Greetings ,

Welcome to the November's Issue of The Chiron Briefing

October was a busy month of travel, teaching and catching up with the working canine community. I began in Indiana, instructing at the American Tactical K9 Association Conference at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center—an incredible facility. With over 400 teams participating and 20 instructors, it was a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones and share knowledge with dedicated handlers.

From Indiana, I travelled to Montreal for the International Oil Spill Science Conference, where I delivered two presentations on canine oil detection: searching for submerged oil from a boat and detecting oil beneath ice. Then it was on to the UK for a series of workshops and presentations, including training for law enforcement in buried human remains detection.

November promises to be just as busy. I’ll be in Poland working with search and rescue teams, delivering workshops for detection teams and developing some exciting plans with our partners there. I look forward to sharing more as those plans take shape.

Towards the end of the month, our focus will turn to putting the finishing touches on training two canines for a special project, alongside a human remains detection canine for a local sheriff’s office.

On the research front, our paper examining a training intervention for searching sealed parcels has been submitted and is currently under peer review. We’re hoping for publication in November, subject to the review process.

Thank you for following and supporting our work. I’m looking forward to sharing this month’s training, research and developments with you.

For now, I hope you enjoy this month’s updates from Chiron K9.

-Paul Bunker and the Chiron K9 team

Condition Your Marker!

A clicker or a spoken “yes” doesn’t automatically mean something to your canine. Its value comes from the association you build between that signal and the reward that follows.

Too often, I see markers being used without a strong conditioned response. The handler marks a behavior, but the signal appears to carry little meaning for the dog. Simply using a marker repeatedly isn’t enough—the pairing, timing and consistency matter.

A well-conditioned marker should create an immediate expectation of reinforcement. It tells the canine, “That behavior earned your reward,” making it a precise and powerful part of your training.

Invest time in building that association, and keep it strong by reliably following the marker with reinforcement. Watch your canine’s response rather than assuming the signal is meaningful.

Spend time progressively conditioning the marker separate from other training sessions. Do not introduce your marker when the canine is imprinting. Use a specific marker training session and ensure the canine is conditioned BEFORE you introduce the target odor. 

Having a marker is easy. Giving it meaning takes deliberate training.

Cooling Collars

During hot weather, I like to use cooling collars as part of my approach to keeping working canines comfortable. My preference is for collars made from the same type of material used in athletes’ cooling cloths—easy to wet and refresh throughout the day.

I particularly like cooling the neck. My thinking has been that this might help cool blood travelling towards the brain, although that specific benefit should be treated as a personal hypothesis rather than an established effect of cooling collars.

My routine is straightforward: I freeze the collar overnight and take a half-frozen CamelBak, topped up with water. This gives me a supply of cold water for a few hours, which I use to spray and refresh the collar as it warms.

Follow the collar manufacturer’s instructions on freezing, and allow it to soften before fitting so frozen material isn’t held directly against the skin.

The collar is one part of heat management, alongside shade, drinking water, rest and adjusting the workload. If a canine becomes overheated, a collar alone is insufficient: veterinary guidance recommends prompt cooling with water and urgent veterinary advice. Royal Veterinary College guidance.

K9 SAR Summit

IT'S FREE

I’m pleased to be an instructor at the 2026 K9 SAR Summit, which starts on 4 November. The Summit’s mission is to make quality training accessible to as many handlers as possible—and tickets are FREE.

Despite the name, the Summit has value well beyond search and rescue teams. Detection dog handlers, scent work instructors and anyone interested in canine searching can benefit from exploring ideas and approaches from across the working dog community.

It’s an opportunity to broaden your knowledge, reflect on your training and discover perspectives you can bring to your own work.

Free tickets are available through 8 November, with optional All Access Pass upgrades available through 11 November.

Explore the program and register for your free ticket.

How much of our search performance comes from the canine’s training, and how much might be influenced by the people around the team? A recent paper by Adele Quigley-McBride, Paola Prada-Tiedemann and Fred Helfers, Strengthening operational performance in canine detection teams with double-blind certification testing, explores this important question.

I have worked with Adele Quigley-McBride on several projects, and I strongly support her approach to the human side of the canine team. We spend considerable time developing the dog’s skills, but our expectations, decisions and interpretation of behavior deserve just as much attention.

The researchers examined six years of narcotics certification records involving 133 canine–handler teams. Across first attempts, the overall pass rate was 94% under single-blind conditions and 72% under double-blind conditions. In double-blind searches, neither the handler nor anyone administering the search knew the target locations or number. These figures represent complete search passes, rather than individual target detection rates. Read the paper.

For me, the practical value is clear: we need opportunities to assess how we work when the answers are genuinely unknown. Can we recognize our canine’s trained response, maintain an effective search and confidently finish when nothing is present?

There are limitations. Vehicle searches were always double-blind and residence searches always single-blind, so search difficulty and blinding were partly intertwined. Luggage searches offered a useful comparison, with pass rates falling from 100% under single-blind administration to 88% under double-blind administration, although these occurred in different years. The study also did not directly test whether adding double-blind training causes improvement.

My takeaway is to make double-blind exercises a regular, constructive part of team development once foundational skills are established. Record decisions before revealing placements, include blank searches and use video to review both ends of the lead.

The purpose is to identify what needs work and build confidence grounded in evidence. The human half of the team needs training too.

Looking to advance your skills in detection dog training and handling? Chiron K9 provides tailored mentoring (virtual and in-person), practical workshops, and expert conference presentations worldwide. Whether you’re seeking one-on-one guidance or group learning opportunities, our programs are designed to help you grow with evidence-based practices and real-world experience.

Thank you for reading this issue of The Chiron Briefing. If you enjoyed it, feel free to share it, forward it, or send me suggestions for future topics. Until next month—train well and take care.

Paul Bunker & the Chiron K9 team