictures you show them in a positive way, it's like a snapshot and that's how he learns.

• 56:54Steven Rinella?

  So they learn like some architecture. I mean, they learn like building structure.

• 56:59Speaker 06

  Sure. Yeah, they learn, they learn, uh,

• 57:03Speaker 06

  like for an example, and, and other dogs did it. My dog, once he got real season, if you can picture a drone over a perimeter.

• 57:13Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 57:13Speaker 06

  And you see these big wide open yards, you know, five, six, seven in a block. My dog would go in automatically at the corners, bisect all of himself. I'd go in, double check, come out, do the next yard.

• 57:27Speaker 06

  But my dog would do this. He would do the same yard, and let's say the dog, here's a fence. And there's a shed on the other yard.

• 57:35Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 57:35Speaker 06

  And the guy's hiding in the shed. So we'd come over here and he'd alert. Even though the shed's 20 feet away in the next yard, but he can't get to it.

• 57:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 06

  Cause of the fence. With, he'd be frustrated and without me saying a word, he'd run out and be waiting at the gate.

• 57:49Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 57:50Speaker 06

  Cause he knows I can get to him from the gate.

• 57:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 06

  That's how smart they get.

• 57:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 06

  Cause you allow them to learn to be a predator. You know, their natural state, which is what they, you know, they were.

• 58:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Speaker 06

  Like a wolf or whatever. So, um, yeah.

• 58:04Steven Rinella?

  They learn structure.

• 58:05Speaker 06

  They learn structure, they learn association and they chain those things together and they just become a better animal.

• 58:12Steven Rinella?

  Are they on hand signals?

• 58:13Speaker 06

  Yes, that's a good point. I do. There are some units that don't. Um, I teach them to follow the hand signals. That's a big, that's a good, really good question. I teach them to follow hand signals and the light.

• 58:24Steven Rinella?

  The light?

• 58:25Speaker 06

  The light in a dark environment.

• 58:27Steven Rinella?

  Like you teach them to, like, they'll go where you shine a light?

• 58:30Speaker 06

  Yes. And I like the light. There's guys that have experimented with, and I have too, with the laser. But the problem with the laser is dogs don't see very well at night. They don't see very, like you and I, they need lateral movement.

• 58:44Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 58:45Speaker 06

  Like most predatory animals do. Um, they need the back and forth. I mean, if a guy's hiding in a dark spot in a bush, and I've seen this happen. And uh, really dark. The dog will go in and I can see him. I can see the shadow. Dog go in and start doing this.

• 59:02Speaker 06

  We can't see him.

• 59:03Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 59:03Speaker 06

  He's trying to find, he's almost like bumping into him. Until he bumps him, then he goes, oh shit, there he, there he is.

• 59:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 59:09Speaker 06

  So.

• 59:10Steven Rinella?

  He smells him, but he doesn't.

• 59:11Speaker 06

  Smells him and the odor is right there and he's excited, but he's working it out.

• 59:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 06

  And it's funny to watch it. I've done, we've done stuff in muzzle. Like, you know, where we actually hit decoys. And we do a lot of muzzle searching for a lot of reasons. Um, getting a dog ready for the street and all that. And that's another whole. Topic we could talk, which is probably something important to talk about. But yeah, uh, we direct them with the light. We give them what's called a search command. And remember, it's, we've chained all these events. We've done the announcement. That becomes a marker. It's time to search, especially for a new dog. So that consistency thing, okay, it's time to search. Put him on a down. Do the announcement, back off from the entry level. Cause the door is always a kill zone. You don't want to just blast him from there. We got guys that are shot there. You know, gotta be wary of that because the suspect's waiting.

• 59:57Speaker 06

  So if you have that big warehouse with that L shape, let's say you send a dog in and we let him have his head. We just let him kind of get some odor. But at the same time, before we let him go deep, we want to get our backside done first. We want to clear an area that is safe.

• 1:00:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:00:13Speaker 06

  So we, we structurally, we, we tell them, sometimes with the collar, but most dogs will do it if they're trained properly. You call them back, here, revere. Hand signal to the right, hand signal to the left, detail the backside. Okay, we got somewhere to go to. Now, and that's, that's a safe area if something happens, right?

• 1:00:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Speaker 06

  And then we start allowing the dog to search. And then we, we try to. We try to as much possible, keep the dog in view. You know, because. Sometimes a guy can hide in a spot where the scent is um, very minute. You won't get that hard alert.

• 1:00:51Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:51Speaker 06

  You'll get a little bit of a change of behavior. And then that's where you've got to recognize like that head might go up. But if you don't stick with it. And you move beyond it, you might miss the bad guy.

• 1:01:01Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:01:02Speaker 06

  Because, and the dog could be a really good dog, but sometimes that scent is very subtle. And you've got to be able to see that as a handler, you know? When I'm doing certifications or new dogs. Um, that's part of the problem, getting that handler to be able to read his dog. Like I'll have another trainer with me and we're doing a search and. We're looking and the dog is alerting. He's showing a solid change of behavior and then the handler just calls his dog and leaves it.

• 1:01:28Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:01:29Speaker 06

  And then halfway through the search, I'll go, wait, stop, put your dog in the down.

• 1:01:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and hunting, and hunting birds, there's this thing like.

• 1:01:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Steven Rinella?

  Everybody's like, the dog's getting birdie.

• 1:01:38Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:01:38Steven Rinella?

  And the guy that knows, the first guy that knows the dog's getting birdies, who owns, the guy that owns the dog.

• 1:01:43Speaker 06

  You can see it.

• 1:01:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Speaker 06

  But a new guy, a new guy will miss it though.

• 1:01:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 06

  Right?

• 1:01:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 06

  And then, and I'll let him, and I, I don't want to go on and on with the search and knowing that he just bypassed that guy twenty minutes ago. Cause then it becomes detrimental to the dog. And I go, look, I go, just to make sure, I've got my other trainer here and we both saw the alert.

• 1:02:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 06

  Okay, sometimes when I'm hiding somebody, I'll tell him to go hide and not even tell me where he's at. It keeps, it keeps me honest.

• 1:02:11Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:02:12Speaker 06

  So that when I'm evaluating somebody, I can say, I had no idea where he's at, but I saw your dog alert and you missed it.

• 1:02:17Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 1:02:18Speaker 06

  You boned up.

• 1:02:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Speaker 06

  So you can't do that. So get your dog back over there. And then he goes, oh yeah, how did I miss that? Well, you missed it. And you don't want to miss a guy in the, in the street.

• 1:02:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Speaker 06

  That's a big deal for units, especially with LA, you know, you miss a guy. And it's one thing to miss him when you can't get your dog there, like a fortified structure, you can't get in, it's all locked up. And you'll tell the command post, hey, we searched everything except for that. Do you want us to bust in or not? He says, no, we can't bust in. Okay, well, it's not clear. Two hours later, the guy's found in there. Cause we didn't get him in there. So okay, and I missed him. No, okay, and I didn't miss him. We, we, you didn't allow us to search.

• 1:02:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Speaker 06

  But it's another thing when you have searched an area and you call it clear. And then suspect comes out.

• 1:03:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Speaker 06

  And I've got some stories on that.

• 1:03:06Steven Rinella?

  That looks bad.

• 1:03:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Do you?

• 1:03:10Steven Rinella?

  There's gotta be things that you can train a dog to do and things a dog just has to come out of the box, ready to do.

• 1:03:15Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:15Steven Rinella?

  You talk about biting.

• 1:03:17Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:03:17Steven Rinella?

  Is, is, can you train a dog to bite or does it gotta be that that dog wants to bite?

• 1:03:24Speaker 06

  That's a great question.

• 1:03:24Steven Rinella?

  Like wants to bite from birth?

• 1:03:26Speaker 06

  Yeah. That's a great question because some dogs do, they, they have a propensity to come out. And their first apprehension, they have the, no problem biting a real bad guy.

• 1:03:36Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:37Speaker 06

  Um, that's not normal. And sometimes when you have a dog that is that quick, maybe edgy.

• 1:03:44Speaker 06

  It brings about other problems.

• 1:03:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:03:46Speaker 06

  Because he's almost too much going that way.

