Momentum K9

Home
Momentum K9

Directions Website Contact the organization

🎯K9 Consultant & Program Development |🌲Conservation K9 Trainer | 🐕‍🦺Specialist K9 Handler | ⚒️Working Dog Development

26/10/2026

What happens when we give our dogs the skills to solve problems?

Watching Wren work through this search is a reminder of why I love the process of training detection dogs.

At 2.5 years old, she’s continuing to develop the skills she needs as an operational conservation detection dog. Lately, we’ve been introducing increasingly complex search problems in operational environments that challenge her in new ways.

Here, she’s searching for a tiny piece of red Kong, used as a general training odor, hidden among some boulders.

But the challenge is about much more than finding odor!

She has to navigate the terrain, interpret the odor information available to her, figure out how to access source, and ultimately perform her trained final response.

And she has to work through those decisions herself.

Independence doesn’t mean the absence of handler support. In fact, thoughtful training requires quite the opposite.

Our responsibility is to develop the foundations, design appropriate challenges, read our dogs, manage the environment, and recognize the difference between productive struggle and frustration.

Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do in the moment is give our dogs the space and time to figure things out.

Of course, that kind of independence doesn’t happen overnight. It’s developed through hundreds of learning opportunities, thoughtful progression, and experience across a variety of environments and challenges.

We can’t prepare our dogs for every problem they’ll encounter in the field. But we can prepare them to be better problem-solvers.

And watching them put all those pieces together is one of the most rewarding parts of training.

23/10/2026

Story of my life 😆 Good thing they are so patient with us! Even at 10 years old Finn moves with ease and speed and I do my best to keep up. She is kind enough to come check on me every now and again.

15/10/2026

I am fortunate to be her shadow.

Today, as I followed Finn through the field, the morning sun cast a long shadow of me trailing behind her. It struck me how, out here, I am her shadow. Quite the opposite of when we’re at home.

After nearly a decade of conservation detection work, and countless days and miles spent following my dogs through the field, I am still in awe of what they do.

There is something incredibly special about following a dog who is doing exactly what she loves, trusting her nose, making her own decisions, and knowing that together we’re contributing to something bigger than ourselves.

As Finn approaches her 10th birthday, I’m increasingly aware that our days in the field together aren’t endless.

And I don’t take a single one of them for granted.

It’s a privilege to be her shadow.

13/10/2026

Not a bad place to work for a bit alongside a wonderful dog!

11/10/2026

What do HABITS have to do with a reliable detection dog alert? 🐾 Quite a lot, actually!

I love exploring behavioral science to help design better training. When I listened to Angela Duckworth discuss habits, I immediately thought of the trained final response (TFR).

“A habit is a behavior that is repeatedly rewarded. And then the brain goes on a kind of neural autopilot. It doesn’t need to think, ‘What should I do?’ It just does.
But it can only do that in a stable situation. In other words, you are not able to do anything habitual unless it has a trigger.
[...]
But the idea is that preceding any habitual reaction, there is a stimulus, a situational cue. And therefore, if you want to build habits [...] then you 100% have to honor the situation and you have to design the situation with the cues that you will reliably encounter.”

— Dr. Angela Duckworth, The Curiosity Shop podcast

I get a lot of questions about TFRs: how and when to train them, why dogs don’t offer them, and why false alerts happen.

A TFR should become a strongly reinforced, almost automatic response to TARGET ODOR. But we can unintentionally muddy the waters with other cues: our body language, familiar containers, and predictable training setups.

We can also ask for the TFR in situations that are too complex or unfamiliar before the behavior is fluent.

Start by building a reliable response under familiar, controlled conditions. Then systematically introduce new variables to help it generalize. Even a well-trained dog may not offer its TFR in a dramatically different situation.

That’s why recognizing a change of behavior (COB) matters. A dog may recognize target odor without offering the final response we expect.

Better training isn’t always about making things more challenging. Sometimes it’s about making the learning picture clearer.

08/10/2026

Meet Finn! 🐾

At first glance, you might think she’s just another Labrador out hunting birds. But Finn has a very different job.

