Ardent K9 Training LLC

04/24/2024

Happy Birthday Jason!

We’re thankful and proud of all that you do every day! What an amazing year you had. Wishing you more adventures and growth in this next one!

🎂🐾🏜️🏔️

04/22/2024

Join us in welcoming miss Lucille Rose (Lucy 🎀) to the pack! 🐾

Swipe to see her grow and change so much already!

Chosen as our trailing dog, we are excited to experience many adventures both in our family and business.

03/29/2024

We had a great turn out yesterday at our first multi-agency training involving detection law enforcement and search and rescue handlers. All teams had a wide range of technical indoor searches and the opportunity to work on scent wheels and other protocol training tools. We look forward to working with these outstanding handlers again in the future!

We would like to give recognition and express our gratitude to Verde Valley Christian Church for allowing us to use their property for training multiple teams over the last few years.

03/23/2024

Congratulations to team Pez and her handler Naomi with Verde Search and Rescue! 🎉

This K9 team has completed their NASAR K9 Trailing Certification. It’s been a grueling 7 months preparing for this certification to provide the unit a Man Trailing team. Through this process, many hours of blood, sweat, and tears have been left behind on the mountains of Northern Arizona and the Verde Valley.

As alway, the biggest kudos and gratitude goes to our support teams that sit out on these trails providing quality, real life simulated scenarios. Without all our volunteers, we would have no dog teams.

It sure takes a village to train a trailing team.

Well done! 🐾🥾

03/20/2024

A huge thank you to Verde Search and Rescue-VSAR’s Jennifer and K9 Ivy for presenting the Hug-A-Tree program at our facility with local homeschool children.

Our community has many families that love to experience the outdoors and today was a wonderful opportunity to provide our children with the know how in the event they get separated from their family or group.

They learned a lot about survival tips like not running off trail and to stay put (hence, “hug a tree”), how search and rescue teams use information like tracking our shoe prints, and the awesome use of the canine nose to help.

The children loved the demonstrations and especially getting to pet K9 Ivy! 🐾

03/14/2024

Happy K9 Veterans Day!

What better way to pay tribute to past and present working dogs than to get soaked in freezing rain this morning and finish the day with urban trailing.

Great work to all the teams that participated today. And a thank you to all our veteran working K9s and K9 teams!!

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In the photo is K9 Dory and her handler. She is a certified Man Trailing K9 and is with Tonto Rim Search and Rescue. If you live in the Verde Valley, be sure to check out the Veterans Memorial Park located in Cottonwood, Arizona!

01/26/2024

Wednesday was our first official Search and Rescue Flanker Training class for non K9 handlers.

I want to thank all the volunteers from Verde Search and Rescue that attended the training. I really enjoyed this opportunity and appreciated those who showed up! It was a 3 hour classroom session that included field experience that each flanker will participated in.

Topics covered:
-Odor and Scent Theory
-Handler Terminology
-Team Formations
-Search Strategies
-Integration of Drones and a
Additional Resources
-K9 Deployment Safety
-K9 Heat Illness Prevention

If you’re a member of an Arizona SAR team and would like to have your k9 team and flankers participate in this type of training, I would like to offer this presentation to your unit at no cost. I believe one of the missing elements to a successful SAR K-9 unit is having a knowledgeable support element that incorporates basic skills and knowledge that best supports the K9 teams on a mission.

Message us and we will discuss details. This offer is only open for the first few teams that sign up!

01/09/2024

We are excited to announce that we’re opening up a weekly sport detection nose work class!

If you have a dog or puppy that needs mental stimulation or if you’re a handler looking for extra foundational work and skill building, this class is for you!

Designed for both beginners and experienced pet dog owners, the topics that will be covered in this ongoing course, include:

-Classical and operant conditioning
-Marker training
-Proper handling and storing of training aids
-Lead handling
-Imprinting and conditioning target odors
-Handler terminology
-Odor and scent theory

Start date is Monday, February 5, 2024. The course will continue every Monday from 3-5pm with a cost per month of $200.00 per dog and handler team.

