K9 Development

K9 Development K9 Development provides a full line of professional services designed to help make man’s best frie
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We are a full service dog training business located in Tracy, California. We were established in 1989 and have been successfully helping dog owners ever since. Our primary objective and basic philosophy is to help owners maintain a balanced relationship with their dog. We can help you in every step you take from training your current dog to choosing a new companion. We use a wide variety of method

s and excel at working with the client's individual needs. From Basic Obedience (loose leash walking, sit, down, stay, come, basic manors, relationship building and problem solving) to top level Performance ( AKC obedience, Tracking, Schutzhund, and Conformation) or Working Dogs ( Police k9, Search and Rescue, Service Dogs, and Hunting Dogs). We have been successfully established in the industry of dog training for well over 20 years.

Right?
10/25/2024

Right?

10/05/2024

And sometimes........................ Dogs, got to love them!

Send a message to learn more

09/27/2024

Think about it.................

This flyer caught my eye.  I instantly recognized it.  The read is a bit long but very cool, if that is?  You're a dog g...
09/05/2024

This flyer caught my eye. I instantly recognized it. The read is a bit long but very cool, if that is? You're a dog geek like me!

WHO INVENTED ANIMAL TRAINING?

Who invented animal training?

The question is silly on its face. Animal training is older than the hills. For certain, it is as old as the dog.

That said, most of what we call animal training today is what the fancy talkers call "operant conditioning," a term first coined by psychologist B.F. Skinner in the early 1930s in an effort to dress up an even older concept -- learning from consequences.

B.F. Skinner did not invent operant conditioning any more than Newton invented gravity.

That said, Skinner DID codify the basic principals of operant conditioning, and he did invent mechanical-based operant conditioning, i.e. the "Skinner box" a mechanical device that awarded animals with food for pulling levers, pecking at spots, and doing other slightly more complicated learned behaviors. (Note: Skinner’s box was a rip-off of Thorndyke’s cat box”.)

Perhaps just as importantly, B.F. Skinner brought into the world of operant conditioning several people who helped shape the way we train animals today.

In fact, I do not think it is too much to say that two of his students -- Marian Ruth Kruse and Keller Breland -- invented modern animal training.

The story begins in the very early 1930s when B. F. Skinner was a researcher at Harvard working on something he called an "operant conditioning chamber" -- a device which measured the response of animals to stimulus. This later became the first "Skinner box" or animal teaching machine.

In 1936, Skinner left Harvard to teach at the University of Minnesota, where he began expanding on his earlier work.

In 1938, he took on his second student assistant, a young 18-year old girl by the name of Marian Ruth Kruse.

In 1940, Skinner added Keller Breland to his team of graduate student assistants.

Keller Breland and Marian Rught Kruse fell in love, and in 1941 they were married.

Marian and Keller Breland learned the basics of operant conditioning from B.F. Skinner, and helped him to train thousands of rats and pigeons used in various experiments and projects.

One particularly important project began in 1941, when Skinner and his assistants were hired by the U.S. Navy to see if pigeons could be trained to guide bombs to their targets.

While pigeon-guided bombs never made it to the battle field, the operant conditioning techniques learned during this period of stable Navy funding suggested to Mariann and Keller Breland a possible business opportunity.

Was there a market for trained animals? They thought there might be.

When, in 1945, B.F. Skinner was lured away from Minnesota to teach at the University of Indiana, the Brelands decided to see if they could make a go of it on their own as commercial animal trainers and contract researchers and consultants.

It seemed an unlikely way to make a fortune.

Skinner had mostly trained rats and pigeons. If the Brelands were to support themselves as animal trainers, however, they would have to train higher animals than that!

Yes, the basic elements of operant conditioning had been used, off and on, and in a largely chaotic way, to train many species around the world over a thousand years. But most of this real-world experience was now lost to time and was little more than rumor or anecdote.

Could the basics of rat and pigeon training be scaled up and used across a wide variety of species? And if it could, would there be a market for such a thing? Would it be a large enough market to put food on the table, and gas in the car?

No one knew, least of all the Brelands. They took the plunge, nonetheless, buying a small farm in Mound, Minnesota and forming a company they called Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE).

ABE's goals were three-fold and reflected their slightly tenuous business plan: to produce trained animals in profusion for an unknown commercial market, to engage in contract research if they could find anyone willing to underwrite that, and to consult on operant conditioning if they could find anyone willing to pay for their advice.

To say bravery was involved in this economic venture is an understatement. To those on the outside, including family and friends, it seemed sheer madness.

The Brelands had a secret, however: they were pretty good animal trainers, and they also had a growing body of evidence that suggested operant conditioning was a very robust training methodology.

