Welcome back to the TWC podcast! Today, I have a guest whose experience in the dog training world spans over 30 years and covers just about every aspect of the industry. Jason Purgason is the President of Highland Canine Training. With a background as a former police officer and K9 handler, Jason has trained and certified working dog teams across law enforcement, military, and specialized detection disciplines—everything from narcotics and explosives detection to human remains and even termite detection. Beyond training, Jason is also the primary instructor at his school for dog trainers. He’s also the current president of the International Association of Canine Professionals (IACP), where he plays a key role in advocating for high standards in the dog training industry. In this episode, we dive into his business, his leadership at the IACP, and what’s happening in the dog training world.
Chapter 1: Who is Jason Purgason and what is his background?
Today, it's podcast Training Without Conflict number 54. And my guest is Jason Ferguson. There is quite a bit of a story, and that's probably why we have him on a podcast, actually. I met Jason, what was it, last year or the year before? Man, the time just goes very fast. So especially now that it's January, it gets even more complicated what is last year, right?
But yeah, Jason, I think you will do way better than me kind of briefing everybody and telling us a little bit about... First, I don't want to go into, and we may end up talking about how it all started for you, but at some point, I think for right now, it's more important to just kind of give me, like, you know, tell me about Highland Canine. Tell me...
what's up with iscp and and kind of but yeah just give me give me your own introduction because i i will miss things okay um so i am first and foremost i'm the uh my wife and i on highland canine training uh in north carolina uh we're about an hour north of Charlotte. We founded the business in 2006. We're in a pretty rural part of North Carolina. We opened the business.
It was quite small when we first started out. But over the years, it's been almost 20, 19 years this year. So we've grown over the decades. And we now have a multifaceted business. We do pet training, focusing on a lot of behavioral cases. We have a police and military working dog division where we train patrol dogs, detection dogs, all sorts of dogs.
We can get into that later if you want, but we've done some pretty obscure things on that side of the house. We have a service dog division where we train dogs for individuals with a variety of disabilities. However, we We've always sort of focused on those with autism spectrum disorders.
Yeah, you started originally, I think, with autism, right? And kind of took off from there.
Yeah. Yeah, big emphasis on autism spectrum disorders. Yeah, and we still continue to today. And then the fourth part of our business is our school. Our school for dog trainers where we teach people how to become part of the industry or part of this profession. So that's been going on, like I said, since 06. IACP stuff is, as you know, pretty recent for me.
I've been a member for a really long time. Not as long as some, but I've been a member for a long time. Our business has been a longtime sponsor of the organization. I actually started on the board of directors a year ago. So it was January of 2024. My journey and entry into that is a story in itself.
And IACP for everybody that kind of doesn't get the abbreviations, it's International Association of Canine Professionals, right? Yeah, correct. And it's based in the States. But now you are the current president, which is really cool. At one point, I don't know, a few years back, I was part of the legislation or legislative committee.
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Chapter 2: What is Highland Canine Training?
They've had plenty of dogs before. They grew up with dogs. They've been around them all their life, but they come with... so many bad habits, um, that they really sort of interfere with what that service dog is able to do. So, um, you know, there's, there's no perfect situation obviously. And we've seen it work really well with both, um, individuals who've had dogs, dog experience and dogs before.
Yeah. Those who've never had.
Wow. Yeah, that's kind of like going back in my time when we used to train guide dogs. I couldn't tell sometimes people that had dogs and people that didn't have dogs. One of the problems that I used to come across that was just kind of not a good feeling was when the person did need the dog. But the dog was treated as a, and sometimes you can have this in the police world as well.
Like it's just a piece of equipment, a tool, something just to have when you need, but not really appreciate that it's a living being that needs not just food, not just, you know. And I'm sure you've had this too, right?
