There are moments in life when you make a decision because you have spent months carefully thinking about it. And then there are moments when suddenly everything becomes clear. For me, one of those moments happened during a recent workshop in the UK. I went there to teach detection dog training. I came home thinking about something much bigger. My future. More specifically, how I want to fulfill my mission from 2027 onwards. Because one thing has become very clear to me: My mission has not changed. I have. And because I have changed, the way I fulfill that mission needs to change too.
Trying to return to the old me
For a long time, I think part of my recovery was focused on getting back. Back to work. Back to training dogs. Back to teaching. Back to travelling. Back to standing in front of groups of people. Back to the life I had before cancer. That probably sounds logical. When something is taken away from you, your first instinct is to get it back. But I am beginning to understand that this might be the wrong goal. There is no going back. My body has changed. My energy has changed. My perspective has changed. I have changed. Cancer doesn’t just attack your body. It affects almost every part of your life. It changes relationships, priorities, emotions and your perception of time. It changes what you consider important. And strangely enough, it can also make some things much clearer. I sometimes compare it with the “overview effect” described by astronauts after seeing Earth from space. From that completely different perspective, borders disappear. Things that seemed enormously important suddenly become very small, while other things become incredibly valuable. I obviously didn’t travel into space. But cancer certainly launched me far enough away from my old life to look at it from a completely different perspective. And I cannot unsee what I have seen.
The UK became an energy check
That is why the workshop in the UK was important to me. My wife and I deliberately decided that I would travel alone. We called it my “energy check.” Could I still do this? Could I travel, teach, interact with people all day, solve problems, give demonstrations and still take care of myself? The answer is yes. But it is a different kind of yes than I would have given a few years ago. Before cancer, I could start early in the morning and continue until late in the evening. Give me another question, another dog, another problem to solve, another conversation over dinner and I would keep going. That person still exists in my head. Unfortunately, my body didn’t receive the same memo. I discovered that I can still do many of the things I love. But I cannot do them in the same way. And perhaps even more importantly, I no longer want to.
The person who understands that better than I do
The biggest thing missing during this UK trip was my lovely wife. She has been beside me through everything. During my illness and recovery she learned to recognize things that I sometimes still refuse to recognize myself. She sees when my energy is dropping. She reminds me to eat. She makes sure I take my medication on time. She knows when I need a break, sometimes long before I am willing to admit it. And she knows something else about me. If you put an interesting dog training problem in front of me, there is a very good chance I will forget everything else. That part of me definitely survived cancer. During this trip I realized how important her presence has become, not because I cannot function without her, but because together we function better. That realization also influences how I look at my future. I love travelling and teaching internationally. It has been an important part of my professional life for many years. But I love being with my wife more. I don’t want the next chapter of my life to be measured by how many countries I visited, how many flights I took or how many workshops I managed to squeeze into a calendar. I want it to be measured by impact.
What still gives me energy?
The UK weekend also gave me another important answer. I discovered what still gives me energy. Dogs do. People do. Problems do. Learning does. Give me a difficult K9 training problem and something happens inside my brain. I immediately want to understand it. What is the dog actually learning? What information is available to the dog? What are we reinforcing? What is our timing doing? What assumptions are we making?What does the data tell us? And perhaps most importantly: are we solving the actual problem, or are we solving the problem we think we have? I still absolutely love that process. I love training dogs. I love observing behaviour. I love detection work. I love building training protocols and testing ideas. I love technology and finding ways to objectively measure things we previously judged mainly by feeling. That hasn’t changed. But over the years, another part of my mission has become equally important. The human on the other side of the leash.
There are two learners in every K9 team
For many years, we have become increasingly sophisticated in the way we train dogs. We study learning theory. We think about reinforcement schedules. We measure behaviour. We analyse odor. We build training protocols. But sometimes I look at our industry and think: What about the human? There are always two learners in a K9 team. I have discovered that I get enormous satisfaction from helping people become better trainers. Not by telling them exactly what to do.
- By helping them learn how to think.
- To observe.
- To ask better questions.
- To experiment.
- To understand why something happens.
- To recognize their own assumptions.
- To become comfortable making mistakes.
- To become confident enough to say, “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
That is where my passion for feedforward coaching has become increasingly important. As an instructor, I don’t just want to create better dog behaviour. I want to create better trainers. People who eventually don’t need me anymore. That, to me, is success.
My mission has not changed
When I look at everything I have done over the past decades, there is a common thread. Curiosity. I want to understand things. Then I want to share what I discover so other people can use it. Whether that involved directional dogs, detection work, operational K9 problems, learning theory, scent wheels, double blind training, technology or coaching humans, the underlying mission has always been remarkably similar.
- Help people and dogs become better together.
- Challenge assumptions.
- Connect science with practical experience.
- Develop better training methods.
- Measure rather than guess whenever possible.
- Create trainers who think for themselves.
- And keep asking questions.
That mission has not changed. If anything, after everything that happened to me, I feel more connected to it than ever. But I no longer believe that the best way to fulfill that mission is to continuously travel around the world doing workshop after workshop. That was one way. It doesn’t have to remain the way.
Less, but deeper
For 2027, I want to become much more intentional about where I put my energy. That probably means doing less of some things. But I hope it also means doing much more of what really matters.
I want more depth. More individual development. More opportunities to follow people over time instead of teaching them for a weekend and saying goodbye. More coaching. More experimentation. More measurement. More opportunities to combine science, technology and practical K9 training. More time to develop ideas. More time to write. More time to train dogs myself. More time to solve interesting K9 problems. And more time at home with the person who has been beside me throughout the most difficult chapter of my life. I don’t see that as slowing down. I see it as becoming more focused. For much of my life, success was connected to what I could do. Now I am increasingly interested in what I can contribute. There is a difference.
One final chapter of 2026
Before this new approach begins, there are still some very special moments waiting for me in 2026.
First, I will return to the UK for an Advanced Detection workshop with Georgie. Then comes something incredibly special to me personally: teaching in the USA together with Bob Bailey. Anyone who knows my history knows what Bob’s work has meant to me. His influence on the way I think about animal training, science and problem solving goes back decades. To now stand together and teach is something I do not take for granted. After the USA, I will travel to the Czech Republic. And then Norway will become my final workshop of 2026. I am looking forward to every one of them. But I will experience them differently now. Not simply as the next workshop on my calendar. They are also the final workshops of a chapter.
2027 will be different
I am not ready to reveal exactly what the new approach will look like. There are still ideas to develop, conversations to have and pieces to put together. And knowing me, probably a few experiments to run. But the direction is becoming clear. 2027 will not be about stopping. It will not be about disappearing from K9 training. And it certainly will not be about losing my passion.
Quite the opposite.
- I want to use the energy I have where I believe it can create the greatest impact.
- I want to continue training dogs.
- I want to continue solving K9 problems.
- I want to continue challenging existing ideas.
- I want to continue learning from science and practical experience.
- I want to continue developing trainers.
And I want to continue helping people reach their individual next level together with their K9 partners. I just don’t need to do all of that in the same way I did before. Perhaps that is one of the biggest lessons cancer has taught me. Change does not always mean giving something up. Sometimes it means finally understanding what is important enough to keep. So when 2027 arrives, some things will look different.
- The way I teach will change.
- The way I travel will change.
- The way I use my time and energy will change.
- The balance between my professional and personal life will change.
But underneath all of that, something remains exactly the same. My mission. The mission has not changed. I have. And now it is time to find a better way for this new version of me to fulfill it. I deliberately did not reveal exactly what the 2027 approach will be. That makes this blog the explanation of why change is coming, while a later post can become the reveal of what that change actually looks like.
