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Police K9 Decoy Work and New Course

By Kevin Sheldahl

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Foreword by Ed Frawley

I met Kevin Sheldahl in 1984 at a police K-9 school in Kansas. We have been good friends ever since. Kevin is a retired police K-9 handler. He became a K-9 Instructor and an International Police Dog Judge. Kevin's company K-9 Services runs 6-week police K-9 courses in which police officers learn how to become new K-9 handlers. To date, he has run 70 6-week courses and trained over 1,200 K-9 handlers. I don't know of another dog trainer that has Kevin's experience and knowledge of police service dogs training.

Ed and I have just completed putting together a course to help people who are new to the whole idea of decoying for law enforcement dogs. It addresses the needs of a departmental decoy.

In many departments, there simply is no training and limited resources for K-9 handlers to tap into in regards to training their dogs. Something like 90% of departments have less than 90 officers or deputies. So the handler recruits someone on shift to help them.

This course addresses that need.

Of course, it would be nice if all handlers had a decoy that is versed and experienced in developing dogs from the ground up. This is simply not possible. But, this course should be viewed by many sport helpers as well. There are sport behaviors that are cancerous in a street environment that the sport decoy may be injecting into training without even knowing. Many of these things are addressed in this course.

The behaviors we would like to promote are demonstrated and discussed in this course.

Equipment is presented in a light appropriate for departmental use, the training is presented in terms of practical activities.

The course should be useful for Handlers, new Decoys, and Sport Decoys interested in helping their local programs!

Enroll in Training the Police K9 Decoy today. This is a self-study course that you can learn at your own pace.

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About Author

Kevin Sheldahl

Kevin Sheldahl is a retired Deputy Sheriff who began training with police service dogs in 1982. In his career, he trained K-9 Teams for his department as well as neighboring departments as a Deputy Sheriff. He has experience deploying patrol, detection, SWAT and tracking canines spanning the duration of his career. He is credentialed as a Master Instructor, Certifying Official, and Police Dog Judge. Kevin has participated in numerous dog sports such as Schutzhund/IPO, ring sports, and police sports. Currently, Kevin instructs courses in Basic Patrol & Detection in the Albuquerque Metro Area and teaches advanced course at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, Wisconsin. View his website here.