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Thinking about adding a dog to your family? Bringing a dog into a home with young children can be a rewarding experience, but it also comes with important considerations. In this episode, we explore how to choose the right breed or temperament, prepare your home and kids for a new pet, and ensure a smooth introduction. Learn how to involve children in training and care, tackle common challenges, and know when to seek professional help. Plus, our expert guest, certified professional dog trainer, Tracey Costa, CPDT-KA, CNWI, NACSW, shares invaluable insights on strengthening the bond between kids and their furry companions, as well as must-know resources for new dog owners. Tune in for practical advice and heartfelt guidance to help your family create a happy, lasting relationship with your new four-legged friend!! Find Tracey Costa at Positive Note Dog Training!Resources:Family Paws: Creating Dog Aware GenerationsDoggone Safe Educational Resources - The Pet Professional Guildi Speak Dog101 Dog Tricks - Kids Edition on AmazonLiving with Kids and Dogs - Colleen Pelar, CDBC, CPDT-KALinks to Dog Training Professionals:Certification Council for Professional Dog TrainersThe Pet Professional GuildThe International Association of Animal Behavior ConsultantsKaren Pryor Academy for Animal Training & BehaviorSupport the showDisclaimerCheck out VitalVet.org for all PetAbility Podcast episodes related to rehabilitation as well as a plethora of other resources and product information.MedcoVet (show sponsor) - the next generation in laser therapy by putting healing in the hands of the pet owner! By using the Promo Code PETPOD22, when placing your first order with any of our affiliate partners, you will receive 10% off and PetAbility receives 10% . Dr. Buzby's Toe Grips – dog nail grips to keep your dog from slipping! Extra love – use this link and the entire 20% goes to support our show! HedzUpPets Watercollars – save your dog from drowning with this unique lightweight collar when around any body of water!Calm & Cozy Cat Wrap - a must-have for cat owners and vet pros working with cats! Use PETPOD22 for $5 off your order.
This week we are talking with Tina Vickrey, who is an ORT (Odor Recognition Test) judge and an active competitor in the sport of scent work. Scent work is relatively new and only became a dog sport in 2005. There are two major organizations you can compete with in scent work, which are AKC and NACSW. While both have the same goal and are considered the same sport, the organizations take very different approaches in how they set up and judge competitions. Although scent work is sometimes known for being good for older dogs who can no longer do sports that involve running and jumping, Tina assures us that this can be a very fast paced and fun sport for young dogs as well. The benefit to starting a dog in the sport at a young age is that you can continue to peel back the layers of learning what this sport offers. Scent work expenses can also be modified depending on your budget. It can be a very cost effective sport since you can teach scent work at home and you never need to compete for your dog to benefit from the sport. However, you can also invest a lot of money if you want to take group classes or travel for competitions. We also talk about training on different scents and how to progress in the sport of scent work for both organizations. Additionally, Tina will make you laugh with her personal experiences and stories of competing with her Staffordshire Bull Terriers. Don't forget to review, subscribe, and share! Follow us on IG: @sometimestheressideeye | InstagramMore information about this episode:NACSW | NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CANINE SCENT WORKAKC Scent Work – American Kennel Club
Le nosework, cette activité qui peut devenit totalement game-changer pour ton chien ! Qu'il soit réactif ou non, le nosework a largement fait preuve de son efficacité et de son bienfait pour les chiens. Aujourd'hui avec Marjorie on fait un focus sur l'activité, ses bienfaits, mais aussi et notamment dans le cadre de gestion de chien réactif ! On parle de valence émotionnelle, on parle de structure de travail, on prend des études de cas très concrètes et on décortique les choses petit à petit !
For our 100th episode, we have the distinct privilege of speaking with the Co-Founders of NACSW, Amy Herot and Jill Marie O'Brien about all things odor, K9 Nose Work, training, trialing and more. ----more---- Speakers: Dianna L. Santos Amy Herot Jill Marie O'Brien Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. Our online courses, seminars, webinars and eBooks are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Are you interested in competing in Scent Work? Give virtual trialing a try! Check out Cyber Scent Work, Inc. where not only may you earn qualifying scores, titles and ribbons, you may also receive training feedback from our incredibly talented and experienced Review Officials. Submit your video entry today. Interested in other dog sports, helping a new dog or puppy learn the ropes to be more successful at home and when out and about? Check out Pet Dog U, where we offer online dog training courses, webinars, mini-webinars, seminars as well as a regularly updated blog and podcast for all of your dog training needs! #allaboutscentworkpodcast #nacsw #k9nosework #amyherot #jillmarieobrien #odor #competing #training #scentworkinstructors #noseworkinstructors #scentwork #nosework #scentworktraining #noseworktraining #scentworktrialing #noseworktrialing #scentworkwebinar #noseworkwebinar #onlinescentwork #onlinenosework #virtualscentwork #virtualnosework #scentworku #scentworkuniversity
Episode #75 with Tony Gravley When it comes to k-9 training, few people know as much about the subject as Tony. With 35 years of experience in handling, training dogs, and handlers, Tony knows what it takes to get the most out of these working dogs. From starting his career as a Marine Corp. MP and Military Dog handler and Trainer, then a Contract Working Dog handler working in Afghanistan and Iraq for over 12 years, then Working at Auburn University Canine Performance Center... Tony has a wide range or REAL detection dog experience. These days Tony still works with Bomb dogs and has a private business as well as being a NACSW and AKC Scentwork Judge. You can find Tony at http://www.nextgenerationk9.com Show Sponsors: Sci K9 Home of the TADD and NOTA http://www.scik9.com Getxent: Training absorbent tubes for all your odor needs http://www.getxent.com Precision Explosives: Get all your safe and REAL training odors (no permits needed) http://www.pre-exp.com Sheepdog Guardian: All your K9 Legal information and updates. http://www.sheepdogguardian.com Ford K9: All your Detection Dog learning needs at one spot. http://www.fordk9.com
In this roundtable discussion headed by Michelle Doram, we hear from the three varied experiences on how to manage expectations when competing in Nose Work. An excellent conversation between Jessica Koester, a CNWI and NACSW Judge, Monica Flores, a 10-year veteran Nose Work competitor and Jill Marie O'Brien, the co-founder of NACSW. The insights and stories shared in this conversation will help all dog and handler teams who are in any part of their competition journey, regardless of the venue. We are incredibly fortunate that Michelle Doram is also offering a live webinar taking a deeper dive into the topic, outlining how handlers may better manage their expectations when it comes to trialing. Be sure to check to out Michelle's Great Expectations: Creating your Scent Work Trial Experience Webinar on April 20th at 4PM PST/7PM EST. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses, seminars, webinars and eBook are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. Want to help your dog in the manner department? Maybe you have a new puppy? Check out our newest online dog training platform, Pet Dog U, where we offer online dog training courses, webinars, seminars as well as a regularly updated blog and podcast for all of your dog training needs! Do you want earn Qs, titles and ribbons and receive helpful training advice? Be sure to check out Cyber Scent Work, Inc. #allaboutscentworkpodcast #managingexpectations #scentwork #nosework #scentworktraining #noseworktraining #scentworktrialing #noseworktrialing #onlinescentwork #onlinenosework #scentworku #scentworkuniversity
Intuitive Animal Communicator Liz Murdoch chats with Sniff dog yellow Labrador Owen and his award-winning scent working mom Yellow Lab Jones plus their avid scent handler and dog mom Turena Koontz. Listen how Liz works as an animal communicator and find out what messages these dogs share about their favorite things, their observations and feelings about scentwork and advice for anyone considering scentwork for their puppy or dog, regardless of age. To learn more about nosework, visit the National Association of Canine Scentwork at www.NACSW.net The AKC began offering scentwork titles in 2017. Another group is the United States Canine Scent Sports at www.uscaninescentsports.com There are also numerous nosework groups on Facebook and Scentwork University online if people need assistance finding instructors locally. To learn more about interspecies and animal communication, visit www.talkingwiththedogs.com or explore Liz Murdoch's instagram at www.instagram.com/talkingwiththedogs. Ready to find out what your dog wants you to know? Reach out to Liz Murdoch on her website to book a session or apply to be on her podcast.
In this spotlight episode, we have the privilege to speak with Michele Ellertson, CNWI, a professional dog trainer, instructor, CO with NACSW and the owner of The Dog's PACE about her PACE Team Games program. This program is a fabulous way to encourage people to support one another while tackling challenging, and FUN, searches. It has been a big hit in the Northeastern US and the Los Angeles-area as well. Be sure to learn more about the PACE Team Games program here. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses, seminars, webinars and eBook are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. Want to help your dog in the manner department? Maybe you have a new puppy? Check out our newest online dog training platform, Pet Dog U, where we offer online dog training courses, webinars, seminars as well as a regularly updated blog and podcast for all of your dog training needs! Do you want earn Qs, titles and ribbons and receive helpful training advice? Be sure to checkout Cyber Scent Work, Inc. #allaboutscentworkpodcast #paceteamgames #thedogspace #trialprep #scentwork #nosework #scentworktraining #noseworktraining #scentworku #scentworkuniversity
In this episode, we speak with the Co-Founder of NACSW™ and Founder of the K9 Nose Work® Shelter Program, Jill Marie O'Brien and Steven DeTata, CNWI who is spearheading the growth of the program and spreading the word on social media. This wonderful program pairs up of K9 Nose Work® certified instructors, or those who are going through the certified instructor program, with shelters and rescues to provide much-needed enrichment to shelter dogs. ----more---- If you want to learn more about the K9 Nose Work® Shelter Program and how you can get involved, whether you an instructor, volunteer or shelter staff member, be sure to check out the program's Facebook Page here. You should also check out the webinar Jill offered that goes into even more detail about the program. There are also some articles that offer a great overview of using K9 Nose Work® in shelters. Article 1. Article 2. Article 3. If you interested in learning more about K9 Nose Work® and/or NACSW™, click this link, which includes information about workshops, webinars, Instructor Program and an Instructor search. If you want to learn more about the competition-side of things, be sure to check out the NACSW™ site. ___________________________________ Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses, seminars, webinars and eBook are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. Want to help your dog in the manner department? Maybe you have a new puppy? Check out our newest online dog training platform, Pet Dog U, where we offer online dog training courses, webinars, seminars as well as a regularly updated blog and podcast for all of your dog training needs! Do you want earn Qs, titles and ribbons and receive helpful training advice? Be sure to checkout Cyber Scent Work, Inc. #allaboutscentworkpodcast #k9noseworkshelterprogram #scentwork #nosework #scentworktraining #noseworktraining #scentworku #scentworkuniversity
Today’s episode is “Making Sense of Smell” with our guest, Jessica Schulte. It’s a fascinating conversation about how this superhuman ability informs the ways in which our dogs perceive, navigate, and understand the world around them. It also provides insight into the value of adding structured or competitive nosework into your dog’s routine.Our Guest:Jessica is a certified dog behavior consultant and a certified professional dog trainer and is one of the first Nose Work instructors certified on the East Coast and has been teaching Nose Work classes for over a decade. She has been the Odor Recognition Test National Coordinator for the NACSW, as well as the editor for the NACSW newsletter.She is also a Certifying Official, and also a licensed AKC Scent Work judge, approved to judge all levels and classes for AKC Scent Work trials. Jessica competes with her own dog, Trix, in K9 Nose Work where they compete at the elite level. They also compete in Rally, Rally Free, and Freestyle. Jessica works with Instinct Dog Training and Behavior in NYC teaching manners, obedience, and solving behavioral issues for dogs and their people.Episode References:J.E. Hayes, P.D. McGreevy, S.L. Forbes, G. Laing, R.M. Stuetz, Critical review of dog detection and the influences of physiology, training, and analytical methodologies, Talanta, Volume 185, 2018, Pages 499-512, ISSN 0039-9140,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2018.04.010. A. Kerepesi, G.K. Jonsson, A. Miklosi, J. Topal, V. Csanyi, M.S. Magnusson, Detection of temporal patterns in dog-human interaction, Behav. Process. 70 (1) (2005) 69–79.C. Mariti, E. Ricci, B. Carlone, J.L. Moore, C. Sighieri, A. Gazzano, Dog attachmentto man: a comparison between pet and working dogs, J. Vet. Behav. 8 (3) (2013) 135–145.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039914018303552)Horowitz, A., Hecht, J., & Dedrick, A. (2013). Smelling more or less: Investigating the olfactory experience of the domestic dog. Learning And Motivation, 44(4), 207-217. doi:10.1016/j.lmot.2013.02.002I. Gazit, A. Goldblatt, J. Terkel, The role of context specificity in learning: theeffects of training context on explosives detection in dogs, Anim. Cogn. 8 (3)(2005) 143–150. [108] G. Lupfer-Johnson,L. Lit, J.B. Schweitzer, A.M. Oberbauer, Handler beliefs affect scent detection dog outcomes, Anim. Cogn. 14 (3) (2011) 387–394.D. Lefebvre, C. Diederich, M. Delcourt, J.-M. Giffroy, The quality of the relation between handler and military dogs influences efficiency and welfare of dogs, Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 104 (1–2) (2007) 49–60.Dr. Alexandra Horowitz Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/alexandra_horowitz_how_do_dogs_see_with_their_noses?language=enPBS Nova: https://www.ted.com/talks/alexandra_horowitz_how_do_dogs_see_with_their_noses?language=enDog Field Study (The Art of the Walk): http://www.dogfieldstudy.com/en/pulse-study/at-the-heart-of-the-walkInstinct Dog Behavior & Training (To Sniff or Not to Sniff): https://www.instinctdogtraining.com/sniff-not-sniff-dog-follow-nose/
This Episode we talk about all things K9 Nose Work, This is an amazing emerging detection dog sport. We talk about its past, the present and the future. We cover how the program began, who can compete in this sport, to common questions all to help our listeners learn more about this wonderful sport. (USE SAME LINKS as last time for our sponsors **except replace the Scentsable K9 and Fredhelfers.com and add.... National Association Of Canine Scent Work. www.nacsw.net Facebook https://www.facebook.com/NACSW www.k9nosework.com
I am so thrilled to welcome you in the very first episode of the Dog Real Talk Program! My first guest is one the best nosework handlers in the USA, amazing world recognized trainer, KPA Faculty Member, Cyber Scent Teacher and I'm super proud to say Tromplo Trainer - Sarah Owings! She is also one of the kindest people I have met in the dog training business! From Cyber Scent about Sarah "Sarah Owings is a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner. She specializes in the practical application of behavioral principles to help transform the lives of fearful, shut down, and over-the-top dogs. As an international speaker, and regular contributor to online training forums, she is known for her innovative approaches to tough behavior problems, and her compassionate and insightful teaching. She has written for Clean Run Magazine on topics such as stimulus control, release cues, and toy-related cues, and serves as Clicker Expo faculty, an instructor for Cyber Scent Online, and is an advisor to the Glendale Humane Society in Los Angeles. Sarah is also an avid nose work competitor, currently competing at both the Elite and Iron Dog levels with her labrador retriever, Tucker. Tucker was the recipient of the Harry Award in 2015, and has the distinction of titling at each level of NACSW without a single miss. With Sniffing Dog Sports, he has won High in Trial in both Advanced, and Excellent divisions, as well as a HIT at Iron Dog. At Turner Trials, an invitation-only three day tournament, he came in second place on day three, finishing fourth place overall against 38 of some of the most experienced competitors in the country. Tucker's trained final response for nose work, a hover-freeze at source, was taught with a marker signal, following the clicker training principles outlined in the Cyber Scent Online course." KPA: https://www.clickertraining.com/ Cyber Scent: http://www.cyberdogonline.com - Agility from the Start (Eva's and Emelie's book Sarah has mentioned): http://agilityrightfromthestart.com/ WE would love to hear your feedback about this episode! Let us know in comments, emails, regular mails (yes they still work ;) ), Facebook messages or any other way you want!
Strap in, it's time for some real talk. As a community, we all need to do better in how we interact with one another, especially as it pertains to different training approaches. Instead of backing ourselves into a corner, ready to lash out and go on the attack simply because someone trains differently than we do, as a community we need to stay open-minded and willing to cultivate as many tools for our individual toolboxes as possible. Our dogs deserve nothing less! The fact of the matter is this: we are all on the same team and all want the same thing - for our dogs to have fun playing the sniffy game. So, put out your torches, hang up your pitchforks and put that email or message in your draft folder to sit on for a bit before hitting "Send". Take a deep breath, and ask, "Am I being as good of a owner/handler/trainer/instructor I can be, or, am I letting both myself and my dog down by being tribal and close-minded?". We discuss this and more in our latest podcast episode. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses and webinars are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport, or looking for help getting your dog to learn some manners? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Scent Work podcast. In this podcast, we talk about all things Scent Work, whether it be training tips, what your instructor or trial official may be going through, a behind the scenes look for how trials are put together, and much more. In this episode, we're going to be having a heart to heart. We had some other talks planned for the podcast, but some things came up, and I want to make certain that we have a very honest discussion for the Scent Work community about how we can all be a little bit better. Before we start diving into the podcast, let me just do a very quick introduction of myself. My name is Dianna Santos, I'm the owner and lead instructor for Scent Work University and Dog Sport University. Scent Work University is an online dog training platform, where we provide Scent Work specific online courses, webinars, and soon to be offering seminars. In addition to that, I've been teaching dogs professionally since 2011. I've specialized in working with fearful dogs, aggressive dogs, I've taught a variety of group dog training classes. I'm also an approved trial official, and I used to work for a competition organization for Scent Work. As you know a little bit more about me, let's dive into this very important podcast episode. For anyone who happens to follow me personally on social media, you may have heard that I received some fairly negative messages in the very end of 2018 and the very early part of 2019. Two of these messages were from different individuals who were very upset that I teach Scent Work the way that I do. They needed me to know that they thought that my training approach was incorrect, and that they were very upset that I was doing this, that I was doing online training at all, that I was having people learn with my training approach. They were just very upset with me. They were very, very upset. We had emailed and messaged back and forth, because I'm always open to talking to people about difference of opinions. It doesn't bother me to have discussions. Really, open and honest discussions about training methods, and understanding from my perspective, that we can always learn, and that not every training approach is going to work for every handler and dog. That's completely true. Or it could just be a matter of preference. Maybe they want to do something a certain way, that's completely fine. What I wanted to do in this podcast was to just challenge all of us as a dog training community, but specifically for Scent Work, to not be so tribal. This is going to rub some people the wrong way, and I'm going to apologize at the outset. Understand what it is that we're doing. We are training dogs to sniff things out for fun. We are not certifying dogs for SAR teams, or to work with police departments, or in the military, or bomb detection. That's not what this is. This is not life or death stuff. This is a game. This is a sport. Even in the context of professional teams, there's still no unified way of training. Every single group may train a little bit differently. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. What I'm hoping that we can at least think about by the end of this podcast episode, is how we can maybe adjust the way that we think about training approaches, and we think about how we interact with one another. I don't think that this is something where I can sit up on my high horse and look down upon everyone. I think I can improve too. I think everyone can. We get very married to certain ideas. It's better to just stay open minded, and realize that certain things may have value in certain situations. Sometimes, learning different approaches to see okay, I'm not going to be doing that, that doesn't work for me, or my dog, or how it is I want to do things, that's okay too. There's nothing wrong with that. Just to make it clear, what is it that I do that is just so terrible, that got these people so upset? I follow the NACSW K9 Nose Work Teaching Method for teaching Scent Work. I am a CNWI, certified through NACSW. This is how I was initially taught, this is how I went through the certification process. It's how I've trained for years. I've gone to a number of seminars and workshops, I've always taken classes where other training methods were used. I can see some value in some of them for specific things. Personally, I like the way that the K9 Nose Work Training Method starts dogs, where it's focusing solely on having the dog find food, so that it's building the dog's confidence, and it's also allowing either the instructor or the handler/trainer or both, to do an assessment of what it is that you may actually need to work on with that dog, particularly in the area of confidence. Now, this is where my background comes into play, where I was specializing in working with dogs who were fearful, reactive and aggressive. These are dogs who may or may not ever, either their people don't even know what dog sports are, or they wouldn't be candidates to trial. The reason why we were doing Scent Work was to make it a part of their behavior modification program. It was to improve their quality of life. That's where I'm coming at this from. This isn't so that they can achieve some title, and it's not that trialing is bad, it's not. That's how I started this. I didn't get involved in Scent Work because I wanted to obtain titles. I got started in it because I was trying to give my dog a better quality of life, who was incredibly aggressive. Trialing wasn't really an option for us. I saw that it did cause a lot of good things for him. It improved his life substantially. With that in mind, when I was using it in my classes, whether it be Scent Work specific, of if I was weaving it in to my Control Unleashed classes, or even my basic obedience classes, it was with the idea of, 'Okay, how is it that we can give these dogs something that will improve their quality of life, that will build their confidence, that will allow them to be a dog, to give them an outlet, when a lot of the time, their lives are so sheltered, because it has to be?'. Because they need a lot of management, to either keep them safe from the world, or to keep the world safe from them, or a little bit of both. It's with that foundation of why I got into this, that the K9 Nose Work Training Method really spoke to me, was that it's allowing the dog to lead. It's allowing the dog to make choices. It's not putting them into a situation where they have to be engaged, and it's not that shaping is bad, shaping is not bad. I love shaping. But, with some dogs, they can feel a lot of pressure in order to make the right choice. They may not feel as though they have the choice to make the choice. That's difficult to explain, but if you ever work with a really sensitive dog, either because they're fearful or because they're reactive, they don't have a lot of choices at all in their lives, because they don't make good choices. That's why they're in a behavior modification program to begin with. There's a lot of management in their lives. By introducing Scent Work, you could actually set up some boxes with food in it, and just see what the dog does. They very well may come up, find one or two boxes and say 'Okay, I can't'. Then, allowing the dog to say, I can't, is a very powerful thing. To say okay, no worries. Then off you go. They go, 'Really? You're going to listen to me? That's great!'. Then it's also, from a instructor perspective, one of the things that I really enjoy about this approach, is it helps handlers understand the power of manipulating the environment. As opposed to manipulating the dog, which is a huge premise behind this training method, where you're constantly adjusting and molding and figuring out how you can set up your actual exercise, long before you ever bring the dog into it. That's the whole point. How is it that I'm going to help my dog be successful in this run. What do I need to do to ensure that they can actually do this, and do it well. How am I going to promote them learning. What's the point? It makes you think like an actual trainer. It makes you think things through, as opposed to putting all of the pressure on the dog to figure it out. You can manipulate and change how the search is set up, so that they can be a little bit more successful. With all of this, when I was doing private lessons with people who had dogs, who were either incredibly shut down and they couldn't leave their front door without vomiting or diarrhea or whatever, because they were so terrified about everything, or, the other extreme, they couldn't leave their front door because they would be at the end of their leash and spitting and foaming and growling and scratching and ... For these people, they're not looking to go to the nationals, they don't even know what the nationals are. Their goal is to maybe walk out their front door, with their dog not losing their mind on either extreme. That's all they want. They want some semblance of normalcy. They want to be able to have their dog be comfortable in their own skin. They want to feel as though they have tools to allow their dog to not be bouncing off the walls, because they're so managed and there's nothing that this dog can do outside of the four walls of their house, that doesn't send them over the edge. The power of being able to give those people the ability to give their dog the chance to sniff for food, is beyond amazing. They love their boxes. I have to say, my clients are incredibly creative and brilliant people. Where they have come up with things that I never would've thought of. I had one couple who had a very difficult dog, was aggressive and fearful all at the same time. Had a long bite history before they ever adopted the dog, and was very problematic with other dogs, but also wasn't very good with people either. We introduced a variety of different things for behavior modification, which, they were working very hard on. The one thing that we had introduced was Scent Work, as just a general concept. Something to give this dog an outlet. What they did, once they realized how much the dog liked it, is they incorporated this into their guest greeting routine. Which I never would've thought of in a million years. The way that this would work, is they would have the dog on leash, a person would come in, they'd sit in their designated spot on the couch. They would set up some boxes with the dog's favorite treats, and the dog would come up and they would search. This would be almost an assessment: can the dog do the scenting game with this person in their house. They found out that they could, that the dog was so focused on the search, they weren't worried about the person, they weren't fixated on the person, the dog was happy and relaxed and engaged in the game. They gave their jackpots, inside the boxes. They would then bring the dog back to their bed, which was away from the visitor couch spot. This is where the brilliance comes in. They would have the visitor toss high-value treats at that dog while the dog was on their bed, to be part of their party. If the dog seemed comfortable, the person would then put the high value treats into the boxes, so the dog could do another run. Depending on how the dog was doing, 9 times out of 10, when they first started this, they were amazed, the dog was totally cool with it. The dog would come up, they would search, they'd do another party, and then the dog would get to retreat into another back room with a chew. That is amazingly brilliant. After they do that a couple times, that person would be part of the trusted group of people that this dog was comfortable with, where they could stay in the room, on leash still, while the person was there, before they retreat into the back room. That's the beauty of this, of giving the dog the ability to make the choice. Shifting the thinking of the owners, and the handlers, of reading their dog, of listening to what their dog can actually do, of wanting to set the dog up for success, of being creative, but not of simply going, "Okay, we're going to do this and then this and then this, and then dog, you're going to do that and then that and then that." I don't think they could've come up with this idea, if they were trying to get the dog onto odor, be it a target odor, birch, anise or clove, right out of the gate, or they were worried about alerts, or they were worried about all this other stuff. That had nothing to do with it. They are never going to use birch. At least not in the near future. I got them a scent kit as a gift, and they both said, "Oh, that's very nice, but we're good with food. He really likes food. It's easy for us.". There's nothing wrong with that. What I'm hoping to show with this example is that there's lots of different reasons why people may be getting involved in Scent Work. I like all of them. I just want more dogs sniffing, whether it be because they want to go to the nationals as a goal, whether or not they just want to get a bunch of titles, if that's a goal, whether or not they just want to have fun with their dog, whether or not they're trying to use it as a behavior modification program, whether or not they just want to get some of the energy out for their dog, they want to give something as far as an outlet so the dog isn't bouncing off the walls. Because they saw it in a newspaper article or a magazine article, or somewhere online, said "Oh, maybe I should do that.". I don't care why. I just want more dogs sniffing. This is where we get to the real talk part. In case anyone wasn't certain, there are lots of different ways to teach Scent Work. I'm going to repeat that. There's lots of different ways to teach Scent Work. There is no golden rule. There is no only one way. There never will be, even as Scent Work matures over the years, there's never going to be just one singular way of doing things. If you want to be a good instructor, trainer, owner, handler, whatever, you should be, in my opinion, educating yourself about all the different types, about all the different approaches, and see what pieces of each would work for you. There are some that you don't think are valuable at all. Again, that's just your personal opinion, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. There are others where you say, "I'm not too fond of this or that, but I do really like the premise behind this and that. Maybe I can tweak it a little bit, to incorporate into what I'm doing.". Let me give you an example of a real-life application. As I said, I am a CNWI, I use the K9 Nose Work Training Method for training, but that doesn't mean that I turn my mind off to anything else. For my dog, for instance, he loves, I mean, loves to bash containers. He thinks that throwing containers around is the best thing ever. It's just a fun thing, he's a very footsie dog. He slides across our hardwood floors all the time. He loves to pounce on things. It's just literally his personality, it's not as though it was a training thing that we did. It's because he's a Doberman, it's because of who he is. I frankly find it very endearing. He's just a happy boy. That obviously doesn't really work, if you want to be trialing. I still introduced him to Scent Work using the K9 Nose Work Training Method, and he's 50/50 at a trial, whether or not he's going to bash containers or not. I think that if it was really going to be a big issue, that I would need to do something else. We were getting ready for one set of trials, this has to be a year ago now, I think, and in our practice sessions, he was consistently, if it was a closed box, and a long row of boxes, he would fly down and he would throw all of his weight on top of that box. In addition to that, we were also working on ground hides. Things that are not in boxes, but just a hide that's actually on the ground, which was one of his weaknesses. He was able to find elevated hides no problem, but he had a really hard time finding ground hides. He had a breakthrough, where he was doing really well on finding ground hides, but now in his super enthusiastic, oh my God, I found it, he was now pouncing on and picking up and throwing, all kinds of craziness. We worked on it, with pairing and everything else, and it was getting better. There was still this level of just insanity about it. He was just so over the top. I did one or two sessions of where I was going to actually try to shape a behavior for him, where this was mainly for the ground hide. I was going to do it for the containers, but it was mainly for the ground hide. I would just have a tin, just on the floor. He'd be on leash. He'd come up, as soon as he sniffed it, I would click, and then I would feed. I would feed and I would feed and I would feed and I would feed. Then we would leave, we would come up, we'd do it again. I'm not looking for alert per se, I was looking to capture the "not kill the tin" behavior. He's already been on odor, he had been on odor for years. We were doing this with birch. We did this over, I think it was two or three sessions. Wouldn't you know, it helped immensely. I never used it again. It was a little stop gap kind of thing. We went back to our pairing, back to our other stuff, but I think it helped him understand, "Oh, I don't need to be pouncing on this. Who knew?". Then we started doing that a little bit with the containers as well, where he would just come up, and I would click, and be "What a good dog, oh, that's a great dog.". Same kind of thing. I used it for two or three sessions, and then he was good. Is he consistently not bashing containers? No. Do I care? Not really. If it's something that I do care about in the future, I may work on it more. Again, I just think that his joy is just, I can't help myself. I just laugh when he does it. Whether or not we're going to be trialing a lot is really up in the air. Just because of my body, and because I'm on the fence about whether or not I think trialing is a good match for me personally, just personality-wise. The reason I bring that up is, I could see the value in using something like shaping or operant training to build a behavior such as, let's not attack the tin, let's instead mark when you find it by putting your nose on it, or whatever. I could see the value in doing that after the dog actually understands what they're doing. In other words, he already knew what birch and anise and clove was. He already knew how to work ground hides. He already knew the whole concept behind all this. Now, we were truly working on behavior. We weren't working on understanding, we're working on behavior. I think that's going