• 1:03:49Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:03:49Speaker 06

  Your normal dog is gonna be, you know, need training. When they come out, when you test these dogs, they're usually from Europe. And they're competitive dogs in KVP, um, ring sport, shits and work. And it's really a big deal over there. They make a lot of money doing it. Not as, not as popular as it used to be. But it's still a big deal. You can, you know, look it up on the website and look at some of the trials and all that that they, that they do. You'll see the, the dog hitting the guy in the bite suit. The call offs, the recalls, the escorts, um, the obedience, the agility, all that stuff. And they, they compete with these dogs and they get different scores. And some of these guys, some of the vendors or even some of the big trainers out there. After they get a couple of high scoring dogs, they'll sell their dogs.

• 1:04:34Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:04:34Speaker 06

  To Americans. And sometimes they're titled and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're green. What I mean, what I mean by that is. They're brought to a certain level. They know how to bite. They're prey oriented, you know, they love the prey toy like this right here, whether it's a jute or something to play with. Um, they've done maybe a little bit of search work. Who knows? You don't know. And they're young though. They're very young. So they need to be brought along and that's another story and.

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  After nine eleven, things really changed because the dog world exploded. I mean, it, it exploded with the apprehension, the bomb dog detection. I mean, the military, you know, they were getting hundreds and hundreds of dogs.

• 1:05:15Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:05:15Speaker 06

  And the whole thing just went crazy. Um, so the need for dogs was pretty high. And that's when some of the younger dogs started coming out. And they're good dogs. I mean, you could take a younger dog. In fact, that's pretty much. The younger dog sometimes has a lot of benefits because he's not locked into the equipment. And what I mean by equipment is the bite suit, the sleeve, the undergarment sleeve and all that stuff that is used in training and. And, um, um.

• 1:05:45Speaker 06

  Competition.

• 1:05:46Steven Rinella?

  But but but how do you get it to?

• 1:05:48Speaker 06

  Right. So that's the whole thing. When you're when you're working a dog and you get some of the basic training, Doug, you're teaching a dog how to hunt. But at the same time, you want to start introducing things. You know, when when I'm teaching a dog, everything I'm doing is for the end result, which is tactics and catching a bad guy. So you take some of those disciplines that are learned in ring sport and KVP and Shitzen, and you use them, you use some of those disciplines that make sense for you. But you trash some of the other ones that don't make sense. And one of them would be to get him off equipment. So you do a lot of you get that dog interested in or you get him to accept the muzzle very quickly. And there's different kinds of muzzles, but you want that dog

• 1:06:34Speaker 06

  to be able to be neutral in the muzzle. Some of the problems, just to talk about training, I'll put muzzles on some dogs that have had aggression training in muzzle, which is fine, but they're not neutral in muzzle. So when that muzzle goes on, he gets aggressive. And that's not what you want. You want you want him to be gunfire neutral, you want him to be muzzle neutral. You don't want rounds going off and the dog's looking for someone to nab or bite. Now he's not safe. You want him to be able to just accept the gunfire and move on, do his work. Same thing with the muzzle. So the muzzle allows you to, when you're playing cat and mouse, when you're playing, you know, hide and seek with the dog, and you're setting up training scenarios, when that dog learns

• 1:07:19Speaker 06

  how to hunt in the muzzle, not only just hit in the muzzle, because when a dog is really good in the muzzle, you'll send him on a straight hit and he'll hurt you. I mean, I've had guys without protection, broken ribs and.

• 1:07:32Steven Rinella?

  From the dog hitting, even though he can't bite.

• 1:07:33Speaker 06

  Can't bite. Yeah, you just like rockets. If you're trained right, and I train them really good in muzzle. I have a certain technique. And and my dogs, you know, they'll they'll they'll put some hurt on you. So sometimes we'll wear a. A vest, sometimes uh over a big jacket, we'll wear it's like a ski vest or something.

• 1:07:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Speaker 06

  Skiing vest, cause uh they'll hurt you. Um, plus it depends on the skill of the decoy too, obviously. But yeah, we, we, that's one thing you wanna do. Another thing would be to do what's called a lot of civil fines. And when I say civil, it means no equipment. So when I'm hiding people, right away, I try to take all the equipment off them. He's hiding in that cabinet. We got him stuck in there and you know, he's sweating up a storm. He's in his tight. But you wanna mimic the real environments.

• 1:08:20Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:21Speaker 06

  Like, for example, you might start, this leads into something else. You might start a dog um on a really simple odor, like a really small closet with a door, because you know the scent's gonna be true.

• 1:08:32Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:32Speaker 06

  And the dog knows how to apprehend. He knows how to catch, you know, take bites and all that. But you wanna introduce him into odor. So we'll put a guy in a suit behind that door and we'll let him cook up. That means he's the, a lot of scent is developing inside that small room.

• 1:08:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:51Speaker 06

  And we crack the door and make it super easy. So we may do the announcement 20 yards away or at the be- beginning of the room. And then depending on the dog, what I think he might need, we're, you know, LAPD, come on, all your hands up. And then the decoy will do a peeky boo. He'll open up and he'll paint a picture. He'll start screaming at the dog and the dog's barking. He's all excited. Then he shuts the door and leaves it cracked.

• 1:09:15Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:15Speaker 06

  We send a dog in. So now we wanna teach him to be able to, you know, bark at scent. So he'll go in frustrated going, okay, where'd he go?

• 1:09:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Speaker 06

  And he's thinking, some dogs will pick up on it really quick. Um, they'll go and they'll start working it. And all of a sudden, you'll see his nose go up and he goes to that corner and then he starts scratching and he gets frustrated. And it's important for the handler to shut up because you want that alert to be between him and the odor. It's called making a dog be obedient to odor.

• 1:09:47Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:48Speaker 06

  And you'll see the mistakes. Sometimes the handler will be back there going, what you got, buddy? Dog looks around, he goes, okay, you just marked it. So in other words, instead of the dog self-discovering, you've told the dog to alert.

• 1:10:00Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:10:01Speaker 06

  And then what happens is the dog will end up falsing. He'll go to a door, check it out, look back at you. You'll think the guy's in there and you'll go, what you got? Dog starts barking, open the door, nobody's there.

• 1:10:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:13Speaker 06

  Because you marked it and it's not about you. It's about what happens right there, that odor. Makes sense?

• 1:10:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  Little things like that will happen and you know, when I go do a lot of problem solving, I'll see it right away. The dog will be, you know, at the scent and he's looking back. I go, you've been talking to your dog a lot, haven't you?

• 1:10:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Speaker 06

  You gotta shut up. I go, in fact, get out of the room. Go hide and let your dog do his thing. I don't want him to even see you. And then we fix it so that because you don't want that dog falsing.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

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• 1:12:18Steven Rinella?

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• 1:12:58Speaker 06

  So the bite?

• 1:12:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like.

• 1:12:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Steven Rinella?

  I mean, a dog might go up and find something, but how do you ever get to, how do you ever get to where you know the dog's gonna come up and bite, but also not bite the guy in the face?

• 1:13:09Speaker 06

  Sure. Well, you know, almost all the bites are gonna be on the extremities.

• 1:13:14Steven Rinella?

  That's just, that's just what a dog's gonna do.

• 1:13:16Speaker 06

  Well, that's what he's gonna be offered to during decoy work.

• 1:13:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:13:19Speaker 06

  You know, one of the, one of my favorite bites is the inside arm bite. I like that one. There's also a thing called bite marking. Way, way back in the day, we used to do a lot of what's called pulling on the bite. And I call it more of like a prey bite. And it's not a, it's not a good bite. Not a bite that's gonna take down a suspect. You want a dog that's gonna be digging in and you mark the, you mark that with a good decoy work. That means the dog bites and he pushes. And that's just, that's just a detail.

• 1:13:45Steven Rinella?

  And you prefer that he's biting on the inside of the?

