K9 Detection Collaborative

What to listen for: “We are very good at selectively breeding, obviously to drive change in the shape, but not necessarily to drive performance.” Robin and Stacy continue their conversation with Dr. Lindsay Waldrop, a Chapman University fluid dynamicist who secured Navy funding to build the world's largest collection of micro-CT-scanned domestic dog skulls. Dr. Waldrop discusses why skull mor...

What to listen for: “We're such dumb visual monkeys. We can't process information any other way except for visuals; whereas the dogs have their brain structured around scent.” Dr. Lindsay Waldrop, a Chapman University fluid dynamicist whose dissertation explored how crabs sniff odor out of water, has spent recent years turning that expertise toward dogs. Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stac...

What to listen for: "If you are not doing search and rescue for the right reasons, you need to look in the mirror. Because it is not about you, and it's not about your dog." Today, our hosts, Stacy Barnett and Robin Greubel, have set the dogs aside (mostly!) to talk about something that affects every handler who has ever posted a training video, shown up to a webinar, or scrolled to...

What to listen for: “Everything I knew about my dog that I thought was true a week ago is no longer true. I have to reset my baseline and go, ‘Who are you today?’” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, pick up the conversation with Joy Brenner of K9 Medic. This time, they’re talking about turning everyday crate time into deliberate heat acclimation. Joy explains that many handlers keep cars...

What to listen for: “At the end of the day, taking care of our dogs is everyone’s job.” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, talk with Joy Brenner of K9 Medic about looking at canine first aid not just from the perspective of flashy trauma response, but that of the quiet, daily work of truly knowing your dog. Joy, who began in human wilderness and tactical medicine, built K9 Medic to teach...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, chat about a peculiar kind of self-deception. The kind that costs years of training, thousands of dollars, and sometimes the well-being of both dog and handler. They call it beer goggles: the tendency to see the dog we want rather than the dog standing in front of us. Robin talks about Flash, her Lab who simply doesn't bark. Sele...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, welcome Bob Deeds back to debrief the first-ever chicken workshop hosted at Robin's farm. Bob, drawing on the legacy of Keller and Marian Breland and Bob Bailey, the operant conditioning pioneers behind Animal Behavior Enterprises and the IQ Zoo, explains that the chicken workshop isn't really about chickens at all! White Le...

What to listen for: "Unless you have a dog who is engaged with you, you can't build that relationship. And you can't get through distractions. It's impossible.” Today, our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, are talking relationships. Specifically, what it actually means to have one with your dog when the pressure is on. They argue that a real relationship isn't Kumbay...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, break down why "opting out" has become a buzzword that may obscure more than it reveals. While the term sounds empowering (giving dogs agency and choice), they argue it can become a self-congratulatory label that prevents handlers from addressing underlying training gaps. Stacy shares the story of 15-year-old Ray, who "...

What to listen for: In the second half of the conversation with Dr. Jennifer Essler, our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, discuss her current research and future goals bridging academic science with real-world handler expertise! At SUNY Cobleskill, Dr. Essler's conservation work demonstrates how detection dogs fill practical niches. Her Round Goby project (tracking invasive fish from t...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, sit down with canine cognition researcher Dr. Jennifer Essler. She unpacks her journey from coding Capuchin monkey videos in a windowless lab to studying fairness in wolves and dogs. Starting with music studies before discovering comparative psychology, Essler's academic trajectory took her from Georgia State's primate labs...

