Episode 173: ⁣ Making your dog trustworthy, with Mike Lilley

Your Working Dog Radio hosts, Eric @vanessk9 & Ted @ted_summers, sat down with Badge-to-Business Owner, MLK9 Mike Lilley. Lilley grew up with hunting dogs, which proved to be invaluable for his later career as a State Law Enforcement Officer with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). (You will NOT want to miss their conversation about hogs, alligators, and panthers… Oh my! )

Lilley’s first parter, Roscoe the Lab, put all of Lilley’s training to the test, but they became an unstoppable team for tracking, recovering articles, and detecting fish and game. After a career shift to Hendry County Sheriff's Office K9, Lilley’s second partner, Neko the hand-selected Malinois, certified in Patrol, Tracking and Narcotics detection with Lilley.

Lilley was given his Police K9 Trainer's certification and officially became a professional dog trainer in 2016. He was promoted to Sargent over the K9 Unit. (There are some good training tidbits, so be sure to listen up!) Lilley soon opened his pet dog training business and works with pet dogs in basic and advanced obedience along with civilian scent detection and law enforcement K9s. He also is an instructor for K9s United providing modern training techniques to agencies in need across the United States. Additionally, Lilley is a Silver School graduate under the teaching of Bart and Michael Bellon, and attended the Gold School in March of 2022.

There are DEFINITELY some training gems and hilarious tangents sprinkled throughout this episode, so be sure to follow him at @mike_lilley_k9