In 1943, the Brelands, working with B.F. Skinner, had discovered the power of shaping behaviors by using a simple hand-held food-delivery switch. Now, instead of being rewarded for actually completeting the task, an animal could be rewarding for "approximating" the task -- a behavior that could be "shaped," by degrees, to the actual desired behavior.

A simple hand-held food delivery switch was, in effect, the first massive leap forward beyond the Skinner Box.

By 1945, the Brelands had gone even further. The mechanical construction of Skinner boxes had led the Brelands to a new idea; that small noises, such as those produced by the mechanical apparatus inside a Skinner box, or the noise made by a hand-held switch, might be an important part of the training process itself.

Experimenting with this idea, Keller and Marian Breland discovered that an acoustic secondary enforcer, such as a click or whistle, could communicate to an animal what precise action was being done that was actually resulting in a food reward.

Keller and Marian called this a "bridging stimulus," and found it dramatically sped up animal training by increasing the amount of information going to an animal. Most importantly of all, it seemed to work well with all animals. Important stuff!

In 1946, Animal Behavior Enterprise's got its first animal training contract with General Mills. The assignment was to train farm animals to appear in feed advertisements.

This first successful contract led to more contracts, first for in-store promotional animals, and then for animals to be used in movies, circuses, museums, and zoos.

In addition to providing trained animals, the Brelands were also asked to train workers and producers in how to work with those animals when they were sent on location.

From the beginning, "training the trainers" became an adjunct business to providing the trained animals themselves.

While the Brelands had worked almost exclusively with rats, pigeons and chickens when employed by Skinner, they now found themselves training everything: dogs, cats, pigs, cattle, chickens, goats, sheep, raccoons, rabbits, ducks, parrots, ravens, deer, and monkeys.

At one point, the Brelands had more than 1,000 animals under training at a single time. Over the course of a lifetime, scores of thousands of animals, representing more than 140 species, were trained by the Brelands.

Of course, it did not take too long for the Brelands to outgrow their small Minnesota farm, and it took even less time for them to realize that long, cold Minnesota winters were not too conducive to animal training outside of a laboratory setting.

In 1951 the Brelands moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, a central location well-served by the railroads, where land was cheap and the weather was not too bad.

There they continued to train animals and animal trainers, and they also started a cash-concern they called the "IQ Zoo" which featured various animals doing amusing tricks, from basketball-playing raccoons and drum-playing ducks, to a printing press operated by reindeer and a chicken that would take on all comers in games of tick-tack-toe.

Though Keller and Marian Breland were equals at ABE, their division of labor suited their personalities and the flavor of the times.

Keller was the public face who traveled and did most of the show presentations and who promoted and expanded on the theory, while Marian was the engineer who made sure everything ran like a clock and actually operationalized everything at the level of fur, fin and feather.

Throughout the 1950s and 60's business was booming, with the Brelands signing contracts with Marineland of Florida, Parrot Jungle, and Six Flags.

In 1955, the Brelands produced the first trained dolphin show at Marine Studios in St. Augustine, Florida, and in 1957 they produced the first trained-whale shows at Marine Studios in Florida, and Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes, California.

The work of the Brelands did not go unnoticed. Not only did the Brelands train other animal trainers who went on to places like Busch Gardens and Disney World, and Sea World, but they were also contracted with by the U.S. Navy to see if dolphins could be trained to do surveillance and salvage work.

It was during this time, that Keller and Marian Breland met Bob Bailey, who was the first Director of Training for the U. S. Navy Marine Mammal Program.

In 1965, Keller Breland died of a heart attack, leaving Marian with three semi-grown children, and Bob Bailey stepped up as as General Manager of ABE.

Marian and Bob continued on with ABE, signing a contract with the U.S. Navy to manage their Marine Mammal Facility in Key West, Florida from 1967 to 1969.

Along the way love blossomed between Bob Bailey and Marian Breland, and they married in 1976, adding Bob's six young children (three sets of twins!) to the now rapidly growing family.

In the 1980s, the Baileys began to phase out the commercial subdivisions of Animal Behavior Enterprises in order to simplify their life and devote more time to teaching. After a 1989 fire destroyed a lifetime of research, including thousands of hours of historical film, the Baileys decided to close ABE for good.

Marian Breland Bailey died on September 25, 2001, in Hot Springs Arkansas, and her ashes were taken to Bush Key, seventy miles west of Key West, Florida, where she had spent so much time training dolphins.

Bob Bailey continues to train teachers in the basics of operant conditioning, and his own contribution to animal and human training will be featured in a later post.

Suffice it to say that if you have heard of clicker training, it's due in no small part to Bob Bailey, whether you know that or not!

And if you have ever trained an animal in the last 40 years, you have stood on the shoulders of Marian and Keller Breland and Bob Bailey, whether you know that or not.

When the history of animal training is written let it be said that these three remarkable individuals invented or perfected so much of what we take for granted today.

Truth..............
08/30/2024

Truth..............

