HAGGERTY WINNER 2012- Jeff Schettler

Jeffrey Schettler has been chosen as 2012′s Arthur J. Haggerty Award recipient with his Book Entry: K-9 Trailing- The Straightest Path.

Jeff has been instrumental in developing new training methods for trailing dogs and has done ground-breaking work in training dogs for children with autism, using exclusively purebred dogs from selected breeding programs. He also has designed an extreme agility course for training police and SAR dogs, and is a prolific author. His book, Red Dog Rising, the story of his police Bloodhound, was awarded the  Planet Dog Foundation Special Award from the Dog Writer’s Association last year. His second book, K-9 Trailing: The Straightest Path, the first in a series of training books, was released by Alpine Publications in October 2011.

Jeff Schettler’s accomplishments include: Pure breed working dogs provider, trainer, and writer for the folllowing breeds: Bloodhound, German Shepherd, English Golden, Labrador, Malinois, and Basenji. Service Dog Provider for children with disabilities using purebred dogs as the foundations for all of our work; in particular German Shepherds, Labradors, and Golden’s. Pioneered the use of German Shepherds for trailing tracking work of their autistic children through sound police methods of trailing outlined in my new book. Pioneered the placement of hand selected and tested pure breed puppies in the home of children with disabilities to promote a better bond between ward and charge than what is the norm in the service dog industry.  Many non-profits use pound dogs that are socialized for service dog work and we believe that though the model might work, it does not work as well as it should.  Our philosophy is to take specially bred pups and place them in the host home at an age of 10-16 weeks for bonding with the child in question.  We believe the bond is 50% of the equation and without it, the work will always suffer.  We also believe that only using line of carefully bred purebred dogs is the way to get the traits we need for the job. No other companies use our method because it is too time consuming and expensive.  No other companies get the results that we do, either.  We train only a handful of dogs each year because our process is so labor intensive; however, the results speak for themselves. Provider to the Veterans Affairs hospital for specially trained German Shepherds to work in a police fashion in and around disabled veterans and to track them should they go missing from the hospital.  Our program was the first of its kind. Jeff was he first full time police purebred bloodhound handler on the street with his dog in the state of California. Bloodhound handler attached to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team for high risk fugitive manhunts. Responsible for the capture of numerous criminals using a pure bred bloodhound as outlined in  his book, “Red Dog Rising.” Responsible for helping to establish sound evidence for several court cases in the State of California to include the murder of a San Jose Police Officer.  All of these cases surrounded the use of pure breed bloodhounds. Pioneering the use of specially bred and trained Basenjis for covert detector dog work in the areas of narcotics and explosives.  We started this program because the Basenji is very small, quiet and unobtrusive, making it so the average person would not know the dog is a detector dog.  Also, the Basenji’s agility, endurance, and ability to thrive in very hot weather gives them an advantage.  No other company has started a program like ours with the breed because they are considered untrainable by many.

We are on our fourth generation of working Basenji.  I have contributed articles on the subject of working Basenjis to the Basenji Magazine. Responsible for the first, 1998, California POST, (Peace Officer Standards and Training), police bloodhound training course offered to California police officers. Responsible for the first, 1999, California POST all police K9 scent discrimination and trailing course using only pure breed police K9′s: Bloodhound, Malinois, and German Shepherd Responsible for the first in the USA tactical trailing course offered to SWAT teams to teach operators how to safely work with police trailing dogs such as Bloodhounds, German shepherds, and Malinois. Contributing author for pure breed dog deployment and training: Police K9 Magazine K9 Cop Magazine The Basenji Basenji Buschtrommel (Germany) The Western Yodel (Basenji-Austraila) Contributor for dog training and deployment on the following shows: Mythbusters CNN Unsolved Mysteries Discovery National Geographic Americas Most Wanted   submitted by Betty McKinney, Alpine Publications.   Learn More About Arthur J. Haggerty “The Captain”

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