After more than 15 years of law enforcement experience, Matt Greenlief decided to open a K-9 training facility in Monmouth.
Cedar Creek Kennels fills a gap in police dog training in western Illinois and across the country. The main training facility is located in the former Maple City Pottery building at 620 S. Main St.
It has 80 rooms that are used for canine development, drug detection, criminal apprehension scenarios, and a dedicated odor imprinting space for the canines.
Training for the dogs starts not in Monmouth, but rather in Europe. Cedar Creek Kennels has partners in the Netherlands and Germany where dogs are preselected for agencies in the U.S.
“If you look at taking a puppy from the time it’s born and spending all that time with that puppy until they’re about a year old, you’re not guaranteed that that dog is going to display the characteristics that we need,” said Greenlief.
The canines come with a vast amount of foundational training knowledge, which Greenlief said makes the process easier for trainers at Cedar Creek Kennels to begin.
Once the dogs have arrived, they are imprinted with the odor of what they will detect while working, such as narcotics, explosives, or people.
The most common dogs used for K-9 teams are Belgian Malinois, German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds, and other Labrador Retrievers. They often begin working between ages one to three.
“I like to tell everybody that comes, prospective handlers and agencies, that our class is not easy. We demand a lot out of the handlers that come through here, but we also demand a lot out of ourselves too,” said Greenlief.
Their training programs are ten weeks long, which allows ample time for handlers and their canines to understand each other. They begin their days with tracking and teaching the handlers how to read their dogs. They later move onto detection work like looking for drugs, explosives, and personal articles.
“We work for perfection here in the class, so we’re almost perfect on the street,” said Greenlief.
Greenlief started his law enforcement career in 2006 with the Warren County Sheriff's Office. In 2007 he was selected to become a canine handler. After receiving his handler certification, he worked with his first canine until 2014
Greenlief's dog assisted him in more than 300 arrests and seizures during that time.
In 2015, the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board certified him as a Canine Trainer.
Cedar Creek Kennels opened in 2019. The business specializes in police K-9 teams and training, obedience training, and boarding.
It is the only K-9 training facility in west central Illinois. Handlers come to Monmouth from all over the country.
“Our program kind of stands out amongst others, nationally anyways. We’ve had handlers come from as far away as Montana, Kentucky, New York, Colorado, so it’s not just local agencies,” said Greenlief.
Most of the training is performed at the facility in Monmouth, but Cedar Creek Kennels works with local communities to further immerse the handlers and the canines in what to expect in the field. For instance, they do various training in industrial and urban settings, as well as open area and field searches. Handlers and canines have also taken training to other local communities, including Galesburg, to build upon their skills in a new environment.
Greenlief said handlers who graduate from Cedar Creek Kennels have a success rate of 73 percent when it comes to tracking people, when the national average sits around only five to 10 percent.
“My favorite thing really is to just watch the teams and the dogs grow,” said Greenlief. “You can ask anyone that comes through here, we get excited when these guys have that first successful track, even in training. If you never fail you never learn, so you have to hit those failures to achieve greatness and to get to that win.”
Cedar Creek Kennels also partners with the Virginia-based non-profit CJ3 Foundation, which provides support to veterans and first responders. Cedar Creek Kennels works with the foundation to provide service dogs at no cost.
“I’m just as passionate to help those guys out and it’s not uncommon for me to shed a tear when we do the handover and the transition with the veterans and the first responders, because you can see in their eyes when they get this dog what kind of improvement it’s going to have with their life,” said Greenlief.
More information is at https://cedarcreekkennelsil.com.
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