One of the features of “From A Dog’s Eye View” podcast is to bring in experts from my community of Cleveland, Ohio, whose profession it is to work with dogs in different capacities. I will be hosting other professional dog trainers, groomers, vets, breeders, and many more. There is so much involved in caring for a dog and my mission is to bring you the best advice. One of my guests, who will be on several episodes, will be Gary Flynn. Many of you have probably heard me say, “Let me see what my dog trainer friend, Gary, thinks about this issue you are having”. In a separate episode, Gary and I will talk about how we met. I feel that Gary’s extensive experience with dogs merits an episode dedicated to how he got started, so that you can understand why I refer to Gary when I get stuck and can’t quite figure out the proper approach for a certain dog. Gary was exposed to dogs while he was in the military and he always just somehow fell into a position where it wasn't exactly the job that he signed up to do. For example, when he first went to Germany, he was a heavy wheeled vehicle mechanic. Within just a couple weeks of being there, he ended up being the base liaison between his unit and all the subunits, to the local MAN service center in Neckarsulm. Upon returning to the states, he was infantry and a good soldier at Fort Benning. He was on the commanding general staff and worked protocol, which involved taking care of foreign VIPs and heads of state. Since he was such a good soldier, he would be grabbed for certain duties, one of which included working with the Georgia Canine Search and Rescue Team. Search and Rescue was a natural fit for Gary because navigating and staying in the woods was Gary’s comfort zone. That was his job as a light infantry scout. The main person he worked with at Georgia Canine Search and Rescue was Curtis Flatt of River Bend, Georgia. His son, Steve did search and rescue too. Gary and his wife stayed with the Flatts occasionally as he was getting out of the army. His family welcomed them into their home. Everybody in River Bend knows their family because his great uncle was the Flatt of Flatt and Scruggs, who wrote the theme song for the Beverly Hillbillies. That song was frequently played at the many Sunday dinners Gary and his wife had there. With the influence and great teaching from the Flatts, Gary started working with dogs and saw what they could do. For example, he saw a drown victim recovery where the dogs marked the location of the bodies that were partially submerged in the water. He also saw an Alzheimer's patient who had walked away from the residence. They found her just a little scratched up and returned her to her home. Those experiences really made Gary understand the amazing capabilities of dogs and want to explore search and rescue even more. (The picture above is Gary with his Belgian Malinois, Tasha, at Ground Zero on 9/11) The more search and rescue work Gary was involved with, the more it made him realize that initially he was giving all the credit to the dog. One could argue that it probably still belongs there, but the truth is, it's the handler's ability to read their dog, and it's the ability to install a clear reward base that is in forward motivation that the dog will work for. Training a dog to find something is what they do all the time. We ask our dog to go find his ball or go find Mom or Dad. What we are actually doing is shaping a dog to do a particular task. In reference to shaping a dog for search and rescue, you are teaching the dog to actually work for an odor, ignore everything else, ignore the other dogs, the people, the horses, the ATVs, the generators, the 800 other searchers on your area of ground zero. This was the type of shaping Gary loved to do. Gary also discovered while working with these dogs that not every dog was capable of handling that level of stress of working through those distractions. What happens when you start to escalate them and move their drives, they don't remain clear headed. For example, everyone has seen this in your pets at home. Some dogs, as soon as they start to get really excited, they get frantic. They have no behaviors other than the instinct to escape. It’s that fight or flight response. They're bouncing all over the place and they're just very frantic. So, not every dog can do what is asked of them to the same level. Selecting dogs and training dogs specifically for search and rescue, became a passion of Gary’s. When he was honorably discharged from the army, he moved to Vermillion, Ohio. He graduated from Amherst and started working with a gentleman by the name of Benji McPeak. Benji was a retired sheriff's deputy and a Vietnam War veteran and was definitely Gary’s mentor. Benji was the master trainer of the North American Search Dog Network. He was responsible for training the bomb sniffing dogs to work at the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988. Two