• 1:13:47Speaker 06

  I like it because the decoy can really work the dog. He can feel it. A good decoy will tell you what he needs. A good decoy and I, my training groups, I actually hire a decoy. And it's, it's kind of a, the handlers are kind of spoiled because back in the day, we did our own decoying. Now I hire people to do it and it's hard work, but they're good. And it makes that dog, you know, I can fix problems a lot with a good skilled decoy. Guys that, you know, do ringsport, KVP and all that. Pay them some money. They come in, they help. But when he's, when that dog's biting, let's say, for example, a dog has a propensity to pull. So when you take that inside arm bite and the dog comes in and he's pulling, you ignore the behavior. You don't give him a mark on it. And then you

• 1:14:32Speaker 06

  wait the dog out. And then pretty soon, he's not getting any kind of reward. He's just kind of pulling. All of a sudden he does this. Bites. Oh. You do a mark and then the dog does it again and pretty soon that

• 1:14:43Steven Rinella?

  You do a reaction.

• 1:14:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, you'll do it. You'll turn away, go to submission.

• 1:14:47Steven Rinella?

  And he likes that.

• 1:14:48Speaker 06

  And he likes that because you're showing that you're kicking his ass.

• 1:14:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's okay.

• 1:14:53Speaker 06

  Dog picks up on it. Oh, I get a reaction here because what he was trained to do was some, we call them bite dummies. You're not doing anything for the dog. You're just a bite dummy. The dog will bite. He's pulling and he's pulling and the handlers or the decoys going, ah, he's marking all bad behavior. So the dog learns to pull.

• 1:15:12Steven Rinella?

  Ah.

• 1:15:12Speaker 06

  Problem with the pull bite, if you have a real apprehension, the dog might pull and rip off clothes and start shaking on it.

• 1:15:20Steven Rinella?

  God.

• 1:15:20Speaker 06

  Piece of prey. Um, that goes into another whole story. So you want that that bite to be firm and pushing.

• 1:15:26Steven Rinella?

  So you can like, you encourage the dog to bite how you want it by the decoy overreacting when it's doing the right thing.

• 1:15:33Speaker 06

  It's very subtle too. You don't need to scream and it's just little things like you're looking at that dog. You're feeling the confidence. The decoy will tell you, okay, don't call him yet. Don't call him. Let me watch him. He re bites and pretty soon he's pushing.

• 1:15:47Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. And pretty soon he's pushing and digging in and the bite's really strong. And then you obviously keep your control and I all my, all my outs are verbal outs, which is another thing. You know, a lot of guys do choke offs.

• 1:16:00Steven Rinella?

  Do you ever get a dog that's got too much, like he's too good at biting and it winds up being not safe to use the dog?

• 1:16:07Speaker 06

  Well, he's only not safe if he's biting the wrong thing. Oh, you mean because he's so powerful?

• 1:16:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 06

  That's a good point. Um, I'll leave it nameless. There was an department I worked with, uh, I still work with them. I have a contract with them and, uh, one of their old handlers had a dog. And he was the son of his other dog from a really good breeding line and it was a shepherd. And not a lot of shepherds out there anymore. There are, there's some great shepherds, but everybody's using the mouths and the duchies. You know, I ran a great shepherd, whatever. But this dog was a powerful dog and he had a couple apprehensions where he bit him wasn't long in the bite and broke the guy's arm.

• 1:16:44Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:16:44Speaker 06

  And that can be a problem.

• 1:16:45Steven Rinella?

  Like the dog's bite broke the dude's arm.

• 1:16:47Speaker 06

  It wasn't like he was on him long. This guy, this dog, I mean, you would take a bite on him through the bite suit and it would hurt. I mean, you have to wear neoprene undergarments and the bite suit.

• 1:16:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:59Speaker 06

  Otherwise, you're feeling some good pain. You know, I remember working dogs back in the day. We had some pretty lousy bite suits. The department wasn't keeping up on our equipment. And I'd go home sometimes, I didn't even know it, take my T-shirt off, getting ready to go to bed and I can't get my shirt off and I got blood, dried up blood on my uniform T-shirt stuck. He didn't go through the suit, but the pressure.

• 1:17:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:25Speaker 06

  Made me bleed.

• 1:17:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:26Speaker 06

  My arm's all black and blue. It hurts, you know?

• 1:17:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:30Speaker 06

  Cause they bite hard, even with a bite suit.

• 1:17:32Steven Rinella?

  You, uh, you, when we talked before, you'd explain something to me that I'd like you to tell people about.

• 1:17:38Steven Rinella?

  When you go to buy dogs.

• 1:17:39Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:41Steven Rinella?

  And you're in the police work and you're, and you're shopping for dogs from the same sources that the military is shopping for dogs in.

• 1:17:50Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:17:50Steven Rinella?

  You're saying the military wants dogs that don't bark, but you guys want dogs that do.

• 1:17:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:17:56Steven Rinella?

  Police want dogs that do bark.

• 1:17:58Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:17:59Steven Rinella?

  And that's more of a thing that, that's just like the dog's tendency and not necessarily a thing that you train into a dog. Like the dog will hunt silent, you know?

• 1:18:08Speaker 06

  It's easy to make the dog silent.

• 1:18:09Steven Rinella?

  It's easy to make it silent.

• 1:18:11Speaker 06

  Most dogs will come in silent. Um, you know, you gotta teach them to bark like it odor and all that.

• 1:18:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you do? Okay.

• 1:18:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, you do. I mean, some dogs will pick it up pretty naturally, but some dogs are really quiet. We had a dog that came out of training from another vendor and he's a good friend of mine. And they had a, they had a tendency of not getting that dog, those dogs to bark on odor. And we had some discussions, but I go, hey, look, because once that dog is allowed to find somebody in that closet or that cupboard. And show him some indication, but no bark, and then he gets paid with a bite. You've taught him to be quiet.

• 1:18:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Speaker 06

  And you've done that over and over again. It's hard to fix.

• 1:18:49Steven Rinella?

  And that's problematic for you guys because of legal issues. The dog's got to bark.

• 1:18:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's just, it's something positive that you can say and, and helps you as a handler like, I mean, for example, too, he, he may not even be able to get to source to this, to where the guy actually is. Like, let's say the guy's up in that ceiling. The dog is trained to get as close to source as possible.

• 1:19:11Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:12Speaker 06

  And bark. So you'll have a dog that can't get close, but he's as close as he can. He'll crawl up that wall and start barking.

• 1:19:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Speaker 06

  That's pretty good. That's a pretty good indication to have. And he also, it steadies the dog. What I mean by that is the dog is given a behavior to do. And when you first teach him to bark at odor, you go with one or two barks bite. Okay, next one, one, two, three, four barks bite. And then you want to vary it. You know, the variable to intermittent. And what that means is you're going to lock in the behavior. Sometimes I want you barking 20 times at that door. Sometimes I want you barking twice.

• 1:19:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:19:47Speaker 06

  Because some, if you don't do that, if you don't, you know, you use pattern to train a dog, but you have to know when to deviate from the pattern to make the behavior solid.

• 1:19:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Speaker 06

  What I mean by that is, it might be bark, bark, bark. Oh, no bite. I'm gonna leave.

• 1:20:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:20:02Speaker 06

  Because I always get bite on the third bark. So you want to build up the tolerance, you know, the time, the length and all that. So the dog stays at that odor. Because you, it might come up in a real search where, you know, you want to make sure the guy's there. Like, you're calling out SWAT. You got all these resources. You really want to make sure that guy's gonna be there.

• 1:20:20Steven Rinella?

  So there's not a reason, there's not like a legal reason. I thought the dog would need to bark.

• 1:20:25Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:20:26Steven Rinella?

  And like, you know, as a way to like announce itself to the suspect so the suspect couldn't like come at you legally.

• 1:20:33Speaker 06

  Sure, sure. And sometimes you can bring him back and have the dog bark up. You know, but if your dog barks at a door, we're gonna deescalate. We're gonna call him back in a real search.

• 1:20:42Steven Rinella?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:20:42Speaker 06

  And we're gonna order the guy out.

• 1:20:44Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:20:44Speaker 06

  And we're gonna do it several times. In fact, with LA, I'm not sure about some of the other departments. Um, but even the departments I work with, if a guy is in a shed and the dog is solid, he's barking, and, and he just shot, you know, let's say he just shot a cop or murdered somebody. Um, time's on your side. You know, you don't need to make an entrance into there. Call your dog back, surround it, treat it like a barricade.

