Get to college. Please join me in thanking amy binder for this presentation. [applause] visit booktv. Org to watch any of the programs you see here online. Type the offer or book title on the search bar on the upper left of the page and click search. You can share anything you see on booktv. Org easily by clicking share on the upper left of the page and selecting the format. Booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. Booktv. Org. Next 1 7 annual savannah book festival in savannah, ga. Ritland trident k9 warriors my tale from the Training Ground to the battlefield with elite navy seal canines. This is about 45 minutes. [applause] good morning. First of all, i would like to thank the savannah book festival for having me here. It is a marvelous thing and gives a lot of doctors access to the venues like this to be able to talk about what they do and what they are passionate about so first and foremost would like to thank them for bringing me here. I would like to thank everybody that is sitting about here to taking interest in the book that i wrote. The message i like to convey, the importance of military working dogs and Different Missions they are doing, things theyre capable of without your support so thank you for coming and supporting me and the book. In my background as far as i got involved, especially as it relates to military working dogs. I grew up in northern iowa. There is not a lot to do other than farm, wrestle and hunt. It was kind of i wouldnt say necessarily a destiny as opposed to picking one of the few things to do in iowa but i got involved in bird dogs early on. A lot of my friends had them. We had a black lab growing up named bud, kind of my buddy and the gateway into the dog world as it were. At a very early age i recognized and appreciated the different genetic traits all these dogs possess in terms of their ability to use their nose, their steadfastness in terms of what they were willing to go through from an environmental standpoint, rushing quote through, bursting through thickets of brush and so on, tough dogs that were motivated to do the type of work we were asking them to do. I noticed even as a young child, the dogs ability to use their nose. They would instinctual use the wind to their advantage and find things that for me was very surprising that they were able to do it. It was foreshadowing in terms of what we do now and where it led me ultimately and the fascination for their ability to use their nose is something frankly is why they are so valuable from a military standpoint. I didnt realize that at that age. It was just cool to see a dog in the dead of winter could snake back and forth and buried his nose 12 inches in the snow and find a ketchup packets that had been opened six weeks earlier. To me it was just need to see Something Like that and the applications that i got involved with later on were much more serious than catch up. I spent a number of years with friends, their dads who trained their dogs. The dog would go out and we would go the core bird hunting and i always marvel that a dogs ability to do what they did. Once i graduated high school i joined the navy at 17, right out of high school as soon as i graduated i went to boot camp. Six months after boot camp after my initial School Training i went to basic underwater demolitions field training. I completedand after that went through more specialized training, advanced training until you get to an actual seal team, seal team 3, i was there for a number of years while i was there and prior to that i got into catch dogs, dogs hunting dogs that cetera, pit bulls which i talk about in the book a little bit and i found myself just marveling at the physical characteristics dogs possessed, in a similar way to the bird dogs but now there is an added element, true forward natural aggression these dogs possess toward other animals and i found myself very impressed by their tenacity and their will to succeed, there will to win and their ability to take down animals two, three, four times verisign is. At that point i got into that Animal Husbandry aspect of dogs, i paid close attention to nutrition and conditioning from a veterinarian aspect. I learned a lot in terms of catching dogs up after they get injured in hunts, etc. I learned just about every aspect of raising dogs from an Animal Husbandry standpoint the way dairy farmer would. And into the genetic theory of everything and blood lines and how they affect different aspects of a Breeding Program and why it is important to Pay Attention and getting really into the weeds as far as breathing is concerned. After that, i got more involved in terms of every aspect of managing dogs and i had a number of dogs which i bred and raised and trained for hunting and working purposes. In light iraq deployment in 2003 there was a marine detachment that had a single purpose expression dog and what he did was essentials lee alerted gone a cave complex, a small doorway was not much bigger than one person could get through at a time. A group of marines were ready to go inside and clear it and their dog was snaking back and forth, all this change in behavior, the dog was into his target odor, and immediately he sat down indicating there was explosive odor back there. There was a clump of grenades attached to a booby trap inside the doorway. For me, without question, that was my light switch moment in terms of really realizing the potential that these dogs had and the rules that they were able to play in augmenting mankind overseas in the battlefield. From that date forward i was starved for knowledge in terms of working dogs as it relates to military and police type of work. I found it very fitting and very powerful, one of the things i mentioned early on in the book, from the earliest recorded times of battle there is one constant in terms of what we still use even today. We have billions if not trillions of dollars invested in smart bombs and drones and laserguided everything and night vision and ammunition, you name it. But from the earliest recorded times of when man battled each other there is one constant and that is the use of k9s as far back as egypt, they used dogs to augment themselves in battle. To