American K-9 Interdiction

I graduated recently from AK9I from the Patrol/Detector Dog Trainer Course. And man was it an experience. Through my Instructor Jan Koppenens, I learned how to have patience with a high drive dog whose only goal in life is to get his ball. From imprinting a green dog and teaching them the game of odor detection, to bitework as a decoy and learning how to build a dog from the ground up, it was alot to learn in a short time. Jan was there and knew how to solve every issue, how to correct every problem. The amount of knowledge he has from working dogs in Europe is absolutely insane. I start work with 3DK9 soon and I cannot wait to just go to work with a dog every day. Yoda is the best partner out there I could ask for. If you hide it...he will find it.. and if he doesn't...well its probably the handlers fault 😂. But seriously. I cannot thank Jan enough for all the early mornings and late days over the last 13 weeks and the extra knowledge above and beyond what was required of him. He took both a green handler and green dog and turned us into an amazing Explosives and Firearms detection team. I only hope I can continue to live up to his expectations out in the field and I hope I get to train or work with him again!! I am only giving 3 stars for the following reasons, none of which were the fault of any instructors. For one reason or another, we missed parts of the curriculum due to not having any green dogs to work with toward the end of the class as specified in the course outline. There was a management/owner change for the school during my time there. While I am not against that, meetings that needed to be held for the admin/instructors took away from our course time that could have been spent training. There were standards not held. Students without vehicles causing instructors to have to transport them around, again taking time away from training. There was an understanding that a student was responsible for transport of the assigned K9 throughout the course. Emergencies happen and I get it but you have to set a standard and hold people to it. I sincerely wish the best for the new administration and hope they can make the school even better than when they took over.

I had the opportunity to train under Stephan Hubert at AK9i, and it was one of the most valuable learning experiences I’ve had. What really sets Stephan apart is his depth of knowledge and his ability to teach. He doesn’t just tell you what to do, he breaks everything down in a way that actually makes sense. He takes complex concepts and simplifies them so you can understand the “why” behind the work, not just go through the motions. During my time training with him, I saw a huge improvement in both my handling and my understanding of the work. He’s extremely detail oriented and does a great job of reading both the dog and the handler, adjusting in real time to get the best results. You can tell he genuinely cares about developing skilled handlers, not just getting through sessions. I’m grateful for the time I spent learning under him and would highly recommend him to anyone serious about their training.

This was a great training program and I’m really glad I chose this school. The school genuinely cares about each and every student that comes through, especially the instructors. I went through the 13 week handler/trainer course with Instructor Jan. He went into incredible detail on teaching us everything about handling, and took the time to make sure everyone understood the material before moving forward. I also learned a lot about decoying and bite work. I would recommend this school to anyone looking into becoming a K9 handler. I can’t say enough how happy I am with my K9. I would definitely come back for future training and would hope to have the same instructor again.

It was a great experience, had lots of fun. Coming from a whole different line of work to get involved with K9 is really fun. Want to give a huge shout out to in my opinion the best instructor there Jan Koppenens. I was here for the 8 week course and really have first week of introductory then I also had 2 snow days and 2 federal holidays, so in 6 weeks fully Jan help me so much to become the handler I am today so in my opinion he needs a raise he’s that good

My experience at AK9i was awesome. Our primary instructor (Stephane) was incredibly knowledgeable. During our time there the entire staff worked harder than anywhere I have been prior to make sure their students were taken care of and were learning quality info. I attended the course with my adult son with me and I was extremely pleased with how we were treated and the level of instruction for him also. You can tell immediately the people there actually love their job and the dogs that are in their care. I witnessed the instructors going way out of their way to help individual students and make sure they had what they needed to not only learn how to be great handlers but to work individually within class settings with custom approaches because every dog is different and every handler is different. Ive been in field now for some months and the continued support has been awesome, the couple questions I have pop up they answer immediately. Attending this school has been one of my best decisions yet.