Nationally renowned dog trainer is a Brandon local

The specialist of dog training in the province is a Brandon resident who spends his work hours teaching dogs and professional handlers at a site near the airport.

The specialist, Jay Palmer, is the K9 program co-ordinator for the Province of Manitoba. He trains dogs for the Brandon Police Service and the Manitoba First Nations Police Service; and other agencies will request his help from time to time, like the Toronto Police Service, Ontario Provincial Police, and Calgary, Vancouver and Halifax search and rescue organizations.

Palmer played hockey for the Wheat Kings, he was a firefighter, he was a police officer, a K9 handler, and now he works for the province training dogs. He is also national team lead trainer for the Canada Task Force, which trains dogs and handlers to respond to emergencies.

Palmer’s work involves a variety of tasks, such as teaching dogs to identify a list of things like cadavers, explosives, drugs, bedbugs, guns, and to teach them to track people and apprehend suspects if needed.

“It’s hard to say what’s going to happen each day,” Palmer, 61, said from his office at the practical training site of the Manitoba Emergency Services College in a recent interview. “If I got police dogs here, I’ll train for police; if I got urban search and rescue dogs, I’ll do urban search and rescue; if I got detection dogs, I’ll do detection.”

Palmer has worked with dogs for 25 years. He started as a K9 handler for the Brandon Police Service in 2001, and moved to his current role with the province in 2017.

Dogs trained in Manitoba by Palmer were used to search for a missing teenager in Brandon last year who, was later found deceased, and the chief of the Manitoba First Nations Police Service, Doug Palson, who perished in a house fire.

“There’s sometimes I come up here and I don’t talk to people. I work with dogs all day, and I go home at night and I didn’t talk to a person all day,” Palmer said in January.

Monday to Friday, Palmer’s job is to train dogs that will go on to serve in various working roles. He is currently training Doug, the newest puppy of the Manitoba First Nations Police Service, named in honour of Palson. He is also training Merrit, the newest puppy of the Brandon Police Service, meant to fill the void left when K9 Storm died last year.

“The way I look at it, I’ll get the dog so strong that the handler can’t mess it up,” he said. “It’s usually a year of initial training, then I’ll hook them up.”

The first thing Palmer does with the dogs is shape their behaviour, he said. Around two months old, and when the dogs are well behaved, he starts training them to track. Then he will introduce the animal to the art of searching for people, and detecting drugs.

Merritt and Doug were set to begin their drug training in January.

Outside Palmer’s office is a slew of equipment designed for housing and training animals. There is a fenced-in area where commands are trained, an area to bathe dogs, and an area to mimic drug searches of everyday objects like boxes, suitcases, and a snowmobile. In the summer, he spends a lot of time in the field on tracks around Brandon.

There are two dozen framed photos of service dogs and their handlers in Palmer’s office. In one photo, BPS Const. Justin Artibise kneels with his K9 partner Blink.

Artibise told the Sun he learned essentially everything he knows about handling dogs from Palmer. In an interview with the Sun in January, the officer said that Palmer is his go-to whenever he wants to work something out, get advice, or even discuss a victory.

“I think he is incredible,” Artibise said. “As corny as it might sound, I see him kind-of as a father figure.”

After Artibise successfully tracked and located a person on duty in January, an event that excites K9 handlers especially when they are coming into the work, Artibise called Palmer in the early hours of the morning, he said. He woke the trainer from his sleep because he wanted to pass on the news that their work together was paying off.

The call is not out of the ordinary. Palmer has received many such calls, and it is one of the things that is gratifying about the work, he said.

“Obviously, these guys think highly of what I do for them,” Palmer said. “When I get a call at one in the morning or two in the morning from the guys I’ve been working with, (that’s gratifying).”

The students are not exclusive to the Brandon Police Service. K9 teams from across the country train for certification in Brandon, with Palmer conducting certifications and offering advice at those times.

At the Manitoba Emergency Services College practical training site by the airport, there is a rubble pile with the footprint of roughly four tennis courts, made from giant slabs of concrete, parts of an airplane, and full vehicles. Palmer helped design and expand the facility. It simulates a collapsed building, and Palmer uses it to train dogs to sniff out people in disaster situations. Handlers from across the country come to certify their service dogs at the site, with teams from Toronto, Halifax, Calgary and Vancouver having made the trip in 2025.

Bob Sandher, an officer with the Vancouver Police Service, in October visited with some team members to certify Vancouver dogs for the Canada Task Force. Sandher said he has been mentored by the Brandon resident for years, and that the crew out in Vancouver regards him as a great teacher.

“He is always open for conversations to talk to,” Sandher told the Sun from Vancouver. “He is not intimidating. And he is a know-it-all, but he doesn’t act like a know-it-all.”

Sandher said that in 2022 while training his dog, he would send videos remotely to Palmer and receive advice and feedback.

“It’s made me a better trainer, made me a better supervisor, made me better for deployment,” said Sandher, who is also the team lead for the British Columbia division of the task force.

“When some of our handlers struggle, I send them off to Jay, because it’s a different set of eyes,” Sandher said. “Jay, I would say, saved our team maybe close to $100,000 in expenditure. Because you have the option of buying a ready-made dog from the States, but Jay likes training them.”

Adam Philpott, a K9 handler at Brandon Police Service, agreed about the reputation and teaching style of Palmer. He said a strength of Palmer is to let students trip up at first.

“He lets you fail in a safe setting,” Philpott said. “He allows you to make the mistake. Then he’s there as a good coach to help you address whatever issues you had.”

The approach means that students learn from failure, he said; being allowed to make the mistake empowers the student to identify challenges and address them.

Going forward, Palmer said he is eligible for retirement in 2027. He is considering moving to a casual position and dog training when that time comes.

Palmer said he is hopeful that his position will be filled and continue when he steps away, because he can’t do it forever: at the “old” age of 61, as he described it, the work is hard on the body. Palmer has tallied a list of injuries over the years from working with dogs, including two surgeries on his knees, a hip replacement, a torn bicep and a ruptured rotator cuff.

»cmcdowell@brandonsun.com