me it really speaks to the truism of mans best friend. Not only are they great pets and great companions but dogs that save our lives and we literally depend on them to help keep us safe any number of capacities. When i was finished with my time i move gone to an instructor role. The nice thing is it gave me a bit of a break from an operational standpoint and i was able to get into the weeds of dog training as it relates to military work. I trained with a number of different clubs and groups and units, organizations, attachments, etc. That gave me a wellrounded perspective of what dogs did, how they did it, right ways to train, wrong ways to train, all the tran multitudes of ways these dogs are incorporated into military service, and there is truly the sky is the limit mentality in terms of what you can do with these dogs. I realize that quickly and the only thing that limited to us as human beings to what we could do with these dogs was ourselves. From a training perspective if we put our minds to it theres almost nothing that we couldnt do with these dogs. It was very i opening to me, the level of capability and capacity you can get these dogs to. As i transition to get out of the navy, is when the regular seal teams started implementing their own k9 program. It is frustrating from a military standpoint, as of former special operator in that dog programs were used before within the special warfare communities back in vietnam. There are a number of units that use them, most of them did, there were seasoned handlers, very experienced, knew how to train the dogs and knew where they need to be to deploy, deployed with them, vietnams ended, very expensive and from a building standpoint, manpower and resources they are hard to maintain and when budget cuts come like they usually do programs like that are unfortunately one of the first to go because they are so laborintensive and expensive sofa k9 programs left. Theres not a single special Operations Unit that still use k9s from the end of vietnam until post 911. With fewer exceptions, military police and k9 handlers augment different units for certain capacities, there was no selfsufficient entities in terms of k9 programs. K9 programs are no different from a police unit, Military Branch and it is not a light switch type of application, you cant turn it off and 20 years later get the k9s back on, flip the light switch on and theres a cohesive unit that works the same before you turned on. No different from a special Operations Unit but you cant disband special operations after a military conflict is over and ten years later something happens and lets just get the guys back going to. It doesnt work that way. After 9 11 it became very apparent with all the work we were doing in afghanistan and iraq, military working dogs were something that were of enormous value. At first they started using military police dogs with their handlers and trying to incorporate them in that capacity but they were limited in terms of the ability of the dogs and the operators because the military police guys are not special operations guys so there could be a conflict in terms of the level of dynamic nature you can operate. Once each unit figured out that they needed their own program pretty much each unit devised their own k9 program because each group, rangers, green berets, special warfare, any of the other counterterrorism units, there is a different enough mission to where each group needs its own program. It is all run inhouse. It is not part of the nw deprogram. They are selfsufficient and done from the ground up with each prospect of yet. Unit. From a big picture standpoint it is tied for people to understand why there is such a difference. It is the nature of the beast and the level that special Operations Group operate at really dictates that each group has its own program. Program. It was a stumbling process at first for a number of groups because unlike any other tool coming in to use the word tool not in a disrespectful manner but in the fact that they are a remarkable and incredibly valuable tool that we use to help augment us and stay safe overseas and in that it is just like anything else you have to learn how to use it properly. Dogs unlike any other thing used to get weused to get a weapon s, night vision vehicles, whatever platform you want to apply are pretty cut and dry. Its usually a piece of mechanical equipment from having used other similar pieces of it and. When you get to the dog is this a completely different animal than a pun intended. But it is being able to truly understand what the dog is communicating with and from his body language is something that takes years to develop. It takes an enormous amount of experience from both the volume standpoint and the disparity between different blogs because they are all individuals the same way you and i are. They have different characteristics and traits into past Life Experiences that forge and dictate how they respond to certain scenarios and until you have experienced these different environments it is difficult to understand what he is feeling and thinking and how he is going to respond. The only way that you can manage and dictate how they respond is to first understand where hes coming from and then also use our body language to communicate back what is expected of them and that transfers to pet dogs, any type of working dog in that animals are almost overwhelmingly nonverbal communicators and so it is our job to be able to communicate back to them what it is that we expect of them. You have to reinforce the behavior to get it to occur again and its really that simple, but to teach somebody that its not a weekend course or threeday seminar. Its years of experience. And so there were a lot of Lessons Learned the hard way, dogs not doing what they needed to be doing, going overseas with them and then not performing up to par what we needed them to do it was a very steep learning curve and a lot of the handlers and trainers and other operators for that matter were drinking from the firehose in terms of what they were learning. Once the bugs began to get worked out, there was a very fluid operational capacity that dogs now played. Most of the