to rub some people the wrong way. Where they would just say, "You could've just avoided all of this if you'd just done that from the beginning.". I think that's a perfectly fine discussion point. I would tend to argue that, in my opinion, it would be better to have the dog understand all that other stuff first, have a really good solid understanding of being an independent hunter, being able to work out different odor problems, so on and so forth, and then if you need to, you absolutely can start working on the behavior piece, no problem. The same thing for formal alerts. Here, let's just dive into that discussion too. I personally am not a big fan of teaching formal alerts, particularly right out of the gate. Only because I've seen it backfire so many times. Again, because of the types of dogs that I was working with, and have worked with, that wasn't our goal. That's what the people wanted, obviously, but that's not what the dog needed. I needed the dog to make the choices. I needed the dog to develop their confidence. I needed the dog to lead the search. I don't need to turn all that off and then have the dog worry about sitting or downing or nose poking or whatever. I also needed the person to do a lot more watching and observing and learning, because it doesn't just apply to Scent Work. This is a piece that I think a lot of people overlook, is when you have a handler, an owner, whatever title you want to give them, and they're working on Scent Work, and you have it set up where the dog is taking a lead and you're asking them to videotape their searches, to watch other classmates, if it's an in-person course, whatever the case may be, you are asking them to hone their eye as far as what a dog looks like when they're searching. That doesn't just apply to Scent Work. Particularly when you're talking about people who are dealing with dogs with behavioral issues, one of the most important things that you can teach that person is how to properly read their dog. How to tell when their dog is starting to drown in whatever emotion it may be. They're getting stressed, they're getting worried, they're getting over the top. You need to get out of dodge. That's the information that's the most important, because then they can make good choices for their dogs. If they don't know what any of that looks like, they're going to continually fail, no matter how often you do a behavior modification program, no matter how hard they try. A very big piece of it is being able to read your dog. You have to be able to read what your dog is telling you. With that in mind, it's so incredibly important, in my opinion, to have handlers who aren't just simply throwing up their hands to be "Oh, look, I want a neon sign for my dog. I need them to be as obvious as day. Just do it for me. Tell me where this hide is.". I understand why you want that, I really do. Getting a "No" quite frankly sucks when you're at a trial. You're missing such an important piece. Being able to see what is your dog doing at this exact moment during a search, are they actually chasing odor, are they in odor at all, are they working at all, are they stressed, are they worried, are they sick. I was doing a mock trial, and someone came up with their dog, and they're like, "Oh, they got carsick and whatnot". Okay, because I'm looking at the dog and the dog does not look well at all. I'm like, "Did you just get here?" They said, "Yes". I was like, "Okay, why don't you go into the back of the running order and let your dog's tummy settle a little bit, because they don't look like they're feeling very well." "Oh no, they're fine." I'm like, "Really, we're not going to take your run away. I'm telling you, your dog is not doing well." "Oh no, they're fine." They went, and sure enough, the dog vomited as soon as they crossed over the start line. They had no clue. Now, could it have been that they were just stressed and that the person wanted to be able to get their run in, and they're worried about not doing their run? Who knows. I honestly think they just didn't know that their dog wasn't feeling well. When you have a better understanding of all the things your dog is telling you while they're searching, a final alert behavior isn't all that important, because they're talking to you that whole time. You would be able to see if a dog is bracketing an inaccessible hide, that that is an inaccessible hide. Once you know what that looks like, it's pretty clear. When a dog does a whiplash turn, okay, they found it. They're closing in on it. When a dog suddenly stops, plants their front feet and starts swinging their hind end around, that's not odor. They want to leave a doggy text. All of that is so important, and has nothing to do with a final alert behavior at all. Does that mean that I hate people who teach final alert behaviors? Absolutely not. I understand why people want to teach a final alert behavior, and I think that there is actually a value in a final alert behavior, in one element in particular. Vehicle searches. The reason being is that a vehicle search, one of the trends that I've noticed, particularly when I was involved with the competition organization, is that people were training their dogs, whether it be on purpose or inadvertently, to do aggressive alerts, where they wanted the dog to paw at something, or bite it, or whatever. Vehicle searches are really hard. They're not easy. They're these big hollow things, odor flows all around them, and as a handler, you forget that wind is a factor. The hide may be on one side of the vehicle, but the wind is blowing it towards the other, and your dog is investigating where the odor is collecting, but that's not where the hide is, and so on and so forth. With a vehicle search, your dog is much more likely to be involved in a aggressive alert, if that's what they have in their repertoire, which is hugely problematic. I think it would be wonderful that if you had a dog who was an aggressive alerter for whatever reason, to teach them a formal alert behavior that was completely different. I think that's completely fine. I don't think that's a problem at all. As long as you're not putting all your eggs in that one basket. You're still building the other skills, you're still teaching your dog to understand okay, the odor may be going here, but that's not where the odor is coming from. How do I find out where the odor is coming from? To allow your dog to come off of the vehicle somewhat, to chase the odor cone so they can get back to source, so that you're conducting the search well, where you're not doing check, check, check, check, check. That drives me crazy. That's a perfect example. Does that mean that people who do check, check, check are wrong? They're not wrong. It's just a personal preference. It drives me batty, because I don't want to have to walk backwards around a vehicle, where I can barely walk forwards. I'm going to be bashing myself on those mirrors and be tripping over the car, I'm going to land on my ass, it's just going to be a mess. That doesn't mean that people who do that are wrong. It's just something that I'm not a big fan of. I would rather that my dog do the search independently. This is what I mean, that while I wanted to do a podcast discussing what I'm hoping as a community we can do, it doesn't mean that I'm immune to it. We all have our preferences, and we all have things that we vehemently disagree with. Or, we just don't like, or we wouldn't do. That's okay. That doesn't mean that people who do it are bad. It doesn't mean that people who do it are, even necessarily wrong. Maybe it just works for them. Particularly with all the different types of training that I'm talking about, the dogs aren't being hurt. We're not talking about abuse here. We're not talking about hurting anyone or hurting anything or doing anything that's bad. All these approaches are perfectly fine, they really are. They're even sound, and if you actually break it down, they all have their place. You can have success in doing any of them. What I'm hoping as a community that we can do, is we be a little bit more open-minded, just as a whole. Instructors, trainers, owners, handlers, everybody, to not be so quick to judge. To not want to just be so tribal of 'Oh no, you're doing that thing over there, therefore you are bad." That's just silly. For my fellow instructors, here is some very harsh talk. The allure is there, to build your base, to show A, that you know what you're doing, B, that you're better, and C, since you are better, that means the others are bad. I implore you, please don't do that. It's a huge disservice to your clients, it's also a huge disservice to yourself. Because then you're painting yourself into a box. You very well may have achieved amazing things, and you probably have, you very well may be the cream of the crop. With the dog, or dogs that you have now. With the clients that you have now. There will come a time when you either have a dog personally or you have a client, that all those things that you were saying how you are just the gift to the world for in what you do, they don't work. If you have been painting yourself as this beacon from on high, this untouchable brilliant, "I am the best thing ever, all must yield before me", what are you supposed to do then? You're not going to reach out for help. You're not going to talk to your colleagues. They might frankly not want to talk to you, if you've been bashing them. There will come a time where you will reach a wall, as far as your own personal knowledge, skills, your weaknesses will show themselves, everybody has them. I have plenty. Please, there are plenty of dogs out there, there are plenty of people out there who need help, who need someone to guide them throughout their Scent Work career. Whether it be because they want to do competition, or because they want to do it for fun. There's lots of them, and particularly, if you have any access to online training, there's a whole big wide world out there. Meaning there's lots of potential clients for everybody. We could all, all of us, every single trainer who does Scent Work, could go to the nines in advertising and everything else, and there would still be dogs and handlers left over for everybody. Don't be afraid to work with somebody else. Don't be afraid to try different things. Always keep learning. Stay humble. For the love of all, please share when things don't go well. The thing that bothers me the most, when I have a new client come to me, is where they and their dog are so incredibly stressed, defeated, deflated, and messages and emails I'll get are, "I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I don't know what's wrong with my dog, we did this, that and the other thing, and this and this and this is broken, and so on and so forth. We're nothing like so and so." Because so and so has been posting every day forever, about how they are brilliant. Their dogs are brilliant. It's always high in trial in this, high in trial in that. Where if they're not trialing, "Oh, I've only been teaching my dog for two seconds, and they can do summit trial level things, even though we never want to trail." "Oh look, I've been working with this dog who was aggressive and in two sessions, they're not aggressive anymore." It's like, really? Come on. You're doing a huge disservice by doing that. I'm not saying don't celebrate your successes, please do. Feel free to show everyone that you're a person. Feel free to show everyone that your dog is actually a dog. I'm not saying that you have to blast out there, "Oh, by the way, we totally bombed this day." You don't have to say that. Talk about how you train. Talk about your processes. Talk about how yeah, we did really well with this and this, these couple things, we're working on, and that's okay. It makes it so that you don't feel as though you have to be perfect. It takes a lot of pressure off of you. It also takes an incredible amount of pressure off of the dogs and their people. As professionals, that is our job. Our job is not to create more problems. If people are rushing through their training, because they're trying to achieve these impossible goals, because they think that's what's involved when it's not, that's just a dereliction of duty, in my opinion. I don't think anyone's doing this on purpose. I think that it's ... I think if people just think, as my fellow colleagues, but that's what you have to do. You have to show that you're the best, that you're great, that you're this or you're that. Otherwise, people won't want to work with you. Yes, you have to show you know what you're doing. Yes, you should know what you're doing. That's only part of it. Being real, letting people know that you're not perfect either, that it's okay to make mistakes, they're not going to break their dog, how they can avoid breaking their dog, and also showing that you're flexible. Be like, "Okay, yeah, I like teaching this and this in this way, but I also have these tools in my back pocket should I need them. You should also, little client of mine, stay open-minded. Don't just take my word as gospel. By all means work with other people. By all means, watch other videos. Do webinars, do seminars. Do in-person things. Go to YouTube. Learn to your little heart's content." The second I have a client start telling me that I'm the best trainer ever, I put the brakes on that real quick. Because I'm not going to be actually reach them. All that's turning into is idolization, which has no place in dog training. I am not perfect. I am very, very far from it. I'm also not the most experienced. There are people who've been doing this longer than I've been alive. Of course I'm not going to be more experienced than they are, that's ridiculous. The point being is that, we have to be careful of how is it we're conducting ourselves as professionals. Realize that you do have a lot of pull, and that you have a lot of clout. People are watching what you do, they're watching what you post, they're watching what you say. If you are constantly saying A, that you are basically the second coming, B, that your approach is the only approach, and C, all other approaches are wrong, you are affecting all of your clients. When you really start building up basically a cult-like following, which is kind of disturbing, that's when people start reaching out to other colleagues like me. It's not a fun way for me to spend my time. I highly doubt I'm the only one who's ever gotten a negative comment from someone. This big, very long, rambling episode, in closing, we all need to stay open-minded. There's lots of different ways to get to the same goal point. People may very well have completely different goals, and that's okay. Learn as much as you can. Train with as many people as possible. Take as many classes, webinars, seminars, read books, watch videos, even if it's just to say, "You know what, I don't really like any of that, or I don't think that works for me or my dog." For me, some of my best learning was, "Yeah, now I know what not to do." That's okay. That's still learning, that's still information. You may find a nugget, you may find a piece of gold in there that you never would've thought of before. How wonderful would that be for both you and your dog? Let's just all stay a little bit more open-minded, know that we're all on the same team. I may not train the way that you do, but my goal is to have more dogs sniff. That's it. There's no nefarious thing behind it. I'm not looking to do anything bad. I just want more dogs sniffing. That's all. If you don't agree with how someone trains, that's okay too. You don't have to train with that person. That's not a requirement. I think if we could all just take a step back, and not be quite so invested in the approaches, and not become so tribal, and not think that we have to go to war for each other, I think we'd all be a little bit better off. Thanks so much for listening. I hope that this podcast episode at least got everyone thinking. Happy training, we look forward to seeing you soon.
When it comes to training, we oftentimes want to take shortcuts or cannot wait to work on the "big dog stuff"! This is no different in Scent Work. However, the dismissal of potential training tools outright, or being in such a huge hurry to get rid of them, can be limiting the effectiveness of your training. We dive into this topic in our latest episode, specifically speaking to the use of boxes and pairing as Scent Work training tools. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses and webinars are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport, or looking for help getting your dog to learn some manners? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Scent Work Podcast. In this podcast we're gonna be talking about all things that work. We'll be giving you a behind the scenes look at what your instructor or trial officials may be going through. Giving you some training tips, and much more. In this episode we're gonna be talking about boxes and pairing, and how people can not wait to get rid of either of those in their training, and how that could actually be a shortsighted way of looking at your training. Before we start diving into the podcast itself, let me just do a very quick introduction of myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I'm the owner and lead instructor for Scent Work University, and Dog Sport University. Scent Work University is an online dog training platform where we focus on all things Scent Work. We provide online courses, webinars and seminars. They're designed to help people who are either just getting started in Scent Work, have been doing Scent Work for a while. Maybe playing the game for fun, or may also be interested in doing competition. In addition to being a professional trainer, I'm also an approved trial official, and have actually worked for a competition organization. So now that you know a little bit more about me, let's dive into the podcast. In this episode I wanted to go over a very common thing that I've notice while I've been training students across the country. It is the desire to get away from foundation skills, and to get away from those quickly. Particularly for those individuals who are interested in competition. There seems to be a rush in order to get their dog ready for trial. But even for people who aren't interested in competing, there seems to be an allure to designate certain things as just a stage, and to announce to the world that my dog no longer needs that. It's as though they're looking at their dog training as though it's having the training wheels on. They can't wait to get them off. What I'm hoping to do in this podcast is to outline for two particular types of training tools that they are tools, and they shouldn't be seen merely as stepping stones. They should be seen as something that you can use throughout the duration of your Scent Work training career. To allow your dog to be more successful, and to allow your dog to really understand particular odor puzzles, and that they have value throughout the duration that you're going to be doing Scent Work. So that's the goal. We'll see if we reach that goal. The two things that I wanted to talk about in this podcast is the use of boxes and the use of pairing within the context of Scent Work. Now there are going to be some people right out of the gate who say, "I don't train that way." And that's okay. The one thing that we all have to recognize with Scent Work is, as with all things dog training, there are millions of different ways of getting to the same goal. We can all have our preferences, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. For this podcast I just want to talk about the two things that I tend to do when I am teaching someone for foundations that work, and to hopefully help people understand why it is that those are used in the first place, and the value that they hold. Not only within the foundation context, but that you can also use them throughout any type of Scent Work training that you're trying to do. The first thing I want to talk about is boxes. For myself, when I'm doing foundations that we're training with the student, either within my online classes or if I was still be able to work with people one-on-one. We would use boxes in order to focus the dog's attention onto a particular part of a search area. It's basically introducing the dog to a container search set up. It allows the dog to self reward, because we'd be using food. It also allows the trainer to assess the dog's confidence, which is extraordinarily important. If I have a dog come up and they're trying to do a box search, and they're very concerned about the boxes, that's important information for me to have as a trainer. I now need to make certain adjustments to ensure that we can build that dog's confidence. Not only within the contents of Scent Work, but overall. So that I know that this is going to be ... this will be an issue. This is something that we need to address. The boxes give me that information. In addition to that, I can also use the boxes to present a variety of different odor pictures to the dog so that they're able to figure out how to work those out. So for instance, I can use the boxes to present an elevated hide problem, where you have an odor box on top of the seat of a chair for instance. But what I like to tell my students to do, is to use a empty box that's a little distance away from that elevated hide. They'll be collecting some of that odor that's coming out of the odor box, and the dog is typically going to sniff the empty box, because there's going to be odor going into it, realize it's not where the hide is, and then hopefully pick their head up, get a whiff of the actually odor cone, and then work their way up to the elevated box. This has worked time and time again, and it's a very powerful training technique. This is all the sort of thing that I do in my foundation classes. Now something to point out is, you can do that same exact approach when you are further along in your training. So let's say that you were no long working on primary. Let's say that you were following the K9 Nose Work training method where you start with food and then you do paired odor as far as birch, anise or clove, and now you're just solely on a target odor, and you've been doing it for a while. You may even be competing. Your dog is doing great. But now they're going to the point where they need to do even higher elevation. They need to be doing hides that are three, four, five feet high. You could absolutely bring your boxes back into the picture. What I mean by that is, you can still have your non paired, if you decided to do that, at large elevation hide. Meaning it's four or five feet up. But you could have some empty boxes facing that hide to allow the dog to investigate the box first, to then figure out where the odor is actually coming from. It gives a dog a sense of familiarity. When they already have a long reinforcement history with boxes, there's no reason to really throw that away. The other great thing about boxes is that they're really easy to transport. So when you want to be able to do training sessions at your field trip locations further down the line for your dog's training, you can just set your boxes up. It could also be a great way of warming your dog up. Anyone who does trialing knows the boxes are used for warm ups. So you could do that within your search area as well. For instance, let's say that you wanted to do an exterior search with your dog, and your dog happens to be a little bit on the sensitive side. Maybe they're environmentally sensitive, or they could just be very environmentally invested. Or maybe they're not worried about the environment, but they think the environment is really cool. Wouldn't it be nice if you could do a test search where you can see whether or not your dog can actually even think in this space? That's where you can bring your boxes into play. Use the same exact search area that you were going to. You can even still have exterior hides, but have your boxes near those exterior hides to help offer a level of familiarity for the dog. They can come in. They can say, "Oh, we're doing boxes. Clearly we're doing the sniffy game." You can test whether or not they're actually able to perform, or if they may need to have more skills to be successful in that space. That'll be so beneficial, as opposed to trying to force your dog to do well within a given space and just hope for the best. To do repetition after repetition after repetition and then have them fail over and over and over again. Have you get frustrated, simply because you think that using boxes will be going backwards. "Only baby dogs use boxes!" It's silly. Use this sort of thing as a tool. Use it as a training tool. Don't just simply throw it away, because you perceive that it is something that only baby dogs do. The other great thing about boxes is that you can use them to incorporate into really complicated odor pictures. So if you're trying to do something, like we noted, with very high elevation, that could absolutely be something you can use your boxes for. What about suspended hides? You can do that as well. You could just have boxes. You can suspend your boxes up. If you're going to a completely crazy location in order to do your searches. Maybe you're trying to work a lot on distractors, where it could literally just be the environment is really distracting, or you actually have a lot of distractors. Wouldn't it be nice to have, again, a level of familiarity for your dog? Where you can set them to succeed, maybe for a warm up search. See if they can actually work in that space first. Give them an opportunity to be successful, and then you can go from there. I'm hoping that these examples can showcase that this is suppose to be a training tool. It's not simply suppose to be some black mark that we never talk about and say, "Oh well, I used to use boxes, but I don't use boxes anymore. I'm this really accomplished Scent Work person, and I'm amazing, and boxes are just for baby dogs." That's just silly. It should be used as a training tool. It should be used as a way to help your dog master these skills, and to further progress in their Scent Work training. The other thing I wanted to talk about was pairing. I know pairing is definitely something that not everyone agrees upon. There's lots of different schools of thought as far as Scent Work is concerned. There's lots of different schools of thought as far as pairing is concerned. I am a CNWI with an NACSW. I follow the K9 Nose Work training method. I think that it works really well, and I am a very big proponent about pairing. I think pairing is awesome. That being said, if you wanted to use pairing, it should not be seen as something that you do for a very short period of time and you can't wait to get rid of. I tend to see this a lot with people who are definitely interested in competition. Because they say, "Well, I wouldn't be able to use pairing, obviously, at a trial. It's just going to be birch, anise or clove, or whatever target odor that we're using. So I need to get rid of that pairing as quickly as possible, so that I know that my dog understands finding the hide." Now, I guess I can see the argument in all of that, but I would use a similar type of dog training scenario to try to make my point. Let's talk about the Canine Good Citizen test. For AKC, they offer a Canine Good Citizen test where basically there are 10 different test items. Where they're trying to assess whether or not the dog has the manners that would be necessary for them to be safe out in public. Throughout this test you are not permitted to use any toys or treats in order to reward your dog throughout the exercises. However, there are Canine Good Citizen Prep courses taught throughout the country. I teach them through Dog Sport University online, and I've taught them before in person. The thing that I would always stress to all of my students, and it would typically be a six week class, is while we are training we are going to be using rewards. Whether it be treats, or whether it be toys, or verbal praise, or anything else. Because we're teaching our dog. We're trying to help them understand a skill. Yes for the test you're not allowed to use that, and we will go through a very specific way of fading out those rewards and to use different types of rewards or just smiling at your dog, and even giving them some verbal praise. But where they wouldn't necessarily have to have the treat immediately, I would strongly suggest that when you're done with the test that you give them lots of treats, let them play with a toy or something. Let your dog know how great they did. But when you are training, you absolutely want to be using all of those rewards. Why wouldn't you? It doesn't make any sense. Now stepping back into Scent Work. The same would apply. I completely agree with you that when you're competing your dog is finding the target odors by themselves. They're not finding birch plus hot dog. They're finding birch. But when you're training you absolutely should be using rewards regardless, and the great thing about Scent Work as a sport is that you are allowed to reward your dog at source, even at trial. While it won't be paired at the hide itself, you're still allowed to actually feed them a treat when they find the hide, which is great. When we're talking about pairing, I think that we're conflating trying to see whether or not we can help our dog succeed in a given exercise, with trying to ensure that they can actually do the thing at trial. I think those are two completely different things. Let me try to clear up what I mean by that. I initially start off all my students with pairing. The second that they start working with birch, for instance, they're going to see paired hides. They're going to see a tin, typically speaking, with a treat on top of it. This allows the dog to self-reward. The whole purpose behind self rewarding is that there is no convincing the dog what the answer is to the question that you posed. It's very simple. They came up, they found the hide, they eat their treat. "Ah, brilliant. You want me to find birch." It's very simple to the dog. There's no guess work around it. The handler doesn't have to get involved and trying to explain what it is that this game is all about. That's a very powerful way to train. So if you have a really challenging hide placement, if you pair it it could actually help the dog work that problem out. I'm not saying you have to pair it forever, because you don't. Maybe you just pair it the first time. The same way we use the boxes, maybe do a warm up search where the hides are actually paired. Do a big jackpot with your dog when they find it. You can play with toys, whatever your reward system is. Take them out, throw them a party. Tell them how great they are. Remove all the pairings, keep the hides in the same locations and run the dog again. That's using your pairing as training. It's a training tool. It should not simply be seen as this stage you can't wait to get rid of. I still pair with my dog. He's been doing Scent Work for five years. That doesn't mean I pair at every single hide. I don't. I'll pair one or two hides within a session. There will be other sessions I don't pair at all. There will be other sessions I pair everything. It's all about being variable. It's about tapping into what we understand about training. What we understand about reward systems, and making things really clear to our dog. My goal is not to set my dog up for failure. I want him to be as successful as possible. It doesn't mean I want everything to be a gimme. I want him to still work and learn to figure out a problem. But I want him to be able to do that. So I don't want him just out there floundering. If pairing the hide is going to help him come up with the solution, and help him understand, "Oh, that's how that works." Then we can over time fade that pairing. Great. Why wouldn't I do that? So again, this is all a matter of opinion. But the one thing that I'm hoping to make clear in this podcast at least, is that if you are using these tools, whether you're working with someone like myself who follows the K9 Nose Work training method, or if you're doing training on your own, or whatever the case may be. But if you're using something like boxes or pairing or something similar, just realize that they are not simply something to do for a number of weeks, you can't wait to get rid of them and you never use them again. Then it wasn't that helpful of a training tool, and that's what you should be looking at this as, that they are training tools. They are helping your dog achieve the type of learning that you need them to to be successful. That's the whole point. The last thing I just want to talk about in wrapping up this episode is that when we are progressing in our Scent Work training, what we have to keep in mind is why it is that we're going from step one to step two to step three, and whether or not those steps are artificial, and they're not actually the steps that our dog needs to take, but they're the steps that we think are the steps that everyone else takes. As an example, let's say that you are getting ready to do your very first trail. You're gonna be doing an ORT for instance, and you signed up for birch. You didn't sign up for anise or clove, you just wanna do birch to start off with, which would be fine. It's about six months down the road, you signed up way ahead of time, which is wonderful. You're nice and prepared. But now you're starting to read things online and on social media about people who are rushing along with their dog, and the dog has already found all three odors. They're alerting and they're doing just brilliant things. They've only been training for two days. You then start coming up with a training plan for both you and your dog, and you're going to be using boxes to start, and you're gonna be using pairing. But now you think that you have to move ahead a lot faster because you've got to get ready for this ORT, so you start taking away some of these things artificially. Instead of giving your dog the time that they need to figure everything out, you're now rushing. You're going up against a false goal, a false deadline that doesn't really exist. What happens when you do that, when you have that kind of approach, is you're going to have glaring holes in your training. You also run the risk of having your dog not really understand what the game is all about. To pick up some suspicious behaviors as far as, if you're really involved in the process and you're trying to shape things or things like that. They may not think it's about the odor at all. They may think it's about something completely different, if you're not careful. Or they could just determine that the game isn't all that fun, because they're not really sure what's going on. Things are kind of confusing. Because you're up against this deadline, you're probably practicing a lot. So if it's not really fun, it's not really clear, it's not really winning for them, they may actually just not like it all that much. What I'm hoping that people can recognize is that every single dog, every single dog is going to have a different process in how they learn. Every single dog is gonna have a different learning path. Even if you have multiple dogs in your home, every single dog is still going to have a different learning path. Every dog will have different sets of strengths and weaknesses. But that's why you should have as many tools in your toolbox as possible so you can help all of those dogs, and you don't just paint yourself in a corner where you only turn into a one trick pony, this is all that you can do. You don't wanna just throw tools away. You wanna have them accessible as much as possible so that you can whip them out when you need to. So I hope that makes sense. That while the allure is there to determine what stage everything is and where it belongs, and you can't wait to get out of it so that you can show everyone that you're this pro. Doing this other stuff isn't bad. It's great. It's actually really helpful. It's stuff that you should still lean on throughout the duration that you're gonna be doing Scent Work with your dog. In my opinion you should be doing it forever. Find times when it would be helpful and then use it. I have no problem whipping out a box or using pairing with my dog. It doesn't bother me in the least. I don't think that it says anything about my training that's negative. I don't think that anyone would look down on me about it, and if they did, I don't care. It works for my dog, and also works for my clients. I'm just hoping that we can all have a better understanding of what these things actually are. It's not simply a, "I can't wait to graduate from this." That shouldn't be the point. "I cannot wait for my dog to actually understand what this is all about," would be a better thing to be excited for. "I can't wait for my dog to confidently do the search." "I can't wait for my dog to independently work this out." "I can't wait for my dog to come up to the start line with me and be really excited to do this game with me." Those are good things to be excited for. But to get rid of something that could be a really helpful training tool, to me that just seems counterproductive. It's showing that we're looking at this through the wrong lens. I hope that makes sense. I hope you found this podcast helpful. We're diving into some touchy subjects, and it's not meant to make anyone look down upon a different type of training. Different thoughts and different approaches are good. Having different ideas about how to get to the same goal is perfectly fine. It's always been there in dog training, it always will be, and Scent Work is no exception. But what I'm hoping that we can understand is that having tools in our training are there for a reason, and that they can be very helpful, and we shouldn't be so eager to throw them away. Thanks so much for joining us in this podcast. I hope you found it helpful. Happy training, and we look forward to seeing you soon.
