Alyssa Richter

Alyssa Richter has over 12 years of experience with canines. She began her canine career in the Marine Corps while assigned to the 3rd Law Enforcement Battalion in Okinawa, Japan where she was responsible for worldwide canine deployments within their area of operation. Her time in Okinawa allowed for exposure to a variety of disciplines and training methods to include tracking, off-leash specialty search dogs, patrol dogs, narcotic, and explosive detection. In 2013, Alyssa became a canine trainer and was eventually stationed at Lackland AFB as an Instructor at the Basic Handlers Course. After Separation from the Marine Corps, Alyssa continued her canine career as a Government contractor in the Middle East until the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2021. Upon returning to the States, Alyssa trained canines for cargo programs until she began a project for the USDA training dogs to find viruses in plants as a part of their research and development team. Today, Alyssa continues her canine career as the Regional Trainer in the Southeast for K2 Solutions, where she provides oversight and training for over 34 canine handler teams conducting Person-Borne and Static Detection.

Class: Transitioning from Training to the Operational Environment

In the world of canine—training, requirements, challenges, and even the community are ever-evolving. We must evolve with it to ensure that we optimize the success of our canines. This course will cover why and how canines experience a decline in performance during the transition from the training to operational environment, how we can minimize the variance of performance in new environments, challenges that training presents and how to mitigate those challenges.