Testimonials
First off, I want to say THANK YOU to George for all the knowledge and training on using clear communication and the E-collar he shared with me and another handler from my unit. Historically the E-collar in the “Police K9” world was the bigger stick and would be brought out to resolve issues in so called problem dogs. But the problems these dogs were having weren’t caused by their so called “hard-headedness” but more than likely the lack of “clear communication” from us handlers to our dogs. How frustrating is it for us to try and learn something when the instructor isn’t communicating their information to us in a way we can understand it? The typical police officer would write this type of instructor off in a matter of minutes. Dogs aren’t able to write us off because we control their lives. When the dog is suffering from lack of understanding of what is being taught we get mad/frustrated and start using compulsion more and more through various means. George showed us the correct way on how to use the E-collar, mark good and bad behavior and give meaningful rewards and corrections when training our police dogs. My dog responded so well to this training, we will be implementing it throughout our entire K9 Unit. I was able to lower the settings of my E-collar to a level 2 for “notify/mark” and a level 9 for “jump/correct” (levels of my E-collar go from 1-50). Please know I couldn’t feel either of these levels when testing the collar on myself, but my police dog could. My police dog performed better in all areas when attending this seminar. This is by far the best seminar in the use of E-collar and clear communication I have attended throughout the country. If you want to take your canine training to the next level, please get to one of George Hickox’s seminars. Our police dogs give us everything they have including their own lives if needed, we owe it to them! Please feel free to contact me with any questions about the training experience I had while attending George’s course.
Jay Fleckenstein
K9 Sergeant for an Iowa Police Department