About Us

At the age of 17, I started working at a world-class breeding facility nestled in the Ozark hills. Mango Kennels bred rare breed dogs such as Dogue de Bordeaux and Presa Canarios. Their program produced multiple AKC, UKC, and IBCA champions. The kennels became my home away from home. In fact, I had a bed set up in one of the kennels and would find myself sleeping in there more times than not. For 7 years I worked as kennel master and trainer for a 45 dog show kennel. I learned so much from those early years. Presa Canerios are like lions. Athletic and powerful.

Every morning on the farm, we would listen to National Public Radio (NPR). I remember hearing about the war on global terrism. It was when I heard about the heavy fighting going on in Iraq and Afghanistan that I decided it was my time to get into the fight myself and give those guys a hand.

Ozark Canine Academy

Introduction

So on April 19, 2006, I enlisted in the United States Army with dreams of becoming an elite airborne ranger.I tightened my bootstraps and set off on a mission to be an airborne ranger, starting with basic infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia, airborne school, and RIP (Ranger Indoctrination Program). Once completing these three voluntary courses, I was trained up and ready for the fight. On December 6, 2006, I received my orders for duty station. I was assigned to the 3rd platoon, A Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Regiment. I had landed myself in one of the most elite fighting forces on the planet during the most violent and high operation tempos of the war and it was a doozy.

Although volunteering as a private to take a dog team, they informed me that you have to have your E5 Sergeant rank in order to go to a specialty Platoon such as K9. Although I couldn’t go to the canine section quite yet, I always found myself around the Dog guy on deployments. Infact because of my kennel experience a was always trained to take over the platoon K9 in case the handler was injured on target. Luckly that never happened. After a couple deployments to Iraq 2007, Iraq 2008, and Iraq 2009 was able to get my E5 Sgt Rank and get my dog. I was so very lucky to get some of the best training in the world. Special operations falls under a different funding umbrella than big army, marines, airforce and navy. That means I was trained by the best trainers in each specialized category of dog training. We would pull the best bird dog, cattle dog, working dog and sport dog trainers to teach us their specialties. We would then blend those attributes to make the best war dog possible. Let me tell you our dogs were on point and looked at like any other platoon member. Rangers are a fine oiled machine and that machine has a dog in the front of it!

“Fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession”. Ranger creed

The highs and lows of battle. Some moments in life shape your destiny forever, like getting married or having children.This is the story of one of the moments that shaped my density and what led us to northwest Arkansas. If you don't like war stories this is where you skip to the bottom paragraph.

Afghanistan was a much different war than Iraq; the land I found to be beautiful. Walking 5 to 7 km to the target buildings in the middle of the night with night vision goggles was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Night vision goggles pick up every bit of light, and in Afghanistan, you can look as far as you can see with no electricity. Farmlands surrounded by mountains and not a single porch light to be seen. When I looked to the sky, I saw more stars than I could ever imagine in my wildest dreams. Shooting stars would be flying in all directions under the night vision goggles. Although we were there for work, the beauty was undeniable.

On March 13, 2010, it seemed like just another day at work. We were called up for a quick mission called Brief Pause. The night started as normal as possible, but what we thought would be a quick 30-minute flight for a one-hour kill-or-capture mission ended up being an all-night gunfight. Shortly after our teams loaded onto the CH-47 Chinook helicopters for insertion, they briefed us in the air. The plan was that as soon as we had boots on the ground, I would peel left to assault the building with the K9 with Staff Sergeant Adam Baig and his squad.

Just before landing, SSg Baig got a call over the radio that one middle-aged male MAM had run from the target building and set up by a tree with an RPG, lying in wait to ambush us. As soon as we landed, SSG Baig jumped off the helo, running toward the tree to the front left side of the Chinook. While he was attending the potential RPG threat, Sergeant Joel Clarkson and I, with the squad in tow, ran full steam at the target building, which was being sparkled from a predator aircraft above.

Operation Brief Pause

It didn’t seem like we were on the ground for more than 15 steps before we started taking small arms fire out of the windows of the target building not 40 meters away. We were up close and personal with the enemy, and they were coming out of the building, trying to flank us with RPK RPG and AK-47 gunfire. At that point, I was only 40 meters from the building, truly the tip of the spear, and all hell was breaking loose. There was a heavy volume of gunfire coming from all around me. Half of the ground force of Rangers was behind and on all sides of me, firing at a cyclic rate of fire. Simultaneously, enemy gunfire was shooting at us and all around us, impacting the ground whipping by. The force of of fighters were coming out and ready to die for their beliefs. They were shooting RPK automatic belt-fed 7.62 machine gun fire directly at our location!