• 1:21:08Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:21:08Speaker 06

  Then you have all these other tools you can bring in. You can forty millimeter, gas it, whatever. But there's no, there's no rush to go in. And that would be my training.

• 1:21:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Speaker 06

  Cause you're gonna get hit on that. It's like, you know, there's been a lot of lawsuits out there where guys, you know, they cowboy their way in and then they, they actually um. Kind of make a shooting happen, you know, because.

• 1:21:33Speaker 06

  And that's, that goes into like, why use a canine, you know? I can just get into this a little bit. Back in the day when um. Canines on LA were still kind of new. And there was a, we were having an issue with our use of Forest Division. And they were teaching a lot of how to chase a suspect.

• 1:21:52Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:52Speaker 06

  How to chase, how to pie a corner, how to wait, be safe, all that stuff. And I watched it and the sergeant that was doing it was a great guy, very good instructor. But I'm coming from another world, you know, I'm coming from canine. So I'm not teaching you how to chase a guy. I want to teach how to contain.

• 1:22:09Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:10Speaker 06

  So you're not going to catch people if you're chasing them. Unless you can, unless you're an athlete, you can run the guy down within the first twenty, thirty yards, he's gone.

• 1:22:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Speaker 06

  If you're doing it safely, because when you're chasing an armed suspect or potentially. That guy cuts a corner, you're not going to cut the corner. You're gonna, you're gonna buy that corner slow and make sure he's not going to ambush you.

• 1:22:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:33Speaker 06

  Or you're gonna get shot maybe. So if you're teach, if you're, if you're chasing him properly. He's going to gain ground on you all the time because he doesn't have to worry about anything.

• 1:22:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Speaker 06

  So why not back off and contain the guy? So we, we would teach like, hey, if you can't run this guy down quick. And you know, your average patrol cop, you're in the car, it's cold, it's, you're calm, you've been. Just had code seven, you just had something to eat, you've been relaxed and now this guy, this athletic suspect, boom, is running. And you're coming out with forty pounds of gear on you, you get hurt. You're gonna get sick, you're gonna rip your hamstring, whatever. It happens all the time.

• 1:23:11Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:12Speaker 06

  So, contain this guy. So, the city of LA, the way the cops are trained, is to contain. And it's phenomenal, people across the country can't even believe sometimes our fine ratio.

• 1:23:26Steven Rinella?

  Like, contain him and let him settle in.

• 1:23:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, and de-escalate. And the way I sold to the department, I go, hey, look, you wanna get your use of force capers down, your use of force incidences where it's an investigation? If you're gonna chase somebody, run them down, there's gonna be use of force. You know, you're gonna tackle the guy, could be a fight, everybody gets hurt, suspect gets hurt, boom. If you wanna de-escalate that, contain this guy. Plus, it's safer.

• 1:23:51Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:51Speaker 06

  Right? You give, you give that, that chance, that suspect a chance to de-escalate. And you're gonna catch them. So, what I'm getting at, when I was on a unit, we had about a fifty percent, forty, forty, fifty percent fine ratio on containments. Not too bad. And I was talking to one of the, Algren, one of the, the chief trainer on LAPD now, and they supposedly have like a seventy to seventy-five percent fine ratio. That means every time a perimeter is set, that's the odds of catching somebody. And it's not because of the canine, it's because of the perimeter units are locking these guys in.

• 1:24:28Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:24:29Speaker 06

  Like, when you see a pursuit on TV, and you've got, you know, the old thing used to be, and still you'll see it on TV, you got primary suspect traveling at a high rate of speed, and you got seven cars behind them.

• 1:24:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Speaker 06

  It's stupid. Cause your seventh car is not doing anything. So, you're going through this neighborhood with a big daisy chain, chase, chasing that guy. What our guys will do, and, and other departments.

• 1:24:51Steven Rinella?

  Like, the final chase scene in Blues Brothers.

• 1:24:53Speaker 06

  It's like, you know, there's a, remember that, uh, thing called the Animal Planet? Um... There was a Attenborough, whatever, doing a narration.

• 1:25:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:01Speaker 06

  And he was doing it. They had some great footage, maybe a drone. I don't know what they had, but it was. They were filming the, those African hunting dogs.

• 1:25:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:25:10Speaker 06

  There are certain breed out there and they work in big packs, not like wolves. There are like thirty of them.

• 1:25:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Speaker 06

  And they had them chasing a deer. And it was just like I train, or we train. They had about three or four of them chasing this deer. And then they had the group splitting off.

• 1:25:25Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:25:26Speaker 06

  So they had a rolling containment. So by the time they surrounded this thing, the deer ended up going into the water. But they had them corralled.

• 1:25:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:34Speaker 06

  Because the deer had nowhere to go. Now, if they, well, it would have been all right here. He's got open space left and right.

• 1:25:40Steven Rinella?

  I understand.

• 1:25:40Speaker 06

  But that's a natural thing that they developed, you know, without.

• 1:25:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:44Speaker 06

  Just beautiful, right?

• 1:25:46Steven Rinella?

  So instead of seven cop cars chasing the guy, spread out.

• 1:25:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, an airship, a good airship and us, well, we can tell when a guy is going. Like the airship will say, okay. Units be advised, he's slowing down. I think he's looking for a place to bail. Because he's in a friendly area now.

• 1:26:02Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:02Speaker 06

  He's like in his own territory. Unless he's like doing some, like, let's say a South End guy in seventy seventh. He's capering in West LA by Beverly Hills. He's gonna, he's gonna bail quick. Cause he's out of his territory. Right?

• 1:26:17Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:17Speaker 06

  He's got to get out of the car quick because he knows there's gonna be a containment. So he's not gonna go very long. But when you get into pursuit in seventy seventh. He's gonna stay in that car because he's gonna go to an area that he knows. And maybe get into a friendly. So there's a big whole different mindset, but. Um, with that being said, the airship will say, okay, he's slowing down. Units be aware, let's start setting up the containment now. And a units to the left and right. So we'll have like the primary unit, secondary unit, maybe a third unit. Everybody else is out here. So when that guy bails, we've already got units here and here. So we lock him in.

• 1:26:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:51Speaker 06

  He's not going anywhere.

• 1:26:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and then your dog comes in and does the detail work.

• 1:26:55Speaker 06

  Ratio just goes up because these guys are thinking containment. And not chasing.

• 1:26:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:00Speaker 06

  It's a whole different mindset. And I tried. And, you know, like, there's some departments I work with, like in Texas. And great guys, they got some good dogs. I got. In fact, one of the guys in Texas, you. Chris Moore runs a for Harris County. They run twenty dogs. And he's frustrated because he knows all these tactics and he's getting into the off-leash thing like I teach him, taught him. But they just don't have the resources like that. And they do a lot of tracking. They just, they don't have that many airships. Because you need all that stuff. And I feel bad for some of the smaller agencies. Because you can really lock these guys down with a good airship. But they're using a lot of drones now. Drones are coming in real handy, these big drones, you know, like the size of this couch.

• 1:27:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:44Speaker 06

  You know, these guys are operating them and it's beautiful what they can do with them.

• 1:27:49Steven Rinella?

  So where did most of the, so you're saying that like you're still involved in dogs and dog training?

• 1:27:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Steven Rinella?

  Most of these dogs are coming out of Europe?

• 1:27:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, most of them. Most of them are.

• 1:27:59Steven Rinella?

  What, why is that? Why is the, why is the center of this kind of apprehension dog coming out of Europe?

• 1:28:04Speaker 06

  It just always has. I mean, there's some breeders out here and they've done some breeding. In fact,

• 1:28:11Speaker 06

  one of the companies I work with Spectrum Canine, they bred a Dutchy that we got for San Pablo. And they bred that dog and that dog is just tearing it up. Great dog. But they know how to breed. They know how to bring the dog up properly and because it's a whole process.

• 1:28:29Steven Rinella?

  What countries in Europe are big into this?

• 1:28:31Speaker 06

  You know, you got Hungary, Turkey, Slovakia, France, Holland, Germany. Germany used to be bigger because a lot of the dogs out of there were coming where they were shepherds.

• 1:28:46Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:28:47Speaker 06

  But some of the more desired breeds has seen, seems to have really gone toward the Mals and the Dutch Shepherds.

