Jeffrey Schettler has been chosen as 2012′s Arthur J. Haggerty Award of Excellence recipient with his Book Entry: “K-9 Trailing- The Straightest Path”, Alpine Publications and will be our Keynote Speaker at the Awards Luncheon on Sunday, Feb 12th at Sardis.
About Jeff:
Jeff Schettler
Jeff Schettler’s accomplishments center around being a pure breed working dog’s provider, trainer, and writer for the following breeds: Bloodhound, German Shepherd, English Golden, Labrador, Malinois, and Basenji; and a Service Dog provider for children with disabilities, again, using purebred dogs as the foundations for all of his work; in particular German Shepherds, Labradors, and Goldens. He’s pioneered the use of German Shepherds for trailing tracking work of autistic children through sound police methods of trailing outlined in his new book.
Jeff has pioneered the placement of hand selected and tested pure breed puppies in the homes 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.”, explains Schettler. ”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.”.
Jeff is also a 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.” notes Jeff.
Schettler was the first full time police purebred bloodhound handler on the street with his dog in the state of California, attached to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team for high risk fugitive manhunts. He is responsible for the capture of numerous criminals using a purebred Bloodhound as outlined in his book, “Red Dog Rising.” Schettler has been 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 purebred Bloodhounds.
To add to his list, Shettler is the first to be successful in 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.” notes Schettler, ”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.”
Jeff and his tactical team during the Eric Rudolph manhunt in NC
Schettler adds, “We are on our fourth generation of working Basenji.” He has contributed articles on the subject of working Basenjis to the Basenji Magazine.
Jeff is also responsible for the first,1998, California POST, (Peace Officer Standards and Training), police bloodhound training course offered to California police officers.Adding to the repetoire, the first,1999, California POST all Police K-9 Scent Discrimination and Trailing course using only pure breed police K-9′s: Bloodhound, Malinois, and German Shepherd. He was also responsible for being the first in the USA to provide a tactical trailing course offered to SWAT teams to teach operators how to safely work with police trailing dogs of the same breeds. Jeff is also a contributing author for pure breed dog deployment and training publications: Police K9 Magazine, K9 Cop Magazine, The Basenji Buschtrommel (Germany), The Western Yodel (Basenji-Austraila), and a contributor for dog training and deployment on the following shows and media broadcasts: Mythbusters, CNN, Unsolved Mysteries, Discovery, National Geographic, and Americas Most Wanted.
It is with great pleasure that we look forward to Jeff speaking at our Arthur Awards Luncheon on Sunday, Feb. 12th. His extensive experience and knowledge on training purebreds for these various services may spark an inspiration for fellow writers, authors and artists in the field of the purebred dog. Please join us at the Luncheon to acknowledge the man and his works, as so deserving of the Arthur J. Haggerty Award of Excellence. For information on attending the Luncheon and seeing Jeff, click here for 2012 Arthur Awards Luncheon
Information submitted by Betty McKinney, Alpine Publications
Compiled and editd by Pat Enright
