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a cute name for a dog. It didn’t take too long for me to realize though that “Kilo” would also be a great name for a police dog.
Specifically, a drug-sniffing police dog! So I asked the instructors there if I could rename Roni to Kilo and they said sure, and it
didn’t take long at all for Kilo to adjust to his new name.

When I brought Kilo back to Poulsbo with me, the Chief for some reason was not thrilled with me changing his name. And then
the Mayor weighed in, and suggested we name the dog “Friday” as an homage to Detective Joe Friday, a fictional TV character
from the tv police series Dragnet. That was first aired as a radio program in, uh, 1949. A little bit before my time. I said no way.
The local newspaper found out about this and they suggested a reader’s poll to vote. Which irritated me, so I went online to
every different computer I could find for the next week and voted for “Kilo” several dozen times to stack the deck. I was never
too worried about it though- I was the K9 handler and that gave me enough say to keep the name as Kilo.

Speaking of dog names…Over the next few years I met a lot of other K9 handlers from different agencies, and of course a lot of
dogs. Most were Labrador Retrievers, there were a few small Staffordshire terriers, some Springer Spaniels, some German
Shepherds, and the occasional mixed-breed that could or could not be readily identifiable. Their names ranged from awesome
to silly. Like “Ruger” or “Bullet” or “Radar” or “Max” or “Scout” to “Stormy” and the very regrettable “Juicy.” I also heard about a
patrol dog that was on duty in a big city running down the street one day chasing a bad guy and the patrol officer was yelling
the dog’s name out loud, which was something kind of weird I can’t remember but they happened to be running in a part of
town that was predominantly filled with European folks – I think maybe Polish? – and the dog’s name sounded almost exactly
like “WHORE” in their language, and so the police chief got some phone calls the next morning about one of his officers yelling
“WHORE!” in that neighborhood and he said the dog’s name should be changed.

While I was at the training center, Bill had an advertising company show up there
and film some promotional interviews for his YouTube channel. The guys from
Samoa, having beat me in distance, got interviewed instead of me. Also featured
were some of the local K9 cops from Brevard, Broward, and Volusia counties.
Now having had some recent experience watching lots of other K9 teams
training, I had started to develop an appreciation for the fact that dog training,
while science based, is still very much an art form. To illustrate the point, I was
once at a multi-state training in Idaho. At the start of the conference, the local
sheriff started the event off with an introduction and welcome, and he said with
a slight chuckle to all the K9 handlers present that although he had never been a
handler, he had been a lieutenant in charge of a K9 program, and the one thing
he learned was “If you ask three K9 handlers to agree on just one thing, the only answer you’ll get is that two of them will agree
that the other one is doing it wrong.” The point was further emphasized that afternoon when some of the professional expert
guest speakers gave out conflicting advice about dog handling techniques during their presentations, even. And during my
trainings with other experts, I heard all kinds of different advice. In fact, the conflicting advice started literally on day 1 in Florida,
when I realized two of the instructors had different beliefs and ideas about how exactly to train and handle the dogs.

And when I went to other trainings, the different opinions always came up. It was like this: “You’re not training your dog
enough” “You’re training him too much” “You’re not playing with him enough” “You’re playing with him too much” “Treat
him like a pet” “He’s not a pet, he’s a tool” “Feed him in the morning only” “Feed him only in the evening” “Never give him
treats” “Lots of treats are fine” “Make him heel” “Don’t make him heel” “Don’t let him play with any toys” “Let him play with
lots of toys” “Let him play with other dogs” “Never let him play with other dogs” ..and so on. I concluded that if you had ten
dog trainers, or breeders, or handlers or canine instructors or any kind of dog professionals in a room and if you asked them one
basic question from how to train or what to feed or whatever, yeah…you would probably get 3 or 4 different answers. And at
least two would be completely contradictory.