• 1:28:52Steven Rinella?

  Got it. What's one of these dogs worth? Coming out of, like coming out of preliminary training?

• 1:28:58Speaker 06

  When I came on the job, we were picking up dogs for three, thirty-five hundred. Now you're talking about thirteen thousand, maybe fifteen grand.

• 1:29:06Steven Rinella?

  And that's for dogs with just basic training?

• 1:29:07Speaker 06

  Basic training. Yeah. And some want more if they include some kind of training with it. But yeah, they're expensive. And then you also, you know, you want to like. I used to work with a vendor, Von Lee Kennels, out of Indiana, Kennel Lighter Rent It. And they get, they were getting hundreds of dogs a year, hundreds. His facilities in Indiana, we'd go there. I'd take my guys, I'd get a hotel, stay there for like three or four days, test dogs. Another one, Elder's Kennels in Riverside, they, they get a lot of good dogs too. But you know, like my trainer told me once, he says, where do you find a good dog? You find a good dog where a good dog is. I mean, you have to keep your eyes open, but the problem is, you want a vendor you can trust, so you don't waste your time.

• 1:29:51Speaker 06

  You also want a guarantee. Because you could have three months into the dog and things start happening. Medically or whatever, so you want that guarantee that, you know. But something that I learned, kind of the hard way. When I was working as a head trainer in LA, you, I don't know, you're a little complacent, maybe a little sloppy because you have all this time. And I, I had a tendency sometime, not always, but, and a dog's not perfect, but I can make him work.

• 1:30:22Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:30:22Speaker 06

  And then, I paid the price for that because, you know, maybe I can make him work, but he's got to go to that handler, he's got to continue to make him work.

• 1:30:30Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:30:31Speaker 06

  And I learned that, you know, just through.

• 1:30:34Steven Rinella?

  You learned to focus on perfect dogs.

• 1:30:36Speaker 06

  Exactly. I learned to be greedy. And I learned, I learned to fly out to Indiana, or go to Riverside, or wherever I'm going, and spend two days training and go, well, you don't have anything for me, I'm leaving. But sometimes when you do that, the guy will go, well, wait a minute. I got one dog you didn't see. I saved him for special forces. But if you really want to see him, I'll show him. He'll bring him out and I'll go, you wasted three of my days, wrap him up.

• 1:31:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 06

  Of course I want him. You know, you were hiding him for somebody else. Because a vendor will sell you what you'll buy. There's not anything against vendors, you know, they, they'll help you to a certain point, but their job is to sell dogs.

• 1:31:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:17Speaker 06

  You know, and so.

• 1:31:18Steven Rinella?

  So do you think that would like, if you look, if you think about bird hunters? Do you think that like?

• 1:31:25Steven Rinella?

  Would your recommendation to people training bird dogs? Or duck dogs, whatever, would your recommendation be that same thing like?

• 1:31:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:31:32Steven Rinella?

  Don't waste time on imperfection.

• 1:31:33Speaker 06

  Hundred percent. In fact, uh.

• 1:31:35Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:31:35Speaker 06

  There was, um, you know, during the, after nine 11, um, that got really big into the SSD dogs and some of the, um, dogs that were looking for bombs. And they use that same method that the bird dogs do, you know, they'll, I did some training with the Marines on it and they were at Camp Pendleton, I was down there training with them, doing a patrol dog class, but they brought in some of their SSD dogs. And, uh, yeah, they were, I learned a lot on that because we weren't really into that and they would contract these dogs out to certain organizations. That made a lot of money. They were charging departments like, God, 40 grand for a dog.

• 1:32:14Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:14Speaker 06

  You know, for the training and everything, but they were good dogs. They were taught to hand signal, go straight out. Get older, turn around, face to left and right. Um, some of these guys in the Marines were actually using, um, communication devices strapped to their collars. So they could talk to them through that.

• 1:32:32Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:32:32Speaker 06

  And, uh, yeah, they were finding bombs and all that because that would, they were, they were dogs that were taught to find ground, ground explosives.

• 1:32:41Steven Rinella?

  Yo.

• 1:32:41Speaker 06

  So that's all they did.

• 1:32:43Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:32:44Speaker 06

  They did a good job.

• 1:32:45Steven Rinella?

  What's your take on these services that, uh? You know, these people now you get these people buying these like high end, like kind of like executive dogs, you know? It's supposed to be like these, these like souped up dogs meant to protect you and your family. Do you buy that?

• 1:32:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well. Here's the problem with that.

• 1:33:03Speaker 06

  You can, anybody can purchase a dog that's going to take care of business. But at the same time, that dog might get you in real trouble. Right? I mean, for a real dog, a dog that's really gonna take somebody down, you better, you better, you better go as mu- you better go through as much training as that dog went through to handle that dog.

• 1:33:26Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:33:27Speaker 06

  And really know the, it's like having a weapon, right? I mean, you know, you're, you're, you just want to hand somebody a gun, you teach them how to shoot, and you also want to teach them about liability, risk management, because you can get yourself in a lot of trouble.

• 1:33:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I mean, someone walking around with some, like, some dog that's

• 1:33:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, that can really-

• 1:33:44Steven Rinella?

  Means business when he attacks a person.

• 1:33:46Speaker 06

  Or this, he might look really good in, in the, the equipment, in the bite suit and the muzzle, but will he really bite somebody? Because that's what we do, that's the problem with police work. You know, because besides the muzzle work and the civil fines that I talked about, we do undergarments, we do prosthetics, you know, which is like the fake arms.

• 1:34:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Speaker 06

  That we teach a dog to bite different surfaces so that we throw a myriad of things at them so that generalization occurs. That means that whatever that guy offers you, you're gonna bite it. You're not gonna freak out over it, or release it, or

• 1:34:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:21Speaker 06

  Have some kind of problem with it.

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• 1:36:37Steven Rinella?

  You know what's funny about that, man, is uh when you set up electronic predator callers? Right? It's so interesting to watch when a coyote comes in, or I've seen cats come in. When they hit that thing, how quickly they know that that doesn't feel like what it was supposed to feel like.

• 1:36:58Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:36:59Steven Rinella?

  I mean, they, they like back, they hate it.

• 1:37:03Speaker 06

  But I bet you have some dogs that bustle right through it. No?

• 1:37:07Steven Rinella?

  I've seen with like with coyotes, once they make contact with it, they know, it's like a little decoy.

• 1:37:13Speaker 06

  Right. That's interesting.

• 1:37:15Steven Rinella?

  They know that that's not what they were at. Like, just the feel of it, the bite feel, the way it feels on their paws, the way it feels on their body. They like hit it, they're out the door.

• 1:37:25Speaker 06

  That's, that's a, that's a good example. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:37:28Steven Rinella?

  Like, they're like, that ain't what I thought it was.

• 1:37:30Speaker 06

  Right. And we've, we've had that, you know, we've had that. In fact, uh, yeah, my, my dog, and I was a brand new handler, and he was in a situation where he was supposed to bite. And he went in there and it was a, find him, it was still find him bark, but it escalated to a situation where the guy needed to get bit. He got aggressive. And he went in and he nabbed him and then he backed off.

• 1:37:56Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:57Speaker 06

  And I'm a new handler and I'm like, I'm thinking, my dog's hard. He's doing all the stuff that we did, right? And my trainer, Don Yornell, I come out and I go, my dog's broken. What happened? And I was one of those guys, I gotta be the best. That's just me. I mean, I'm, I put in tons of training and anything I, anything I do, I want to be really good at it. So I'm like, I want the best dog and this is pissing me off. And lo and behold, he says, don't worry about it. Just like I would tell a new handler now, we'll fix it. Not a big deal. So we did a whole lot of stuff. Muzzle, um, we didn't have an undergarments back then or prosthetics, but we did a lot of things to civil him up and to get him that way.

• 1:38:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:41Speaker 06

  And the next apprehension that, that was required of him, he did a great job.

• 1:38:46Steven Rinella?

  He went for it.

• 1:38:46Speaker 06

  I'm like, and after that, after that, because he was such a strong biter, um, and he had this natural reflex of biting and shaking.