She’s a conservation detection dog, and over the course of her career, she’s been trained to detect 10 different conservation targets, supporting wildlife conservation and ecological monitoring projects.

And even as she approaches her 10th birthday, she’s still enthusiastically putting that incredible nose to work!

Her latest assignment? Finding invasive American bullfrogs. 🐸

At Conboy Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Washington State, invasive bullfrogs prey on the native, endangered Oregon spotted frog.

Right now, we’re taking advantage of a seasonal change in bullfrog behavior. As adult bullfrogs transition into their wintering period, they occasionally move out of the water and onto land.

This creates an opportunity for detection work, as locating bullfrogs on land is considerably easier than finding them when they can quickly escape into the water.

Finn has been trained to detect the bullfrogs themselves, using her nose to help locate these otherwise difficult-to-find animals.

We’re fortunate to be collaborating with K9 Conservationists 🍉, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and Mt. Adams Resource Stewards on this important conservation project. It’s a great example of how detection dogs can contribute to broader efforts to protect native wildlife.

Of course, Finn doesn’t know anything about invasive species management. What she does know is that searching is one of her favorite games, and doing her job earns her something she absolutely loves.

That ball you see her leaping for at the end? That’s her paycheck! 🎾

Almost 10 years old, 10 conservation targets, and still going strong. It’s a privilege to work alongside a dog who brings so much enthusiasm to every search.

05/10/2026

We’re back at beautiful Conboy Lake National Wildlife Refuge for the rest of October. Continuing our invasive species detection project 🐸.

01/10/2026

There is a lot more happening here than just a dog playing with a toy.

Chase. Tug. Fetch. Release. Cooperation. Rules. Reinforcement. Training. All built into a game.

Good play isn’t just about getting a dog excited about a toy. It’s an ongoing conversation between two participants, and play gives us an incredible opportunity to learn about the dog in front of us.

What does your dog actually enjoy?

Which parts of play are influenced by their genetics?

Does your dog want to chase, tug, possess, retrieve, or interact with you?

How does your behavior and movement change the game?

And how do you build enough structure into a game that you can use it as meaningful reinforcement without controlling it so much that it stops being fun?

For sport and performance dogs, those skills can directly influence how much enthusiasm, clarity, and engagement we are able to bring into training and beyond.

Those are some of the things we’ll explore at Play With Purpose: Building Better Performance Through Play, October 31–November 1 in Arcata, CA.

Two days of observing, experimenting, playing, and learning how to use play more intentionally with the individual dog in front of you.
https://momentumk9training.com/events/

28/09/2026

Build confidence and Joy! The rest will follow.

One of my biggest priorities in scent work is developing dogs who are confident, enthusiastic and joyful about searching, and who trust themselves enough to solve the problem in front of them.

A confident dog isn’t constantly looking to the handler for the answer. They learn to trust their training, follow the odor, work through uncertainty, and make decisions based on the information available to them.

That confidence is something we should intentionally build.

We can give dogs the skills they need to navigate increasingly complex search problems. We can reinforce independent decisions, persistence, and commitment to odor. And just as importantly, we can give them enough space to actually use those skills.

Sometimes good handling means doing less.

When we step in too quickly, over-handle, or repeatedly help the dog toward the solution, the hide may get located but we also take away an opportunity for the dog to figure something out. And figuring things out and then getting rewarded for it builds confidence.

Not every moment of uncertainty needs to be fixed. Not every mistake needs immediate intervention.

Our job is to create training problems the dog is prepared to solve, support them when they genuinely need it, and allow them to work through the rest.

A few clips from last night’s Scent Work class, with dogs doing exactly that: searching, following odor, working through problems, and becoming more confident in their own decisions.
Huge thanks to RCM High for the training space!

Address

95501–95503, 95534

Website

https://k9conservationists.thinkific.com/courses/foundations-first

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Momentum K9 posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Momentum K9:

Want your organization to be the top-listed non profit organization?

Country:

City: