Clermont County Dog Training Club proudly presents:
Ashley Wendler
ScentWork Trial Handling for Beginners
August 29, 2026
(Saturday)
Pennyroyal Baptist Church
3733 Pennyroyal Rd, Franklin, OH
1-day Working Spots – $100
1-day Auditing Spots – $25
Contact Edith Markoff at emarkoff01@gmail.com with any questions.
If you have ever watched the beginner classes at a trial you can very easily see who is in their first rodeo and who has mastered some of the key success skills to help make searches successful.
CCDTC is hosting Ashley Wendler to guide people planning to enter an ORT or getting ready to trial at NW1 or Novice levels. This is directed at beginners to help teams avoid common errors in the trial environment.
Ashley’s training plan is directly modified from her years of training professional detection dogs and teams as well as sport dogs and her countless hours serving as a judge.
Ashley was in the United States Air Force for 8.5 years and this is where she found her love for training and handling dogs. Her career started as a military police officer in 2010 and she was deployed to Iraq in 2011. At that time she first came in contact with military working dogs and their handlers. She watched handlers and their dogs go on patrols to help protect their fellow soldiers. By observing the bond between dog and handler and by experiencing the importance of that interaction Ashley knew this was the job for her! When Ashley returned from deployment to Ramstein Air Base in Germany she immediately began her journey to embark on the dog handling career. In 2013 Ashley attended Military Working Dog Handlers course at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Upon graduation in May of 2013, she returned to Ramstein where she picked up her first dog Nira, a 2 year old German shepherd right out of K9 Training School. By August of 2013 Ashley and Nira attended deployment training, and in September they were deployed to Kuwait in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. After returning from Kuwait Ashley then moved to Florida where she worked her second and third partners. While stationed at MacDill Air Force Base, Ashley was afforded the great opportunity to attend the Kennel Master/Trainer Course where she became certified to teach and lead k9/handler teams under her command. In July of 2016, Ashley found herself in Ohio where she continued her career as a Military Working Dog Handler with her fourth and final dog before taking over the role as kennel trainer. She helped prepare and advance K9/handler teams for daily missions and deployments. Ashley got out of the military in July of 2018 where she continued her dog training career at Train Your Pup, a pet dog training business. She started the companies nosework program and does private training and group training classes for everything from basic obedience to behavioral problems.
For this weekend’s workshop, the name of the game is nosework but that doesn’t mean you only have to rely on your dog’s nose. Handler’s should be able to read their dog and understand what their dog is trying to communicate with them. In this workshop we will be focusing on just that! Change of behavior is the most important part of calling an alert. You will only have a change of behavior when odor is present. If you can read that, you are more likely to get a yes when you call alert.
Seminar Topics Ashley will work on strategies for effective trial execution and improving our ability to read our dogs. We will talk about how we can communicate with our dog and how our dog communicates with us.
Ashley will be working with 15 teams. We are gearing the working spots toward dogs that are early in competition career and thinking about ORT or Novice levels to qualify for a working spot. Auditor spots will be limited, and the quantity will be determined once working spots have been confirmed.