• 1:38:56Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:38:56Speaker 06

  And so I had to have really good control over him because he was doing a lot of damage. And there's a thing called the 13th floor. You know, if I should even be getting into this, but, um, where the guy is submitted to a hospital. It's a jail ward, but it's a hospital.

• 1:39:13Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:39:14Speaker 06

  And a lot of his bites were trained into that. And the sergeant's looking at me like, what are you doing? Are you like leaving him on a bite forever? I go, no, I'm not. I mean, I'm, he's coming right off. So they actually assigned a seasoned handler with me to keep an eye on me. I'm brand new, you know, and I'm like,

• 1:39:30Steven Rinella?

  Cause this dog's doing too much damage.

• 1:39:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, and I'm like, he's a great dog, but he's like, I'm calling him right off. Like boom, couple of seconds. And then he saw an apprehension and Sal looks at me and he says, you got better control than anybody in a unit. He says, your dog's popping right off. He just bites hard.

• 1:39:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:50Speaker 06

  So I had to realize that and, and, you know, do things accordingly. I mean, I had to, I had to maintain really good control over him.

• 1:39:57Steven Rinella?

  It was interesting point you raised a minute ago. When I was talking about these guys, various buddies of mine talk about these dudes that like make these, uh, defense dogs. It's an interesting point you make that if you're selling someone a dog that's supposed to protect their family.

• 1:40:16Steven Rinella?

  How do you ever really know?

• 1:40:18Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 1:40:18Steven Rinella?

  You've only had, you've only had them being training until you take them out to attack someone.

• 1:40:23Speaker 06

  Hundred percent.

• 1:40:23Steven Rinella?

  You could have that thing sitting around for five years thinking it's some big bad attack dog, but that dog has never attacked anybody.

• 1:40:30Speaker 06

  Right, and that's my whole thing. You know, that brings me into this.

• 1:40:33Steven Rinella?

  It's like an interesting idea.

• 1:40:34Speaker 06

  That brings me into this. Yeah, here's what's relatable to that. There was a time when the guys in the SWAT unit, um, we weren't getting along very well with SWAT. There was a lot of egos going on. Now, when I left, we're golden. We like, love each other. We work together with them. But there was like a competition thing, you know, canines getting all these bodies. They're doing all this stuff and that's a SWAT caper, that's not a canine caper and this kind of silly stuff. So we had to, we had to get through that. But as they developed, for some reason, they started doing some work with Delta and some of these other, you know, high-speed units, because you know, LAPD SWAT's great. They're like one of the best in the country. But they're doing all this advanced stuff all the time and

• 1:41:20Speaker 06

  Delta, their teams are married with a canine guy. Like LASO, Los Angeles County Sheriff's, their canines are part of SWAT. LAPD SWAT and canine are different, different entities. So, um, we don't, we don't work together per se like that. We do train together. We do work together, but we're not married up like that.

• 1:41:40Steven Rinella?

  It's not like in the military.

• 1:41:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, not military or like LASO, when they get a SWAT call, canine's there all the time.

• 1:41:45Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:41:46Speaker 06

  With us, it's going to be a special event.

• 1:41:48Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:41:49Speaker 06

  So, uh, yeah, with that being said, um, after they did this, this training with Delta, they says, oh, we want a SWAT dog. This kind of goes into what you're saying. Oh, what's a SWAT dog? All of our dogs are SWAT dogs. Our dogs are always there for you, you know? And we'll always pick a certain dog that might be better for a certain incident, right? I mean, if I need a bigger, more powerful dog at this certain location.

• 1:42:14Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'm not understanding what you're saying. Who was saying they wanted a SWAT dog?

• 1:42:17Speaker 06

  Our SWAT unit.

• 1:42:18Steven Rinella?

  Your SWAT unit wanted a SWAT?

• 1:42:20Speaker 06

  Wanted a specific SWAT dog assigned to SWAT.

• 1:42:23Steven Rinella?

  That they picked up off from the Delta guys?

• 1:42:25Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:42:25Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:42:25Speaker 06

  And I'm thinking, and I knew it was coming and I thought, well, I go. The only, I go, they wanted to go in training and all that. I says, well, the reason that our dogs are SWAT dogs is because they've been out in the street for a year and most of them had about forty, fifty apprehensions already. Now, for you to have a SWAT dog that's gonna prove you right and not fail you when everything's on the line, how are you gonna make that happen? You gotta be a handler for a while.

• 1:42:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:54Speaker 06

  So you're trying to reinvent the wheel. Our, our dogs are gonna take care of business. We're gonna train with you. We're gonna do. So we nixed it. But

• 1:43:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:02Speaker 06

  They wanted that SWAT dog thing and it kinda goes in line with

• 1:43:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:05Speaker 06

  he's not proven. You know, I can do all the training in the world. Here's your SWAT dog. It looks great out in the field. Muzzle work, bite work, whatever, but is he really gonna take care of business?

• 1:43:15Steven Rinella?

  This is the thing that, this is the thing I find with, with friends of mine that have do, uh, hunting dogs. Is you got, there's like, the hunting dogs that it's just all training. It's like putting pen raised birds out in

• 1:43:31Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:43:31Steven Rinella?

  little meadows and the dog knows he's gonna find something in ten seconds, right? It's like, that's all that dog ever lived. And then you got dogs that have been hunting for real.

• 1:43:42Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:43:43Steven Rinella?

  And when I, whenever I hear about all that my field trial this and field try that, I just like, I don't, I don't care.

• 1:43:50Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:43:50Steven Rinella?

  I don't care.

• 1:43:51Speaker 06

  Hundred percent.

• 1:43:51Steven Rinella?

  Like, the dog that's been out doing the real deal stuff in the real world, that's interesting.

• 1:43:57Speaker 06

  Right. Well, you know, we had the same thing. I mean, there was like a lot of canine trials all over the place. Not all over, but you know, they, and our guys didn't really compete very much in them. Sometimes they would. And they may not even do very well in them. But they're competing against a dog that's maybe had one bite and they're five years in the job.

• 1:44:15Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:44:16Speaker 06

  And now you're competing with this guy that's had like thirty, forty in the year or fifty or more, whatever. You know, I had a hundred and twenty-one bodies one year. That's a lot of, that's a lot of searching.

• 1:44:29Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:44:30Speaker 06

  In, in, in our heyday. And back in the day, forty percent of them got bit. That was standard in the industry. Now that will get you fired. You know, now the bite ratio is looked at.

• 1:44:41Steven Rinella?

  So you had a year, you caught a hundred and twenty people and forty bites?

• 1:44:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:44:46Steven Rinella?

  What, like, this kind of, kind of final, final-ish question here. What is the dog getting out of this? Do you mean like, like, what drives that dog? To wanna catch a person.

• 1:45:03Speaker 06

  Well, it starts from this little toy here. That's a piece of prey object.

• 1:45:07Steven Rinella?

  Let me see it.

• 1:45:08Speaker 06

  It's just a toy. It's just a con with a rope and I use a lot of it. And, uh, you know, this is what we train.

• 1:45:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:45:15Speaker 06

  I mean, it's not only it, but it's the natural instinct. The predatory and, and most dogs have it. Even your little poochy dogs, they have some kind of prey, prey in them, you know, but some of them obviously have a lot more genetically predisposed for all that.

• 1:45:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:31Speaker 06

  You know, that's like the Texan dog, they do everything for this. This is their reward system, which is be a tennis ball or a con, a Jew toy, whatever it might be, but the dog's hooked on this. And, you know, when he bites a man, it's just a bigger version of this.

• 1:45:47Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:45:47Speaker 06

  You know.

• 1:45:48Steven Rinella?

  It's not like he's like, cause yeah, he's got no concept of justice.

• 1:45:52Speaker 06

  No, not at all. I mean, although, um, there is something to, to say about protection of, of the handler and all that. They.

• 1:46:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you think, okay, that's a factor.

• 1:46:02Speaker 06

  I think there is some of that and I'm not so sure how much with every police dog, but for a home dog, let's say there, you're gonna see some of that. Like I saw it in my mouth. Like we talked about, I can't, he's not totally the most trustable dog. He's got a lot of guardiness in him and he's very guarded to the family.