I've seen it with, as you mentioned, I've seen it with working dogs. And I've seen it with a few of the other types of service dogs that we train. But that's the one thing I love about training service dogs for particularly kids and young adults with autism spectrum disorders is, you know, one of the sort of
I hate to put it, one of the side jobs for this dog in most cases, not all, but most cases is, you know, a social draw. It's a social draw for these kids and young adults. You know, these individuals oftentimes are isolated. They don't have a lot of friends. They don't see a lot of interaction in public for a variety of reasons. And then all of a sudden we put this fluffy dog with them.
And now all of a sudden people are paying attention. They're interacting. They're talking to this kid where they never would have before, even to ask, hey, can we pet your dog? Or what's your dog's name? Or, you know, what type of dog is this? And then, you know, these dogs are also serving in a lot of cases, again, not all, but in a lot of cases as a bit of a playmate with these children.
and and the you know their ability to play is wonderful i mean it's absolutely wonderful for for both sides of it right the dog the dog benefits from it the kid benefits from it um so you know unlike some of the guide dogs and other service dogs the those that are they're working with um People with autism spectrum disorders, they get to be dogs a little more.
And that's one of the things that I really like about it.
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Chapter 3: How do service dogs assist individuals with autism?
you know, a training device or training tool or a system or methodology, even though when we look at it face value, it's clearly a mess. It clearly isn't going to work. It clearly has little to no opportunity to lead us to success. But people seem to swarm on it.
simply because it's the newest thing or it's the thing they continue to see on social media or this person said it or this person's selling it.
Yeah, and there is that human nature thing of like, what if really it is the latest new invention and I'm missing out? But yeah, you can try and Like I, all dog training is about how do you tell the dog, how do you instruct a dog in the way, well, because you like, let's say I just had this conversation. I think it was with one of my graduate students here about detection.
Like, how easy it is if we have, let's say, five coffee cups here, and one has coffee and the other ones have something else, and I tell you which one has the coffee, and you smell and you, you know, you cannot mistake the cup of coffee among everything else. And when you think about detection, It really comes down to how well you can explain to a dog what the goal, what the objective is.
The only difference is that the dog cannot be instructed and guided the same way as I just said it in one sentence to a person. when that starts in your head, you can pretty much win away all the bullshit of some of the things in different systems and approaches simply because as a whole, the system may work.
And of course you see that, yes, they're producing dogs and yes, these dogs are successful, or at least most of them are, but there is a lot of bullshit that is not needed in the whole system, so-called, right?
Yeah, and a lot of that's, you know, the biggest problem that I see, one of the bigger problems I see with all these methods and systems is, you know, they all
sort of hinge on human influence.
And the reality is, is with detection dogs, you know, specifically with detection dogs, there are some other dogs that I feel like fall into this category, but I think it's most important for detection dogs. We're asking those dogs to go out. We're asking them to do a job.
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Chapter 6: How does the training of detection dogs differ from service dogs?
Again, the CDT requires a lot of information, so we're looking at people's CV, resume, background, experience. We're doing... background checks on people to make sure, yeah. So again, they're delivering these pretty significant case studies. And again, getting feedback from those clients, direct feedback from the clients that they worked with about the results, et cetera, et cetera.
That then is all submitted to a panel of people and that panel changes because there's basically a pool of people. And if you were to submit a CDT, you don't know which individuals within that group it's going to end up going to. But it's a group of individuals.
And even at the end you wouldn't know, right?
Right. You know, you'll never know. No, it's complete. It's all completely on the back end of it. You would not know who created your CDT. But it's going to go to at least three different evaluators. And those three different evaluators are going to take independent looks and reviews of it and going to grade each section of it to develop a final grade.
Once all three of them have a final grade, those three final grades are combined in a metric and then you get a passing or failing score. So it's... I don't want to use the word intense. It's definitely doable. If you've been training dogs for a while, you've got some experience working with clients, it's definitely doable.
And that is something that I don't think AACP had before, right?
Was that offered at some point? They had the CDT before, but it was incredibly cumbersome. It required the person to, you know, email stuff in and mail stuff in and things would get lost in the mix and it was very complex and it got pretty complicated and created frustration. So one of the things we did this year was we streamlined that process.