Spots are limited!! A small class size will allow each dog sufficient training time during class.

We will be taking deposits for the class, so please contact us and we will hold your spot.

12/25/2023

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our family to yours’!! 🎄 🐾 ✨

12/19/2023

Nice job Sava!🐕🎉🇺🇸🐾

We spend a lot of time in the wilderness working on building a foundation to the trailing game for the dog. For the handler, we use the wilderness to teach them critical lead handling skills and most importantly, how to read their dog and the environment.

This makes for a seamless transition into urban trailing. During the wilderness phase, we periodically work in small urban problems to identify any issues that may need to be addressed outside of the training discipline.

12/17/2023

It’s always a pleasure to have our son Joseph join us every now and then to assist with training dogs. Joseph laid a nice short urban trail for this team.

His favorite part of assisting in training is having a walkie talkie and using it every step of the way!

12/12/2023

No available spot openings! 🚨

We’re excited for another great training weekend in February. 🥾 🐾

11/16/2023

How cute is Remi with her tug at 12 weeks old?!

Remi is currently in our detection program pipeline. And play is a corner stone with any working dog. Almost every interaction is a play or work session with this little puppy.

We get asked all the time how young can you start working a puppy. The short answer is that the moment you bring your puppy home, you have begun training it. This is why it’s so important to get started on the right foot early on. We offer in-home training classes to help new dog owners with developing their puppy all in the comfort of their home.

Things we cover for puppies:
*Marker training
*Behavior shaping
*Potty training
*Puppy proofing your yard and home
*Crate training
*Establishing a routine

11/07/2023

📢 GET READY!

It’s time to sign up for Ardent K9’s second Basic Trailing Seminar! Set to take place February 9-11, 2024.

Located in Cottonwood and the surrounding areas, you’ll hike through some wonderful Arizonan landscapes!

To ensure quality instruction and participation, slots are limited and geared toward law enforcement and SAR handlers. Please reach out with eligibility concerns.

Day 1: half classroom lecture and half in the field
Days 2-3: ALL field training

We are excited to offer this class again! Everyone left the first seminar with increased knowledge and lots of hands on experience. The following topics that will be covered include but not limited to odor and scent theory, handler terminology, marker training and learning theory. We are also including additional materials for team integration and the use of different formations in training alongside your trailing K9 team.

Bring your boots, because there will be plenty of trail running for all!

🥾🌵🪨

10/26/2023

We are so proud of these two!

They started their journey less than 1.5 years ago. And they’re doing great things.

The Verde SAR K9 team is a disciplined group that sets high standards of training for both dog and handler. The right selection and pairing of dog and handler builds an outfit like this.

I’m truly blessed to witness their successes in their unit as their trainer.

VSAR search dog IVY and handler Jennifer Brehler.

Finding missing people is hard. This duo are volunteers for VSAR, Search Dog team. They train twice a week with Ardent K9 in Yavapai County to develop Ivy’s search nose. Her specialty is human remains. They have recently had successful searches in our county. An accomplishment that is a sad, but a necessary closure for the families involved.

https://www.ycsoaf.org/

09/28/2023

Thank you Chief Allen Muma with Jerome Police Department for joining in on our training. We had the opportunity to work with drones and thermal capabilities integrating them with our K-9 trailing teams.

By integrating the drone into the trailing team, we gain a direction of travel with the K-9 which allows us to view from the operator’s location with the team or from a launch area. This provides enhanced situational awareness to the team on the ground. Remember, just because your agency may have these resources readily available, if your teams are not training together on a regular basis, neither will support one another effectively. Each resource has capabilities and limitations. It’s best to discover all these variables during training so everyone engages and supports each element.

09/19/2023

Wow! What a successful Basic K-9 Trailing Seminar this weekend!