It all comes down to this: If it’s important to you that your dog understands both what *to* do and what *not* to do, then you can't ignore the balance between reinforcement and punishment."

Sorry, but I had to bask in this a little longer......
08/20/2024

Sorry, but I had to bask in this a little longer......

Big news! CARDA trailing K9 Lance and his handler Jess recently located a missing woman on a search in Tuolumne County. With the help of this fantastic team and the support of many agencies from across the state, the woman was safely located two days after she went missing and reunited with her family.

This is why we do what we do 🧡 Well done, K9 Lance and Jess.

"GET SOME!!!!! Lance and Jess!!!!!!"  Proud trainer moment!  2 walk-up finds with 2 different trailing teams in 2 days.....
08/17/2024

"GET SOME!!!!! Lance and Jess!!!!!!" Proud trainer moment! 2 walk-up finds with 2 different trailing teams in 2 days............. Life is good!

𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐲 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐞 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐮𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐧𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐲

Members of our Search and Rescue Team went to Lyon’s Lake in Tuolumne County to assist in the search for a missing 64-year-old woman. The woman was last seen walking her dog the morning of Tuesday, August 13th. With the help of multiple agencies, she was found alive on Thursday, August 15th.

We want to recognize a member of our Search and Rescue Team, Jess Baker and his K9 Lance who ultimately located the missing woman alive. Search and rescue operations take a team to execute, we are thankful for the Placer County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue members who are dedicated to helping in these types of situations.

Our thoughts and best wishes are with the family now that they’ve been reunited ❤️

Look who got one today!  Super proud of you guys!
08/15/2024

Look who got one today! Super proud of you guys!

This morning around 4:15 AM, it was learned that an 85-year-old woman with dementia went missing in Santa Rosa. K9 Dolly and her handler, Officer Sullivan responded to the area and met with Santa Rosa Police Officers. Dolly used her keen sense of smell to lead her handler to where the woman was. A big shout out to Santa Rosa Police and K9 Dolly for their outstanding efforts!

Beat the heat, stay alive!
07/13/2024

Beat the heat, stay alive!

It’s hard to express how happy we are with how many people are on board with the conceot of rapid cooling for canine heat injury. 12 years ago when we published our systematic review “Rethinling Heat injury in the SOF (Special Operations Forces) Canine” where we concluded there was no scientific evidence to support that slow cooling was better than rapid cooling, and that there was no scientific evidence that cold or ice water cooling was detrimental to chances of survival, we were attacked with an angry mob of villagers with pitchforks and torches (okay, not really, but that’s what it felt like. ) After more research by multiple universities and private entities, now in the working dog world rapid cooling is accepted and practiced as the standard. It’s saving dog’s lives! Thanks to all of the working dog professionals who did the follow-on research that was needed in this topic. More research is still needed, but we’re off to a good start.

His was the first dog training book I read back in 1986.
07/12/2024

His was the first dog training book I read back in 1986.

It's that time of year once again!  Yep, when it gets hot, it's time for K9 Swim lessons!  25 seasons and it never gets ...
07/03/2024

It's that time of year once again! Yep, when it gets hot, it's time for K9 Swim lessons! 25 seasons and it never gets old...... Good times ahead! Most dogs it's not about the actual swimming, it's more about building confidence in and around the pool. It's creating possibilities and changing perspectives. If you have a want, K9 Development can help show you a way............

06/29/2024

Another video from a few weeks ago at "Detection School"", this one is a "first person perspective" (love my Gopro/AKA Judge Judy). It was fun working with Natalie Morris and Cameron Ford. Good times!

Truth....
06/24/2024

Truth....

I love Dogs . . . . . . .

06/21/2024

My friend recorded this for me while at Detection School last week. Thanks Tina! We had a ton of people watching us, it was single blind ( I didn't know where the odor was) and videos and mentors. Ha, no pressure!

OK, life on the road is good until....................  You end up with "Roller" in your rear view mirror!
06/21/2024

OK, life on the road is good until.................... You end up with "Roller" in your rear view mirror!

Sorry, I've been M.I.A of late.  Busy doing it so not much time to post about it.  What I can say is there is always a l...
06/21/2024

Sorry, I've been M.I.A of late. Busy doing it so not much time to post about it. What I can say is there is always a lot going on. Life is good when you get to train lots and lots of dogs! Also me and Mouse have been on the road a bunch too. Dang I love my girl, especially when she makes me look good! (and even when she doesn't, she's still my girl and odds are it's my fault anyhow.) Life is so much better with a dog in it.

06/11/2024

The good side of humanity. Makes me smile!

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26654 Hansen Road
Tracy, CA
95377

Opening Hours

Tuesday 8am - 7pm
Wednesday 8am - 7pm
Thursday 8am - 7pm
Friday 8am - 7pm
Saturday 8am - 7pm

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