With the start of a new year, many of us will begin creating trialing goals, such as our desire to obtain a certain title by a certain date. In this podcast, we discuss the benefit of designing smaller, obtainable goals that are laser focused on building specific skills for both you and your dog, and how these smaller goals will ultimately help you achieve the "big" goal of earning your desired title. ----more---- Want to learn more about Dog Sport University? Check out our website and look over our Dog Sport Skills courses. You may also be interested in our informative webinars as well as the Dog Sport University blog. Have you heard about Scent Work and want to delve deeper into that activity? Perfect, we have just the thing! Check out our sister online dog training platform, Scent Work University where you will find courses and webinars suited for both those dog owners who simply want to have fun, and those who are seriously competing with their dogs. Maybe you're looking to help your puppy or dog in the manners department. Then your need to check out Family Dog University where we provide a variety of programs to help your dog be the best canine family companion they can be! PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Dogs Sports & Training Podcast. In this podcast, we talk about all things dog sports as well as all things dog training. We'll provide you a behind-the-scenes look at what your instructor may be going through, what your trial officials may be going through, provide you some training tips and much more. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about how in a new year, we can start designing some trial end goals and how we have to make certain that those are ideal goals and that we're not setting ourselves up and our dogs up for failure. Before we start diving into the podcast, I'm just going to do a very quick introduction to myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I'm the Owner and Lead Instructor for both Dog Sport University and Scent Work University. Dog Sports University is an online dog training platform where we provide online courses, webinars and seminars covering such topics as dog sports, such as agility, competition obedience, treibball and tricks as well as good manners courses such as our Family Dog Program, our Perfect Puppies Program, Canine Good Citizen Prep, Real Life Skills, Shaping Behavior and much more. In addition to being a professional dog trainer, I'm also an approved trial official and have actually worked with a competition organization. So, now you know a little bit about me, let's dive into the podcast. So, at the start of the new year, it's very common for all of us to start designing some goals, some resolutions, things that we would like to do. And when we're involved in dog sports, one of the most common things that people do is that they will start designing some trial end goals, some things that they want to achieve in that given year in regard to dog sports if they happen to compete. And that may be that they're going to start competing or that if they are competing, they want to obtain a certain goal as far as a certain title. What I'd like to do in this podcast is to really nail down what I would claim would be a better way of designing those goals, so that you can actually achieve them in training and so that you're not setting your dog and yourself up for failure. Because sometimes when we put out a goal post, it's just so incredibly vague such as, "I want to obtain that title," it can be a little difficult in order to put together a plan to actually achieve that goal. So, in this podcast, we just wanna talk about some of the better ways that you may be able to design your new year goals, so that you can maybe ultimately obtain that title, but you're actually working towards very specific goal points instead. I'm going preface this by saying I personally have a love-hate relationship with competition. I personally can take or leave dog sports a lot of the time as far as the competing piece. I really enjoy the activities, I enjoy the training part of it. And there are times when I really enjoy trialing and there are other times where I find it really super stressful. And a lot of that just has to do with the fact that I get stuck in my own head a lot of the time. My dog is brilliant. If he had a better handler, he would have a lot of letters behind his name. By coming at it from that perspective and because the titles themselves don't hold any inherent value all within themselves in that I need to have a title in order to get up the next day. That's just not how I'm wired. I can come to the place of putting together goals a little bit differently than someone who really thinks that having the titles is really, really, really important. And it's not to say that either approach is wrong. It's not. What I'm hoping to do in this podcast is just outline some of the ways that all of us can at least do a better job of our designing our goals so that they can actually be obtained. I have actually done the whole thing of saying, "Oh, well I would like to achieve this title by this date." This has never worked for me. Now, the argument could be made that maybe that's just because I don't have a good approach, maybe it's because I'm competitive enough. Who knows? My guess is going to be that for me personally, and this is probably true for a lot of people is that that goal didn't provide me with a whole lot of information. It was just a date on a calendar that seemed to get closer and closer way too quickly 'til all of a sudden, we were there and there was no way that we were gonna be prepared in order to obtain that goal, in order to do well in whatever sport it may be. Whether it be rally, obedience, barn hunt or scent work. So, what I want do in this podcast is to outline some of the things that I've found to have been successful as far as helping me really design some good goals that can be obtained through training and practice that are all pointing towards ultimately ending up at that title. So, the way that this would work is you, of course, will have a big goal. And the big goal can absolutely be the title. So, for instance, in scent work, one of the goals that I would have for 2019 is that we do go back to trialing. That would be goal number one. And goal number two would be that for one of the competition organizations, which is NACSW, that we would obtain our NW2 title, which is the level two title. So, that is a big goal. But from that, what I need to do is I need to figure out well, why are we obtaining that right now? What is missing? What is missing training-wise? What is missing skill-wise? Why is it that we don't have that already? What is it that we need to do as a team, both on the dog training side and on my skill side together, what is it that we need in order to obtain that title? And this is where I think designing some very specific goals will help, so for instance, for NW2, you're gonna be dealing with more distractors within the search area, so we would need to have a very specific exercise set up where we are working on those kinds of things where now there are distractors within the search area itself. So, then we have a general premise, but now you need to break that down into smaller goals. An example of that would be I would like my dog to work a container search where there is two distractors out within the container search and he successfully finds the hide without hitting on the distractors. Perfect. And then from there, you can start making it a little bit harder. There's going to be five distractors out and there's only going to be one hide. He successfully finds the hide. He does that, great. That goal is checked off. Then, we wanna do it within a time limit, then we wanna do it when he's both on leash and off leash. Then, we wanna do it where the hide is actually blind to me where I don't know where it is. So, I hope you can see that even with this very simple example, that's starting with the big goal of we would like to obtain our NW2, you can then from that, figure out what your actual actionable goals would be. And then, from there, you can make it even more specific where you can actually come up with a game plan of how it is that you're going to be developing your training program so that you can obtain those skills. And the key here is that it shouldn't just be focusing on the dog. Nine times out of 10, with dog sports, it's a team effort. It involves both the dog and the handler. You both have to be showing up and doing well. You have to have good skills. So, you want to make certain that you're focusing on both. You're not putting all of your emphasis on the dog and you're just kinda sitting at the sidelines saying, "Eh, well we'll figure it out." You wanna make certain you're working on both of you. So, to take another dog sport as an example, one of the things that I would like to do this year is to get more involved in our rally and our competition obedience trialing and a lot of that's gonna depend on my body, whether or not it decides to cooperate or not. But instead of just falling back on that excuse, so saying, "Well, there's a really good chance that my body isn't going to cooperate, so we're just not even gonna try." This year, I'm actually going to put a training plan in place where we are going to at least training wise be prepared to go into certain trials. Whether or not we actually make it on trial day is an entirely different question. That all depends on what my body says that day, but it's no longer going to be an excuse of saying, "Well, you know, we don't need to perfect this stuff, because I probably won't be able to do it anyway." Just recognizing that if this is an important goal that we have to work on it and it's going to require work. I'm going to have to make certain that I have a certain period of time of practicing these specific skills that I am videotaping my practice sessions, that I'm seeing where things could be improved, where it is that there are weaknesses either within the training itself or even with my own handling. What am I doing with my body? So, particularly with rally or a competition obedience, one of the things that I tend to do when I'm heeling, is I'll tend to look over my shoulder down at my dog. And what that does, it pushes him back, because I'm looking backwards. The other thing I've had an issue with is having a very good rhythm when I walk and that can make things very difficult for the dog, because they're constantly flowing between a fast walk and a pace and a trot whereas if you can just find a really good rhythm, it makes things a lot easier for them. So, what I would need to do, because we would like to go forward and actually compete in both rally and competition obedience is I need to do two different things: I need to work on my dog skills, so that he understands the various things that he would need to do both at the entry level of that dog sport as well as a level ahead of it, because you never wanna just prepare for the bare minimum. You don't wanna go in there just by the skin of your teeth. You want to be able to go into that trial knowing that your dog could actually enter the level above and do well. That way, it's easy peasy. So, I need to work on those things with him. A lot of it's just cleaning it up and finessing stuff. But a lot of it's gonna be on me, that I need to make sure that my handling skills are up to par, that I'm doing my piece. So, those are the kinds of things that all of us can do where if you have said to yourself, "I want to obtain this title in 2019," that's great, that's fine, but what is it you're actually going to do to obtain that title? And then be really brutally honest about it. Where are you right now? Where will you and your dog be able to go within a reasonable period of time? And it very well may be that you may not be able to obtain that goal within that time frame and that's okay. That's one of the big things that I think a lot of us put way too much pressure on ourselves and our dogs, because we're worried about the calendar and a lot of the calendar stuff is because we're worried about other people. So, we're thinking about what other people would think about us, whether it be our dog's breeder, whether it be our friends, our colleagues, whatever. None of that matters. You wanna make certain that you're doing this in a way that both you and your dog can be successful, you're not biting off more than you can chew and you're designing goals that are actually obtainable. So an example of an unobtainable goal would be if you had just purchased a 12-week-old puppy from a breeder and you wanted to obtain your OTCH or your MACH within that year. That's not going to happen. Now, are there people who have done a MACH in a year? There are. It's really very rare and it's not a really good idea. You're not gonna be able to get your OTCH in a year. It's just not gonna happen. It doesn't mean that you and your dog are bad. It just means that it's gonna take more time to develop those skills. So, make certain that you're being realistic with your goals. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by asking what would take normally two, three, four years of skill building to be jammed all into one for no other reason than to say that you did it in that time frame. You're just gonna drive yourself crazy, you're gonna make it so that your dog hates whatever activity that you're doing and it's probably not gonna work out for the best. Just be realistic with these sorts of things. Design goals with the undercurrent that you're going to enjoy this. The one thing about dog sports is that this entirely elective. You don't have to do any of this. It's supposed to be fun, even for people who do this for a living. They enjoy doing it, even if this is what they do in order to pay the bills. They still like the sport. They still enjoy it. Don't design goals that are basically guaranteed to make you miserable at the end of the day, because they're so incredibly difficult. And that also doesn't mean that your goals should be really gimme, like, "Oh, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna feed my dog a treat today. Oh, I did my goal." You know, there has to be a balance. But make certain that it's being realistic, you're keeping in mind all the various things that are gonna go into obtaining that goal and then it's not just such a broad thing such as, "I'm going to obtain this title by this date." That's not going to help you. You need to be able to break that down into very specific skill sets that both you and your dog are gonna have to work on and ideally when you're designing your goal, you have an idea of how it is that you can then obtain that goal and you may even wanna break it up into smaller steps. The more short-term goals you can set, the better it is. Because that way, it feels as if you're making progression. If you only have giant goals, it's never going to feel as though you're getting there. It's gonna be like three months down the line, you're gonna be like, "I'm nowhere even close to where I wanna be right now." But if you actually break that up into smaller pieces, you can keep track of it whichever way works best for you, on a piece of paper, on your smartphone, however. But just jotting it down, we've done this, we've done that, we've done the other thing. You know what, we're making pretty darn good progress. But by also keeping track of it, you can see when you're back sliding. You can see when you're not on track. You can see when you veered off the path completely and you ended up in Osh Gosh Land. So, the whole premise behind this is with the start of a new year, a lot of us are gonna start making goals and we're gonna be saying how we would like to do this, that, and the other thing. And there's nothing wrong with that. All I'm suggesting is that we be a little bit more mindful of it, particularly when we're interested in competing. It's great that people do a reset and that people have nice, fresh eyes in the new year and there are things that they would like to try and do with their dog. Maximize on that positivity and this is coming from someone who is a lifelong pessimist, but maximize on the fact that you do feel this sense of revival. Maximize on the fact that you are excited to try these new things. That you are excited to try to obtain these different goals. But set yourself and your dog up to succeed by breaking those up into smaller pieces, so that you can actually obtain them. So, I hope you found this podcast helpful. Thank you so much for listening. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.
In this episode, we discuss the need for all Scent Work enthusiasts - whether they are interested in competition or not - to practice a bit more patience. Doing so will ensure your dog has the skills they need to be successful in this game...and will also ensure that YOU have the skills needed to be the best handler possible! ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses and webinars are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport, or looking for help getting your dog to learn some manners? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Scent Work podcast. In this podcast we talk about all things Scent Work which include training tips, what your instructor or trial official may be going through and much more. In this episode we're going to be talking about the importance of being patient when we're training Scent Work whether we're interested in doing it for fun or for if we're interested in doing it for competition. Before we start diving into the episode, let me do a very quick introduction on myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I'm the owner and lead instructor for both Scent Work University and Dog Sport University. These are online dog training platforms. They are designed to provide high quality instruction as well as flexibility and convenience so that you'll be able to access these dog training resources regardless of where you're located. So without further ado, let's dive into the podcast. In this podcast episode what I'm hoping that we can understand as a community is the importance of being patient as far as it comes to dog training overall, but particularly with Scent Work. I do think that there is a tendency within this one specialty of dog training that tends to force people, or invite people rather, to try to rush. There's a couple of different reasons for that, but within this podcast episode I'm just hoping to outline the importance of actually taking your time, of ensuring that your dog understands some core material, and core skills are mastered, that you have mastered some skills, and how it is you can actually design your training so it's not just a simple rush to the end goal. To start off with I just want to talk about why it is that I think, in my opinion, that Scent Work as an activity invites people to rush, and the reason is that Scent Work as a whole is trying to highlight how amazing our dogs are, and being able to use their nose to find very specific types of odors. For Scent Work as a competition they're going to be finding things such as birch, anise or clove. That within itself is a very sexy and alluring thing that I could take my dog and I can have them go find something that doesn't normally mean anything to them whatsoever, and to most of the public, birch, anise or clove doesn't mean anything either. So you can whip out your little tin that has a scented Q-Tip in, and say, "My dog is going to find this, and I'm going to hide it somewhere in the house. And they go, "Really? Why?" And I go, "Oh, just wait." So you hide it. You have the dog search for it, and then everyone's oohing and aahing because that's pretty impressive. Why on earth would your dog find birch? I don't even know what birch is if I'm not involved in Scent Work. Just by design being able to have that super reinforcing activity of being able to show off how brilliant your dog is, that tends to make people want to rush because you realize how cool that is, to show that off to other people or to just do it yourself, you want to be able to do that right away. There are lots of dogs that would benefit from having a foundation laid out in a different way, or maybe they're only searching for food, and I hate framing it that way because it's the same exact thing. Searching for a hot dog, scenting wise is the same thing as searching for birch, but as human beings we put a lot more weight in searching for birch. One of the things I always try to tell my students whenever they start bringing these things up of, "I've been on primary for a little bit, and now I want to go on to a target odor. I want to do it yesterday. Why can't we go on to a target odor? What's the delay?" Blah, blah, blah. It's okay. I understand what you're saying. I can understand the allure, but are you saying that you think finding a hot dog or a treat is less impressive than finding birch? And they will begrudgingly say yes once you drag it out of them. I say, "Okay, if that's the case, then you should be able to find a hot dog within a space that I've hidden somewhere. So I want you to put a blindfold on, get down on all fours and find that hot dog where I hid it just using your nose." And they look at me like I'm a little crazy, but that's basically what we're saying when we make that argument. They're like, "Oh yes, so my dog can find a hot dog, but they could be finding birch, and birch is so much better." That's not true. The only difference is that we're trying to teach our dog that birch has value. That's the difference between the two, but the actual ability to scent is the same whether or not your dog is finding hot dogs or birch. I'm hoping with this example we can understand that just a premise, as an activity, it's almost baked in from a human perspective that we would tend to rush, because we want to show everyone how brilliant our dog is that they can go out and find these target odors. And there very well may be a situation where your dog would benefit if they were following the K9 Nose Work Training method which I use where they start off with primary, that it would be better for them to find primary for a certain period of time to build up other skills before they ever started finding a target odor. That is again a school of thought as far as how it is that you would train. I would argue there are some dogs, particularly those who are lower on the confidence scale, where you would definitely want to go the primary route because you don't want the dog to potentially be frightened by a particular exercise or something, and then associate that fear with birch. That would be bad. I'm hoping that you can see with just this introductory part of this podcast with how the activity is almost framed and design invites us to rush, and we have to be mindful of that and fight that urge as much as we can. One of the things that I would urge people to do when they're thinking about these kinds of things is how is it that you can develop a solid foundation for your dog so they could actually be successful in Scent Work, and let me just put this out there, not just for competition. I think that it's just as valuable for someone to avoid rushing if they only wanted to play the game for fun as the person who is also interested in doing competition down the line. To me those are exactly the same. Those people should have the same concerns. So with that being said, how is it that you can develop a solid foundation for your dog where you're not rushing them, where you are actually, positively certain that they understand what it is they need to do. And a lot of this is understanding that your dog has to develop skills, but so do you. For myself personally with how I teach Scent Work using the K9 Nose Work Training Method through NACSW is we are designing search areas where we are always manipulating the environment. We're never trying to manipulate the dog. That's never the goal. So you're always changing the picture that you're presenting to present a different skillset for the dog to master. It's understanding that you are not teaching the dog how to sniff. You're not going up to the dog and saying, "Okay, use your nostril in this way, and then process it that way in your brain, and then do this with it." Of course not. That's not what Scent Work is. Scent Work is literally presenting different odor pictures to our dogs, and then giving them the time and the space to work those out, because quite honestly we are only guessing as human beings how these odor trails actually work. Our dogs are the experts. We're just trying to give them an opportunity to say, "Here's a funky odor picture, can you work that out?" That's all this is, but you have to give your dog the opportunity to do that. And there are definitely things you can do to manipulate the environment to make that problem easier in the beginning, and then progressively make it a little bit more complicated, but it's understanding that you can even do that piece. That's very important when you're training. You don't have to present your dog with inaccessible hides the very first time you're ever doing Scent Work with them. That would be unfair. What is the goal in doing that? What are you trying to teach your dog? That they can't get to the thing that you're trying to make rewarding? That doesn't make sense. So for us when we're designing our training plans or our approaches, again, whether we're interested in just doing it for fun or for competition, how is it that we're actually developing the skills for the dog so that they can be successful and they actually understand what it is we want them to do? At the same time understanding that this entire process is not just focused on the dog. You are a very important part of this. The way that I design my training is so that, particularly in the beginning, the handlers are an observer where we're trying to build as much independence and confidence in the dog as possible so they're going out and they are searching. But the handler is still doing an active role of watching, of watching and learning from their own dog. They're picking up on cues that the dog is giving off, when the dog first detects odor, when the dog is chasing odor, and when the dog has found odor, when the dog is actively working, when the dog could be asking for help, when the dog is getting stressed. All that is really important, and if you rush ahead and you have no idea what any of that looks like, and you were interested in competition, that's going to be a really big problem. Then another level to those skills is as far as a handler, obviously handling a long line or a leash is a huge skill that you need to be able to master. Knowing what to do with your own body, even if your dog is working off leash, how are you not inhibiting their search? How are you supporting them throughout the search? How can you remind them to go to different parts of the search area without taking over the search? Because if you do too much, with a lot of dogs, they'll just say, "Okay, you with the thumbs, you go find the hide. Let me know when you found it, and then I'll eat a cookie. That sounds good." So if you're constantly doing check, check, check, check, check, a lot of dogs will just be like, "Okay, just let me know when you find it, and then you can pay me, and then we'll be good." You wouldn't want that. That's not the goal. I'm hoping that we can understand as a community that both you and your dog have to do a tremendous amount of learning in order to do well. You both have to build a lot of skills in order to do well. As a handler you also have to realize how it is you can set these things up. How are you designing your exercises? How are you splitting this up so they are in incremental steps, that you're not throwing your dog into the deep end of the pool, that you're not turning off their excitement and their joy for the game? All of this is actually pretty complicated, and it takes time to do. I hope that makes a little more sense as far as the need for developing these solid foundation behaviors, and that rushing ahead, you could absolutely get a list done in three weeks and enter into a lower level trial and potentially do well. People have done it. I've heard of it. I've also seen those very same people maybe squeak by at the next level, and then fall apart at the higher levels because they don't have the skills. They and their dogs simply don't have the skills that they need, and then they languish at those upper levels. The dog learns to hate the game. The person isn't particularly happy, and it's just a mess. All because they said, "But I wanted to get there within three weeks." Why? What happens in three weeks? Do you turn into a pumpkin and you're not allowed to do Scent Work any more? I understand the allure. I really do, from taking a step back and from listening to my students from over the course of all the years I've been doing Scent Work, on the East Coast of the United States originally, and now on the West Coast of the United States. It's all the same where people want to be able to showcase both themselves and their dogs. They don't want to be wasting time. They don't want to just be spinning their wheels which is completely understandable. I'm not asking that you stay at a given level and don't ever progress. I'm not asking that you don't set goals and try to work towards them. Just the opposite. I'm just asking that those goals be realistic. To use a completely different dog sport analogy, competition obedience. You wouldn't expect a 12 week old puppy that you've been working with for a week to then enter a trial and earn their OTCH which is their highest level of competition obedience title as possible within AKC. That would be ridiculous. No one in their right mind would ever think that that would happen. They also wouldn't think it would be possible in three weeks. A lot of people would argue you wouldn't be able to do that within a year or two or maybe even three. These things take time. These are very specific skills. This is testing both your dog's ability to work with a variety of different factors, not to mention just learning how to work on hides and odor problems, but being able to work within the environment, being able to work with a variety of different stressors. Then you have all of your skills too. A lot of people think that this is just simply dog-centric. That the handler doesn't play a role at all, and that's not true. That's a misnomer. You do have skills that you have to develop. You have to be able to listen to your dog. You have to be able to read what it is that they're doing within that space. You also have to know that you're not frankly, screwing them up, that where you are within the space is not inhibiting them from actually finding the hide, that you're not making it impossible for them to be successful. That's a pretty big involvement. So I hope that we can have a better understanding just as a community that speed should not be the metric. The metric should be whether or not the dog and the handler have obtained the necessarily skills. And I do not think as an instructor myself that I've perfected the way of relaying that to my students. I think it's gotten better over the years, but I don't think that I've perfected it yet, because I'll still get questions from students who say, "Oh, when do we get to do X or Y or Z?" It's like, "You just started this class two weeks ago. It's going to take you time." I try to be as forthcoming as I can where if anyone who takes my Introduction to Scent Work Class, I say, "Look, if you are interested in competition, as a general rule, I try to tell people it's going to take you six to eight months of training to be ready to to into your very first trial," which I would urge people to do an ORT because they can be extraordinarily informational to tell if your dog would be comfortable in a trial environment. Can they actually search within a trial environment? Can you search in a trial environment? It's good information to have, and then you probably would be able to enter into the other levels of competition for the other competition organizations, but you would be ready to do that. You wouldn't just be getting in by the skin of your teeth. You wouldn't just be squeaking by. You would actually be confident in your skills at that time point, and that's generally speaking. Are there people who could do it faster? Sure. Are there people who would take longer? Of course, and it shouldn't matter at the end of the day. But I just try to let people know as a general rule, that the timeframe you should think of, but it's a common question that I still receive. Again, the point is podcast is at least to help people start thinking about the importance of being patient, but I'm not claiming as an instructor that I've found the perfect way of relaying that even to my own students. We try to remind everyone that this will take time and that this is a process and everything else. And again, I think I've improved over time and over the years, but I don't think I've perfected the message just yet. If anyone else has any ideas of how to say stuff, then by all means, please share, but as a general rule, being more patient is extraordinarily helpful, particularly when we're talking about Scent Work. One of the things that a student recently asked me, "When do we get to do target odors?" Because again, I start using primary, and would lay out and, "Okay, this is how we do it. We do it for six weeks for a primary." If your dog has any kind of confidence issues, if they're a little bit on the shyer side, if you've made a lot of adjustments for them in this first foundation class, their first introduction to Scent Work, then I would urge them to stay on the foundation path where we keep them on primary as we continue to introduce them to other skills. If your dog doesn't have any confidence issues, if they're loving the game, they didn't have to make a lot of adjustments, then generally speaking then they can go on to the target odor path. So it's six weeks on primary regardless, and then you figure out which fork in the road you would want to take that would be best for your dog. And they were okay with that for about three weeks and then week four is "Okay, when do we do target odors?" It's like, "Okay, we have to finish this class first, and then we have to assess where your dog is." They finished that first class and it was perfect, and then they went into the birch class and their dog was doing well. Their dog didn't have any confidence issues. They didn't need a lot of adjustments for the exercises. Their dog was actually loving the game, was doing really, really well. So then they went to what I call the Introducing Birch Course, and again, dog was doing great. And the question was, "Okay, when are we going to teach alerts?" Again, we are literally just introducing the concept of birch to this dog. I said, "Okay, the way that I teach this is we will be using pairing, meaning that there will be a hide out within the space, and we're going to have a treat with that hide so the dog can self-reward, and they can make the association that birch is actually valuable." They will then say, "Okay, but when are we going to teach alerts?" It's like, "We have to teach that birch is valuable first, and then we need to introduce them to all these various odor puzzles and odor problems." The way I start is primarily with containers and interior searches first. Then we should introduce them to the other elements, for my purposes, it's exteriors and vehicles. If they were interested in doing things like AKC, then we can talk about buried hides or handler discrimination down the road, but teach your dogs the skills first. Then worry about an alert behavior, even if you need it at that point. I would argue that nine times out of 10 you don't because you can read your dog at that point really well, and your dog probably developed a natural alert behavior that you haven't taught which tends to work out pretty well. Again, that's all about preference and training ideas and schools of thought which is completely fine. It could be a discussion for another time, but that's the way that I train. And this client was like, "Okay." The next week, "When do we teach alert behaviors?" And I was like, "I'm not certain how else to put this to you, that your dog is learning skills right now." So finally the way I framed it was, "Okay, do you have children?" This client said "Yes." I said, "Okay, perfect. How old are they?" "Oh, I have a two year old and I have a six year old." I'm like, "Okay. You think that your two year old is pretty smart, right?" They're like, "Oh they're great, perfect." I'm like, "So can I put them into a college course and expect them to pass a physics' exam?" She said, "No." The client said, "No." I'm like, "Why not?" "Because they're two." And I said, "Exactly, but are you interested in them doing something like physics down the line or some kind of higher science? They would be able to get a really good job, and maybe be a doctor or something." And the client said, "Of course. I would love for them to be a scientist or something, but they're two years old. They're learning walking and talking a small amount. They're not ready for physics." I said, "Exactly, and that's where your dog is too." It seemed to kind of click in the brain like, "Oh I need to take my time with my dog." It's not that I think badly about this client. I don't. I understand the allure of trying to get to the end result now, but it's understanding that the dog actually has to understand the skill. Let me provide you with another example of where in my group classes this would typically be an issue, elevation hides. The way that I teach elevation hides, I actually introduce the concept in my very first class, meaning the very first type of class that someone would take, first timer, so the introduction to Scent Work class. We typically introduce it around week three or four when I was teaching this in person. And the way that I would introduce it is I would have ... Again, we're just using food ... I would have that within a box, and it would be either on top of a empty box, so start off with a very small amount of elevation, or it would be on top of a chair. And there's an empty box facing that item on the floor, so in theory, the odor flows from the elevation hide, collects in the empty box, so the dog can come up and smell the empty box and go, "Ooh, I smell odor, but there's nothing actually in here", and ideally they lift their head up and can catch the odor, kind of work their way back up to that elevated hide. So it seems to work pretty well to introduce the concept of elevated hides to the dogs. However, elevation odor hides are actually pretty tricky. It's a difficult odor problem for dogs to work out. As a general rule for my in-person dog training classes, when I was doing Scent Work, this would be the week that the individual dog runs would take the longest because they'd be trying to work out these elevated hides. And this was also the week where the students would get the most frustrated. It's still early in their process of learning all about Scent Work. They can see, plain as day, where the hide is. They don't understand why it takes the dog so long, and when you are the one on the floor, and everyone else is watching you, 10 seconds feels like 10 hours. So they get fidgety. They get frustrated. They do a lot of huffing and puffing, and not understanding why it is that it's taking so long for their dog to find the hide. So we would always have to have a nice big discussion beforehand. Just know that your dog's may take a little bit more time to do this. All I want you to do is breath, step back, allow your dog to work it out, and I'll be narrating to you the various things that I see. For this one particular client with this one particular dog, came out, dog was working. There was two hides in the search area. They found their other hide very, very easily, and they came up and started working the elevation problem. This dog worked for five minutes straight, and that client, the human client, was beside themselves. They were not a happy camper. They were stressed. They wanted so badly to just step in and tap the box or something. And the only reason I allowed that dog to work that long, because it is a very long time to be working on a problem, is that dog never gave up. They never showed any signs that they were stressed. They were not worried about it at all. They knew roughly where the odor was, but they just could not figure out where it was, but when they did, it was this huge light bulb moment for this dog. At the end of the run everyone gives a nice, big round of applause to the person who ran. They are not happy at all because they're comparing themselves with their other classmates, which they've already forgotten their classmates may have taken a minute and a half or two minutes to find the hide, but they took five whole minutes. It was just, that's a travesty. We wrapped the class up, and that person sent me an email immediately that night. They were very upset. They thought that this was clearly evidence that their dog has no idea what they're doing, and they just don't feel they're progressing as well, and yada, yada, yada. I write back, and I'm like, "Seriously, your dog actually did really well. These are the high points. Your dog never gave up. Your dog was persistent. Your dog was showing persistence while they were doing this. Those are all really great qualities, and they found it out and they figured it out in the end." "These are some adjustments that you can do when you're practicing at home. Definitely keep me posted, and if you have any more questions," and they wrote back, and they weren't having any of it. So then we had a telephone conversation about it, trying to talk this person off the ledge. I said, "Just take tomorrow off from any kind of Scent Work so it's not quite such a thing, and then do some of the adjustments and things we talked about, and by all means, let me know. But again, from my perspective, your dog actually did really well." Fast forward to the following week. We're moving on to different types of skills, but we're going to be folding in our elevation hides as well. A couple of other students went. Their dogs did very nicely. They all did very well. This other student gets her turn. She comes out with her dog. There were three hides within the search area. There was one elevation hide, one typical hide or introductory hide, and then we also had a different problem that we were posing. Her dog had the fastest run out of everyone. And the look on her face was priceless because she was convinced that her dog was the worst of everyone, and she just wanted to get this done, and she wanted to move on, and she just didn't understand, and "Why is this taking so long?" Five days. Five days, she went from her dog is the worst thing ever to her dog was the fastest of that class. The reason I like to share this example is what she had done even though she was upset is she'd taken my advice, and she had broken up the exercises she was doing at home. So it was just about elevation when she was doing one of her repetitions. She started with a smaller elevation, and she immediately followed up with a recovery search. So the dog would figure it out, and then the dog would get a really easy recovery search, and then a really huge party. She got to the point where the elevation was the same height as we had had in class by the end of her practice week. Because she had taken this skill that clearly her dog struggled with, and figuring it out which again is typical, but it could potentially be a weakness for this dog, she broke it up into small pieces. She gave her dog the opportunity and the time to work it out, and sure enough her dog did. Now just suppose that was what she wanted to do, and she kept saying in our conversations before she finally relented and said, "Okay, I'll do it this way, and if it doesn't work, I'm going to do what I want to do." She wanted to go and present the dog the box. She wanted to say, "I'm just going to tap it. I'm just going to point to the box to get him up there so that they find it faster because I can't have them taking five minutes." And my argument was, "Why not?" This is a learning problem. This is a learning moment. Allow your dog to do the learning. I would argue, if she had stepped in every single time to point out to the dog where the box was, the dog wouldn't have developed the skills of figuring out that problem, and sure, if we had developed the class so that we weren't still testing elevation hides, and we had just moved on to the next skill, she could have said, "Oh yep, nope, we've found elevated hides. Everything's fine." And in theory, she could keep going on in her training, potentially could go compete, and then sure enough, her dog doesn't know how to work on elevation hide. Again, I like to include this example because it's a very common theme of I know where the hide is as the handler. I know what the answer is to the question when we're training. It feels like an eternity when my dog is trying to figure that out, and it can be extraordinarily frustrating as the person to take a back seat to the dog, and allow them to do that learning, to allow them to take the lead, and not be quite so involved. In my opinion that's where people start getting into trouble. Allow the dog to do that learning. You can then finesse things once they actually have cemented the skills, but they need the skills first. I hope that makes sense that it's a very common thing that I've seen again across the country on both coasts. When it comes to Scent Work, people tend to rush a lot, and the dogs are actually pretty smart. The dogs are able to kind of put two and two together, but the more complicated you get, the more problematic that becomes because they need to have a foundation, understanding of these skills to be successful. And that will be exponentially more difficult for you and you'll have gaping holes in your training if you rush through. I hope you found this podcast somewhat helpful. If there's anything I would love to see happen within this Scent Work community is just for all of us to take just a little bit of a step back, and to have some more patience with our dogs to really enjoy the journey a bit more, and not be so worried about the end result. And this is not just for people who are interested in competition, this also applies for people who are just looking to do things for fun with their dogs. It's really all about the learning itself. It's about the journey. I know that sounds very cliché, but it is true. All those little practice sessions should be the thing that you look forward to more than anything. And whether or not you're competing or you're showing off for your family and friends, that's the cherry on top, but it's the actual individual training sessions that are important. Thanks so much for joining us. Happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.
