My background is very simple - dogs. The obsession started at fourteen when I visited K9 Command Dogs in New York City followed by Federal Guard Dogs in North Smithfield, R.I.

The owner of Federal Guard Dogs, Gene Corcini, had been an innovator who was ahead of his time in the field of protection dogs. As Gene’s facility was local to me I began to more or less badger him for a job. One that I was far too young to be given. At fifteen Gene finally gave me the job in hopes of getting rid of me. Instead I became more obsessed, especially of Gene’s favorite: the Rottweiler. As they say, the rest is history.

I was introduced to the sport of Schutzhund, with my first trial being the DVG National Schutzhund Championship. Tom Rose won the championship and it was really inspiring. I joined a local Schutzhund club (Ocean State Schutzhund Club) where I titled my first dog. At the time the Training Director was David Wood. Although not a professional trainer, Dave was extremely talented. He had a thorough understanding of dog behavior and performance training. It provided a great foundation for which I am still appreciative and draw upon.

This was followed by working with Rick Francis in Orlando, at the time a “Schutzhund personaility”. This eventually led to Edgar Kaltenbach in Germany. By that time I was already becoming interested in the more difficult dog sports of French and Belgian Ring and KNPV. Even with these more difficult dog sports it was clear: dog sports prepare a dog for dog sports. Perhaps because of my introduction to dogs being protection dogs my interest was in functional protection. The problem was that outside of dog sports performance was extremely poor, including even the national police dog championships.

I decided to apprentice under Paul Theissen, the Chief Judge of the DVG in America (national Schutzhund organization) and owner of a police dog center. Paul was from Germany and had been involved with Schutzhund all his life. He was one of the first people I found to be bringing performance training to police dog and personal protection training. Paul was old school in a lot of ways, as well as hard core. We worked exclusively with the KNPV suit (I think the design hasn’t changed in 50 years!) in the hot Florida sun hour after hour. To this day I’m not sure how I survived.

It was really the training of Armin Zirm in Germany that had the greatest influence. Armin drew heavily on Schutzhund for precision obedience, French Ring for decoy work and German K9 law enforcement for functionality. He developed a program of training that drew enough attention in Germany that he was awarded all of the Mercedes and BMW security dog contracts.

Over time contact with elite police dog units in Germany, work with professionals in the field of executive protection, innovative trainers in Europe (such as Dany Maison in France) and eventually my own staff would contribute to what has become CPI’s advanced training programs.

Ultimately it is the correct understanding of dog behavior that training techniques must be built upon. That combined with the ability to think “outside of the box” is at the heart of everything we do at CPI.