Yeah. So the difficult question that I would have, maybe it's not difficult, but In our, just in like the dog training community that actually does use some form of aversive in their training, there is potential of abuse. And often there is abuse. And is it even visible? What would AACP, if anything, I mean, would that be something that AACP can say, okay, well, we can revoke membership.
Are there any conversations? Is that something of concern? Because that's probably one of the biggest, I think, problems that if we can resolve to some extent, we will be in a better place because I think it's important that somehow we deal with that. But everybody's afraid, probably including myself, to point finger at somebody else that has a business and is doing whatever, unless
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Chapter 7: What are the common misconceptions about police dog training?
stand our ground and do good things and allow them as we always have allowed them to do good things um but i do not like i i've myself given up on trying to convince The people that are in those extreme groups, you know, there is plenty of trainers that are curious, that are trying and choosing, well, I want to train my dog without aversives. I mean, that's cool.
I, you know, that's your choice and you're accomplishing something. The only time I probably, not probably, but the only time I have an issue with that is when We're going to say, well, we tried really everything. We've exhausted any option. And the best thing to do for this dog is to euthanize it.
But we haven't even told the dog, forget about doing anything more, but just told the dog, no, that's a bad idea. Don't do that. But even then, I in a way wish that that owner will look for help elsewhere simply because they don't want to give up and want to exhaust, like really truly exhaust their options before they make that hard decision because life and death is... It's a clear cut, right?
And if I have a, if my dog is, or my kid, or anybody that I care, and I've tried a lot of things, And it's at the point that I'm like, you know, I'll go to some witch, I'll do some bruja or Baba Yaga, whatever. Like, I mean, I'm at the point that I want to save my dog or I want to save my kid from cancer, whatever it is.
And this is like my biggest problem with them when they say that everything was done and we're not touching this part. That's not going to work. That is the reason why we're here. And it all gets so confusing, and people buy that. I don't know. I'm rambling here.
Do I think we'll ever come together? No, I don't. I don't see that in the foreseeable future. I really don't. Do I believe that both belief systems can coexist? I think that's our best hope right now. I think the balanced community, and I'm not trying to be super critical here. I'm just trying to make a statement based on what I believe.
I think the balanced community, unfortunately, has done a pretty poor job historically of educating people. And I think that that's been a bit of a problem because they're also busy training people's dogs and helping to resolve behavioral issues and keeping dogs in homes. Whereas others on sort of the opposite side of that I guess for whatever reason, simply has a lot more time to create content.
And, you know, you do a simple Google search. And this is a conversation I've had a number of people. You do a simple Google search. about training tools, and the first two and a half pages are populated with articles written by the Force Free community about how training tools are terrible. Is that something that balanced trainers could change? Absolutely.
Put pen to paper, sit in front of a keyboard, craft articles, content, and useful information that's truthful, and direct that people want to look at, learn from and read. The problem is because we've sort of taken a back seat on the content production side of things and the education side of things, we've given, we've sort of given the stage to the opposing side.
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Chapter 8: What role does breeding play in the quality of service and detection dogs?
I mean, it's been eight for Florida, and now everybody's going to laugh at us, but we're in the 40s and low, high 30s, but that's super cold for us. We're just so not used to. But those days are, you know, we train all day, and it's very enjoyable. Pretty soon we're going to have to start thinking to go up. So I think you're going to see me at your place at some point.
Looking forward to it.
All right, Jason. Thank you for, really, thank you for the conversation. But most importantly, like, really, really thank you for just being part of AACP and volunteering your time to something that most of us really, really care and it's very much appreciated, man. Like, really appreciate it. So I will see you soon.
Been a pleasure. Yeah, again, if people are looking, it's IACPDogs.org. So go learn more about IACP. Thanks for having me on. It's been a pleasure.
Yeah, man. I'm going to put everything, all the links on the description. So cheers. See you.
Thank you.
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