Strap in and get ready for some real talk! In this episode, we share the confessions of a nervous competitor...who also happens to be a professional trainer and a trial official. "What, they are not perfect?!" Nope. By sharing her story, the hope is this will help fellow competitors who are also nervous about competing. This could be their battle with self-doubt, fears of not being flawless when they compete, or their obsession with outside forces that have nothing to do with the quality of their training (what other people think, etc.). Being open and honest about these things will hopefully be a launching point for future conversations we can all have as a community. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses and webinars are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport, or looking for help getting your dog to learn some manners? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Scent Work Podcast. This is where we're going to be talking about halting Scent Work. We'll be giving you a behind the scenes look as far as what's your instructor or trial officials may be going through giving you training tips and much more. In this episode, we're going to be talking about what it's like to be a nervous competitor, particularly when you're already a professional trainer and you've actually worked for a competition organization before and how that could be a little challenging. Before we start diving into the podcast, allow me to do a very quick introduction of myself. My name is Dianna Santos, I'm the Owner and Lead Instructor for both Scent Work University and Dog Sport University. These are online dog training platforms that are designed to provide outstanding instruction to as many people as possible regardless of whether they're near a dog trainer or not. I've also been a trial official with United States Canine Scent Sports as well as AKC Scent Work. I'm a Certified Nose Work Instructor through the NACSW and I've been teaching group classes since 2011. So now you know a little bit more about me, let's get started in the podcast. Now, I don't think that being nervous when you're competing is a rare thing. I think that a lot of people can relate to the fact that you could become nervous when it's your time to step up to the line. Are you going to do well? Is there something you were going to forget? What about your long line? Are you going to be doing patterns? What if you say something incorrect? There's a lot of reasons why you would be nervous, but when you're an instructor and a trial official, I think there's an added level of stress. So in this podcast, what I wanted to do was just to document how I feel about the whole thing and the challenges that I faced that are all put on by myself, no one is causing this to happen to me. This all a personal thing that I'm going through. But I don't think that it's a strange thing. I don't think that it's an anomaly. I think it's actually fairly common. So my goal is to hopefully help someone else not feel so nervous to realize just how much weight we give to trials and it's not to say the trials aren't important. Is that to say that I'm trying to diminish anyone's training, but at the end of the day, this is a game and if you don't pass a particular trial, it's not the end of the world. Your life is not going to come to an end. It may feel like that at the time, but that's not really the case. So again, the point of this podcast is just to really let you know how I'm dealing with this stuff and try to give you some ideas of how you could avoid some of the pitfalls I've put in for myself because there's no point in me going through stuff and then having you do the same exact thing. So just for full disclosure, I am a professional trainer. I have been for a while. I have worked for a Scent Work Organization. I am an approved official. I have officiated, I've worked in score room, I've done a variety of different things within Scent Work. I do not think that I am the end all and be all of Scent Work, far from it, but I do feel I know my stuff to a certain degree as much as anyone can know anything, especially related to dog training. If you ever hear someone who says, "I know all the answers", you should take that with a grain of salt. With that being said, I have not trialed as much or as often as some. There are some people who you look at their trialing schedule and you're like, "Wow, that's amazing". I have a love/hate relationship with trialing and a lot of it has to do with the fact that quite frankly, I'm a sore loser, I will readily admit. It is not something that I'm proud of, it's something that I've had since I was a child, so I don't like the way that it feels when I lose or I don't get a Q. But is also a lot of judgment that I've placed on myself and again, there's no outside force that's doing this. It's all in my head. But I also tend to believe that I'm not the only one who's going through this. So I'll tell you a little bit about my journey as far as Scent Work trialing and where I am right now. So, my very first trial that I ever did in Scent Work was years and years and years ago, and it was with my first Doberman and it was really my first foray into a dog sport at all. I wasn't a professional dog trainer yet. I was in the process of thinking of becoming one and I had no idea about this whole dogs sport thing. I was completely green, I was like a deer in headlights. So I think I was just so new, I didn't even have an opportunity to be nervous, I was just doing it. I showed up for the ORT with a dog who never should have went to that ORT and I give a lot of props to the people who hosted the trial. They were very welcoming, they were very understanding, they answered a lot of questions, they made sure everything was safe and my dog happened to pass all three ORTs in that day, which was great. Then we determined this is not a good idea. He's not reactive, he's aggressive. It put him back in his training. It was just not a good idea to do. But that was my first taste of actually trialing. Then from there, I started my professional dog training career and I was doing training for Scent Work. But when I started trialing again, it was actually for Barn Hunt with my new Doberman who is very social and very happy and very wonderful. We did very well in Barn Hunt, he just seemed to take to it like a fish to water. So that went nicely, "Oh, Q's are good. Q's are fun. Trialing is fun, the ribbons are fun. Oh look, he has little letters behind his name now. That's exciting". I did an ORT and he missed one odor, which was fine. Then we went back and we did it again, which was perfectly fine. Up to this point I'm feeling okay, I'm not feeling too bad yet. We then do our NW1 and he passes it on his very first go and I was elated. I was so excited and there was a woman sitting next to me in the parking lot and she came out and she was so upset because her dog had missed a hide and she was visibly upset, angry upset. Then she just went into this whole meltdown of first she was angry at life, then she was angry at the officials and then she was angry at herself and she apologized to this dog for the remainder of the day. I think this was her second search that she missed the hide. So basically for a NW1 that means that you're done, you miss a hide, you're all set. That has really seared into my brain that I never wanted to be that person. It's not that I think that she's bad or wrong, I felt bad. I felt really sad for her that she was going through all of this because here I am with my brilliant little dog. We happened to pass everything and we had fun and there she is and she's distraught and I felt awful. It was just gross. It was like, "I hope that that's never me." I hope that I'd never get to that point because in what's the ... Why would I be doing this trialing thing if it made me miserable? Well, fast forward to, I go to my NW2 and in between that time period, I had done trialing with some other organizations and he had done well. There were searches that several USCSS for instance, you're able to keep all the cues that you earn. So if you miss a search is not the end of the world. But if you pass your others, you still walk away with something, which is really great. It's a great confidence booster. It's just a different dynamic. But for NACSW, it's all or nothing. So we go in for our NW2 and at this point my body is already a mess. I can barely walk. I'm a mess and we go to do our exterior search and it's down a couple, maybe three or four steps and then you get to your start line, then you can go. So I hobbled down the steps and then I released him for his start line. My long line is all tangled, so he pulls me a little bit and he is not hunting for odor, but there is probably a lizard or something similar within this little garden area and I'm like, "Oh, dear Lord". Now mind you at this point, I'm a professional trainer, I'm a official with another organization, I'm a CNWI, so I'm a certified instructor with NACSW. The person who is judging me is a co-founder of NACSW. I have photographers that I've seen other trials that I was either officiating or I was working with. I have clients who are sitting there and they are volunteering at this trial. Can we say pressure? It's not pressure that any of these people are putting on me. Not one of these people were looking at me saying, "Well, you had better get that hide or I'm going to hate you." But that's what I'm thinking in my head. So now that he is in lizard mode, I'm thinking "That's it, we're done." So I'm trying to get him to other parts of the search area to make sure at least we covered the whole thing. In my mind, lizard time took 15 hours. When you watch the video, it took a whole of like maybe 15 seconds if that, and right next to that garden area, was a garden hose off by itself and that's where the hide was. Do you think that my dog went to that area or tried to multiple times? Of course he did. Do you think that his mother would let him check that out? Of course she didn't. So we looked at all this other stuff and I timed out and then when they told me where the hide was, I honestly never even saw that garden hose. I was so up in my head about all this other stuff that I wasn't even in the moment. I was so concerned about, "Oh, now he's going to be just on the lizards. All these people think I don't know what I'm doing. They're going to take away my instructor status". Like none of this is going to happen, but it's what I thought and "Oh, by the way, it's on video. Awesome, I'll make sure that I buy that". So from there, we then go into our container search. Same judge, same co-founder of NACSW, same photographer, and even more people that I know who are volunteering. I'm like, "Great" and it's in a gymnasium and the containers were a collection of different kinds of boxes, but the things that are the most important to the story, are metal lunchboxes. I set my dog up at the start line, I release him, and he immediately launches himself on top of one the metal lunchboxes and slides down to the very middle part of the gymnasium as he's riding this lunchbox and I know damn well that's not the hide, but I'm so concerned that he's going to destroy this entire search area that I just call it and the judge said "No, but he's having a really great time." So I know I'm done. Like there's no fixing this, we are so not into doing this NW2. But good grief, we then go on because we still have to do everything else. We have an interior search and our interior search is two rooms and I elect to have him off leash for both rooms. So the first room, there's going to be two highs and the second room, there's going to be one hide and they were classroomish kind of things. So I release him to go for the very first room and he buzzes around looking like he's not doing a whole lot of anything. He's just running around, which is a wonderful thing to see. At this point I'm feeling just resigned to the fact that we haven't passed and kind of just enjoying him being joyful. But then he comes up to a garbage can that has wheels and he sniffs that wheel and in my head, I call alert, but my mouth doesn't say anything and he leaves. Now I'm stuck with this debate of, "Oh no, I was supposed to say alert and I didn't. What do I do? How do I get him back and all?" He's just like ... It's just, it's a mess at this point. We then go to the middle of the room and he's able to work on a hide that was on a chair. Brilliant. Actually called alert for that one. Feed him, fabulous. We got back to where the garbage can is. Do you think that I motioned near the garbage candy? Do you think that I did anything to help my dog? Of course I didn't. So now he's like, "Well clearly you didn't like that hide when I told you about last time. I'm going to go bounce around and go see what other stuff I can find". So I called alert on some sink or something where it would never be in a million years and the poor judge was like, "No". You could just like hear it in her voice like "What are you doing?" That was where I had the soul crushing feeling of "They're going to take my official card away. I'm not going to be able to be an instructor anymore. I can't be a trial official anymore. They may take my dog away". I mean, none of this is true at all, but it's everything that you're thinking in the moment. So I collect my dog and was like, "Oh, what a good little honey". Here, that's where it was. Like, "Yeah, I know that's where it was" and we do the second room and I have to say, even though everything has been a mess up to this point, he really rocked that second room. It was an inaccessible hide and he told me that it was inaccessible hide, he was bracketing it like it was crazy. So, wouldn't you know, I actually called it and we got a yes. "Woo, yay". Then we had our vehicle search for our very last search. Once again, our judge is a co-founder for NACSW and there's a bunch of people again that I can recognize who are either filming or they're volunteering. The start line, I believe the vehicle was in something like a tennis court or something similar to that, though was surrounded by fencing. The start line was at the opening of when the gates, but the vehicles are inside. Again, we're in Southern California, it's summertime, so it's hot. Do you think that I would just after they told me that I could go, would walk up to the vehicles and then let him search? Of course not. Why would I do that? That wouldn't make sense. So I released him from the start line, nowhere near the vehicles. Then eventually we got to the vehicles and he told me about the hide pretty quickly. Do you think that I called it? of course I didn't call it. So now my poor black dog in the middle of Southern California summer is in sweltering heat and burning pause and it's just a mess going around and around and around and finally, he shows me again and I say alert and I get the where and I point and I actually get a yes. Now mind you, this is NW2. Do you think that I said finish? I mean, watching the videos from this trial for me personally is hysterical because it's just such a mess. It's just awful. But even so, the world didn't end on that day. It was a learning experience. These are all things that I took away saying, you know what? We probably weren't ready for this trial to begin with. He probably is fine, I need help clearly. But it's not that big of a deal and just because these people are there, I'm sure that they would have been delighted to have celebrated in our success if we were successful and I'm sure that some of them were like, "Oh, that's so sad that it didn't go well". We did get called out during the debriefing of the judge for the interior search. The first search said, "Oh yeah, and the lady with the Doberman. That Doberman, what he likes to do is run around, stir the odor up, and then find where the hides are. It's really interesting and fun to watch". It's like, "Yay...". But the point being is that with that trial, I have not been rushing to go back into another NW2. I've actually been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and putting it off some more. Well, I finally entered one thinking because it's in the town that I live in, there's no way I'm going to get into it. We did and I'm like, "Oh God, this is going to be a great opportunity for me to show that I don't know what I'm doing again". The thing is that, it's not that I don't know what I'm doing, I do. I have a lot of years under my belt. My dog is really good. I'm not the best handler in the face of the earth, I know that. My body doesn't cooperate really well and my brain, my mind does not help. The lack of self confidence really becomes glaringly obvious and worrying about all these other things. Particularly now that I've launched these two online platforms, my concern is, "What do you mean you don't have your NW2 yet? That's awful. I'm never going to work with you. You have no idea what you're doing, you sucked". It's not true, I actually do know what to do but I am a poster child for what happens when you let all these thoughts get away from you. So I'm hoping with this podcast by sharing and being very open and honest about the stuff, cause I'm not shy about sharing it at all. Then hopefully I can help somebody else realizes that that's all really silly and are there people out there who will say that, who will think that, who will talk among their little circle and say? "Oh, she's such a joke. She can't ... She doesn't even have her NW2 yet. I can't believe that people give her money." Sure, there very well maybe. But that's not the majority of people and even if they do, so what? I don't have someone banging down my door saying "You are no longer allowed to be an instructor. You may not be an official. You're no longer allowed to own your dog because you haven't titled to the level that we think is appropriate". Like it's just ridiculous. But that's exactly what I think a lot of the time, and I don't think that I'm alone. While this is for people who are officials or who are trainers, I think that there are people who also have those issues when they are just competitors. They're worried about the other competitors think, they're worried what their classmates think, they're worried about their instructor thinks. It's a very natural thing for people to go through. But I can tell you it doesn't help you. It's not a motivator. All it does is muddy the picture for you. So again, my NW2 is this weekend and I can quite honestly tell you I'm not looking forward to it, which is silly and I just have to have a really good assessment with myself of why am I doing this? It has nothing to do with the organization because I can tell you I've tried with a number of different organizations and every single time that we trial, it's more stressful than fun and it's just because I'm worried about these other things that no one else cares about. So I need to determine is there a way that I can compartmentalize? Is there a way that I can fix the way that I'm looking at this, so it is actually enjoyable? But if it's not, then we probably shouldn't be trialing. There's no reason to put myself and my dog in that kind of situation and particularly for my fellow super nervous and self conscious competitors, just know that there's no way that you can be there for your dog as a teammate that you need to be if you're not mentally in the game and that's easier said than done. Something that I struggle with clearly and I haven't found the perfect solution to it. I know the things that I should be doing about this as far as how I could change my thinking about it and I just go, "Oh, that's just so hard, we'll deal with that later. I'll go do some other project before I have to worry about that". But if you're finding yourself constantly concerning yourself about what other people think, is going to take away from you building these memories with your dog and from you performing well. Even if performing well doesn't mean a cue, is still means that you and your dog are jelling together as a team. I've seen this happen with other people and I go, "Ugh, if you would just get out of your own way, you would be fine". Then I'm always expecting them to turn around and be like, "Hello, kettle, how are you?" So it's easy for many of us to say to other people, "Oh, this is what you should do", and "Oh, here's a solution to your problem" when really you're struggling with it yourself. As far as some real life tangible things that you could take away from this podcast, just know that for me personally, if I had a client or a colleague who went to a trial and they did not qualify, I do not have a little black book that I'm keeping track of all that stuff. I'm not waiting to pounce on them and say, "Ha ha, you are not as good as you thought you are". That's not what I do. Instead, I would always celebrate the things that they did do and they did well at that trial. Even for my NW2 that I just described, that wasn't really all that great at all. I can still hold on to the fact that while that container search was for all intents and purposes on a professional standpoint could be deemed as a disaster, it was hilarious. That's very funny. He was having a grand ole time. We weren't going to cue, I hope that he doesn't do it again, but it was funny in the moment. That will be a memory that I will hold onto the entire length of time that I am blessed to have him. That's something, so if you're having difficulty finding joy in trialing and you're nervous about it, but you're not nervous about whether or not your training is where it should be, but you're nervous about all these other outside factors. The one thing I can tell you from personal experience, being someone who I honestly an instructor and an official would be more exposed to potential backlash. It's overblown, it's not true, it's not real. It really is all in your head and there will be some people who are detractors. There will be some people who are negative, but the vast majority of people are not. The vast majority of people are very supportive within this community and they understand that you're a person, that you're a human being and you're not a robot. You're not a machine. You're not perfect and neither is your dog. People happen to like humility and they like honesty and being authentic. Being vulnerable is all those things, being where you're admitting to say I'm a little nervous. I'm not nervous that we can do well, if I can just get my head in the right space. If I think about this right then I think we'll be fine. But I get in my own way because I'm worried about all these other things. The key point is that you're not alone. There's a lot of people who think that, particularly if you happen to be a professional trainer and even more so if you also happen to be a trial official. Now that this rambling podcast has gone on, you may be asking yourself, "Okay, well little miss teacher lady, what are you doing to help yourself where that NW2 that is coming up?" The main thing is I'm just trying to not load my schedule up with too much other stuff cause that tends to be what I do when I'm stressed. I try to put on tons and tons of other projects so that I can constantly keep myself busy. But what's going to happen is as that day approaches and then I say, "Oh no, that day is eating into my schedule, maybe I'll just skip it", which would be bad. So I'm trying to keep a balance. We're doing short little training sessions leading up to it. Nothing major, but just making sure we're keeping it really nice and fun and high octane for both of us. I'm just trying to keep my expectations realistic. All I'm looking for going into this is to have a good time and I know that sounds incredibly cliche. "Of course you'll have a good time if you qualify", but I can tell you there have been times that I've gone to trials for other organizations that had nothing to do with the organization per se, but just the way that I was conducting myself at the trial where my dog did great, he would get five out of five or six out of six or whatever the case may be, and I didn't have a good time at all. I was stressed to the nines, I was trying to do too many things at once. I was working at the trial the same time I was running him. I was doing a million things at once and it was miserable. I didn't like it at all. I'm looking to not have that experience again. For this NW2, if we don't pass anything but we together as a team have fun, that's all I care about. I mean sincere, true, real life fun. If he wants to dance on containers without destroying them or whatever else, okay. I not promoting that, but it's the change in mindset of "I'm okay if we don't Q as long as we're having a good time together." But if we can't even do that, then I just don't think that trialing is a good choice for me. That's just got to be a choice that I'd have to make at some point because right now it's ... I'm at a fork in the road where there have been some experiences have been really pleasant. Obviously the ones that you could win, more of those are in that camp. But like I said, there have been times when we've killed it and I didn't have fun at all. It was miserable. So I changed some things so that I'm no longer trying to do 20 million things at once when I'm trialing and I'm hoping that they'll make a difference. But I honestly don't know if it will, because I'm still expecting myself to have this little voice in the back of my head that are saying, "You have to be perfect. How are you not perfect? Now no one's going to listen to you. No one's going to buy your courses. You're going to go out of business, AHHH". What's the joy in that? That's miserable, that's awful. So a lot of this is going to hinge on my ability to quiet those voices that aren't overly helpful, to focus on the training and the knowledge that I have, the amazing ability that my dog has and not get stuck in those circular patterns of thinking that are quite unhelpful. If we're able to do that and we're able to have fun, then we may continue trialing. But if we don't, meaning I'm not able to do that, then we may just need to take a break for awhile and that may include never going for an NW2 again and who knows? He's five, we have plenty of time. What I'm hoping that people can get from this rambling of a podcast, is that there is no absolute way of how you need to do this. I know people personally who have done dog sports for a long time and they just burned out. They took a long break as more talking like 5, 10, 15 years. They didn't do anything and then they came across another dog that they thought would do well and it piqued their interest a little bit. Then maybe try a different dog sport and they take it in stride and they make sure that it's fun and they prepare ahead of time so they're not just winging it. They're going in when they're prepared and they are just coming at it from a better perspective where they're able to go in, realize this is just a game. It's an opportunity to make memories with their dog. They're prepared to do well and they don't Q every time, but they have fun every time and that's something that I aspire to be. I don't know if that's possible for me personally, but I'm hoping that people can understand is that your journey doesn't have to stay linear. You can change your mind at any point. So even if I were to turn around tomorrow and say, "You know what, I don't think this trial thing is for me". That may just be for now, it's not as though I'm handing in some card that says I'm never allowed to trial again. It may just be that I trial at a later date. So if anyone else is battling nerves, self doubt, they're concerned that the world is glaring at them, they're not going up the levels as fast as they thought that they should. Their dog doesn't have as many letters behind their name. They don't have as many accolades, particularly if you're an official or an instructor. Just know that first of all, no one cares. Really, no one's keeping track of these things. The people who are quite honestly, their opinion doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Just don't get bogged down in that stuff. If you're really are struggling, it probably is best to just take a break. Your pocket book will thank you. Trialing is expensive and if you're not having a good time, which is going to translate to your dog not having a good time, it reaches and make a whole lot of sense. So just take a break to reassess and then maybe you only do certain things. Maybe only trial so much, and then maybe we're able to turn a corner and you're just a trialing fanatic and you have fun every single time and that would be great. But the main thing that I'm hoping that everyone can understand is that you don't have to be stuck doing anything. All of this is a choice and it should be a choice you make individualized for you and your dog and that can change over the life of your dog. That can change if you were to get another dog, that can change between having different dogs in your household. But whether or not you trial or not, doesn't define who you are as a person and that's coming from someone who struggles with that very thought. I know intellectually it's true, but it's difficult for you to admit, particularly when you're a professional. So I hope this podcast was able to help anyone else out there who has been described as a nervous competitor because of outside forces. You're not alone, it's actually fairly common. But just try to reassess so you can figure out the best way that you can find, joy again for both you and your dog. I hope you find this podcast helpful. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.