of the seasoned trainers who Gary worked with were Cliff Lindsey and Joe Clement. Cliff operated out of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and worked with Bloodhounds. Joe was the president of North American Search Dog Network. This type of environment laid a strong foundation for effectively conducting search and rescue missions. Gary was fortunate to land a job working with such a prestigious group of experienced trainers, but being the rookie of the group, he realized he had to do the grunt work. Cleaning kennels. Being optimistic and a hard worker, he learned that cleaning kennels was a very important part of the job. He got his hands on every dog. He learned each dog’s personality and traits. It wasn’t just the motion of cleaning the kennel, letting a dog out for a morning break, and throwing food down. He had to manage each dog. A job that would be unpleasant to a lot of people was actually very beneficial to Gary and helped him gain more knowledge about dog behavior. The dogs that Gary was managing were coming from countries like the Czech Republic. A lot of these dogs had shutzhund titles. Shutzhund is a German word meaning “protection dog'“. It focuses on three different levels of developing dogs for tracking, obedience and protection work. They are also carefully bred to ensure the highest quality of dog. Today, a dog that is imported from Europe with Shutzhund level 3 (the highest level) can cost upwards of $70,000. Some of the dogs in these kennels were BH's, or Begleithund, which means “Basic Handling”. This is a title given to dogs who have been evaluated for their temperament and obedience in many different situations. Working with this caliber of trained dogs propelled Gary into forming OSDA, which stands for Ohio Search Dog Association. They are still in existence today. His main goal was to provide professional search assets to any public service agency that had the sole responsibility for a specific search and rescue mission. Sometimes that would fall under the fire department, sometimes the sheriff’s department. It all depended upon what was going on and who was to grab custody of the mission at hand. Very quickly after forming OSDA, Gary started working dogs doing homicide evidence recoveries for the FBI. He also did work for the SBI unit (Special Bureau of Investigation) under Dennis Gunsch and Micheline Taliano. Within just one month of being in business, Gary was called to the same county three times to go find searchers. Two of those calls were search dog teams. Gary knew he had to formalize OSDA to increase the efficiency of these search teams. His goal was to categorize it as a 501 C3 business, a not for profit charity that functioned as a public service agency. It based its standards primarily off of the NAPWADA and NASDN (North American Search Dog Network) standards. These were already recognized standards. NAPWADA stands for North American Police Work Dog Association. Its main purpose is to assist all law enforcement agencies in the training and certifying of police dogs to adhere to their established standards through continuing education at the local, state and national levels. Determining what was certifiable and strictly following these high standards required a certain level of training. There can be no gray areas. The dog might be able to do a specific task, but not in the manner that is in accordance to these standards. Now it's not a matter of IF the dog did it, it's HOW the dog did it. One of Gary’s proudest and rewarding search and rescue tasks was his first federal deployment at ground zero on 9/11. Three of the four dogs were certified by OSDA! This included Gary’s Belgian Malinois, Tasha, Mike Palumbo’s black lab, Lucas, and Kelly Clark’s German Shepherd, Evil. The fourth handler, Terry Trepanier and his amazing Golden Retriever, Woody, was Gary’s dayshift partner. Just to emphasize again, a lot of dogs would not be able to handle the level of stress and be able to confidently maneuver their environment under control and command with no leash and no collar. A leash and collar can be a death sentence to a disaster dog working under the rubble. Gary’s experience at 9/11 will be a future episode you won’t want to miss! (Gary and Tasha - 3rd from the left with his team at Ground Zero) As Gary was becoming more in demand and experienced at search and rescue work, he noticed a transition in training the dogs. The dogs he started off working professionally, were hard dogs, kennel dogs, that were worked as inventory. A lot of them had never been underfoot in someone’s home. They had Schutzhund titles, did bite work, searched for articles, but not much odor training and definitely not a family pet. The transition occurred when Gary started training dogs to follow an odor with a clear reward base system to get and keep them motivated. Being the leader that the dog requires which involv