• 1:46:18Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:46:19Speaker 06

  And, uh, once I get somebody to know him, he's totally cool, but I found out the hard way that I, I gotta watch him.

• 1:46:25Steven Rinella?

  So one, so one of your apprehension dogs could develop a professional, like, or, or develop a personal relationship where they are in some part motivated by protecting their handler.

• 1:46:35Speaker 06

  It's a really good question because the way that I preach to guys, and this is, you can tell them all day long, it says, you know, for the most part, this is a working dog and he's not a pet. And the worst thing you can do really, I think, is to treat him totally like a pet.

• 1:46:52Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:46:52Speaker 06

  First of all, you wanna contain that drive, the dog stays in the kennel when it's working. And of course you wanna bring him out and socialize him and all that. But when he becomes too much of a family dog, there's been a lot of times where that's bite you in the butt.

• 1:47:06Speaker 06

  Because a dog will perceive something, you know, maybe a a neighbor will come over and do something or move or make some kind of furtive movement and next thing you know, he gets grabbed by this police dog and the lawsuit happens.

• 1:47:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:19Speaker 06

  And and I've got stories about that. So um you got to be careful about that stuff, you know? I mean, it's safer just to treat him what he is. He's a police dog. He goes in the kennel. He goes to work. Days off, bring him out, run him around, have fun with him, play with him, do some toy work with him, whatever. But he's, his job is to catch bad guys.

• 1:47:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:40Speaker 06

  And some dogs you want.

• 1:47:41Steven Rinella?

  Never like that dog, you don't, the dog's not angry when it goes at somebody.

• 1:47:47Speaker 06

  Oh, that's a good point. So when you are training a dog to bite in the beginning as a puppy, they're biting out of fun. You start off, you know, maybe with a juke toy, you know, dogs like, you know, so big, you know, three months old. You got him on a little juke toy. He's having fun. You're playing with him and he's biting and and that's how you want to bring a dog up. You don't want to do what's called like the old sentry dogs where they treat, teach a dog to bite out of aggression and sometimes even out of defense and fear. When a bite, when a dog is biting out of defense and fear, he's but he's unreliable.

• 1:48:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:48:22Speaker 06

  Because he's not biting out of fun. The aggression will come later. You know, you want to build aggression to where he's biting out of fight, but that's later on. Does that make sense?

• 1:48:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:32Speaker 06

  So you do that too soon and the dog can be can be very unstable.

• 1:48:37Steven Rinella?

  But a a dog that's aggressive as a youngster and biting out of fear and anger, you're not gonna.

• 1:48:41Speaker 06

  It's a toy. He's coming at you. He's biting him. You have him on a leash. You let him run around the toy in his mouth. You grab it again. You play tug. You work on the bite. You work on the grip. You get all those things. Then you develop into a bigger tug. And as a dog gets older and he has his adult teeth, then you bring in the the sleeve. And then you graduate from the sleeve to the bite suit and you bring him along that way. You know, so by the time he's nine months old, he's he's like on his way. You know, he saw he's got a nice bite. He's biting for the right reason. You know, he's not biting out of, you know, I wanted to just kill everybody.

• 1:49:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:14Speaker 06

  It's a fun thing. Tug of war and all that stuff.

• 1:49:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:17Speaker 06

  That makes sense, so.

• 1:49:18Steven Rinella?

  Have you uh, have, did you ever lose a dog? Did you ever have a dog get shot in the line of duty?

• 1:49:23Speaker 06

  Um, I've been around it, yeah.

• 1:49:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:25Speaker 06

  Um, that that uh, quick story. I was a new handler. I wasn't in the street yet. I was still in training and um.

• 1:49:40Speaker 06

  We had a dog, uh, the, the Roddy I was talking about, John Hall. And he was a seasoned handler. He'd been in a lot of shootings, a lot of, a very violent time back then. We had a, uh, it was a traffic stop by two motor cops that pulled two Hispanics over and he's gonna give them a ticket, but he had no idea they just robbed a bank.

• 1:50:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:50:02Speaker 06

  Or a store. They robbed a store. So they're thinking shit, you know, he, they came out of the car, shots fired, pursue him, help call, and they bail out into a perimeter in West LA, which is a really high-end area of LA, and canines called. So we're all, the whole unit's en route. We're, you know, back then we didn't use SWAT. It was, everything was patrol. Um, the unit was a lot newer than it, you know, is now. Um, John Hall shows up with his dog and I think it was another canine. I was on the other block, side of the block, searching. And while we're about halfway in, maybe an hour into it, I hear the shots fired go off and the help call comes out and I can hear the shooting

• 1:50:43Speaker 06

  going on. And what happened was, he went in there, um, and there was a sergeant, a canine sergeant, Mark Mooreing, was on his search team as his backup with a couple of patrol cops. The dog entered the garage and then he was ambushed right away. The dog is on the bite, he's already shot in the neck, the dog is, but he's still taking care of business. And now John's having a gunfight with the second suspect and he gets hit in the hand, transitions to his other hand and ends up taking down the suspect. And then Mark Mooreing shot one of them too. And then Liberty was still on the bite, finally released and just bled out right there.

• 1:51:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, good.

• 1:51:23Speaker 06

  So she, she died. And that dog, it was really sad because he raised that dog for a pup. It was one of the dogs he raised from a good breeder.

• 1:51:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Speaker 06

  He trained all, you know, did all the training. Um, we've had dogs, uh, stabbed. We had a dog, a really nice dog, apprehend somebody in a bunch of, inside of a building and the guy pulled out a knife and stabbed him.

• 1:51:44Steven Rinella?

  Killed it?

• 1:51:45Speaker 06

  Killed him. Uh, there was another one. We ended up actually changing policy on this one. Uh, Sal Abadaka had a dog, uh, Newton Division, and very sad too. He had a really good dog, Marco. This dog was a nice dog, a lot of apprehensions, been in gunfights with him. And they had a guy under the crawl space and then he was wanted for like a burglary or something like a low grade felon. He wouldn't come out. And this was, this is when we changed our tactics, you know? So we sent his dog under the house. Well, the guy was ready for it and he wrapped himself with an army jacket. He took the bite. He had a screwdriver and he shanked him behind his head several times and Sal heard the whining. Dog came off the bite. He came out and then

• 1:52:28Speaker 06

  he's in his arms like, you know, laying there. It was kind of neat because the airship, they would never do this today. The airship, now this is a, you know, a rough area of Newton Division residential area. I think it was like, uh,

• 1:52:44Speaker 06

  Gage and it was a 50th and some street Broadway or something. The airship landed in the middle of the street, picked the dog up and flew him to the vet in West LA.

• 1:52:56Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:52:57Speaker 06

  Pretty badass.

• 1:52:58Steven Rinella?

  Did that dog live?

• 1:53:00Speaker 06

  No, he died.

• 1:53:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:53:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, we, we all showed up at the vet and Sal's in tears, you know, and Sal's a hardcore guy and he's crying.

• 1:53:07Steven Rinella?

  But they get close, the guys get close to the dogs, man?

• 1:53:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, I cried like a baby when my dog passed away at home. He got bloat and, uh, and my two boys with me and I'm like, Jesus, I'm losing my shit. So, yeah.

• 1:53:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So what's your business now, man?

• 1:53:22Speaker 06

  So I do, um, I do a lot of, you know, I started my business in like in 2010 and basically we were getting, even before I started my business, we would get called to help other agencies do training.

• 1:53:35Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:53:35Speaker 06

  It would be on duty stuff. It was just kind of mundane tactics and stuff like that. But then I noticed as I was training, um, I couldn't do, when I started my business, I wanted to offer advanced tactical training. That was kind of my thing. But I, I soon found out that I couldn't because I started in 2010 because most departments weren't doing anything what we were doing. They weren't doing off lead work. They weren't using the collar like I used it. The collar was more used like a punishment device and not a way to communicate.

• 1:54:05Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:54:06Speaker 06

  Which, and you've probably heard that from other guys, right? Um, in the bird world, you know, not using the collar properly. Causing all kinds of issues. There's a lot of that going on. So I developed an e-collar course, a five day course for units to get the dogs to work off lead and do it the right way.