What to listen for: “Trust your dog, but trust your training first.” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, welcome back veteran USAR handler Bob Deeds to talk about the artificial divide between working dog and sport detection communities, and why both sides desperately need each other! Bob shares his journey from FEMA disaster work into nose work, leading into his innovative "geo-scent...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, explore how drive, motivation, arousal, and focus work together as an integrated system—rather than isolated traits—to create elite performance. Using a car engine metaphor, Robin explains drive as the engine size or “genetic horsepower” a dog is born with. It’s fixed hardware that defines inherent desire for the work. Motivation is t...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, announce the opening of signups for the 2026 Distraction Camp and Intentional Handling and Hide Setting. Signups begin on January 4 at noon Central Standard Time. Christi Raak, who has been on the podcast, will lead the Distraction Camp, focusing on engagement, focus, arousal, and mobility. Lily Strassberg, currently in Israel, has gi...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, welcome veteran USAR handler Bob Deeds, whose journey from compulsion-based training to positive reinforcement transformed both his career and the field itself! His career trajectory spans volunteer search and rescue in the early nineties through Texas Task Force One, where he deployed to the World Trade Center with his partner, Kenzi...

What to listen for: Our hosts Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett explore generalization as the foundation of reliable detection work. Together, they reveal generalization as extending far beyond simple obedience across locations. It encompasses odor variability, environmental context, behavioral chains, and handler presentation. They explain how explosive and narcotic sources vary like chocolate-cake...

What to listen for: “[Being a part of] this podcast terrified me. Putting myself out there was so vulnerable, and I felt like it was such a big risk for you guys, as well. I’m so thankful. I’m glad you made me, but I’m also going to say I’m glad that I did it because in the end, I had the final say in buying the microphone and the headset.” After 151 episodes, Crystal Wing says goodbye (or rather,...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel, Stacy Barnett, and Crystal Wing, break down how time, airflow, and placement reshape detection dog work! They kick things off by describing a week of hides left up to 96 hours, the longest-out scenario that reveals how odor pools migrate and change. Drawing from this experience, our hosts brainstorm creative ways to design hides that can better help yo...

What to listen for: “Search and rescue work is the volunteer profession that you pay to do and is one of the most stressful things you can ever do, because somebody else's life could depend on what you're doing.” In part 2 of their conversation with Steve White, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett ask about the development of Hydrated Intensive Tracking (HIT), which evolved from experiments...

What to listen for: Two-thirds of The Dames of Detection, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, welcome Steve White, a veteran law enforcement K9 trainer whose 46-year career began in military working dog handling in 1975. Steve discusses the challenges facing modern police canine programs, particularly how vendor-driven training models often prioritize efficiency over optimization, which creates sessi...

What to listen for: "Get a dog, take the dog you have, start training, do it yourself. Yes, the client dogs will come, the other pieces will come, but get yourself out there." 2/3 of our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, sit down with Katelyn Graham from Katalyst Kennels, who shares her expertise in breeding and training Labrador Retrievers for detection tasks while managing a mult...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel, Stacy Barnett, and Crystal Wing, dive deep into a counterintuitive training philosophy sparked by their recent interview with Petra Ford: sometimes accepting imperfection creates better performance in complex behavior chains. The conversation began with Petra's story about reinforcing her dog even when she knew it wasn't sitting perfectly squ...

What to listen for: Our hosts, Robin Greubel, Stacy Barnett, and Crystal Wing, do a deep dive into their recent Intentional Handling and Hide Setting camp where, during a sweltering week in Iowa, seventeen detection dog teams discovered how unconscious body positioning can make or break a search! The breakthrough moment came on Thursday during an outdoor search. A handler, diligently following ins...

What to listen for: “We’re always inspired by the students and all the hard work that goes on. It blows my mind every single year.” Today, our hosts, Robin Greubel, Stacy Barnett, and Crystal Wing, reflect on their recent experience at Distraction Camp 2025, where handlers and dogs from across the country gathered on Robin's Iowa farm to build deeper relationships through the chaos of real-wo...

What to listen for: “I don’t just pet them, I go, ‘this is why you train the way you train, remember that’” Today, two-thirds of the Dames of Detection, Stacy Barnett and Crystal Wing, welcome back obedience trainer Petra Ford to talk about why she believes in a “you do you” approach to dog training. When her dog Zesty dropped eye contact during their first championship run, instead of demanding c...