What to listen for: “You can still support your dog, but you do not have to step in and solve [the problem].” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, sit down with returning guest Bob Deeds to unpack a week of Intentional Handling and Hide Setting, the detection camp the two hosts built years ago and this year expanded to fifteen students running six searches a day! Held on Robin's working farm, the course throws teams (Papillons alongside Malinois, cadaver handlers alongside sport dog pe...

What to listen for: “Barking should be under stimulus control. It only happens when I cue it – or when the dog finds target odor – and nothing else.” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, unpack the reality behind bark alerts in detection work. They challenge the idea that a barking dog is always impressive or useful, and ask the critical question: can we train a bark alert versus should we? Drawing on real-world deployment experience, they explain when bark alerts are tru...

What to listen for: “We are very good at selectively breeding, obviously to drive change in the shape, but not necessarily to drive performance.” Robin and Stacy continue their conversation with Dr. Lindsay Waldrop, a Chapman University fluid dynamicist who secured Navy funding to build the world's largest collection of micro-CT-scanned domestic dog skulls. Dr. Waldrop discusses why skull morphology offers no reliable prediction of scent detection performance. Breed shape, muzzle length, turb...

What to listen for: “We're such dumb visual monkeys. We can't process information any other way except for visuals; whereas the dogs have their brain structured around scent.” Dr. Lindsay Waldrop, a Chapman University fluid dynamicist whose dissertation explored how crabs sniff odor out of water, has spent recent years turning that expertise toward dogs. Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, chat all things scent with her in this episode of K9 Detection Collaborative. Her central argume...

What to listen for: "If you are not doing search and rescue for the right reasons, you need to look in the mirror. Because it is not about you, and it's not about your dog." Today, our hosts, Stacy Barnett and Robin Greubel, have set the dogs aside (mostly!) to talk about something that affects every handler who has ever posted a training video, shown up to a webinar, or scrolled too far down a comment thread. They're calling it the “toxicity tax,” and they've come to argue it's being paid at...

What to listen for: “Everything I knew about my dog that I thought was true a week ago is no longer true. I have to reset my baseline and go, ‘Who are you today?’” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, pick up the conversation with Joy Brenner of K9 Medic. This time, they’re talking about turning everyday crate time into deliberate heat acclimation. Joy explains that many handlers keep cars too cold, creating a dangerous temperature “delta” that leaves dogs physiologically unprepared fo...

What to listen for: “At the end of the day, taking care of our dogs is everyone’s job.” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, talk with Joy Brenner of K9 Medic about looking at canine first aid not just from the perspective of flashy trauma response, but that of the quiet, daily work of truly knowing your dog. Joy, who began in human wilderness and tactical medicine, built K9 Medic to teach handlers, medics, and even surgeons pre-hospital care tailored to real field conditions. High-fid...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, chat about a peculiar kind of self-deception. The kind that costs years of training, thousands of dollars, and sometimes the well-being of both dog and handler. They call it beer goggles: the tendency to see the dog we want rather than the dog standing in front of us. Robin talks about Flash, her Lab who simply doesn't bark. Selectively bred for quiet patience in a hunting blind, Flash is temperamentally ill-suited for the alert-...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, welcome Bob Deeds back to debrief the first-ever chicken workshop hosted at Robin's farm. Bob, drawing on the legacy of Keller and Marian Breland and Bob Bailey, the operant conditioning pioneers behind Animal Behavior Enterprises and the IQ Zoo, explains that the chicken workshop isn't really about chickens at all! White Leghorns, selected for their speed and reactivity, are a crucible for the trainer, forcing observational prec...

What to listen for: "Unless you have a dog who is engaged with you, you can't build that relationship. And you can't get through distractions. It's impossible.” Today, our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, are talking relationships. Specifically, what it actually means to have one with your dog when the pressure is on. They argue that a real relationship isn't Kumbaya, it's the thing that keeps a dog still on a medic's table and calm on a tailgate in Texas! Robin describes bringing her ...