• 1:54:22Steven Rinella?

  Give them directions from a collar.

• 1:54:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, and just I got to the point where I developed a class over a period of time through some trials and tribulations that I got a really solid class now that I can take 10 guys and get them pretty much going as long as they're certified in the street. So that's primarily what I do, but I also have contracts with a few agencies that I do their maintenance training.

• 1:54:44Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:54:44Speaker 06

  And, uh, but I'm slowing down, you know, I'm pushing 69 now and my wife wants me to not be gone so much.

• 1:54:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You don't deal in dogs. You don't buy and sell dogs.

• 1:54:54Speaker 06

  I have, I don't do that. I have done some patrol classes, but I'm pretty expensive. So it's really not, you know, for, for my time, they can probably do a better job going to a vendor.

• 1:55:07Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:55:07Speaker 06

  And getting their patrol done in a group of guys.

• 1:55:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. What, what's the name of your, well, how do you work? Just underdog roller?

• 1:55:13Speaker 06

  Uh, tactical canine.

• 1:55:14Steven Rinella?

  Tactical canine.

• 1:55:15Speaker 06

  Tactical canine and, uh, yeah, it's going good. It's been a, it's been a great, been great, great career, great job. And I love what I'm doing. So.

• 1:55:26Steven Rinella?

  And you, and just to be clear, you keep a couple of pet dogs around?

• 1:55:28Speaker 06

  And I keep a couple of pet dogs around. Yeah. They're a pain in the butt. But yeah, trying to do a little more traveling now and all that stuff. But, and I got, I brought two other guys on that are going to be doing a lot more work.

• 1:55:40Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:55:40Speaker 06

  So I can field, field more stuff, guys that I trust.

• 1:55:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:44Speaker 06

  That are going to do the same thing I do.

• 1:55:46Steven Rinella?

  You ever think about raising a bird dog?

• 1:55:48Speaker 06

  Uh, no, but I've worked with them. Um, it's pretty interesting. Yeah.

• 1:55:52Steven Rinella?

  I'd, I'd be interested to see if like, I'd, I'd be interested to see if you, you know, if you worked with a bird dog, what the result would be.

• 1:55:59Speaker 06

  Yeah. I think a lot of the concepts are probably, and I've worked with them with the Marines. I, I learned a lot how they worked them. In fact, I.

• 1:56:05Steven Rinella?

  Oh, doing the bomb dogs.

• 1:56:06Speaker 06

  Doing the bomb dogs. And we talked a lot about that. Like, here's a quick story. When I first saw them working in Pendleton, then I did some work in Cap Lejeune. But they were doing, what they were doing is we're teaching a dog to go out and do the left and right. Hand signals commands, dog turn around, sit, cast them left and right. About a hundred fifty, a hundred meters out. And they were using a reward system and the reward system Tritonics used to make. Before it became a Garmin. They used to make a, a bird launcher. Or, yeah, what it would do is it would. It would be, you could hide it. Put the bird in there in a cage. Remotely press it. Bird comes out.

• 1:56:46Steven Rinella?

  You mean a bird bird?

• 1:56:47Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, bird launcher. And for, I guess the bird dog guys were using it. Well, they took that same concept. And they would put a toy in there.

• 1:56:54Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:56:55Speaker 06

  All right. So the bomb odor is over here. That's hidden over here. So the dog were alert, passive alert, because there's a bomb. They would just sit there and wait. And then boom, pay him. Toy goes up in the air to get paid. So that's the marker and all that.

• 1:57:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:09Speaker 06

  I'm watching them do this. I go, well, you know, do you have any other method of paying? I said, is that, is that the marker?

• 1:57:14Steven Rinella?

  You guys call it paying, like giving them a payment.

• 1:57:16Speaker 06

  You're paying them, yeah. Pay the, pay the dog, pay the dog. You know, especially in detection. Pay him, he's on odor. Throw the ball on top of his head.

• 1:57:23Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:57:24Speaker 06

  So he gets the marker. So he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, it works great. I go, well, I see a problem. I said. Your dogs are alerting on the bird launcher. Because of the, because of the picture, right?

• 1:57:36Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:36Speaker 06

  Oh, no, no, they'll, I go, let's do an experiment. I go, put that bird launcher. Thirty yards over here. Or twenty yards away from the bomb, the source. Which is what you want to find. And every one of those fuckers, they went in and they fringed. And they. They, uh, they got the bomb odor, but they left it. And final on the bird launcher.

• 1:57:59Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 1:57:59Speaker 06

  Because they know.

• 1:58:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:01Speaker 06

  So I said, you know, you've got to, you've got to vary everything, right? Now, one way to count, to counter it, which they actually do now. Is if you had like ten bird launchers. And have the bomb odor here. So that. They can't just find one. They, the primary scent is going to be the.

• 1:58:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:19Speaker 06

  The bomb odor. And there's a lot of. A lot of things that guys do where they they mess things up like that.

• 1:58:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:26Speaker 06

  They don't realize that they use one thing to bridge something. But then it costs them.

• 1:58:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:31Speaker 06

  In another way, you know what I mean?

• 1:58:33Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sure, yeah. And you can part of your work is coming in troubleshooting.

• 1:58:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, you can troubleshoot that stuff. Exactly. Sometimes handlers don't even know. I mean, simple little things like marking behavior. I mean. You know, you'll get I see a dog doing a guy doing obedience with a dog. And every time he puts him on a sit. He sits and he jumps up in his face. And I said, well, you want him on a solid down, right? You don't want that to happen. But what he does is what he does is I watched him working them. The dog would sit. And then every time he sits, he pays him with a toy to jump up. And well, that's what he's doing. So stop, get rid of that ball. Too much ball work, too. That's another thing.

• 1:59:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:09Speaker 06

  You can identify things like that. They don't even know. I even told guys when I was working a dog.

• 1:59:16Speaker 06

  Just to drop your ego, I says. Look, I got a problem with this dog. What am I doing? To cause this? And it says, you know, Doug, you're doing X, Y, and Z. Really? I didn't even realize it.

• 1:59:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:27Speaker 06

  So you just got to drop the ego and figure out that, you know. You're doing something innately that you're not even paying attention to that.

• 1:59:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35Speaker 06

  Is causing a bad. A bad reward for the dog or a bad marker.

• 1:59:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:39Speaker 06

  So sometimes it's good for people to evaluate you.

• 1:59:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:42Speaker 06

  Like we're doing a collar work and we have this out here. And, you know. You'll see dogs really quick. It's like in a dark environment. And they'll pick up on it. And they'll get maybe not even get hit with the stimulation, but when you call them off the bite, they're going to the guy holding the collar.

• 1:59:59Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 2:00:00Speaker 06

  Yeah. So then you got to hide it. Or everybody has a collar.

• 2:00:04Steven Rinella?

  They just tune into weird, not weird stuff, it's perceptive, man.

• 2:00:07Speaker 06

  You paint that picture and you got to be careful what picture you're painting. You always got to be aware of that, you know, and a new handler has a hard time because, you know, I mean, I've trained thousands and thousands of dogs and. That's why they hire me because I can see those things right away.

• 2:00:21Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 2:00:21Speaker 06

  And but it wasn't always that way. You know, it just took a lot of experience.

• 2:00:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's good.

• 2:00:27Steven Rinella?

  Well, Doug Roller, thanks for coming on the show, man.

• 2:00:29Speaker 06

  A pleasure. Thank you for having me. And thank you all the people I know out there.

• 2:00:33Steven Rinella?

  Well, I bet you're gonna get some emails, people wondering, uh, gonna ask you a bunch of dog questions, man.

• 2:00:38Speaker 06

  Well, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure meeting you and especially a shout out to Task Force Heroes.

• 2:00:43Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 2:00:44Speaker 06

  That's how we met.

• 2:00:44Steven Rinella?

  Shane Yates, yeah. Well, Task Force Heroes, Shane Yates.

• 2:00:48Speaker 06

  Shane Yates does a great job. And, you know, my buddy JD, that got me to go. God bless you.

• 2:00:55Steven Rinella?

  Thanks for coming on, man.

• 2:00:56Speaker 06

  All right. Thank you.

• 2:01:24Steven Rinella?

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