All handlers and auditors completed 30 hours of classroom and field training exercises. We had a nice blended group of handlers and experience levels, so we got to work basic and some advanced problems. On the final day, I was pleased to see handlers utilizing the information they learned over the seminar into practice. At which I moved into an observation role.

We had handlers and auditors from San Bernardino County Fire Department, CARDA (California Rescue Dog Association), Southwest Search Dogs, Verde Search and Rescue K-9 Unit and YCSO Search Dog Unit.

Special thanks to our support team that makes hosting efficient and top notch! Well done to all!






(californiarescuedogassociation)

09/09/2023

My favorite part about puppies is how you can pick them up and carry them around without breaking your back lol!

On a serious note, we like to make a point in practicing the handling of field dogs in the event they get injured or need to be inserted or extracted via a technical rescue team.

09/04/2023

It’s a great feeling when we can go out and help serve the community!

This is Logan’s second live find in his career so far. Logan came to us as a rescue when he was abandoned in a home. When police discovered him, he was severely underweight and was living off of candy and toilet water. As you can see he is living his best life now!

“Jerome PD was called to assist Clarkdale PD with a missing elderly female. We had dogs and drones. The weather restricted our drone deployments, but the dogs didn’t let us down. Jerome PD volunteer Jason Supple had K9 Logan who was lead dog along with two additional K9 resources. Just before dark, K9 Logan alerted and led Supple to the victim who was treated for exposure and dehydration. Verde Valley Fire was able to get their Ranger ATV to the victim’s location to transport her to awaiting Verde Valley Ambulance. Clarkdale PD pulled out all the stops in their effort to find this person, and due to the experience, training and professional abilities of all involved this incident ended positively. On scene were Clarkdale PD, Jerome PD, Yavapai County SAR, YCSO, Verde Valley Ambulance and some citizen volunteers. Job well done, and special recognition to Jerome K9 Logan and volunteer Jason Supple . -Chief Allen Muma”

Great job to all involved!

08/30/2023

Had an early start to trailing today. Got some water too!

08/25/2023

I really enjoy the friendships and camaraderie working with my unit training teams. We all have the same goal and that’s to train and develop strong K9’s to deploy at a moment’s notice to assist the public within our community.

If you have a SAR K-9 or a police detection team that needs the guidance from a trainer to maintain team readiness, please send us a message and we can see how we can assist your unit. We are based out of Northern Arizona. I also can travel to your unit with all the necessary equipment.

08/19/2023

I am very thankful for the opportunity to have attended HITS this week in Scottsdale.

I am even more excited by how many of our handlers dedicated themselves in attending both the Smart Dog Training Conference and Handler Instruction & Training Seminar (HITS) bringing home a wealth of knowledge!

All this information will benefit our K9 teams in their conditioning and future deployments.

It was also pretty great catching up with some of my friends, prior instructors, and getting to meet many influential members of the working dog training community and of course hitting up vendors and coming home with up new gear and training equipment!

08/14/2023

Some of our team repping at the Smart Dog Training Conference in Scottsdale, Az this weekend!

Everyone is learning a lot!!

Some others, including myself, are pretty stoked to be attending HITS later this week.

07/30/2023

07/23/2023

Happy Saturday!!

Today is a great day to give a special shout out K-9 Koa with Maricopa County Adult Probations. Koa and her handler are responsible for removing numerous illegal fi****ms off our streets from prohibited possessors. They work hours on the job in addition to all the maintenance training required to maintain operational readiness.

Thank you for your hard work and service to the community!

07/09/2023

🚨🚨

Only a couple of spots left!!

This seminar will establish foundational skills necessary for responding to dire missions. Missions that are more than luck, but of strategy, honesty and trust between handler and k9, and life saving teamwork.

You’ll find motivation, real world deployment scenarios, and challenging landscapes of Northern Arizona.

Jason is ready to train! Will you join him?