The term "reactive dog" can mean so many things to so many people...which can make talking about this subject quite challenging. In this podcast, we attempt to better define this term, outline the types of dogs who may be included in this category, while also talking plainly about which dogs specifically should not be competing at Scent Work trials at all (ie. aggressive dogs). We also touch upon the need for everyone to be an advocate for their own particular dog and how we can all be more understanding and use a bit more empathy toward one another. Definitely a large topic to try to tackle, but hopefully this podcast can at the very least spark some meaningful discussions and thoughts on this thoroughly sensitive subject. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses and webinars are not only for those who are interested in competiton, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport, or looking for help getting your dog to learn some manners? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Scent Work podcast. In this podcast we'll be talking about all things Scent Work. This includes a behind the scenes look for how trials are conducted, what your instructor may be going through, training tips, and other helpful information that we can provide. In this episode, we're gonna be discussing the topic of reactive dogs in Scent Work. Most importantly trying to nail down what the real definition of what a reactive dog is, and helping you make a better determination of whether or not you should be competing with your dog at a Scent Work trial. Before we dive into the podcast itself, allow me to do a very quick introduction from myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I'm the owner and lead instructor for Scent Work University. This is an online dog training platform where we provide online courses, webinars, and seminars to help you achieve your Scent Work goals. Whether it simply be just playing the game at home, or also preparing for competition. So without further ado, let's get started within the podcast. One of the most common things that I've encountered throughout my time with being a professional instructor and trainer is the lack of understanding of what a "reactive dog" actually is. There is a very broad understanding as far as which dogs would actually fall in that category. When we're talking about Scent Work in particular, particularly in the realm of competition, many of us may be referring to completely different dogs as far as how they present behaviorally, but we're lumping them all into the same category of a reactive dog. The purpose behind this podcast episode is to try to help us have a better understanding of what that word actually means. Whether or not our dogs are indeed reactive, and if they are, would it to suitable for us to be competing with them? And if we were going to be competing with them, where we may want to compete. It's a fairly large topic, but I'm hoping that it'll provide some clarification, because there does seem to be a lot of confusion around this word. It's only been exacerbated over the years. I don't think that it's been clarified much. There's people who use this term interchangeably with other things that I just don't think is very helpful. Again, for my purposes, my goal anyway, is to help clarify at least what I believe a reactive dog would be behaviorally speaking, to try to put a little bit more meaning behind that term. And then as a community we just need to determine if maybe that term is fairly useless at this point, and if we need to maybe find some other ways of describing what we are trying to say a certain dog may be presenting as behaviorally. For myself personally, reactive dogs can actually include a subset of several dogs. A reactive dog to me is a dog who has spacial sensitivity to either other dogs or other people, meaning that they would prefer to be farther away from other dogs or other people. Now, that preference can either be fear-based in that they're afraid of other dogs or other people, or that those things may hurt them. Or that they actually are offensive towards them, where they would like to hurt other dogs and other people. That within itself I think is a very important distinction, because if your dog is more on the "I would like to hurt other dogs and other people" range, in my opinion, then your dog more than likely than not should not be competing because they're more closer to the aggression part of that scale. Where they're going to be thinking that a good offense is the best defense, meaning, I'll use my teeth and I'll think about it later. That's simply just not safe. If your dog's first reflex is to try to bite something, whether be another dog, another person, or whatever other trigger there may be because it has startled them, it's just not a good idea to have them in a trial environment. Now, there are many people who will say, "Well, my dog and I have been competing in several different sports. And I've been competing in several different sports for a long period of time. I compete in agility, or I do fly ball, or I do competition obedience, or whatever the case may be". All those sports are specifically not open to reactive dogs. They don't make a blanket statement as a sport saying, yes, we would like reactive dogs to be here. It's actually quite to opposite. But in that vein, they may actually have a dog who would prefer if other dogs didn't sniff their butt, or something like that. These very same people say, "Well, I've been in these much higher octane sports and activities, and I've been able to manage my dog just fine, everything is okay. So, all of your concern about a separate trial is not really well founded". I would just have to disagree. The reason being is that it is true that at Scent Work, you are not having dogs running at full tilt. They're not doing obstacle courses. They're not maybe at the same type of adrenaline high than a dog coming right off an agility course maybe. That is true. But there's a different type of adrenaline high. And again, we just have to be blunt about this. If as a sport, not going into specifics about particular venues, but as a sport, we are saying that dogs who are "reactive" are welcome to come and attend and compete. You are now dealing with a different population of dog. That's not to say that I think reactive dogs are bad. I don't. But we have to just be honest about this. These are dogs who are coping with a completely different subset of triggers and issues than dogs who are not reactive do not have to deal with. Those non-reactive dogs are not stress stacking for instance. They're not dealing with all the stresses of life and being bombarded with them every single second. If a leaf blows by for a regular dog they're like, "Oh, a leaf went by." But for a "reactive dog", it could be, "Oh, my god a leaf went by!" And that was on top of everything else that just happened to them within that day before you ever get to the trial. When people start bringing up other sports, I honestly think that's it's a false equivalency. We're comparing apples to oranges. It's not the same. I agree that there are definitely higher octane activities out there. With those activities for all of my "reactive dog" clients, I will tell them to stay away from those activities like the plague. If your dog is reactive, you should not be probably going to an agility trial unless they have done an enormous amount of work ahead of time. They have improve tremendously, they have all kinds of coping mechanisms and skills. Even so, in my humble opinion, is it worth it? Would it just be better to play that game at home where you know the dog can be safe, than put them into a situation where they could potentially make a mistake, which could just be devastating. To not only you and your dog, but to whoever or whichever dog they did that mistake to. Again, this is where I think things keep getting complicated. We're not talking about the same things. We're not looking at this all as the same picture. My hope with this podcast is that it won't be too much of rambling, but rather we can just really focus our attention on what this stuff is. And we can all talk about it openly and honestly without getting everyone's defenses up. And without thinking that one type of dog is better than another type of dog, one activity is better, or organizations are bad for how they stand on things. That has nothing to do with it. As a community, we just have to be really open and honest. Every single dog has a set of very sharp teeth in their mouth. Every single dog has the ability to bite. Every single dog has the ability to hurt either another dog or another person. We just have to come to terms with that. And there are some dogs on that scale who will like to use their teeth more than others. That doesn't mean that every single reactive dog does. They don't, but if your dog is closer to the aggression side of that scale, they should not be competing. You should be working with a professional to ensure you're keeping yourself safe, to ensure you're keeping your family safe, you're keeping any other animals in your household safe, and you making sure that this dog is safe. That they're making good decisions. That they're not being put into a situation where they're going to have to use they're teeth. Again, just a little bit of honesty and looking at these hard questions, and without getting all emotional about it, I think can help all of us in the end just make better decisions for our dogs. Again, getting back to the definition of what a reactive dog is. For me, personally there are these two tracks of dogs who are more fear based, and dogs who are more aggression based. Again, for me personally, if you're more towards the aggression part of that scale, you most definitely should not be competing. If you are truly aggressive you probably shouldn't be leaving your house a whole lot. And you definitely should be working with a professional one-on-one, and that should be in person. I do online training because I'm incapable physically of actually working with people in person any longer. I worked with aggressive and reactive and fearful dogs for years. I will not work with someone virtually. I just personally do not think it's safe. I would much rather have a trainer there in-person to see with their own eyes what the dog is doing and they can put together a plan. But now we're going to be talking about the other population of reactive dogs. The dogs who are mostly based in fear where they are barking or lunging because they're trying to make this thing, be it a person or a dog, go away. That's what all that big display is all about. "If you keep coming at me I may have to snap at you. I may even make contact with you. But more often that not, I would really prefer for you to just leave. And if you did leave, then I would retreat and go somewhere else." Within that subset of dogs, you then have dogs who may also just be fearful. Whereas, yes, they do bark and lunge, but they also are just afraid. So, could just building their confidence overall, letting them know that they'll be kept safe. Could that be enough to help in including in their management? If you're going to be competing with this dog, depending on their level of reactivity, are there ways that you can just put in routines in place to help keep that dog safe? To do proper management, to ensure that they wouldn't have to be doing these sorts of things. This is where I think as a community we just need to change our perspective of these things. It's not that your dog is being a jerk. It's not that your dog doesn't have manners. It's not that your dog is being abstinent. Your dog is afraid. Your dog is concerned. Your dog is doing what is 100 thousand percent totally appropriate for a dog to do. If I want that thing to go away, I'm gonna use all the tools in my toolbox to make it go away. That's barking and lunging. If that thing has any sense, it will leave me alone because there's a good potential that I may have to use my teeth if it doesn't. To the dog this makes perfect sense. To us as humans, it's really not cool. It makes us nervous. It makes us embarrassed. We feel as though our first go to thing, particularly when dogs are reacting to other dogs is like, "What is wrong with you?" You're like, "They're just another dog." But to your dog, that dog could be terrifying. A big part of this is just changing the way the community looks at these things. That this is not your dog trying to embarrass you. This is not your dog trying to ruin your life. This is not your dog trying to make things difficult. This is your dog struggling with something. So, we need to come to terms with that as a community as a whole, so that we can have a better way of how we approach these things. For me personally, if I have a student who has a reactive dog, our first goal is to figure out what type of reactivity is this. Is it towards people? Is it towards dogs? Is to towards both? Could it also include other things? What's the basis of that reactivity? Is it out of fear, or is it offensive aggression? Because if it's offensive aggression then there's a whole lot of things that are off the table, such as competition. We seriously need to work on this behavior modification program. If the dog is closer to just being flat out dangerous, even to the people who are with them at home, then we have some really difficult conversations that we have to have. Luckily, that's not very common. There's the majority of reactive dogs are completely manageable that's more on the fear side, and you can actually teach them skills of how they can better deal with their triggers. If I have a student who we're working on giving the dog those skills on improving their ability to work around triggers, that we're putting management things in place that the owner, the handler can do. Better decisions that they can make on behalf of the dog. If the dog can learn to defer to their person to say, my person will keep me safe. The question particularly if they're doing Scent Work with me is, well, they're doing really well in Scent Work and it definitely is helping. It's providing them with a higher quality of life. They really seem to like the game. Everything is going well. Do you think that I should compete? What I would urge all of my students to do is to actually volunteer at a trial with the venue that they were interested in competing with. And that was after they had already reviewed the rules for that venue, and they had seen whether or not that particular competition or organization is actually open to reactive dogs. For instance, as of October of 2018, AKC Scent Work has put out a clarifying policy that for all intents and purposes, they are not specifically open to reactive dogs. They actually do not even have reactive dogs within their vocabulary as an organization. They will not permit clubs to design rules that are specific for reactive dogs, such as red bandanas or putting in place a six to eight foot spacing rule. That rather if competitors wanted to socialize with their dogs within the parking lots of the potty areas, they are actually welcome to do so. For my clients that I may be working with who have reactive dogs, my opinion would be that that may not be the best place to put your reactive dog. And it's not that AKC doesn't want your dog to succeed. It's not that AKC hates your dog. It has nothing to do with that. But I always try to look to find how could this all go terribly wrong. If I bring my reactive dog to an AKC trial, to an AKC Scent Work trial, and at the very beginning of that trial there's a bunch of dogs socializing and playing in the potty area, and even dogs who know each other very well, even dogs who aren't reactive, can snark at one another. It's nothing big, but they still snark at each other. But to a reactive dog, particularly one where it's based in fear where they think the other dogs are going to hurt them, if that were to happen even a little distance away, that can now put your dog at a more stressed state where they're like, "Oh no. There is a threat here, there is something for me to be worried about." The other issue about inviting people to socialize with their dogs is not just socializing with people, but saying oh, yeah, if you wanna socialize dog-to-dog that's fine. It's inviting people to walk up to my dog with their dog. If my dog is reactive, obviously that could be a really huge issue. For me personally, I would say if you have a reactive dog, maybe at the very least see what that trial host does for their AKC Scent Work trials. If you're not comfortable with any part of it, then maybe compete with a different organization. That doesn't mean that you have to hate AKC Scent Work. Every single organization is completely entitled to create whatever standards or rules they like. As competitors, we just have to play good consumers and do our research. See what's going to work best for us and our dogs. A lot of us have multiple dogs. I am of the very strange minority of professional trainers where I only have one. But there are many people who have multiple. You may have one dog that you're gonna compete with AKC Scent Work, and another that you may not. That's all about being an advocate for your dog. Find what's going to work best for them, what's gonna work best for you, and go from there. There is no golden rule, right or wrong as far as how to do this. At the end of the day, for me personally, what I would always urge my students to think of is, could you entering this trial potentially be a detriment to your dog being able to be successful after that trial? In other words, if you were working on behavior modification, you are improving your dogs reactivity overall and so on and so forth. And you've been doing that for months or maybe even years. Would your going to this trial set all that back? And if that's the case, then maybe you just don't go to that trial, because all that hard earned progress shouldn't just simply be thrown away for even an attempt at a title. That just doesn't compute. It doesn't have the equal bearing of worth. Then the question is, okay, well if I have a reactive dog and if I want to take a really hard look as to whether or not I want to do AKC Scent Work or not, well what about the other venues? Are there other venues that I could look into? Because I thought that reactive dogs were open in Scent Work, because there is only one dog in this pace. Now you have me a little confused. It is generally true that Scent Work is as a sport generally speaking, is open to reactive dogs. The reason being is that the organization that started Scent Work, NACSW, which created the sport, they are indeed open to reactive dogs. The organization was started and the sport was started by people who worked specifically with a lot of shelter dogs, with a lot of reactive dogs, and they saw the value in the activity. When they designed the sport, it was with that in mind of giving those dogs in particular an opportunity to actually come out and play and earn titles, knowing full well that those dogs aren't welcome in other sports simply because it isn't safe. This is where having an understanding of history really does help. The whole sport was designed to try to provide a civilian equivalent to what these people were doing in their professional work, of professional detection dog work. But that they also specifically themselves worked with shelter dogs and reactive dogs and wanted those dogs to have an outlet. That doesn't mean that every single organization has to follow in those footsteps. Make sure that you're reading in the rules. Make sure that you're clear on what it is the organization would like to do. What types of things that either the organization or the hosting club would do in order to ensure that everything was safe. And again, volunteer, volunteer, volunteer. See these things first hand without your dog so that you can see whether or not it's suitable. See whether or not you would just be stressed the whole time. Even if a club is putting together every step that they can to ensure that everyone is safe, depending on you and your own individual dog, it could still be a really stressful situation. If that's the case, then why don't you just play the game at home? There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't make you or your dog bad. It doesn't make you or your dog lesser than. It means that you're making a good decision on behalf of both of you. It's really trying to determine what's best for you as an individual. Again, if you have multiple dogs, you may be making different decisions for each of your individual dogs. The other thing I really wanted to talk about was in this definition of reactivity, is trying to nail down that one reactive dog may present completely different to another reactive dog. This is where as a community we just have to figure out whether or not that term is of any use anymore. Or if we need to determine other terms to use to describe what it is that we're seeing. There could be that a dog is "reactive" where they bark and lunge at other dogs for instance. But only in certain situations, where maybe if that dog that they're barking as is trying to sniff their butt, then they're gonna bark and lunge. But otherwise, they seem fine. To place that dog in your mind as the only example of a reactive dog would not be giving you the full picture. Whereas other dogs may have a threshold where another dog can be a football field length away, and they're barking and lunging at the little silhouette of a dog on the horizon. We need to as a community have a better understanding of what this means. As dog owners, we do have to take responsibility of knowing who our dogs are, and whether or not they can be successful within a given situation. That is a fair thing to assume. That the onus is on us to ensure that we're advocating for our dogs and we're not putting them into situations where they could potential make a catastrophic mistake. Like why frankly if it's a bad enough bite, they could be put to sleep. They could be humanely euthanized because of the bite itself, not to mention the damage they did to the other dog or the person, and all that fall out will be terrible. That responsibility lies with us. That's not just because it's a morally correct thing to do, it's also with the law generally speaking. While that is true, that doesn't also mean that as a community that we don't have to have a understanding of the various types of reactivity. Just because you may have a dog who will just do a quick, get away from me, if a dog is trying to sniff their butt, that that is the only level of reactivity that anyone ever is dealing with. There may be other people who their dog is deemed "reactive" but really, their dog is just horribly terrified. They don't bark and lunge, but they shutdown instead. Instead of stressing up, they stress down. They would still need space. That dog deserves just as much space as a dog who's barking and lunging. But there's so man people in our community that will completely discount this poor scared dog's desperate attempt to say, "Please stay away from me." And will keep encroaching, and encroaching, and encroaching until finally the dog decided to use their teeth because they had no other recourse, because they weren't being all loud and "obnoxious". Again, as a community we have to have an understanding of what this stuff is. This is why for me personally, having the red bandana rule is a good one. Just because my dog isn't barking and lunging doesn't mean that I want your dog sniffing my dogs butt. It also doesn't mean that I want you to be encroaching on us. I had a client whose dog was dying with cancer. She was going to one final Scent Work trial to try to kind of have a last hoo rah. She placed a red bandana on that dog because she knew the dog didn't feel 100%. She also wanted to ensure that she was having one-on-one time with her dog and she wasn't having countless people come up going, oh, I want to say good bye. The dog didn't wanna say good bye to anyone. The dog didn't realize that he was dying. He just wanted to have fun with his mother. So, she put a red bandana on him. People could send their condolences from afar, they were able to have fun for that very last trial. Having this notion that some how reminding people to think, to remember that our dogs are dogs, and that they may not want to be mugged not only by other dogs or by other people is a bad thing, it's just silly. It just, it's something that happens not just within Scent Work but just dogs overall just out in the world. It's a ludacris notion that your dog should have to tolerate being completely invaded by other people that they don't know and they shouldn't do anything. You as the person shouldn't be allowing that to happen. If that was your child, you wouldn't allow some stranger to come up and pinch their cheeks and pick them up and twirl them around and pat them on the bum. You would never in a million years allow that to happen. So, the same shouldn't be happening to dogs. This idea that somehow an owner trying to project to people, can you please give us some more space, where the red bandana is a bad thing, in my opinion is just silly. We have to just be honest that there are times when we just don't think. We're at a trial, we love dogs, we see a fuzzy dog and we're like, oh, I want to go pet the fuzzy dog. But the fuzzy dog is wearing a red bandana. Hopefully something will click into my brain to turn back on and be like, oh, wait a minute that dog needs a little more space. But if that red bandana isn't there, and I'm like, oh, fuzzy dog, fuzzy dog, fuzzy dog, and the owner is like, please stay back, please stay back. And then you have other people going, well are you being so anti-social? It just, it's awful. Again, as a community, I think we just need to have a better understanding of all these different things. No, it shouldn't be that at a trial that we're trying to accommodate Kujo, who is trying to kill everyone. And everyone has to hide in their cars with the doors locked as a helicopter comes in to oversee whether or not this dog can actually get into the search area. Of course not. That's ludacris, that's insane, that would never happen. It's not what we're talking about. We're also not saying that at a trial that only reactive dogs can be accommodated and now all other "normal dogs" are being jipped. That's not the case either. All we're saying is to remind people of who it is that we're working with. We're working with dogs who may not really appreciate other dogs up in their space, and who also may not appreciate other people suddenly coming over in their space. That honestly applies to all dogs. Your dog doesn't have to be reactive to not like those things. I'm hoping that with this podcast we can at least have a better understanding of what reactivity could actually be. It doesn't necessarily always have to be that the dog is barking and lunging at the end of their leash. It doesn't always have to be towards dogs. It could be towards people as well. That it could be a dog who just needs more space because they're terribly afraid. But that the onus does still stay with the owner. That we're not trying to advocate their responsibility as an owner. That okay, well, I still need to make good choices for my dog. Yes, you do still need to make good choices for your dog. That's not the responsibility of the community at large, or for the competition al organization they may choose to compete with. That responsibility does lie solely with you. But there are things that we can do as a community, as fellow dog owners, and even as competition organizations to make things safer. To just ensure that everyone is being safe. And that we're just using some common sense. The one thing that I will say, having worked specifically with reactive, fearful, and aggressive dogs the entirety of my professional dog training career, is that this is a very hot button topic emotionally for the owners. You feel attacked. You feel attacked by the whole world. More often than not you didn't seek out having a dog who is fearful, reactive, or aggressive. You just wanted to have a companion. You may have wanted to do dog sports or something else, but then lo and behold your dog has these issues. You can get very defensive because if feels as though the world is against you. As a community, it would be nice if we could just be a little bit more understanding so that these people don't feel so attacked. And at the same point, for my fellow people who have had dogs who are fearful, reactive, or aggressive, it's also crucially important to just be honest about your dog. And that can be very, very, very hard. If you take a good, long, hard look at your dog, and you say you know what, my dog is actually aggressive. My dog isn't reactive, my dog isn't fearful, my dog does want to bite. Then that dog has no place at a trial. And that's hard to admit, I know. It's really, really painful. But we have to be willing to make that determination. I have worked with people who have called me. Oh, yeah, my dog has bitten 14 people, can you help? And it's like, I'm sorry, that dog bit 14 people too many. I can help set up an appointment with a vet so that we could maybe say good bye to this dog. The response was, oh, no, no, no, the dog is fine. It was always everyone else's fault. That doesn't make any sense. At no point in time should your dog have to use their teeth, particularly 14 times. That's insane. Again, there just needs to be a recognition of responsibility across the board. There is no one group who is at fault for this. Everyone needs to do more, and everyone needs to do better. Part of that solution is just coming up with better terms that we can use so we're all talking about the same thing, then I'm all for that. And I would be happy to work with any of my fellow colleagues to try to come up with better terms, so that we're talking about the same thing. Because a dog who is merely trying to make things go away, is very different from a dog who says "Oh, yes, I would like to kill you now." Those are two completely different dogs. Just because a dog isn't barking and lunging doesn't mean that dog still doesn't need space. I hope this helps somewhat at least get you thinking about how it is that you may be approaching the topic of what is a reactive dog, of maybe looking at your own dog or your client's dogs in a more honest light. How you may be able to better assess who they are. And whether or not you should be competing with them. If you don't have any of these types of dogs, maybe it can help you have a little bit more empathy, that the people who own these dogs are not looking for special treatment. They're just looking for a little bit of understanding, and an opportunity to have fun with their dogs too. Because again, more often than not, they didn't seek this out. Not many people walk into a shelter or to a breeder and say, "Hey, I would love to have a dog who has a whole slew of issues. Sign me up.!" That's typically not what people do. It's just something that happens. If you've never had to experience owning a reactive dog of whatever variety that may be, you may just assume that it's because, "Oh, well that person just doesn't know how to train. Well, if I had that dog I'd be able to fix it lickity split." It's not that easy. It's a lot more complicated than that. Again, I think if we all do better as a community, it would help overall. I feel as though this podcast turned into a little bit more rambling than I would have liked, but I do think that some of these topics are important for us to discuss, and just to think about ruminate about. I hope it was somewhat helpful. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.
Have you ever considered hosting a Scent Work trial, but wasn't sure what was involved? Perhaps you have some reservations or thought it may not be for you. In this episode, we speak to two Scent Work University instructors, Lori Coventry and Kristina Sveinson, to see what goes into hosting NACSW and SDDA Scent Work trials respectfully, as well as pitfalls to avoid and tips for success. Learn more about Lori here and Kristina here. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses and webinars are not only for those who are interested in competiton, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport, or looking for help getting your dog to learn some manners? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the Scent Work University All About Scent Work Podcast. In this podcast, we'll be talking about all things Scent Work. We'll be giving you a behind-the-scenes look, as far as what your instructor or trial officials may be going through, we'll be giving you training tips, and we'll just be discussing everything that goes along with doing Scent Work with your dog, whether you're interested in competition or not. In this episode, we're going to be speaking with Scent Work University Instructors Lori Coventry and Kristina Svenison, in order to discuss what it takes to host a successful Scent Work trial. All right, without further ado, let's dive in. For our first interview, we're going to be speaking with Lori Coventry, an Instructor with Scent Work University and Dog Sport University. Hi, my name is Lori Coventry, I own Do Over Dog Training in Buffalo, New York. I am also an Instructor for both Scent Work University and Dog Sport University. With Do Over Dog Training, we offer trials, seminars, coaching days, sniff and go's, teach classes for all levels of Scent Work. I am also an AKC Scent Work Judge, and a UKC Nose Work Certified Official. I'm available for seminars, coaching, consulting, video reviews, you name it. And also as part of our business, we do regular dog training, so we offer private lessons for manners and behavior, and have a couple seminars that we do related to that. We asked Lori some of the most common questions that we received from individuals who were interested in hosting a Scent Work trial. How many Scent Work trails have you hosted? I have hosted six weekends of NACSW trails. How many levels have you offered in a given day of trial? With NACSW, it's usually one level per day, unless we do elements, and that would normally be two elements per day. And I've done regular trials and element trials. How many officials did you need to hire? So with NACSW, it's typical to have a CO, a Certifying Official, and then two judges for the day. How many volunteers have you needed? We could always need more, but typically, 15 to 20 good volunteers a day runs a great trial. What is one hosting nightmare story you would like to share? So a few years ago, we rented a fire hall for a trail, NW1-NW2. It was planned ahead of time, way in advance, had contract signed, everything was cool, and then you really don't talk to the trial site until before the trial. So I called a few days before the trial to confirm our walkthrough time with the CO, and when I was talking to the guy in charge, he said, "Hmm, I don't know if we can do that this weekend. We have our Fireman's Picnic, everyone will be here." I think I started crying instantly. So I got a hold of, it was a student that helped set this up for me. She had contacts at the fire hall, so I got a hold of her, and she talked to the fire chief. He's like, "Don't worry, we can do this. We'll block the parking lot off, so that your people are separate from our people, and there's going to be some going in and out." They were cooking food and stuff inside, and for the competitors, I think it went okay. I don't think they really noticed that there were like 500 firemen there, but for me, it was very stressful. It was just awful, and then just a whole bunch of other weird things happened that weekend. A dog that wasn't entered that weekend was in an RV got out, and got loose, and was running all over town, and half my volunteers left to try to find the dog. I think a dog's leash snapped in the parking lot during that trial. And there was just so many minor things there and there, that I'm sure the competitors had no idea was even happening, but that goes down in my history as, like I almost wasn't going to do trials after that trial. It was really bad. What is one heartwarming hosting story you would like to share? So I don't know. I'm sure if I really thought about it, I could of a good story. But things that jump to my mind are the Harry Award stories. Those are always just so wonderful to hear. People that truly enjoy the trial, and come up, and thank you. "This was great and I loved it." That just makes me so happy. And of course, just having volunteers that love to come, that love to watch, that love to learn, always things just, that's what makes me continue to want to have trials. What is a tip you could offer to anyone interested in hosting a Scent Work trial? Organization. You have to be organized. I have room full of totes that is all trial-related. I unpack after each trial, repack, kind of make a note of any supplies we were low on, so we'd have it for next time. And everything, at least at the start of the day, is very organized. Things might go downhill a little bit, as everybody's running, and grabbing this, and grabbing that. But even with emails and all of that, organization is key. Also, there is a, I don't know if it's a program or what you want to call it, but it's Yet Another Mail Merge, Y-A-M-M. It's through Google or Gmail, and it's a great way to send all of those emails, those bulk emails you need to send out because you could do it all at once. It's a mail merge program. I'm sure there's others out there that are great, too. This one costs $25 a year, but if you're hosting several trials, it is so worth it. What is a common pitfall you would urge people to avoid when hosting a Scent Work trial? My biggest pitfall, the thing that I try to do too much myself. I try to do it all. You need volunteer coordinators, you need, it's great to have someone that could do hospitality for you. I tend to do all that myself. Recently, I've been putting my mother in charge, since she just retired. So she can run and grab food, and set everything up, and do all that so that I'm not doing it, or trying to find a volunteer to do it. So having someone for hospitality, as minor as that seems, is a huge time saver. And just putting good people in charge of different things so that you're not working so hard. Any other information you want to provide? So I hope this wasn't supposed to be a one-answer question. I have a few things here. I would say, if you're new to hosting NACSW trials, find several people you can train to be score room leads. It is a very important job and it is required that leads be approved by NACSW. You'll want to have several people trained so that the same people don't get stuck in the score room all the time, because everyone would like to watch some searches. Or, on the other hand, you may have somebody all trained, and ready to roll, and maybe they can't do it the day of your trial, or maybe they got into your trial. You don't want them to have to pull out just so they can do score room. So try to get a few people trained. If you have students who are willing to travel, offer to pay their travel expenses so they can gain score room experience at other trials. This is still something we're working on in our area. We just don't have enough score room leads for all levels, so it's a pretty stressful part of planning a trial. Another tip, visit the parking lot as a host. I really try to make time to go out to the lot, say hello to the competitors. We have a lot of duty, so we can't stay out there all day, but make a few passes, say hello. Make sure everybody's doing okay, especially if it's really warm, or really cold, or whatever. I mean, just go out there visit, know who's coming to you trial. They're supporting you, so you should support them. I think that goes a long way. And then my biggest pet peeve, but I'm trying to get over it is, and I think this is a complaint of a lot of trial hosts, is try not to let the emails get to you. Do your best to educate when people are asking questions that can easily be found in premium or the rule book. If they're asking for directions or hotel information, make sure you have that on your website, or in the premium, and then just direct them there. If the hotels are full, they can go to Google. They can try Airbnb. It's not your job to find a hotel for the competitors, that can be quite time consuming. So I try to be polite, but I don't stop everything I'm doing to answer these kinds of questions. But I do try to answer them, I don't want to be rude. These people are, they're paying to come to your trial, so you have to be polite. But sometimes, if you just give them a little bit of time, they find the answers on their own, and they respond back to you that, "Okay, I'm good. No worries." So that's what I've been doing a little bit lately, is just holding off on answering those kinds of questions. Other things, you have to respond to right away if it's something more specific, or drops, or adds, or things like that, I try to be pretty quick about. The silly ones, I tend to wait a little bit. So as we can see from listening to Lori, is that there are several things that we can do if we were interested in hosting specifically an NACSW trial, but also it applies to all Scent Work trials, in general. So that we could be more successful, so that we can enjoy the process ourselves. So it's not quite so stressful, and it doesn't make it so that we don't want to host trials ever again. But also, to ensure that it's a successful event for both our competitors, our volunteers, our trial officials, and also for us. So I want to shift gears a little bit, and I want to bring in our second instructor, Kristina, who has experience in working with the Canadian Scent Work organization, SDDA. My name is Kristina Sveinson, and I am with the Little Nose That Knows in Alberta, Canada. I've discovered a passion for sport scent detection in 2014, when I was looking for something fun to do with my Chihuahua, Bolt. Bolt is a passionate puppy, and I am lucky to work with him. In addition to scent detection, he loves to do rally obedience and do really anything with me. He has achieved both his SDDA Started and Advanced titles, and was the first Chihuahua in Canada to achieve those titles. So that makes him special, too, of course. My love for the sport began in 2014, when I attended the first SDDA trial in western Canada and I was hooked. I began taking as many seminars and courses that I could to become involved in the sport. I read the rule books passionately and really got involved with the sport of scent detection. And then I noticed that, we were looking for the same kind of outlet. And so I started teaching it. In my day-to-day life, I have an interest in adult education, and I work in human resources for a large organization. So I have some familiarity with teaching, but no experience with training dogs. So that was my step outside of the box. I've trained a lot of my own dogs, but never others. And yet, it came super easy for me, and I have a really great relationship with my students. Over the years, I have developed curriculum that seems to work for each individual. I work with a games curriculum, as well, and I offer trial prep lessons, as well as distance learning, so that I can work with students who can't come to the classroom on a day-to-day basis. I also work with reactive and rescue dogs to help them enjoy the sport, as well. And I'm an Ambassador for the SDDA, the Sporting Detection Dog Association. I believe in their mission statement, and I host scent detection trials for them, as you're about to hear more about. I just want to keep the game fun for everyone involved. I love to see people smiling and laughing at my trails and at my classes. So that is what I strive for. So as with Lori, we polled the same questions to Kristina, to see how there may be some differences in hosting an SDDA trail from an NACSW one. How many Scent Work trials have you hosted? I began as a host with the SDDA, which is the Sporting Detection Dog Association in Canada in 2015, where I hosted my first trial in September of that year. I have since been a host or co-host for over 10 different trials. Most of which, being two-day weekends, with some three-day events thrown in there. And a total of over 21 single trial days. How many levels have you offered in a given day of trial? In SDDA, we typically offer all four levels in a trial day. When I started hosting in 2015, trials were happening only once a year. So I wanted to accommodate the demand and make sure I was offering all levels. One judge can host up to 75 runs in a day, so I would bring in two judges, for a total of 150 runs, and four SDDA levels, Started, Advanced, Excellent, and Elite. I continue to offer trials that have all four levels, but I have done a couple now that are only a couple of levels. It's been a change, as we've moved to having more local judges, we can offer target trials that meet the need of certain small groups. How many officials did you need to hire? SDDA scent detection is unique, in the fact that you don't have to hire trial officials. You hire one judge, and that person serves as the SDDA representative on-site for the duration of the trial. And then you have the trial host, who is in charge of coordinating pretty much everything else. The host is approved by the SDDA, as having a venue available, and has coordinated with a judge, who is willing to attend the event, and agrees to the levels offered. We hosts are working hard. We have to decide which search areas will be used for which levels, if there will be reused space, and how we will make sure that we add extra items so the judges can reuse the space fairly. And we are also coordinating competitors, and the score sheets, and the score room, and the ribbons, and prizes, and making sure those started competitors get that great first feeling when they come on-site, as well as pairing everybody with fair and fun judge to work with. On average, how many dog and handler teams have come to your trials? For a single judge trial, we usually see 25 to 30 handler and dog teams. If we have multiple judges, that number doubles. However, we also have many teams that are pursing one and two components, as opposed to trying for all three components in one run. So we see as many as 40 or even 50 teams under the two judges in a day of a weekend trial. Of course, that takes immense management on the part of the host, and timing on the part of the competitors, to make sure that they're running their excellent containers over on this end of the grounds. And then 15 minutes later, maybe they're running their advanced interior on the opposite end of the field. So that takes time to coordinate and a good experienced competitor, or else a competitor that's being well-mentored by us. What is one hosting nightmare you would like to share? In the summer of 2017, I hosted the worst trial of my career. I had many trials under my belt and this one shouldn't have been any different. But it started with score sheets arriving late, and many of them having to be photocopied because of a shortage, and it spiraled from there. One of the judge's flights was delayed, to the point of almost missing a Friday event. We had a shadow judge and a new judge, as well as an experienced judge. The venue that we were using Friday was under new, well, temporary management, I should say. And they didn't want us there, so they closed the main building to us, where the only bathrooms were. Thankfully, we moved to our other venue for the weekend. And this was a new venue to us, an 11-acre farm, nestled in the center of the city. We hadn't planned for the size of this venue properly, and so the distance between search areas took much more time than we were expecting, and therefore, our days were very long. We had an issue with an incorrect hide that was supposed to be on a vehicle. We had a level of elite that was run incorrectly and had to be reimbursed. And I spent basically, the whole weekend on edge, just waiting for the next thing to happen. Every time somebody came up to me, I was sure that it was with more bad news. And I was close to tears many times. I thought my attendees would be so disappointed. And I did not feel the event was up to my usual standard. But at the end of it all, I kept getting kudos. People had little or no clue that there were any issues, they were happy still. It was after this event that I cried, knowing I had still given the competitors the experience that they came for, that they knew and they loved, even if my experience was far from my normal, and something I don't ever wish to repeat. What is one heartwarming hosting story you would like to share? Every trial seems to be special to me, and I racked my brain trying to decide which heartwarming story was the one. But in the end, I decided to go with what happened to me just a few weeks ago, in September of 2018, when I returned to my big venue, the 11-acre farm from my last story, where my worst trial had happened. So this year we came back, we put some new techniques in place. We hashed out our timelines, rigorously planned our searches back-to-back in adjacent areas, as opposed to from one end of the farm to the next. And this time, we had a super trial. We finished on time every day. The site owners were able to leave at a decent hour to lock up after us. The competitors still had an excellent experience, despite it being a bit wet, rainy weekend. And my team, me and my volunteers, we had a blast, too. Everything just seemed to flow. And it just felt like a great big success. It was the first time that I felt like things had gone pretty good. Most trials, I can feel regrets, and this one, those weren't the first things that came to mind. And that's what makes this my heartwarming trial story. What is a tip you could offer anyone interested in hosting a Scent Work trial? I would say, ask a lot of questions. And better yet, allow yourself to have a mentor. If you apply to be a host in the organization of the SDDA, we have a Facebook group for people who are, or who are interested in being hosts, and even a general Facebook group, as well. But ask. Say, "I'm looking for help, I want to host my first trial." Reach out to the community and you'd be surprised the overwhelming support you'll get back. If it wasn't for my mentor, I don't think I ever would have hosted. They gave me so many resources and kudos of encouragement, that made me go onto mentor others, as well. To prepare to be a host though, I would say, volunteer at a trial first. And if you can get into more than one position, do that as well. It's different going from being a timer to being a gatekeeper, being a judge's assistant or working in the score room, but I think that experience of volunteering in all the positions helps you have a well-rounded view of what it takes to make a trial happen. That and competing in the trial, and I think those are the components that a new host needs in order to be successful. Because at the end of the day, we're here for the competitors. We want to give them that experience, where they can just come, and work with their dog, and hopefully be successful. And it takes a lot of effort on our part to make that happen. What is a common pitfall you would urge people to avoid when hosting a Scent Work trial? Avoid picking a venue that is too small or too restrictive. It's easy to say, "Oh, I'll just use my training space." But it takes a lot of coordination in order to do that. And your first step is to coordinate with your judge, make sure that they're willing to use a smaller space, and reuse spaces for the different levels. Smaller venues can work, separating rooms with curtains, or fencing can work, but you have to be ready to coordinate a team of volunteers to make those switches. Coordinate with your judge, and plan, plan, plan. The bigger the venue, obviously, that you can have, the better. But I think that when we dream too big, that can be a pitfall, as well, which makes venue selection a really tough point. The other thing I would say to hosts when it comes to venues, is look at the venue that you're selecting, and look closely at it. And then take tons of pictures and videos, so that you can relive the venue afterwards, and be successful in your planning. We take our venue for granted. We think that we can just make it be what we need it to be, but sometimes certain places just aren't right for a trial, and it's okay to admit that. When you're using a smaller space, plan on bringing in lots of items so that when your judge has to reuse space, they're able to place hides on items that can be removed, and clearly marked as hot. This is critical, as you don't want a hot item to accidentally end up back in the search area. I will say another pitfall that hosts really need to be cautious of, is filling your trial too full, and then having to juggle time. You can't make more hours in the day and you can't predict when contamination's going to happen, like someone eliminating in the search area, which takes time to clean. So if you fill your trial too full, and you haven't left yourself any extra time, you end up cutting into your judge's lunch break, or having a really long day, which is very exhausting on your whole team. So think about what kind of limitations you might encounter, and especially as a first time judge, maybe plan to under-fill instead of going right to the limit. Is there any other information you'd like to provide? I just want to talk briefly about competitor etiquette. It's not that we have a whole lot of expectation as hosts on our competitors, but there are a few things you can do to help a trial run smoothly. Such as being on time for your check-in and walk through, being polite and courteous to the volunteers, the gate stewards, et cetera. For example, you need to try to remember that sometimes it's easier for a host to convey quickly to the gate stewards a change in the flow, than it is to try to track down every competitor in that level to tell them about a change. So don't be frustrated with those people, but listen to their direction. Other basic competitor etiquette things you can do, would be to make sure that you are pottying your dog in the designated areas and cleaning up after your dog. Make sure that you're patient and courteous. Remember that it takes a lot of effort for hosts to put on the event. And while you might be ready to get your score sheets, and your ribbons, and just get out of there, there are things that the host has to do on their end before they can just wrap it up, and send you packing. And they are doing their utmost best to make it happen quickly and efficiently for you. Lastly, just remember that everybody who's there is there for the same reason and wants to have a good time. So respect other peoples' space, respect their dogs' space, and remember that we are still all sharing a common space, particularly in the parking lot. So while you might want to hang out and talk with a buddy with your dog out, sometimes that might not be appropriate for the next dog. So try to be courteous of that, as well, and put your dog away after your run, before you're visiting with your friends. I want to thank both Lori and Kristina for bringing up such wonderful information and tips on what it takes to really host a successful Scent Work trial. And again, this is regardless of the organization that you are going to be hosting for. But it's helpful to see how specifically for NACSW and for SDDA what has worked for both Lori and Kristina, some of the things that may have gone awry, and then also the things that they have suggested in order to ensure that everyone can be successful. I hope you found this podcast helpful. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.