At that point, I was in the center of the firefight. We could only imagine what was going on in the mind of Max, the 65-pound meat rocket Belgian Malinois that was attached to my hip. We were in the dark, and gunfire flashes were coming from every direction. I was lying on my belly in the prone shooting position, and Max was losing his mind, barking and jumping in the air as he was tied to my hip on a 3-foot lanyard.

By that time, Baig had bounded through the gunfire to link back with his squad. Even through the gunfire, I heard him yelling at me in a grave voice to “get Max down before he catches a bullet.” Not wanting Max to get hit, I reached with my left hand and smacked the leash toward me. Simultaneously, an AK-wielding enemy combatant ran out of the house trying to flank our position to my left. Because I popped the lead, Max jumped on my back with all four of his paws. Remember, I was lying prone on my belly so when I say he jumped on my back, I mean he curved his entire being around my body as if he was shielding me.

So there I was, in the center of a firefight, with my dog on my back. There’s a phenomenon a psychology professor at Westpoint named Colonel Dave Grossman talks about in his book on combat about how soldiers reported during heavy gun fights that it seems like time stood still. Seconds seem like minutes, he says. I can attest for this phenomenon because at that moment as I was shooting my rifle and time stood still, I could see the rounds being ejected from my M-4 carbine as if everything was in slow motion. As the weapon was cycling through in slow motion, boom! I looked up and saw Max, inches from my face, barking. It was the longest five seconds or so of my life. I just remember shooting and him barking, shooting and him barking, simultaneously

Boom – bark! Boom – bark! Boom!

The strangest thing was that I recognized what was going on in that moment and thought to myself, “This is awesome!” And just as quickly as it started, suddenly, time just sped back up into real-time, Boo-boo-boom, boom, bark!

For a second or two, there was a brief stop in gunfire and that’s when I heard, 10 feet to the right side of my location, the worst sounds a Ranger can ever hear: “Eagle down! Eagle down!” – which means a Ranger has been injured on target. It was SSg Joel Clarkson who’d been hit, and we had to get him out of there as quickly as possible. The platoon sergeant and medic did a phenomenal job selflessly exposing themselves at the front of the gunfight to package up our wounded brother and get him on the bird for evacuation.

The gunfight raged on while we landed the evacuation helicopter on the “hot” LZ (landing zone). They loaded Clarkson onto the bird, and while he flew to receive the care he needed, we continued the fight well into the morning daylight hours. Once the building was secure, we got picked up by our 47 to RTB (returned to base). Debriefing on base is when we learned that Joel had been flown to Germany and was undergoing surgery. We all held onto hope, but three days later, on March 16, our buddy succumbed to the injuries that he had sustained on the battlefield that night.

All of this occurred toward the end of our deployment. Ranger battalion, being the incredible leaders they were, sent the platoon back a week early in order to attend Joel’s funeral services. At the funeral, I met his beautiful young wife, 23-year-old Cassandra, and their nine-month-old son, Orion. Seeing Joel’s mother and young family for the first time, I realized the true sacrifice our gold star families make. The feeling split me down the middle. I loved being in the fight, and knowing the first stanza of the Ranger creed “Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession,” was always on my mind.

After a lot of discussions with my beautiful wife Tracey, we decided to leave it all behind and choose to raise a family of our own. Having made a promise to my “Rangers in the Sky” Joel Clarkson, that I would live the best life I could for them, my wife, Tracey, and I relocated to northwest Arkansas and started our own family. We have 2 wonderful children of our own, 45 acres of land with highland cows, chickens, pigs, cats, horses, ponies, and every other animal you can think of. In 2014, we started Ozark Canine Academy, a dog training facility at Wood Family Farms.

For the last 10 years, I’ve been formulating the best possible system of communication with the dogs we train. I used my GI Bill to attend civilian training courses and combined with the schools and experience from all my years of training in the military special operations community. I’ve read countless books and am constantly increasing my knowledge, skills, and abilities through continuing education. Through more than a decade of working with dogs and training them, I have developed a systematic approach to shaping the behavior of the household dog so families can have the highest quality of life possible with their pets.

I hope you take the lessons I learned from the battlefield and can implement them into your life so that you and your dog can live the best life possible. We owe it to our Rangers in the sky. God bless our gold star families, and as we say in the infantry, “follow me!” Rangers lead the way!

Friends your dog will meet during their stay on the farm.