Heritage K9 LLC is a professional dog training business for both working and pet dogs.
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Heritage K9 LLC Owner and Head Trainer Sonja Heritage has been heavily involved in FEMA Canine Disaster Search for over 20 years now. She recently resigned as Head Trainer for the Search Dog Foundation, after six years, to train dogs on her own that meet her high expectations. While at SDF, she used her extensive deployment history to design challenging and realistic rubble, building and training props not found anywhere on the West coast. She also designed and implemented a highly successful canine training program.
Previous to SDF, she was a member of the elite Virginia Task Force One in Fairfax VA, one of only two international task forces in the USA. Sonja has been on many deployments including the U.S. Embassy Bombing in Nairobi, earthquakes in Turkey, Taiwan, and Haiti as well as The Pentagon on 9/11, several major hurricanes including Katrina, the recovery of the Space Shuttle Columbia Crew and the Montecito Mudslide. She has been a canine search asset for DC Metropolitan Police, Maryland State Police, NCIS Norfolk, Charles County PD, Arlington PD, Alexandria PD, Baltimore County PD and many other agencies.
Sonja is FEMA Certified, currently on CA -TF6 and has trained many (over 60) operational dogs in the field of FEMA/SUSAR disaster search, both live-find and human remains. She is focusing on bringing task forces and disaster search handlers highly trained search dogs as well as providing very dependable allergy alert dogs for anyone who has a life threatening allergy. Sonja is a FEMA instructor, evaluator, handler and trainer as well as a judge for the National Association of Canine Scent Work (NACSW).
Our disaster search dogs are screened to the FEMA standard, have high hunt drive, solid training methodology and enjoy their work! We have four tiers of training available for our disaster dogs: Certification ready with Sonja, Foundation Skill Assessment ready with our staff, started on foundation skills or we can find you a raw but talented FEMA search Candidate and you can do all the work. Of course we will work with you and your new dog to assure a good transition and also offer continued training options no matter where you live. Just let us know what you need.
