— A Welcome from KILO1 —
My purpose for this website.
Although the sales of the High-Performance Giant Schnauzers are limited, I want to serve the protection canine community with what I have learned since 2009 — the lessons, the price my Giant Schnauzers and I have paid in blood, dirt, and sweat.
I have seen the pain a human being can inflict on a canine. I have seen the death of canines in the system. I have seen the violence, the viciousness, the insensitivity of just how low and depraved a human being can be toward a working dog — no remorse, no apology, just brutality.
Those lessons — recorded, documented, briefed — forced hard decisions. I had to step aside and think outside the box, because the traditional methods designed for the streets had extremely limited application behind razor wire, concrete, and steel.
I did not set out to make a name.
I set out on every deployment to survive — with my unit, and with our canines. And although we were ahead on human tactics — cutting-edge entries, cutting-edge movement — our canines were being left behind.
After a brutal interdiction involving one of my earliest Giant Schnauzers — Max — I understood what the cost of complacency would be.
Max is the dog the Giant Schnauzer community and law enforcement got to know.
Max taught me everything I needed to know about this breed — their love, their loyalty, their undying commitment to protect their handler.
I knew that if I stayed complacent inside the earlier police tactics we had been shown — tactics with extreme limited use inside the prisons — Max would be crippled, or killed.
It was not easy. It was not free. It came with the laughs. The ridicule. The quotes of “it’s impossible” when I asked. It came with watching my dog take broken ribs, trauma to his face, stab wounds, multiple vet visits.
That is what committed me — not just to change our tactics, but to teach.
To teach this breed that it is okay to stay inside their instinctive behavioral protection mode, and to mentor that instinct with tactics that complement their behavior — not override it.
That is where the K1K9 Combat Transition came from. That is where the use of lights and lasers to guide them came from. That is where the biting method came from.
Seventeen years later, I know what our Giant Schnauzers have executed flawlessly. I know we had a different method — one that raised the survival ability of both the canine and the handler.
And I realized it was not just us we were protecting.
There are hundreds of thousands — millions — of protection canine owners out there who deserve to at least hear, see, and understand that there are other methods. Methods that can help them survive an encounter.
Everyone says a dog barking is all you need on a protection K9. The truth is: if you are never prepared for the one percent, you are going through life knowing that eventually that number is going to be called. And the result — for you — is anybody’s guess.
I have paid the price with our canines and our units.
Saving lives. Restoring order. Removing the most deadly weapons that were going to be used against officers. Helping facilities recover from massive gang violence. Recovering officers who were taken hostage.
Those stories will never be told — for obvious security reasons, and out of respect for the families and the victims.
The story that will be told is how our canines and handlers survived — with the techniques that ensured we went home at the end of every mission.
That is the purpose of this website.
Not to tell you this is the only way.
To share with you a way.
A proven way.
— Joseph Garcia · KILO1™
