"My goal in life is to be as good of a person as my dog already thinks I am.”
- Unknown
Those of us who grew up in small town USA have always known there was an underbelly of darkness and crime just below the feigned belief that all was well. We depend on local law enforcement to protect us from the criminal element that plagues all communities. With drug use and distribution on the rise even in our beloved community, and budgets shrinking as the cost of running a city swells, the ability to enforce and protect becomes more difficult.
Enter K9 Charko, the City of Salem’s K9 Patrol Dog. K9 Charko (pronounced Charo) is a German Shepherd from the Boulder Creek Performance K9 LLC (BCPK9) Kennels in Slovakia. The local BCPK9 training facility is located just north of Salem on Highway 72. Mark Wynn, a Salem native, is the owner and trainer. Wynn trained K9 Charko and K9 Officer Mike Loveday of the Salem Police Department to assist the department in protecting our community.
Wynn’s expertise in K9 training was earned through hard work and experience. He worked and trained as a military contractor working dogs, police service dogs, and search and rescue dogs in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Jordan (at the King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center). While in Iraq, he was the kennel master for the world’s largest K9 contract, managing over 100 explosives detection dogs at the Baghdad Embassy.
Wynn imports rare breeds for BCPK9 stock. He uses Belgian Malinois, Hanovarian Hounds and Bavarian Mountain Hounds because of their healthy physique and exceptional tracking/trailing ability. The Hanovarian Hounds are extremely rare. There are approximately 80 of them in the United States, and Wynn owns five of them.
K9 Fleck, a German shorthaired pointer and a narcotics detection dog trained at BCPK9, is now working in St. Charles. The first day on the job, K9 Fleck alerted to a vehicle for suspected drug currency, netting an $80,000 find in suspected drug currency.
BCPK9 is dedicated to the training of police K9s and their handlers. The company believes in “training for the street, not just certification,” according to Wynn. Although he believes certification is of paramount importance, he can’t express enough the necessity of both state and national certification for all trainers. He believes in a third-party certification evaluation to ensure non-partial and honest evaluations. BCPK9’s business philosophy is “There is no second chance on the street,” and this mindset influences the way they train.
I was able to observe K9 Charko and Wynn’s K9 Dillon, a Belgian Malinois, in action as they were taken through a series of patrol and apprehension tactics. I was amazed at the intense focus the dogs had. Wynn would create chaos with lights, loud noises and gunfire. The dogs ignored everything except the commands of their handlers.
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man. "
- Mark Twain
BCPK9 is expanding their services beyond the training of these specialized dogs to provide safe tactical gun handling using the Ultimate Training Munitions (UTM) program. Wynn is bringing in a tactics instructor from Oregon to provide “realistic training without permanent holes.” The one-day class is scheduled for Dec. 17 with a cost of $250 per participant. The fee covers all UTM Ammo. The training is limited to 10 seats.
UTM Target Shooting products provide the most realistic alternative to live fire available. This technology was previously only available to military and law enforcement. It is now available to responsibly armed citizens who want to train with their own firearm using this specialized live fire technology. UTM target shooting ammunition and firearm conversions allow all skill levels, beginner through advanced to experience live fire in a real-life situation without the consequences of lethal ammo.
Wynn allowed me to experience this amazing technology using an assault-style rifle. It was like shooting the real thing. You get the same recoil and accuracy. I shot through a quarter inch piece of cardboard and barely scratched the paint on the dry wall behind it. If you shoot just for fun or training for your concealed carry, UTM will ensure a shooting experience “as real as it gets.”
Do you know how to clear your house or any building while protecting your loved ones? Do you understand the difference between cover and concealment when being fired upon? The 13-room training structure was designed not only for training the dogs, but for this type of training as well with input from members of the Navy Seals, Green Beret and Special Forces.
This training will allow you to not only experience numerous scenarios in buildings and outside, but also to help you understand when it is time to fight and when it is time to break contact. When considering the cost of this training Mark says “Good training is not cheap, and cheap training is not good. There is a big difference between putting a gun on your side and putting a gun on your side and being trained to use it.”
For more information about the police dog training or about the UTM training you can contact Mark Wynn via email, mark@bcpk9.com, or by phone (573) 263-9922.