Have you ever been to a Scent Work trial, and the atmosphere was just...wrong? Everyone seemed stressed and miserable, and a dark cloud hung over everyone and everything? There are plenty of reasons why this can happen, but you as a competitor can help prevent it! In this episode, we discuss what Scent Work trial officials dread, and in so doing, showcasing what they would deem the "ideal competitor", the competitor who refrains from doing some of the very things that can drag a trial down. Now, that is not to say all the blame or responsibility lies at the feet of the competitors. Nothing could be further from the truth! But, this is a topic not many competitors think about, or give enough credence to. You, as the competitor, are a crucial part of the puzzle to ensure your Scent Work trial goes well! So let's figure what you should do, and pitfalls to avoid. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses and webinars are not only for those who are interested in competiton, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport, or looking for help getting your dog to learn some manners? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the Scent Work University All About Scent Work podcast. In this podcast we'll be talking about all things Scent Work. We'll be giving you behind the scenes look as far as what your instructor or trial officials may be going through, we'll be giving you training tips, and we'll just be discussing everything that goes along with doing Scent Work with your dog, whether you're interested in competition or not. In this episode we're going to be talking about what officials would consider an ideal competitor at a Scent Work trial, and how you may be able to work towards becoming one of those ideal competitors. All right, let's get started. Before we get started, I just want to take a really quick moment to introduce myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I'm the Owner and Lead Instructor for both Scent Work University and Dog Sport University. These are online dog training platforms that are designed to connect outstanding trainers with as many dog owners as possible. Both SWU and DSU are designed to provide quality, convenience, and flexibility. We hope that you'll check them out to see if there are any online programs that may be suitable for both you and your dog. Without further ado, let's dive into the podcast. If you're competing in Scent Work, more often than not you've been at a trial where things just didn't seem to go all that well. Things went left. Everyone seemed stressed. The atmosphere wasn't all that great. Maybe there was some toxic people in the parking lot. Maybe there were just some other competitors who just didn't seem as though they were in this for the right reasons. With this podcast what I want to talk about is from an official's perspective what it is that competitors can do in order to ensure that the trials don't ever get to that point. Now that's not say that all the responsibility lies in the shoulders of the competitors. That's not true. It is absolutely true that the competitors can be there in the right frame of mind, that officials could be there in the right frame of mind, and maybe the host isn't. Or maybe the host and the competitors are, but the officials aren't. It is definitely a group effort. If one of those elements is not working the way that it should, then it can affect the entire experience. But what I'm hoping in this podcast to achieve is an understanding of just how important the competitors are to this whole formula, and that there are things that you can do to help improve the experience for everyone, and also it can help your overall performance because depending how it is you conduct yourself not only during the search but also in between the searches, could also affect the way that the official, be it your judge and even your hide placer, then conducts themselves throughout the day but also how they're approaching everything that they have to do. Because here's a little bit of a hint. They're just people too. Again, the purpose of this podcast is to talk about some things that, again, I just don't think that enough people are thinking about or considering, and just to give you a behind the scenes look, if you've only done competing and you haven't been an official before, just some of the things that officials may be considering or even going through when they're actually officiating these trials. Right out of the gate what I would like to do is to talk about some of the things that officials dread. This is again a general statement. This is not supposed to be covering everything under the sun, but just some things for you to keep in mind that as an official if they see these things happen, their skin starts to crawl, the hair goes up on the back of their neck, or they just go, "Oh, it's going to be one of those trials." The reason why I want to start off with this is so we can kind of see just how unhelpful these things are in the first place. But you also may listen going, "I never do any of those things." And that's a good pat on the back for you. There really isn't that many people who do these things. I mean, just to be perfectly blunt. With the majority of trials that I've either officiated, overseen, or worked at, I would say the very mass majority of the competitors are very pleasant, they have a lot of sportsmanship, they are there to have a good time with their dogs, they're there for the right reasons, and they're doing it the right way, which is fabulous. There are going to be a few people who are just not doing any of those things. The purpose of starting with this first section is to just talk about when officials see something and they go, "Oh no." If you happen to catch yourself doing those things, just know that that is something that usually puts off alarm bells for an official and that could also affect your performance overall. It could also affect the way that you're experiencing the trial as well as everybody else. The first thing that as a judge, what I've noticed, what I've officiated that makes my alarm bells go off is when someone comes up to the start line and I say, "Oh, hi. Welcome to your so and so search. This is your start line. Here are your search area boundaries. You have this amount of time in order to find this many hides," if it's possibly known. "Do you have any questions?" And the person just stands there and goes, "Of course not." It's like, "Okay then. You may start when ready." This is a tough one because as an official you may just say, "Well, maybe they're nervous." But we also see you walking up the start line. So if you're talking under your breath really angrily at your dog or at yourself or just life and then you're futzing with all of your stuff at the start line, we're trying to give you some information and then you bark at us, we're like, "Well then. Okay. You can go whenever you're ready and we'll just hope for the best." It just puts everyone's guard up and it gets everyone really super defensive. The competitors that officials really dread are the ones who are very snarky, who bark a lot, who are very short, who don't want to even acknowledge the fact that you as an official may be taking extra time out to make certain that they don't have any questions, that you can set them at ease, that you can let them know like, "This is your search area. You don't have to go over there." Like, "If your dog wants to go over there for a little bit, maybe that's where odor is going, but there isn't a hide there." And then lo and behold, those typically speaking are the competitors who end up going off into osh gosh because they weren't really paying attention, and then they're all angry when their dog either times out or they false alert and you're like, "I told you that that wasn't part of the search area to begin with." The first big category that I would say for things that officials dread are competitors who are very short and they just seem angry. I mean, they just seem angry and nasty and just unpleasant. I think that's something that everyone can relate to, that trying to deal with someone who's like that is not fun. But as officials it's our responsibility to always be professional and to just take a deep breath and be like, "Okay, well start when ready," and to just let them do what they need to do during their search, and to also be understanding that for some people when they do get stressed or nervous, they do kind of sound really short and curt and just unpleasant. It's not that they have any malice behind it. It's just because they're nervous. But understand that your official is not a robot. So if you were to do that and you were competitor number 30 and already 15 other people did the same exact thing to this official who's been out there in the elements for hours on end, working their butt off trying to make sure that this trial goes well, and now you come in and you start snapping at them, there is nothing to say that this person is not going to be like, "Okay, well, I just, I give up. Go on and search and you had better hope that you don't drop any treats." All of the empathy and the connection as a human being is lost and then it truly does become you are just in there as a sack of meat doing stuff with your dog and they are just this very judgmental person on the outside, and that's not ideal on any level. If you do happen to find yourself getting really stressed and worked up about something, I would urge you to take a nice deep breath before you go to your search. That'll help you and your dog anyway. But definitely try to make certain that you aren't being really super negative to your official. It's just not a good idea just generally speaking. But just know that these are people too. It just can affect the entire atmosphere of the whole trial, but it really could negatively affect your search. The other thing that officials dread overall are competitors who do not seem to know the rules at all. Now it's very confusing right now in the world of Scent Work, particularly in the United States, in that Scent Work has exploded in popularity which is wonderful, and there are now eight, count them, eight titling organizations in the United States alone, which is great. That means that there's more opportunities for everyone to play, there's lots of different things that maybe I prefer to go over here and do this thing, but now I can go over there and I can do that thing as well. All that is great. The only problem is is that there are differences from organization to organization. Some organizations are newer than others and they're still figuring out what it is that they want to be able to do within their organization to meet their standards. Maybe they wanted to try something, it looked great on paper, but now it doesn't look so great in practice. They may also be updating their rules. Regardless, when you sign up for a trial as a competitor, it is your responsibility to know the rules that are effective for that trial forwards and backwards and sideways and underneath. It's just you have to understand the rules. As an official it is extraordinarily stressful when you have competitors throughout various stages of the trial clearly showing that they have no idea what the rules are. There's a big difference between someone who just doesn't know what the rules are but just kind of goes with the flow. And it's a whole other situation where a competitor hasn't taken the time to understand the rules, they don't know the rules. They also don't care to know the rules, oh and by the way, they're really upset because they wanted to be able to do what they want to do and it doesn't matter if it's in complete contradiction to what the rules are. It's everyone else's fault but this person. That is something that just makes the officials hair catch on fire because you want to be able to help someone so that they could be successful. Because here's another little secret. Most officials who are very good, vast majority of them, want you to succeed. They want your dog to succeed as well. If you do happen to seem a little lost, they will be happy to help you. But that's really complicated if you don't even know the bare basics of what the rules are for the trial they are entered in and that you don't seem to care to want to know and that you now want to be able to do what you want to do, even though that's not what the rules allow you to do. I'll give you an example. There was a trial that I ... for an organization that I work with. An official contacted me and they told me, "I was officiating this search. I gave my little run down for the search before the person went in to do the search. They were doing their search and not even 10 seconds in they called alert. It was a false alert. That wasn't where the hide was. So I told them, "I'm sorry no, but you can reward your dog over here." The person said, "Oh okay," and they just keep walking and kept searching in the search area. So the official went up to them and said, "Oh I'm sorry, the search is done. But if you want to reward your dog where the hide is, this is where the hide is." And the person said, "This isn't what we do in class. If I call false alert in class, I get to keep searching." It's like, "But this isn't class. This is a trial, so if you want to bring your dog back over to the hide to reward them that'll be great." This person, the competitor lost it. I mean yelling and screaming and turned into hysterical crying. It was bad. It was just bad. This official, and I give them a lot of credit, calmed them down, explained to them the difference between trialing and training, and by the end of it the person was fine. But now this official was completely flustered for the rest of the trial because this had happened. Whereas if the competitor had simply read the rules and maybe even asked a question during the briefing, then all of this could have been avoided. As an official, it is super stressful when it's clear that people have no idea what the rules are. Now, I want to stress that being confused it's not something that you should be ashamed of or you should be worried about. If you are confused about something the day before the trial, make some notes and there's often times a lot of Facebook groups or other social media or even just contact information for the actual organization itself. Contact those people, reach out, and ask those questions. Try to get clarification. If you don't get clarification or it doesn't answer all of your questions, then bring them up during the briefing. Please have your questions answered before you actually start running. Now that doesn't mean you get to not read any of the rules and just show up at the briefing and just start asking, "So, what is it that we have to do?" Like you do have to actually read the rules and understand them, but if you have a question, ask as early in this process as you possibly can because if you're trying to ask those kinds of questions while you're trying to search, your official isn't going to be able to answer you. It's just not a good thing for you or your dog to be doing. You should be concentrating on searching, you should be concentrating on reading your dog and figuring out what are they doing, not trying to say, "Oh, I don't know what the rule is for such and such." Again, as far as officials, something that happens almost at every single trial is there are people who aren't reading the rules, who aren't familiar with the rules, and they are not taking the steps to actually familiarize themselves with the rules ahead of time, and they're almost expecting everyone to pick up the slack around them. That's not how it works. So please, if you are competing in any venue, particularly if you're competing in multiple venues, read upon the rules the week before you go to the trial. And then if you have questions, post them to some of those Facebook groups. Contact the organization directly. You can even contact the person who's hosting the trial, and if they don't have the answers, then they can reach out to someone who does. But it's your responsibility to really know what the rules are so that you and your dog can be successful. Something else that officials dread, typically judges because they're the ones who see this more often than not, are the competitors who are really super disorganized. Now, I want to say this with a caveat, that things happen where maybe you were keeping track of your spot in the run order and suddenly three dogs just flew through and you thought you had 10 minutes and now you have one minute. I mean, you were watching it like a hawk and everything was great and then all of a sudden it's your turn to go into the staging area. You have your whole routine all set out, but now it's all befuddled. So you're all frazzled yourself, you're trying to get yourself all together, and you rush to the staging area because you don't want to make anyone wait and you're all just out of sorts. What you want to do is you want to breathe and just take your time. As an official, personally I can usually tell the difference between someone who something like that happened where it was something completely out of their control, they were trying to do the right thing and now they're suddenly in the area going, "I guess it's my turn," and they're trying to get themselves together, and someone who wasn't paying attention to the run order, who didn't have a routine down, who doesn't really have any kind of consideration for themselves, their dogs, or the other people around them, there's a big difference between the two. Regardless, if you are all befuddled, try your best to breathe and just collect yourself as much as you can. When this starts turning into something that an official dreads is when you are stressing up and up and up and up and then it starts turning into this little cyclone of stress and just chaos. An official would be a lot more understanding from you if you are trying to breathe and you just say, "Oh, just give me just one second," and you're trying to get your long line together, whatever the case may be, but you're breathing and you're trying as opposed to, "Oh, well, everyone must do this for me now, and can you go get my treats and can you go get this and can you go get the other thing." I was like, "No, that's not going to work." You want to try to be as organized as you can. You also want to try to be as calm as you can. Now officials should notice when someone is a little stressed and they should be able to step in and offer some reassurance, maybe remind you to breathe, we don't want you passing out in the middle of the search area, but that's not necessarily their responsibility. Their responsibility is not to make sure that all the responsibility it taken off of your shoulders and they have to set you up to succeed. They should be there to support you, but you've got to do some of the work as well. As an official, if I see someone coming up and it is just a whirlwind behind them, and they have no care in the world and they're just assuming everyone will pick it up after them, that's not going to go well for me. It's not that I'm going to score them any differently. They find the hide, they find the hide. But it just, it creates a very different atmosphere, and it doesn't happen a lot. This is something I will say, is that people who are purposefully disorganized and just completely inconsiderate of others, is very rare, it doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, it's really, it's just kind of gross. It leaves everyone with a bad taste in their mouth. So try to avoid that as best as you can. If something happens outside of your control where suddenly you're pushed up in the run order and you feel like you have to rush a little bit, just breathe in between, do the best that you can, and just show that you're trying. That's all you have to do. But if it's simply, "Well, now everyone else has to figure this out for me," well, that's a little bit different. Probably the biggest thing that causes officials to dread what it is that they do are people who are not trusting their dogs when they're searching. Now, there's a variety of different reasons why you could be doing this and it's actually a really common thing to happen. The reason being is that having an official saying no is really stressful for the person, and I could understand that. But as a judge, you can see because you are at a different vantage point than the handler more often than not, so you oftentimes can see the dog saying one, two, three, four, 10 times, "Here it is. I don't know how else to say this, but here it is," and that can be frustrating within itself, but I think a lot of officials can recognize the fact that where they're standing is offering a different vantage point than where the handler may be. That's an entirely different scenario than when the dog has said one, two, three, four, five, 10 times, "Here it is," and then the handler also recognizes it, doesn't believe the dog or doesn't accept it and says, "Show me," over and over and over and over again. The show me thing is the worst. It is something that I think across the board every official who hears it, their jaws get tight and their shoulders get all tense and they're just like, "Oh, why are they saying show me?" It's so frustrating. I would urge any competitor if you have the urge to say show me, do something else, anything else. Maybe you just call alert. That'd be nice too. But if you really don't, if you're really not sure, then maybe just move off a little bit, see if the dog leaves with you, try anything else but don't say show me. It is just, it's the bane of almost every judge's existence. If that was one thing that would just go away from Scent Work, officials would be so much happier. Now really quickly I wanted to go over some of the ways that a trial can go from really fun and exciting and enjoyable for everyone to really super stressful. The first is when competitors start second guessing the searches. What I mean by this is you go in, you do a search with your dog, your dog has found, let's say there's two hides, your dog has found one hide and they're working and working and working trying to find the second, and you see them do a change of behavior in one corner but then they get drawn over to something else and you can't really tell and you're not really sure, so you bring them back to the corner and you call alert and the judge says, "Sorry no, that's actually here, which is near the corner but it's not in the right corner." Long story short you walk out of that search not feeling all that great. Your dog found their first hide. They clearly struggled with the second. You aren't really sure what was happening in the space. Maybe they got distracted. Maybe there was some pulling of odor. You called away from the hide. You are not really happy. That's understandable. That's totally fine. If your immediate response is they set a really bad hide, it's very difficult to keep that within you as a person for the next couple of hours, because you're not supposed to be talking about the searches at all regardless of what organization you're competing with. You're not supposed to be saying, "Hey, did you struggle in that search?" It's just supposed to be a thumbs up or thumbs down, and then when the trial is all over, then you're supposed to be talking about details. When things start getting really stressful is when people don't follow that rule and they start saying, "Hey, did your dog have any difficulty in the interior search?" And if someone else says, "Yeah, we only found one hide," which again these conversations should not be happening, but they do, that spreads like wildfire and by the time the trial is over and you're having the debriefing, you have a very big swath of the trial competitors are furious because they have all these theories about why the search didn't go well and they think that the person who set the hide had no idea what they're doing, the judge was being unfair, whatever the case may be. Then sure enough during the debriefing, the person who set hide, be it the Co for NACSW or PSD for USCSS, judges for AKC or UKC, whatever the case may be, they then explain to you what it is that their thought process was when they set the hide, what they thought would be happening in that space, what actually happened in that space, and then what they saw for the handling. Suddenly everyone has answers to all their questions. Suddenly it makes all kinds of sense. It wasn't this grand conspiracy to make everybody fail and everyone goes home and they're fine. The only problem was is that for all those hours in between the entire atmosphere of the whole trial went down in the dumps. It's just everyone's angry, everyone's stressed, everyone's upset. I've seen this firsthand. It's happened to trials where I was actually the hide setter. If the competitors had just waited and if they hadn't talked about the hides, which again you're not supposed to, and if they didn't get themselves worked up in such a lather, I could've explained to them what was happening because once I did, they were fine. This is something that I see a lot, and again, I cannot stress this enough. Please don't talk about the searches at trials. It's against the rules and depending on the organization you could actually be written off for a written warning, you could lose your cues for the search that you're talking about, and anyone you're talking to could lose their cues for that search. And if you continue to do it, depending on the organization, you might just be kicked out completely because the whole point of trials is that you don't know what's going on in the search. If you knew all the details about the search, then you wouldn't have to have trails at all. You could just keep practicing at home. Now I understand that as competitors it can be very stressful when clearly you saw that your dog was struggling, clearly you saw that your dog had picked up odor somewhere but they couldn't get to it and you didn't call it correctly. I get it. I've been there. Wait till the end when the person who sets the hike and actually explained what happened, it makes a difference. The other way that I notice the trials go from good and fun and enjoyable trials to trials that are more stressful, are people who are constantly looking at the clock. Let me just let you all know, just as a general rule, your officials don't want to the trail to be going on any longer than it absolutely has to. Your officials want your trial to be smooth and efficient and they would like to get home a little early as well. They are exhausted by the end of the day. I mean, they are mentally tired, they're physically tired, it's a really hard job to be an official. That is exacerbated when you hear the mutterings like let's say for lunch and you'll hear people saying, "Oh, I can't believe how long this is taking. Oh, can't they speed things up," and, "Oh, I was hoping to do something later on today," and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You want to try to avoid that stuff as much as possible. Know that your officials are doing their very best. Now are there officials who are slower than others? Yes. Typically speaking the people who are posting the trials will know that and they'll talk with the officials and be like, "Okay, look, even if you're giving information to the competitor, it should be over a series of seconds, not minutes, and if you're going to provide them a quick, little feedback thing as they're leaving the search area, it's got to be quick." We're not trying to rush anybody out, we're not trying to make this into like a production line, but we do have to get through a lot of people in a short period of time. The main thing is just as competitors just know that the apparatus behind the trial, their goal is to have it be efficient, and also everyone's goal is for you to be happy. Everyone's goal is for you and your dog to have a good time. If at every single turn it's complaining here about how long it's taking, complaining here about how you thought the hides were unfair, complaining here about the weather, complaining there about the time of the day, it just goes on and on and on. Suddenly this really, happy, fun, awesome thing we should all do be doing together turns into this just sludgy, gross, depressing, stressful, yucky thing, and on top of that your officials are mentally and physically exhausted. And it can really burn them out. I would just urge you that as competitors, please know that everyone at trials 9 times out of 10 who are working or volunteering, really do want everyone to be done sooner rather than later. They want it to be efficient, they want it to run smoothly, and they want you to have a good time. If there is a bottleneck, because it does happen, things happen, they're trying their best to fix it. Just know that, and if you start going like, "Oh my god. I can't believe it's whatever time," take that time to just hang out with your dog, read a book, take a nap, talk with friends, whatever the case may be. You're there. You're fine. You are always free to leave. I mean, you could if you absolutely had to. But more often than not, if you just take the stress out of it and just go, "Okay, I have this whole day to spend time with my dog and with friends and with other people who love Scent Work," then it's not that big of a deal. The other thing to try to keep in mind is that for your officials, I know I've mentioned this a couple of times already, but it is a very difficult job. The people who are being approved for these positions more often than not, again, they have the expertise necessary and they also want you to be successful as a team with your dog. They don't want to say no. They don't want you to fail. If an official really is out there going, "Ha, ha, I didn't get any cues. This is a great day," then I agree with you, they shouldn't be an official. That's not the point. I hope you'll keep that in mind when you are going to your next trial. At this point you're thinking, "Great. Now you made me feel really bad about being a competitor. You made me think that I am just this terrible, awful person. I'm never going to a trial again." I don't want you to think that. Again, the things that I'm pointing out do happen at trials, but it's a very small percentage of people that do them. The purpose of this podcast is just for you to see what not to do and that it not only negatively affects the officials, it negatively affects the overall trial, which means that it's negatively affecting your experience as well. If you do happen to notice yourself doing any of these things, you want to catch yourself and see if you can change course. And then you're also saying, "But you titled this podcast The Ideal Competitor. What am I supposed to be doing?" Let me just give you a really quick rundown of what an official would love for you to do in order to be an ideal competitor. Number one, know the rules. Know the rules forwards and backwards. Ask questions ahead of time, but be familiar with them by the time that you get to the trial. Number two, be considerate and kind and just nice. That goes a really long way, and do that with everyone and anyone at the trial. Make sure that you're breathing. This can help you and your dog actually do better when you are competing because it takes some of the nerves off of you, it takes some of the stress out of your leash, it can help set your dog at ease. It gets oxygen into your brain, which is good. We want you to be able to think, and again, not pass out in the middle of the search, but that will also open you up to be more receptive when your official is giving you directions or when they're asking you questions or they're seeing if you have any questions. You also doing those things can then let us know that you're trying. Again, this is that reciprocal relationship back and forth, it's a give and take. Please know that the majority of the people who are working at trials, be it officials, be it trial hosts, be it volunteers, are there to ensure that you and your dog have a good time. They have your best interest at heart and odor is something that we honestly and truly are guessing at. Even people who have an incredible amount of experience can never guarantee what is going to happen in a space and they can never guarantee that is going to be the same the very first time they set the hide, to when the dog goes, to when the first competitor goes, to competitor number 15, to competitor number 30, to competitor number 50. All those dogs may actually experience a different odor picture by the time they get into the search area. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold our officials to a high standard. We should. That doesn't mean that our officials shouldn't be experienced. They must be. It would be better for you to go into a situation thinking at least as a default, "This person is not trying to set me up to fail. This person has done their best. Now let me figure out during the debriefing what it is that may have happened." And also know that there may not been anything with the search at all. It could've been an off day for you, it could've been an off day for your dog, or there may just been a gap in your training. That's okay too. All trials are supposed to be as a test of your training and to provide you with information. Sometimes the information is, "I'm not going to show under that judge again," and that's okay too. But it's a completely different outlook and approach than, "Those people are terrible and they're trying to ruin me and my dog and I hate them." Like that is an entirely different approach. An ideal competitor would be going in thinking these people are having my best interest at heart, they're trying their best, they have the expertise and the background necessary. I'm going to go into the search. I know that my dog and I have the training and background to do it. We're not just winging it. And if something goes awry, then I'm going to be open minded to figure out why that happened. And it could very well be something that I did. It could very well be my training. Or it could've just been the Scent Work gods decided, "No, thank you. We're not going to let anyone find the hide today." The other thing as an ideal competitor, you will really toe the line when it comes to talking about the searches in that you won't have something else to talk about. Generally speaking an even better rule is to just not talk about Scent Work at all. Don't talk about class, don't talk about the trial last week or last year. Talk about anything else but Scent Work. I know that sounds counter-intuitive. We're at a Scent Work trial. Why shouldn't we talk about Scent Work? Not only does it defeat the whole purpose of the trail, not only can it get people all lathered and all worked up, but it can also impart undue stress and burden onto other people who may not really know that when you are going on and on about this terrible experience that you had, it was really the very first time you ever tried to do Scent Work with odor at a class ages ago, they may think that that's that very same trial and now you've put all this baggage and stress onto them and their dog. That's just not fair. Try to avoid that as best as you can. The last part of being an ideal competitor is that you're there for the right reasons and that will bleed over into all these other aspects. You're there to have fun with your dog. You know that this is a game. You absolutely can have respect and admiration for the amount of training and time and effort that you and your dog have put into this activity, but that you are not finding dead bodies or bombs. You are finding birch, anise, or clove, or some other target odor. This is a game and an opportunity to bond and have a good time with our dogs and to be around like minded people. If you go into a trial with that mindset and you are opening yourself to having a good time, then you're the perfect competitor and officials will love you from now until the end of time. It makes a huge difference. I hope this podcast helped a little bit so that you can see from the official standpoint just how important everything that you're bringing into the trial as a competitor really is. You are a very important part of the puzzle, and the entire apparatus of a trial is designed with the sole purpose of both you and your dog having a good time. A lot of these newer organizations were started up with the very basis of we want more dogs out playing and having fun. That's the whole purpose of this. If we all can do our part, then we can ensure that that happens. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found this podcast helpful. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.