operators had been overseas and operated before and knew what to expect. The dogs had been operating for several years and everything was getting hammered out and started to transition very smoothly and now it got to the point where every unit has multiple dogs and they are doing a fantastic job with them, be it parachuted or any number of highlevel Different Missions in the environments that we operate with them and the guys that operate within its remarkable and it speaks to the versatility of dogs in general in terms of what you can get them to do. Moving forward, i was at a crossroads personally. At the end of 2,008 i could either stay in the navy and become one of the handlers early on and become a part of the program or i could separate from the navy and start my own company and try to have a larger impact in terms of training, supplying the different scenarios and training courses for the military and it was a tough decision for me personally. Its one that from a selfish standpoint if im looking at it just selfishly i wanted to stay and be a handler. It was a very tough decision for me to make instead of getting that oneonone time and doing the dance with them and they did try to make a bigger impact to get out and form a company and provide a multitude of services and ultimately and obviously that is what i ended up doing. It was important and dear to my heart to make as big a difference as i could. No different than when i joined the navy to the reason i went into the team is because i wanted to make the largest impact i could. I have always kind of taken that train of thought with everything ive done as that is going to make the biggest impact and thus far it has worked out pretty well. But it was still a difficult decision for me to say im going to forgo what i want to do personally and im going to to transmit a larger impact and do thtodo that greater good for the entire community. I started my own company. We did a lot for a host of different clients and in a number of different capacities. Some of them are going into drug dog programs for the Border Patrol and some of them were going into the land security for airports to and some of them are going to the department of defense for military work and i realized very quickly that again this is something the level of impact they can and act in the role they play is much bigger than me or anyone person and thats why there are a multitude of people like me that do the exact same thing. Theres a number of vendors and companies that provide similar services. A few years and we secured the training contract for a special Operations Unit. Myself and one other employee went out and we were trainers for a period of time and for me i would say that was kind of the best of everything for me in that i have put several years into the company and now i was back to where i owned the company that was providing the trainers and dogs and training for the same group by group a thing and its something i will always be very proud of and just tickled to death to have been part of because they put everything together for me. Once i decided to write the book i was essentially approached by my publisher to write it and one of the reasons was the amount of information or misinformation or lack of information that has been out there as it relates to military dogs especially in special Operations Groups there is a ton of misinformation out there and theres also a lot of just american citizens that have no ideas that the dogs are used at a minimum in the capacity that they are. It cant be overstated how important they are. There are literally tens of thousands of american troops who are here today because of dogs like these. And it just for me its important that it was and still is important and everybody realizes that so for me it was a tough decision to write the book because of the amount of exposure that it gives. The guys like me are not typically ones that want to be in the spotlight and want people to know who they are or what they do or what they have done. So again i was kind of at a crossroads and not do i stay keeping the lowprofile just providing the work or does it make sense to put a highlight on these blogs and make the entire public understand just how vital and important they are and how lifesaving they are and again it would have been easier to just keep doing what i was doing and that none of you would be sitting here and no one would know who i am. But again, when i look back at postvietnam programs getting turned off or here in the next year or two when things are rounded down to the point where from a penny pinch her standpoint it doesnt make sense to keep these expensive k9 program, i hope, and michael is that there is enough interest and passion behind the general public to keep these programs going because they are so vital. Once i decided to write about it is largely been a great experience for me in terms of the feedback that ive gotten and the questions i get asked and got emails and messages i get from people that say i have absolutely no idea that the dogs were used to the way they are and people are just behind. They are excited about it and they support it. From the time i started with dogs and providing all these dogs from day number one, it was always on the front side essentially and i put a lot into providing Job Training Services etc. One of the things i realized very quickly was that on the back and, there wasnt much of a support structure and there was essentially none as it relates to special operations working dogs. Once they are done whether it be from combat injuries, combat stressrelated mental issues or just old age just like the guys like m me gets get to a certaind cant do the job they are doing at the level we need to anymore it is time to write out of the e pastor and go do Something Else and dogs are the same way. What i realized is that there are not any support structures for those dogs and it honestly happened by accident and that there was a unit that approached me and said we have to dogs both of them have been wounded and are almost nine years. Its time for them to retire. We dont have the capacity to do what we need to do with them. A lot of people w