In our very first podcast, we will answer the burning question of: what is the deal with dog sports and why would anyone ever want to get involved in one?! We discuss the benefits of dog sports as an activity, and how competition is a separate route that some dog owners may want to check out. And yes, we will also go into how online dog training really DOES work. This is going to be fun, and we thank you for listening. ----more---- Want to learn more about Dog Sport University? Check out our website and look over our Dog Sport Skills courses. You may also be interested in our informative webinars as well as the Dog Sport University blog. Have you heard about Scent Work and want to delve deeper into that activity? Perfect, we have just the thing! Check out our sister online dog training platform, Scent Work University where you will find courses and webinars suited for both those dog owners who simply want to have fun, and those who are seriously competing with their dogs. Maybe you're looking to help your puppy or dog in the manners department. Then your need to check out Family Dog University where we provide a variety of programs to help your dog be the best canine family companion they can be! PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Dog Sports and Training Podcast. In this podcast, we'll be talking about all things dog sports. We'll be giving you a behind the scenes look at what instructors and officials are considering, what they're looking for in competitive teams. We'll also be providing you training tips and answering your questions. All right, let's get started. Before we start diving into the podcast, I just want to really quickly introduce myself. My name's Dianna Santos, I am the owner and the lead instructor for both Dog Sport University and Scent Work University. I've been training dogs professional since 2011. I am certified through the Karen Prior Academy of Dog Training. I'm also certified through the Certification Council of Professional Dog Trainers. In addition to that, I am also an official with several scent work organizations including AKC Scent Work, as well as United States Canine Scent Sports. I'm also the Judge and CSD Coordinator for United States Canine Scent Sports, where I oversee several officials. I'm coming at this with a variety of different view points. As both a professional dog trainer, as well as an instructor, as well as a competitor and an official and someone affiliated with an organization. My goal is to give you as many different perspectives as possible to help you reach your training goals and to make sure that you and you're dog are having the best time possible as you go for those titles. All right. Without further ado, let's jump into the podcast. For our first episode, we wanted to answer the question of, why would you want to get involved in dog spots in the first place? With that in mind, I actually reached out to several of my clients to see if they would have other questions that would spring off from that, to see if I'd be able to help people wrap their heads around the whole concept of what dog sport is, and why it is they should even get involved with it in the first place with their own dog. I think one of the best ways of doing this, is to actually start off with how I got involved with dog sports. The way I fell into it was very similar to how many people do. My very first Doberman was dog aggressive. He was not dog reactive, he was dog aggressive. If he had the opportunity to eat other dogs, he would. I had found a professional trainer. I wasn't a trainer at this point. They were working with me in figuring out what it is that we could do for behavior modification and for training, to improve this quality of life as well as keep everybody safe. In the process of doing that, I found out about set work. He was not a candidate at all in order to trial, but as with most people, I decided to try out for what's called an odor recognition test for NACSW, which is a Scent Work organization. In the process of doing that and both preparing for and actually doing it, that was my first foray in dog sports. I had never actually been to a trial before at that point. It was intriguing. It was very, very interesting. I have to say that we never did any trials with Zeus again after that point. It wasn't that he did badly, he actually did really, really well. He didn't have any explosions, he didn't have any behavioral issues, he passed all three tests. He did great. A lot of people who were there didn't even know just how much he was not suitable to be trialing, 'cause he did a really great job that day. He was under really good management, and he was just set up to succeed as much as he could within the confines of that space. But what I found was that the groups of people who were there as far as the competitors as well as the officials and the trial hosts, were all very supportive. It was this sense of accomplishment for everyone. There were people who have been trialing forever. It's as though they've been trialing since the day they were born. Dog sports are a second nature to them. Even those people were very kind to people like myself how had no idea what I was doing. That was pretty much how I was introduced to dog sports as a concept. I had Zeus for another couple years after that point until he passed away. Then I got my second Doberman who I have now, and he doesn't have any behavioral issues. He's fabulous and he's athletic and he's just game for everything. The idea was that we would be able to trial. He's introduced me to all kinds of different dog sports, 'cause he can do pretty much everything. I've had a lot of firsts with him as far as, going into a space and not knowing anything about it as far as a trialing aspect. I may know how to train for it, but I'd never actually been to a trial. That's pretty much how I got started. It was really through both of my boys. I have to say that, before that I would hear about trials and I'd be like, "I don't know about all that. That's not really what I'm looking for, I just want my dog to be happy and healthy and well behaved." But I have to say, since I've started trialing, it's definitely something where they say that you get bit by the bug, that's definitely true. It's not just about the titles and it's not just about the ribbons. Those matter, I'm not gonna lie, but it's the community and it's also the incentive to keep going. It's the incentive to keep practicing and training, and it's an opportunity to have these bonding moments with your dog. Traveling to and from trials, being able to hang out in a hotel every now and again, to just being at a trial site. Even though you're surrounded by all these other dogs and people, at least for me personally, I find it to be an opportunity for me to just spend time with him. Where he may just be hanging out in his crate, but I'm sharing granola bars with him and I'm giving him plastic bottles and we're going for potty breaks, whatever else. But it's just us, it's just the time for us to hang out. That was how I fell into it. I fell in love with it, a lot more than I anticipated. I really did not think at all when I first started, that I would be the kind of trialing person that I am now. Quite honestly, if my body cooperated a little bit more, I think I would trial a lot more. That's basically how I got started. Honestly, that's how a lot of people get started. They get started because they are doing an activity that would be beneficial for their dog, either for behavioral issues or just to provide their dog with something else to do, because they are smart little creatures. Then they go to a trial for the very first time, and if it's a good experience, then they're like, "Oh, I think I'd like to do that again." Then before you know it, they're part of the traveling masses that just go in droves over the weekend to go do stuff. I think that ties in really well with the second question that I received from one of my students was, "Why is it that trials are so popular in the first place? Why are dog sports popular? Why is trialing with your dog popular at all?" These are actually two separate questions, because I think it's a misnomer to assume that if you are going to do a dog sport, that means that you have to trial. I really hope to dispel that in this podcast. It's probably something I'm going to be repeating over and over and over again. The story that I said with Zeus is actually a really good example, where we fell into Scent Work because it was part of his behavior modification program. It worked wonders, it really helped improve his quality of life. He was a lot calmer, he was more fulfilled because we weren't able to go out and do things. We couldn't go for walks, we couldn't go for hikes, it just wasn't safe. We were able to do things at home using Scent Work to help use his brain, 'cause he was extraordinarily smart. It helped improve his quality of life. Now even though we did that ORT and we had done well, we did not enter in anything else, 'cause it was not good to test fate. But that didn't mean that I stopped doing Scent Work. If anything, we did Scent Work more, because now we realized just how awesome it was and how much I loved it as an activity. He really enjoyed it. I just hope that that's clear, and there's a lot of people who just assume that, "Well, I'm never interested in competing," or, "I don't want to compete," or, "My dog wouldn't be suitable to compete." "Well that means I can't play that thing." Of course you can. There's nothing preventing you from doing that. Another example of that would be with the boy I have now. As of the recording of this podcast, he is coming off an injury. We're not really sure the extent of it. It doesn't seem to be that serious. It's probably just a muscle strain at this point. But he's five years old, and something I've been going back and forth over, is agility. Is whether or not we should be competing in agility. I am not very well put together myself. I am a physical mess, and I'm also terribly uncoordinated. It just would not be very pretty. He is very athletic, he's very fast, and he loves to play agility. We just do really short sequences in our backyard. But I've been going back and forth for years, like whether or not competing with him would be a good idea, because the jumps are a certain height and you have certain obstacles you have to do. There are different venues that you can choose to make sure that the courses were suitable for him and maybe there would be certain obstacles we wouldn't do, and all this other stuff. But that doesn't mean during that whole time that I've been going back and forth about it. That because we weren't competing or there was a chance that we would never compete, that I never played the game at home. We do, we play the game at home when he's not sore. Once or twice a week, if not more. He loves it. He thinks it's the best. I'm hoping that that makes sense, that just because you are either not interested in competition or you're not sure if it would be a good match for you or your dog, that you wouldn't be able to do that activity. The activity of a dog sport, such as agility, is a great thing for a lot of dogs to do. Competition is a completely different thing. As far as why it is that these things are so popular, it depends on the activity, because each activity is gonna bring you a different benefit, it's going to reward you and your dog something that's unique for that activity. As an example, we'll just take agility. Agility is so incredibly popular, because it's combining so many different elements of the relationship that you have with your dog. First of all, it's the opportunity once they understand the equipment and they've been training, whatever else, that now they're able to run along side you and do this obstacle course where there are jumps and there are tunnels and there are things like A frames that are like these little mini mountains. There's all these really interesting things that you can do with your dog, that you can showcase their athleticism, they get to run free with you. It's a partnership. Both of you are going through this together, it's not as though you are going over the jump with them, they're running along side you. But you're directing them to go do these things in a very harmonious way when it's done well. That's very addicting, that is something for a dog owner, is spectacular. It's awe inspiring, because this is another species, this is not a little person running along side you, this is a completely different animal. For them to understand a slight flick of the hand or a turning of your shoulder or the directions of your feet, that is incredible that those very slight signals and cues from you, can cause your dog to do a series of obstacles, one right after another. It almost seems like a seamless flow of just awesomeness. It's addicting to watch and it's very addicting to be a part of. People who fall into agility, really do fall in love with it. There are people who are able to do it, they've done it in wheelchairs, and they've done it in automated wheel chairs, or there are people who just stand stationary and they direct their dogs with a variety of different verbal cues or whistles, it's amazing, it really is incredible at the end of the day. Dogs who do agility, love agility. The ability to actually be able to do all this is fun, it's just enjoyable for them. To have that partnership with their person is also a very big plus. That's only one example, I mean there are so many different dog sports that are out there. The overarching reason why it is that dog sports are popular is, it's maximizing on a couple of different things. It's highlighting the fact that you and your dog are indeed a team, in one way or another. You're doing these things together. It's also allowing your dog to be a dog at some level. Whether it be like agility where you're doing obstacles or it's Scent Work, where they may be going off and they're hunting for a specific scent, or it could be competition obedience where they're using their brain to showcase how they can work as a teammate with their handler to do a certain routine with healing and staying, and retrieving and recalls. It's incredible. You then have things like lure coursing, where the dog is chasing a plastic bag, which is supposed to mimic a bunny. You can see them go through these courses where they're not going over or anything, there are no obstacles, but watching a dog really flat out run is amazing. They love it. They're able to tap into their prey drive, to do something that is safe and exhilarating and is so not stuck in the human constraint of things, and the construct of how we make them live their lives. It allows them to be a dog. The joy that they show is very reinforcing to the person. People who own dogs want to have fun with their dogs, I think generally speaking. The joy that your dog shows when they're doing something is extraordinarily reinforcing for you. When you're doing a dog sport that really helps your dog be a dog and allows them to use their brain, to have a physical outlet, to maybe even tap into an instinct, something like herding where a border collie would be herding sheep or even treiball, which his like urban herding where a dog of any breed will be pushing fitness balls along a course to get them into a goal. That's amazing. That's allowing the dog to tap into something that has been developed in them over a long period of time, over sometimes hundreds if not thousands of years. That's amazing, and that's why it's so incredibly popular is because, even though people may not be able to put that into words, they can feel that, they can experience that. It's completely worth all the time and effort it is to get good at such thing and to just practice it. All those practice sessions are opportunities for you to have even more fun with your dog. It's just this ever flowing, reinforcing circle of awesomeness. Which is why people do fall into dog sports, even when they're simply initially just looking for something to help their dog be better behaved. Then they stick with it because it is just so great. One of the other questions that I received from one of my clients was, what is it that they need to know before they take the plunge before going into a particular dog sport. I thought this was a really great question, because it's not one that many of us ask. Most of us who actually first start off in dog sports, don't even realize it's happening. We literally just step in like, "Oh, apparently I'm doing a dog sport now." Particularly with a lot of dog training programs at the moment, they are very good in how they very seamlessly fold in dog sports into even their basic obedience programs, to try to introduce people to the concept of, "Oh look, your dog can do an obstacle. Your dog can do this, your dog can do that." Because learning is good. Our dogs are very, very smart little creatures. The more that they can learn and the more they can have appropriate outlets, the less likely they are to do naughty things like eat your couch. But before you ever were to commit to an actual dog sport training program, I would say a couple things that you want to consider is, a really honest assessment of your dog is. I mean that both as a personality, as in age and also health. There are some people who will be really attracted to something like agility or another really high octane dog sport is flyball. Flyball is where you'll have three little jumps, they're not very tall, and the dog has to go run over them to hit a ball dispensing machine at the end of the lane. They have to retrieve that ball and then race back over those little jumps. They do this in teams. There's a multiple, I think there's four dogs who do it one right after the other. There's two teams that are competing against each other. It's basically a race. Which team can have their dogs go down, do the jumps, grab the ball and then run back the fastest? There are people who watch that and they go, "Wow, that looks like a whole lot of fun. My dog loves to run, my dog loves balls, they would love this." That's great. But then what you would want to figure out is, what's your dog's personality? Are they gonna be okay running along side another dog who's running at a fast speed? Are they going to be scared? Are they gonna be reactive? Are they gonna be like, "Hey, you. Get away from me." There's also a lot of noise associated with flyball, because the handlers are encouraging their dogs very enthusiastically to go off and get the ball and then to race back as quickly as they can. That enthusiasm and all that noise can be very intimidating to a lot of dogs, because it can be perceived as yelling and screaming. Where they're like, "Oh my goodness, everyone's yelling at each other." There's also a lot of barking that's very common at fly ball matches, because all the dogs are really, super excited. Those are the kinds of things you wanna consider is, the activity looks like a whole lot of fun, but is my dog going to be completely bombarded with all this stuff and then be freaking out 'cause it's so noisy and it's so stressful? Then you wanna ask yourself on a physical side, does my dog have the physical capability to do this thing? If your dog has had a knee replacement already or maybe they just have a really weak backend, maybe they have hip dysplasia, maybe they're just not fit, maybe they're just overweight, maybe they're elderly, maybe you adopted your dog as a senior. Should they be doing something that is so incredibly high-impact as something like flyball or agility? My suggestion would be no, that probably wouldn't be the best thing to do. Maybe you want to start off with something a little bit lower impact on them so that they're not sore, so that you're not potentially hurting them. The other thing that you wanna consider is, what is it that you're looking to do as far as, what your goals? What are you looking to get out of this? If you are interested in competing, that's great. Then you probably want to see whether or not you and your dog really could compete, and at what level are you looking to get to? What I mean by that is, if you're looking to compete at the World Team for agility, well then you have to have a really serious assessment of both you and your dog's skills, their age, and also how long it's gonna take you to get there. If you're just interested in maybe trialing at a lower level to just have fun, that's great. There's still a very big difference between doing something for fun, and also still competing if you actually wanna do well, anything above the very novice entry level level. You also wanna ask yourself what your situation is regarding finances. Because if you are interested in getting involved in a dog sport for the competition side, you actually do want to compete. You wanna do some of your research to figure out how much that costs. Whether or not that's going to be a drain on the other things you may wanna be doing with your dog or just with your life overall. It's so disheartening when I hear people get really super psyched about something revolving around dog sports, and then they get bit by the bug and everything is great and they're looking around twice and they're like, "Oh my goodness, there's no way I can pay for this stuff now." They just feel so deflated and so ... It's just really disheartening for them. You wanna come at this with as much of an eyes wide open approach as you can. Have just really realistic expectations for yourself. Understand what your situation is, where it is you would like to go, and give yourself a little bit of a time frame, and be flexible with yourself. There's no rush on these things. Understand that if you were to just find out about a dog sport today, it's very unlikely that you'll be able to compete tomorrow. It's gonna take you time in order to develop the skills that both you and your dog will need to be successful. Depending on the sport, it can take a significant amount of time. As an example, when I was considering doing agility competition with my dog. My goal was, we're gonna be training for at least a year before we actually ever compete. That time frame would probably still be correct now. Maybe we get it down to six months if I was really gung ho about it. But again, he's five years old and he's a Doberman. I'm probably not gonna be competing with him because of his age, and I wanna make sure that I don't hurt him physically. That's something that you would want to consider as well is, if you wanted to compete, then are you comfortable with the amount of time and training and practice it would take to do so. All that being said, does it mean that you shouldn't get involved in a dog sport at all? Of course not. You absolutely can play the game. You absolutely can do the training and the practicing and the working with your instructor and introducing your dog to all those different activities. That's great. But you just wanna know what the answers are to those questions, before you really take the plunge and actually try and compete. Another really interesting question that I received from one of my students was, "Are there any reasons that someone shouldn't get involved in dog sports?" The answer is, yes there are. But I would preface this by saying that it's more on the side of not getting involved in the competition side of it, as opposed to the actual activity. But there are definitely some activities that you may not want to do with your own particular dog, like the example we've given before with flyball. Maybe if you were doing it one-on=one with an instructor where there wasn't a whole bunch of other people practicing, maybe it'd be a fun thing that you do once in a while. That's fine. The other example again is lure coursing, where if you have a dog who is more on the senior side, maybe they have some structural issues, maybe having them running like that and doing the turns where there could be a variety of different turns on the course, maybe that would be hard fro them. Those are the types of reasons why you may not want to do a particular dog sport as the activity or it may just not be a good match for your dog physically. It may also be that you don't want to do a particular activity if it's going to exacerbate a behavioral aspect of your dog that you're trying to work on. An example of this would be, a dog who is extraordinarily, over-the-top possessive. Where they're almost resource guarding sort of thing. You've been working on that with a professional trainer and it's been going along really well. You probably wouldn't want to get into a situation where you were then testing whether or not that would come back. An example of that would be, let's say that that particular dog was also a terrier, and you were interested in doing something like barn hunt, where it is a course set up with a series of hay mazes, so there's hay or straw set up in the course like a maze. There are real live rats that are safely contained inside PVC pipes. Those are hidden throughout the maze. The goal is that the dog comes in and they have to do three different things in order to pass. They have to find all the rats that are hidden in the maze, and there can be between one and five, depending on the level. They have to do a climb, which means they have to get on top of one of the hay bales with all four feet. They also have to do a tunnel. There's actually a tunnel created with the hay itself. Those are three different things they have to do within any given run if they were actually competing in bar hunt. As far as why it is that you may not want to do barn hunt with a dog who is a terrier and has a history of resource guarding, is that that dog will be entering into the barn hunt ring, will probably find their rat, and will be very excited about it, and I'm going to assume, would be very possessive about it as well. Your job as the handler, is to either restrain your dog once they find it, rewarding them, telling them how great they are, so someone else can go in to retrieve the rat so they can be safely removed from the ring. Or that you would be removing the two of yourself to hand it off to somebody else. I'm hoping that you can kind of see where that would be a problem for a dog who has resource guarding issues. That either you or someone else is putting your hand to take away the very high value thing of a rat inside a tube, away from that dog. That's putting your dog, who's probably into a very higher state of arousal and probably tipping over into prairie drive, into a sense of conflict, where even though you and your trainer have been working on this dog not being quite as possessive or not demonstrating those really negative behaviors associated with resource guarding, you're putting them into a situation where they're now more likely to show those behaviors again. I would say, maybe that wouldn't be such a great idea to put that dog into that situation in the first place. That's a very long example of a situation where you may not want to participate in a particular dog sport with a particular dog. Even if you weren't interested in competition. Maybe even that dog wouldn't do well even in practice. 'Cause again, you're still going into, I need to take this thing away from you that you find really super rewarding and very high value. That could be a problem. As far as the competition side of why it is that you wouldn't want to get involved in dog sports, again, just to stress, the majority of time, you can play the activity at home or you can work with your instructor and you can do it that way, that's fine. I would urge people who have dogs who are aggressive, like I had with Zeus, they really should not, in my opinion, be competing at all. Full stop. Period. It's just not safe, it really isn't. It's not to say those dogs don't deserve to have a meaningful life, it doesn't mean that those dogs don't deserve to have fulfillment, they do. You can do those activities again at home or in a very well controlled training environment where you're working with a professional. But to put them into a situation like a trial that is extraordinarily chaotic, there's at least on minimum, on your very small trials for certain activities, 30 dogs at this location. 30 dogs, plus 30 people that are just competitors. Then you have the people who are running the trial, then you have the people who are volunteering at the trial, then you have the people who are officiating the trial. You have at least 50 people at this trial. Again, those are the smaller ones. You can have agility trials that have hundreds of dogs at them. You can have hundreds and hundreds of people at them. They could be located at a public facility, where not only is your event going on, but other things are going on. Where there could be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. Just think of the stress factor that that could do to a dog. Again, those situations you could be putting them into where they could make a mistake. For me, it is a no-brainer. If a dog is really, truly aggressive either to dogs or definitely to people, they should not be competing at all. The other reason why you may not want to do competition is, if you or your dog wouldn't do well in those kinds of situations. That's where you just need to have a really honest assessment about it. You personally are putting a lot of weight on the competition as far as trying to build up your own self worth. "If I get this title, that means I'm great," or, "If this dog gets this title, that means that I'm great." That's going to really bite you in the butt later, because even if you and your dog are fabulous, you have all the great training, they are just amazing with their skill set, all that's great. I don't care how good you are, there's going to be at some point that you and your dog are not going to get a placement or that you may not even queue. That's normal, but if you are approaching this as though you are tying and weaving in your self worth with your dogs ability to actually qualify or to earn a certain title, that's really not good. We see it all the time. On an organizations side, I see all the time people are just completely distraught. There's a difference between disappointment and just broken down and falling apart if you and your dog didn't do well. If that's the case, you have to have a really serious assessment of, maybe you can change the way you're approaching it. If you don't think that you can, then maybe you shouldn't be competing, at least at this time. Maybe you can do it a little bit later when you can change your outlook on it. Within the same vein of why I would suggest someone steer away from doing the competition side of a dog sport is, it's kind of the flip side of that coin. What we were just discussing is, "If I don't qualify or get the title, that means that I'm terrible." But the flip side of that is, because I have earned this and because I've done so well, that means that I'm awesome and so much better than everyone else. Now this is just a personal pet peeve of mine. When people are trying to attach too much value to what it is that they've earned within a certain dog sport, it's not to say it's not a testament to how you and your dog have done. It is, it is definitely proof that you and your dog have done well, that you've done your homework, you've done your training, and you're skilled. Great. But it pretty much ends there. It's not as though the heavens up and a key falls from the sky and you have the key to the world now. That's not how it works. What I have found, is that people who are really like, "I am the best thing ever because I have X title," the problem is that it may work for that dog, but a lot of times with their subsequent dog or sometimes even with that same dog, they then are still pushing the dog far beyond where that dog should be going or they're not reading when the dog may be sore or they may be sick, or maybe something didn't go well or whatever. What happens with that is, they are pushing the dog beyond where they should go, and it can really ruin the relationship with the dog overall, which is not the point of the whole thing. It could just set you on a really dark path, and there are people who have gone down that path and they get really far down and they look around and they're like, "Wow, this is not what I was doing this for in the first place." They have a really hard time getting back into it. But I do wanna note that dog sports overall, is a wonderful thing for dogs to get involved in. Again, there's two different tracks. There's the activity of the given dog sport, and then there's a competition side of the dog sport. Overall, I would say that the dog sport competition community is actually fairly supportive. Are you going to have drama? Are you gonna have drama queens? Yes you are. Are you gonna have certain venues that are stricter or more stringent than others? Yes. Are you gonna have others that don't have maybe as high standards as you would like as a competitor? Yes. Do you have to do your homework? Absolutely. But on a whole, the communities for all these different sports is actually really good. Everyone is in it for the love of their dogs. If there are people who start straying away from that, then as a community we just say, "Hey, why don't we come back over and have fun with our dogs." I would say that if you are on the fence, if you are getting into dog training because you want your dog to be polite with your company or you don't want them pulling on leash or you just adopted a dog and you just want them to be well behaved around the house. Maybe you're taking a basic obedience class, and you keep hearing these things like agility or Scent Work or obedience or rally or whatever, and you're like, "I have no idea what that is." I would say, why don't you watch one of those classes that may be offered. Maybe you should ask some questions for your instructor, maybe you'll be able to go to an actual trial and just watch for a little bit. It's really fun, and the dogs really enjoy these sports. They really enjoy the activity itself. Even if you never wanted to do competition, and maybe it's something that you don't want to do right now, maybe you'd like to try a little bit later, the activity itself can be an extraordinarily beneficial to every dog. I would definitely urge you to check it out. Just really quickly, I just wanted to talk about how all this ties into Dog Sport University, which is the online platform that this podcast is branching out from. Dog Sport University was formed in order to provide online dog training to as many different people, dog handlers and dog owners as possible. The common question that comes out of that is, "Wait a second, does online dog training really work?" The answer is, yes it does. The great thing about online dog training is that it offers three different things. It offers quality, convenience and flexibility. With Dog Sport University, all of our instructors have either taught the same exact course or a very similar course or course topic in person, and they've been doing so for years. They know what works and what doesn't. They also know the various types of modifications you can make for any given exercise. What they're doing, is they're taking all of that knowledge that they've accumulated over years of actual in person training, and they're transferring that to a virtual experience you can then enjoy no matter where you're located, either in the United States or in the whole world. We have students and participants, as of the recording of this podcast, seven different countries, which is amazing. I know for me personally, having lived first on the East Coast of the United States and now living on the West Coast of the United States, it can be extraordinarily frustrating to not be near someone that you wanna train with. There are such incredibly talented trainers everywhere. Our goal is to try to connect you with those really talented trainers. Even if you're not near them geographically, you can still benefit from their knowledge. The other part is the convenience factor. With online dog training, you don't have to be pigeon hold into a particular time frame. With our courses, we offer three different types of enrollment. Student, auditor and watcher. With students, there is a definite start date, but you still have access to all that course material for a year. With a student, it's the most intensive option that you can choose from. You will be submitting homework and video assignments for your instructor to review and to provide feedback on. They may also have an online chat with you several times throughout the course. You also have full access to the entire course forum, where you can ask questions, you can get feedback not only from your instructor, but also from your fellow course participants. The auditor is a really nice intermediary, where you will not be submitting homework or video assignments, but you can absolutely participate in the course forum asking questions, and again, getting that feedback not only from the instructor, but from other course participants as well. The watcher is the most laid back option that you can choose from. This is where we're offering the flexibility factor. If you wanna do something that was a little bit more self taught, where you knew that your schedule was already crazy, and you just wanna be able to come on, view some lessons when you can and work on it when you have a chance, then the watcher is probably the best option for you. You would be able to see the course forum, but you wouldn't be able to actually post. The reason why there's convenience and flexibility, is that you are able to do all this from the comfort of your own home. Better than that, you can actually view your course player on any mobile device, even offline. You can download it using a particular app, and you can view it while you're maybe training with your friends or maybe if you have an in person trainer that wanted to work on something with you, you can do it there, which is really super helpful. You don't have to try to memorize everything. You can also go over a course material over and over again. Maybe there was a side note that your instructor tried to emphasize that you were like, "I can't really remember what they said," but you can go back to the course player and you can play that part over again as often as you need to, so that you're able to get the information that you need. The other great thing about the flexibility, is not only with the enrollment options but also because you have access to all this course material for a full year, you can go at your own pace. The key with dog training is just like learning with people, is individualizing it. They are all individuals, no two dogs are gonna learn the same. Your dog may fly through the first couple of exercises, and then with the next couple, they may need a little bit more time. Where if this was an in person course, you would have to do, these are the exercises for week one, and these are the exercises for week two, and so on and so forth. With this format, even if you're a student, you are still more than welcome to take the time to adjust those exercises so that maybe it takes you instead of one week to do the exercise, maybe it takes you two weeks, maybe it takes you three weeks. It could take you longer. That's totally fine, there's nothing wrong with that. The ability for you to individualize this so it works for you and your dog, is really super helpful. All that to say that yes, online dog training does work. Our goal at Dog Sport University, is to provide as much quality as we can to help people reach their training goals and to connect them with some really incredibly talented trainers. We're adding new trainers all the time, and we're always looking to add in more content. As far as the types of courses that we offer, we offer our Good Manners courses, which we have everything from basic manners to preparing for the Canine Good Citizen Test, to applying for real life skills. Then we also have our dog sport courses. We cover a wide range of different dog sports. From agility to competition obedience, to try ball. Including tricks and tracking and weight pull, and all kinds of really great things. In addition to that, we also have things that's just canine fitness, where you can learn how to make sure that your dog is as fit as they possibly can and can avoid injuries. We also have things that can help you become a better handler, things that can be addressed across all the different dog sports. We offer a lot at Dog Sport University, as well as not only our courses but also our informative webinars. You're more than welcome to check us out at dogsportuniversity.com. I hope you found this first podcast helpful. At the very least I hope it sparked your interest a little bit in dog sports, so you can look into what dog sport may be a good match for both you and your dog. Thank you so much, happy training, and we look forward to seeing you soon.
In this podcast, we will discuss the battle many dog trainers, instructors, handlers and owners will encounter at some point: keeping their ego in check when it comes to training and competing with their dog. We will discuss how this applies specifically to Scent Work, some of the common pitfalls and how you can set your dog and YOURSELF up to succeed. Be certain to also check out the Scent Work University blog. ----more---- Looking to build some skills that will help you become a better Scent Work handler? Take a look at our Handler Scent Work Skills courses. Know your dog needs to work on a particular skill or aspect of their Scent Work training? Our Advanced Scent Work courses have what you need. Need tips on how to succeed in a particular Scent Work competition organization? Find what you are looking for with our Competition Venue courses. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the Scent Work University all about Scent Work Podcast. We're so delighted that you're here. The purpose of this podcast is to discuss what the title says all things Scent Work. We're hoping that you'll find this podcast helpful. We'll answer some of the questions you may have about the activity of Scent Work. In some of our series, we're also going to be giving you a behind-the-curtain look as far as what happens at trials, what your instructor may be going through, as well as some tips that you may have as both a competitor as well as an owner of a dog where you just want to broaden their horizons. All right. Let's get started. I wanted to take a quick second just to introduce myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I am the Owner and the Lead Instructor for Scent Work University as well as Dog Sport University. I've been training dogs professionally since 2011. I am certified through the Karen Pryor Academy of dog training. I'm also a certified Nose Work instructor through NACSW. In addition to training dogs professionally for a number of years, I am also privileged to be the judge and CSD coordinator with United States Canine Scent Sports which is a Scent Work competition organization that was started in 2016. We are growing very rapidly in the United States and looking to grow internationally as well. In addition to that, I am also an AKC fully approved judge for Scent Work. I also participate in a AKC Scent Work trials as a score room person as well as a competitor. I come at this from a variety of different standpoints as not only an instructor and a professional trainer, but also as an official and a coordinator of officials and also one of the backstage people for competitions. I view Scent Work from a variety of different viewpoints. I think that it can help me in helping you have a very well-rounded approach to Scent Work. It's just a really quick rundown for me. All right. Let's get started with our podcast. In today's podcast, we're going to be talking about a very important topic. That relates to battling your ego. This will be in the context of Scent Work and Scent Work competitions. We're coming at this from the standpoint of not only a competitor but also an instructor and even an official. This is, hopefully, going to be helpful to all those different categories of people who may be involved in the activity of Scent Work and the competition element as well. The first thing that I wanted to really underline when we're talking about this really important topic that's almost an elephant in the room is it's crucially important for us as handlers to understand that when we are doing Scent Work competitions, we are doing this on behalf of our dogs meaning that we are the ones who sign the checks, we are the ones who bring them to the trial site, we are the ones who signed them up. Your dog isn't the one making these decisions. You are. As such, it's really important for us to understand that we hold a lot of responsibility as the teammate in how we conduct ourselves and how we hold ourselves together mentally and how we cope with the competition stressors overall. This is why battling your ego is a really important thing that I don't think too many people give enough credence to. The fact of the matter is almost everyone is going to reach this point at some point in their competition career where you may have been very lucky in the beginning parts of your training. This is pretty common where in the lower levels, you're getting guesses left and right, you're getting lots of cues and lots of pretty ribbons and everything is fabulous. Then, suddenly, it all comes to a screeching halt. You get your first no or maybe you get a couple of no's. Now, you're not getting cues. Particularly, if you're working with a group of friends or if you're working with classmates who may also be trialing at the same time, maybe they got a yes where you got a no or you happen to see colleagues or friends going out and saying like, "Oh, I got this awesome title and, oh, we did this." Then, you see other posts like I got the first ever yada-yada. This is where the human brain starts getting involved in really negative ways. It starts weaving in all these insecurities, self-worth issues, and questions about, well, now, I need to get this cue not because I'm trying to make memories with my dog, not because I'm trying to test my training, not because I'm trying to have a good time with my dog because I need this because this shows that I'm a good person. This shows that I'm a good trainer. This shows that I'm a good competitor. This shows that I'm a good dog honor. That shift is something that almost everyone will go through in some point of their competition career. It's crucial that you recognize it as early as you can. Then, get the car back on the road because if you stay on that path, it's going to diminish the quality and the fun of the activity. You are going to diminish your ability to be a very good teammate to your dog. You could actually be putting both of you into situations that you're not ready for. You could be discounting the importance of actually training and practicing. You could just be taking away all the fun. You could actually be making it miserable for both yourself and dog. The point of this podcast is to touch upon some of these hot topic issues that can be really uncomfortable for some of us to talk about, but is very crucial for us to realize and to understand that if you're going through this, I've been through it. Almost every competitor at some point has. You just have to recognize it and then figure out how you can get back on track. One of the ways that we can help ourselves as competitors is we can have a really honest discussion as to why it is that we're competing in the first place. For me, personally, I am a horrible sore loser. It's really bad. When I was a child, I would play a lot of card games with my family. I was very young. They were all experienced and more often than not, I would lose. In the beginning, I would throw fits. I mean it was terrible. It's really bad. I didn't like the way that felt. I completely swapped it. I put it on its head. I would throw games on purpose because I felt like I had a little element of control. Then, it didn't make me feel so bad. That's not really a great coping mechanism for it. It would have just been better to learn not to be a sore loser, but that's how I dealt with it. Knowing that when I came into the dog sport realm, I avoided it as long as I could. I really did. I was a professional trainer for a while. I would just say, "Oh, my dog isn't appropriate and whatever." My first Doberman was fairly ... he was dog aggressive. He was not dog reactive. He was dog aggressive. They're like, "Oh, we can have you. We could lend you our dog." I was like, "Oh, no. That's okay." But in the back of my mind, I was like, "I don't want to do this, because I don't want to feel that way." I know at some point I'm not going to do well. I don't want to feel a little gross about it. It did fall into it with my new Dobie who is wonderful. He's extraordinarily talented. He makes me look like I know what I'm doing. I remember our first real competition thing that we were doing consistently was Barn Hunt. He was fabulous. I mean he was just spectacular. As with most sports, the lower levels, it's not that they're easy, but you're able to go along. You're able to accrue a lot of Q's fairly quickly. We did that. It felt great. I was like, "Oh, look at the pretty little ribbon and oh look he gets a little couple letters after his name." How exciting. But I was just thinking, "Oh it's not that big of a deal like, oh, we're just having fun." That's what I would try to convince myself where in the back of my mind, I was waiting for that ever-present this was all going to fall apart at some point. Sure enough, we entered into a senior class. It was the first time that we got it a "No". I came out of the ring. We held our party. Everything was fine. I was like, "Okay." Well, just no biggie. Whatever else, also realizing that senior for barn hunt is one of the hardest elements to go into from the lower levels. It's a big jump from open to senior basically. Then we went back for our second run. We got another "No". I can honestly tell you that second run I was so stuck in my head about that first run. I wasn't reading my dog. I wasn't going along the ring the way that was supposed to. I was distracted. I was so stressed. It affected our ability to do it. Then, I just started making mistakes left and right. I wouldn't practice anymore. Then, we just show up for trial. Then, lo and behold, we would get another no. It was a nightmare. It was just awful. The whole time I'm sitting there going I can't believe this. I teach barn hunt. I can't have "No's" which is a ridiculous statement because the last time I checked I'm not a robot. I am a person who has flaws, who makes mistakes. I am not perfect by any stretch. It started snowballing from there. I finally caught myself when I wasn't going to practice anymore. I wasn't able to teach because my neck and my back issues acted up, but I wasn't even taking him just to have fun. We went for months, almost six months, without doing any Barn Hunt, one of his favorite activities ever, simply because I was all caught up in the, ,well, we don't have our senior title. I was like, "Who cares?" Last time I checked, like no one's knocking on my door saying, "Santos, why don't you have your senior title?" No one cares. It was something I had to go through. I just had to really sit down and evaluate and say, "Okay. Look. My dog loves this activity." It's a very big jump from open to senior. You have to be more present as a teammate when you're doing this. I need to not be all hung up. The fact that we got some "No's", "No's" that we earned really. I earned. He did his job. He found all the rats. I just never called them. While this isn't specifically for Scent Work, I'm hoping that I can demonstrate that this happens to everyone that at some point in your competition career, you're going to get a no. Particularly in the realm of Scent Work, a lot of times when we call false alerts, it's because of us. It's because of the handler. We convinced the dog of, "Oh, look, I'm staring at this chair." The dog is like, "Well, there's no odor there." But maybe when I play this of a game, I don't know, maybe you change your game, but you really like it when I sit. I'm going to sit here. I'm going to look for my cookie. Then, we get all flustered and mad. Then, we try to blame the dog when actually they were just cuing off of us. It's really crucially important for us as handlers to understand the importance and the weight that we hold as a teammate. That means we have to have our head screwed on right when we are actually going in to compete. Now, I can hear you saying, "Okay. Well, that's all fine and dandy." But what about what other people think? I don't want to readily admit it, but I really do care what other people think. Particularly all the instructors and the other officials out there raising their hands like, yeah, there's no way that I can show my face if my dog can't get X title. No one's going to want to learn with me anymore. No one's going to take my classes. No one's going to be at my business. I need to be up on my game. I need to be perfect at all times. I understand the concern. I truly do. There were times where I was like, "Oh, I just …" It's a good thing that my neck and my back went out because I can't teach barn hunt anymore. One of my students are like, "What?" I'm like, "Well, I haven't gotten these titles. Clearly, I have no idea what I'm doing." She's like, "Of course. You do. What are you talking about?" We saw your run. He was having so much fun. He found the rats. Then, we learned from you that we need to not do that, that we need to understand our importance as handlers. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be an instructor anymore, but that's something that a lot of people go through where they're pushing themselves and they're pushing their dogs in this attempt to be perfect so that they can maintain their ability to hold on to their clients because they feel as though if I falter even a little bit, then, everyone's going to leave me. A shout out to all of my fellow instructors and officials. Your students more often than not are not just with you because of what you achieve. That may have been how they found you, to be blunt, but it's really the connection that you make with them. By showing that you aren't perfect, you're actually helping them because it's setting realistic expectations. I cannot tell you how heartbreaking it is to see students come to me for brand-new, never had them before. They've been struggling and really falling apart as a team with them and themselves in their dog because they see all these posts. They're always so lofty on social media. We've only been training for two seconds, but now, we have the highest title and blah-blah-blah-blah. They're trying to emulate that as much as they can. Sure enough, it doesn't work. Sure enough, there's a lot of problems that come along with it. Now, they're just at their wit's end. They go, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong with my dog," which is heartbreaking. There's nothing wrong with either one of them. Everyone learns differently, and everyone has a different way of approaching things which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. For my fellow instructors and officials, if you have a student who's with you right now and they are showing progress, they actually can see that paying you their money and you are helping them and they're happy with that, it's the human connection that you're making with them. They're not just going to abandon you because you went to a trial and maybe didn't queue and everything. It feels like that at the time, I understand, but it's not true. We need to as professionals remind ourselves of that because we're putting all the undue pressure on ourselves, but I can tell you that that does bleed over to our students that if we're putting that high almost unattainable expectation on ourselves, we are then transferring that to our students which is entirely unfair. On the same wavelength is the idea of always wanting to be the first. Now that AKC Scent Work is available for people to enter into trials which is fabulous, more trialing opportunities, more opportunities people play is great, but now, there's this mad rush. I want to be the first to get this title. I want to be the first to get that title. Personally, I think that is a fool's errand. It's not to talk down on people who do that. If you do that, but you do it consciously and you recognize that if something was happening in your training that you needed to address first. If it wasn't going along the way that you wanted to, then, it's not going to be the end of the world than I guess. But, often times, none of those considerations are being made. I would urge people instead to always ask themselves why are you competing. Why are you doing this in the first place? Why are you spending your money? Why are you getting up so early on a weekend? Why are you calling around all this stuff in your car so you can have it set up at the trial site? Why are you doing all this training in preparation? Why are you travelling to the trial site? Why are you going through all the stress that just comes along with trialing? What is the purpose? At the end of the day, you really should include I like doing this with my dog. If that's not part of the equation, then, maybe you want to re-evaluate things and figure out where things went awry, and how you might be able to fix it. One of the biggest ways that the ego can really get in the way of you as a competitor is trying to keep up appearances that everything that you do is perfect. This is where you can get into a competition of keeping up with the Jones'. This is where you will see trends spread like a wildfire. It doesn't mean necessarily that that trend was good, but someone sees someone else do something. Then, they start doing it. It just goes from there. This is where we have the show-me thing went from coast to coast in record time. It is the bane of almost every single official's existence like stop your dog has already told you where it is. Why are you saying show me? The same thing where you may have someone who is watching an official maybe do a debrief at a trial where they're going over, well, this was a particular owner problem. This is what we were expecting. This is what we saw. Here, I'll give you this small little tip that is extraordinarily contextual to this type of odor problem, but now the everyone is doing it for everything. It's something that we really want to be mindful of that just because someone else does it doesn't mean that that applies to you and your dog. It doesn't mean that if you don't do it, that you're somehow wrong. In the same vein of trying to keep up appearance as an appearing as though everything is perfect. All that's going to do is cause you to get really stressed out when things do go left. For anyone who has competed at any period of time at a summer trial, you know that things go left all the time. Our trials are notorious for having things happen. I give a lot of props to the people who host and the people who officiate and the people who volunteer who keep things running so smoothly for the competitors, but, oftentimes, in the back-end, there's a lot stuff going on that was not planned. But even for yourself as a competitor, how many times have one of you walked up to the start line? You have this whole plan. Maybe, it's a venue where they allow walk first. You're like, "Okay. I know that this is the way this search area is all designed. We're going to come up to the start line. We're going to be there for X number of seconds. I'm going to check my little wind flag. I have taped to my belt. Then, we are going to go left. Then, we're going to do a pattern over here. Then, if he doesn't check this out of this, I'll make sure we go there." That's your plan. You have it down to a science. You've read all the articles. You've listened to all the podcast. You're like, "This is what we're going to do. It's going to be great." You walk up to the start line. You look down. There is no flag on your belt. It's blown off in the wind. You didn't even realize. Great. You don't know where the wind is going. Okay. Fine. Well, we'll figure it out. Then, you are getting yourself all ready. You realize that your long line is horrendously tangled. I mean it is a knot. Now, you're sitting there and you're scrambling and trying to get your long line all out of knots. You're all frazzled. Now, you don't remember was I going to go left or was I going to go right? That whole time your dog is standing there at the start line going, "Yeah, the height is right across from us, whenever you're ready." But you're not paying attention to your dog. You're thinking about how you can keep appearances. You can look like the awesome handler that you know that you are. You get your long line all untangled. You give your cue for your dog to search. They try to go straight. You decide to go right. You're dragging your dog along with you. They're like, "Okay. Then, maybe we don't want to today." You're doing a pattern and the dog is like, "It's not here. I told you it's way over there." You're asking them to check over and over again. They're like, "I'm telling you, man, it's not over here. Whenever you're ready for me to tell you where it is, you just let me know." You skip the whole part across from the start line because you want to do a pattern on the other side. You're doing your pattern over there. You're doing all these lovely Vanna White's. You're doing all these movements. You're giving your dog line. You're stepping back in. You're doing all this wonderful stuff. The whole time, your dog is like, "I mean I can sniff this if you want, but there's nothing here." Then, finally, you get across from the start line and the dog gives you a beautiful alert. Now, you are circling behind them. You're checking their line. You're doing all this stuff. The dog as you're standing like, "I don't know how many times I need to tell you this." They walk off. They gave you this beautiful indication. Now, you're doing all this to check. They leave. They're like, "Oh no." Today, you're going through your mind I don't know if they showed any interest anywhere else. They really showed interest there, but I wasn't done checking. Oh, maybe we didn’t check their thresholds. Now, you go over to the threshold. Now, you get your 30-second warning. Now, you're really stressed out. It's like, "Oh my goodness." Your dog is really investigating in this corner. Lo and behold, that's where another dog had peed before. This is an exterior search. You're looking at it. You're like, "Oh wow. They're looking really hard at it. Okay. Okay." Then, you start seeing the back-end swinging, like oh that's not that kind of looking. You urge them back on. You have like 10 seconds to find this thing now. You urge your dog to go back to where the hide really is. They go. They give it a very slight indication. They're like "Yeah. For the 15th time, here it is. Do you want to maybe give me a cookie now?" You go, "Alert." The judge who is like losing their mind on the inside goes, "Yes." You go in in your reward. That's best case scenario. That whole time you are sitting there stuck in your head going, "Why is this so hard?" Then, you get the scoresheet back from the judge. It's ticked off trust your dog. Give your dog more space. Don't direct your dog so much. I mean I want to talk about how you being stuck in your head has negatively affected your search and on the feedback that you get which is totally fair is now only going to feed into your need to try to control the search even more. This is really bad cycle that just goes on and on and on. Let's take the same exact scenario. You do a walk-through. You have an idea. Then, you just take a breath. You're like, "Okay." This is what I think that we should do if my dog has not shown any signs that they've actually found the odor yet. Then, we will need to do these things, but my dog is the lead dancer They're the ones with the no's. You come up. You realize that your wind flag is gone. Don't worry. If it's windy enough, just hold out a part of your long line and see which way it goes. If you have longer hair, just take a piece of your hair out and see which way it goes. If you're really that worried about it, close your eyes and just try to figure out where the wind is going if you can. Breathe through untangling your long line. Chitchat with the judge or yourself to actually talk because talking will actually force you to breathe which is a good thing. Once it's all untangled, take a nice deep breath. Hold your dog at the start line. Then, watch their head. See where their head is actually pointed. You may have thought, "Oh, well, this whole part of the search area looks really super interesting. They must have put a hide over there." But the dog's head is pointing ahead of you, then, let them go straight. When your dog has actually shown an indication, know that even if you've trained a final alert response, it's very common for dogs to not give that final response behavior at a trial because you're stressed which they can detect which can cause them to be a little stressed, but if you know from reading your dog that they're in odor, don't ask them to confirm it 20 times because they're probably going to leave. Then, what are you going to do? For me, personally, I would rather call alert and trust my dog and get the ever dreaded no than to not trust my dog and force them to fall somewhere else. It's just a consideration for people to keep in mind as far as a possibility. But I'm hoping that you can see the difference between those two examples. Their real-life examples, they happen all the time. I've been in that situation where I walk up to a start line and everything is cool as a cucumber. I'm getting ready to switch my long way over. It is just a ball in my hand. I'm like, "Oh, it's like extension cord." You look at them wrong and they're tangled. In that moment, I feel as an instructor, well, I'm just a complete failure as a human being because my line is tangled. Now, I'm holding up the whole trial and, oh, everyone's going to hate me. It's just terrible. None of that is true. My long line is tangled. Who cares? Just take two seconds and untangle it and go from there, but these are the kinds of things that we have to keep in mind as competitors. There is a definite added stressor when you are either an instructor or an official. It just comes as a nature of the beast which means you have to be even more conscious of it. You have to work that much harder against it. One of the things that I noticed with competitors, myself included, is they are getting wrapped up in trying to be perfect. They don't have to be. There is an absolute desire to meet all the requirements and a need to meet all the requirements for the level that you're competing in. As you go up the levels, there's an expectation that handlers are going to clean up their handling such as you won't be dropping treats in the search area, such as you won't drop your leash in the search area, such as you'll have good leash handling skills at that point. You won't pull your dog inadvertently off of odor. Those sorts of things are tests of precision of being able to have some tact and skills under your belt. That's a whole purpose of having those in the upper levels of competition, but that doesn't mean that if you were to go feed your dog and little known to you, you fed one treat to their mouths, but there was another little piece stuck on your finger and you fell on the ground that you were now a failure as a person. These things happen. For me, personally, I was at a trial recently with my dog, I think, the last couple of months. He was working his exterior space. Everything was great. He found his hide. Wonderful. I called alert. They said yes. Fabulous. I feed him. As I'm going to put my hand into the treat pouch and out, it flings the treat right at the hide. I'm an official with this organization. I'm like just give me a, picked up my treat. I gave it to my dog. It happens. Being human and not being perfect is okay. Having a good sense of humor helps a lot. It's just something that I really had to improve my motor skills. I had to maybe look at the type of treats I was feeding. Maybe, the types of treats I was feeding were more prone to getting stuck on my hands and then falling out as I was trying to rush into feed. That's where being truly prepared comes into play. I find it to be extraordinarily unfair to the dogs, a level of expectation on them when we are trying to reach a certain pinnacle of our training. If we haven't put in the preparation for ourselves, that's a really convoluted way of saying if I'm not putting in the time to improve my leash handling skills to ensure that my motor skills are good, to ensure that I could actually read my dog, to ensure that I can actually break down a search area to know, okay, we have gone here, here and here, but not there, to know that, okay, what is it that I need to do as the team meet of this partnership to help my dog if they need it? When do I need to step in? When do we need to step out? All those different factors as far as being a handler is entirely unfair if I haven't practiced any of that. If I don't possess any of those skills and I'm putting 100% of the onus on the dog where I could actually be inhibiting their ability to do their job, that's just not fair. That's coupled with the fact that you're putting so much weight on your need to get this cue, need the title. Then, you have to put the time in. You have to put the preparation in. I've talked about this in my blog previously where there needs to be a balance with how often you're competing and how much you're actually practicing. I know firsthand lives are crazy. There's so few hours in the day. All of us are doing a million things at once, but if you're going to be competing particularly regularly, that means that you should be practicing regularly. I'm not talking about hours a day, but you should be doing this fairly regularly. You should be honing your skills. It's not you can't then be upset if your dog doesn't perform well, if you're not putting in the time to improve yourself. This is where having the realization that you don't have to be perfect, but that still means that you do have to practice. That's a hard thing for a lot of people to comprehend that if you realize that there are things that your dog is doing in their training that you need to work on, such as let's say that they are having difficulty with corner highs or they're having difficulty with threshold highs. We're very easy to go into dog trainer like, "Okay. Well, , we can do this and that and the other thing in order to practice for that. Perfect. But, then, if you're also viewing your videos and you notice that you're crowding your dog or you're constantly fiddling with your leash or you're never getting to the entire search area because you're not covering the whole search area, that means that you also need to do things as the handler to improve your skills. I hope that makes sense that while you do not need to weave in your own self-worth with the fact of whether you cue or not because you shouldn't do that. If you don't cue, it's simply information on what you need to do with your training going forward. That being said, that information more likely than not is going to apply not only to your dog but to yourself as a handler as well. If you do notice that there's something you need to work on, that doesn't mean that you're terrible. It doesn’t mean that you're the worst. It doesn't mean you should give it up. It doesn't mean that you should quit if you're an instructor or an official. It just means you have to work on something which isn't bad. It's the practicing and the playing of the game at home which should be the most important part to the whole thing. You are having this opportunity to play this really great game with your dog. If you can improve your relationship with them by improving your skills along the way, that's a win-win. That's not a bad thing. I hope that makes sense that while I don't want anyone wrapping up their self-worth as far as whether they get a cue or not at a trial, that doesn't mean that you then get to throw away your responsibility as the handler. You do still need to have your skills as fine-tuned as you can at the level that you're competing with. If you're brand-new as a novice, I do not expect you to have the same handling skills as someone who's competing at the elite level. It's just not. The same thing goes for all dog sports. You're not expecting someone at rally novice A to do the same thing as someone who's doing their arch competition for competition obedience. It's just not the same, but that doesn't mean also that the person who's competing at the highest level then just gets to use an excuse why they shouldn't also hone their skills. I hope that makes sense and understanding that if you're really hitting up a wall for your training where you're frustrated all the time, the dog seems really losing their enthusiasm for the game, everything seems just monumentally difficult, it very well could be that your ego is getting in the way that it is clouding your judgment as far as viewing what actually needs to be worked on both on the dog side and your own. Then, it could be causing you to destroy the reason why you want to compete in the first place. I'll end by sharing a wonderful thought that a colleague shared with me which I can't take any credit for. This is not mine at any point, but it is brilliant. She said that she goes into every single trial when she goes into it and when she leaves. How am I going to have fun today is how she goes into it. Then, when she ends did I have fun today. How brilliant is that because that is the whole point of doing this. This is a game. While earning titles and earning ribbons is fabulous and the accomplishments can be really quite amazing and really someone to be respected, that's not the end all and be all of everything. It's the fun that you're having with your dog. It's the memories that you're creating with them because they're not with us long enough. That's the more important piece to this. Make sure that when you are doing any type of competition, but particularly with Scent Work that you are doing it for the right reasons and that you are having fun. How are you going to have fun at this trial? When the trial is over, did you actually have fun? Those are two really great tests that you can give yourself to make sure that you're just on the right track. I hope you find this podcast helpful. It's touching upon some really hot button topics that I don't think are talked about enough, but I'm hoping that they can help you as you continue in your Scent Work career particularly if you're competing. Thank you so much for listening. Happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.
In our very first podcast, we will answer the age-old question: why on Earth is Scent Work so popular?! We will also dive into answering some other intriguing questions that were posed by our students, as well as give you some ideas on how you can get started in this activity, if you haven't already. And yes, we will also go into how online dog training really DOES work. This is going to be fun, and we thank you for listening. ----more---- Want to learn more about Scent Work University? Check out our website and look over the various Skills and Competition Venue Courses we offer. You may also find our Webinars to be interesting, as well as our Scent Work-specific Blog. Looking to know more about dog sports in general, get tips on basic manners training or want to see if clicker training is for you? Check out our sister online dog training platform, Dog Sport University. You, and your dog, will be happy you did. Happy Training! PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the Scent Work University All About Scent Work Podcast. We're so delighted that you're here. The purpose of this podcast is to discuss what the title says, all things that work. So we're hoping that you'll find this podcast helpful and we'll answer some of the questions that you may have about the activity of Scent Work. And in some of our series, we're also going to be giving you a behind the curtain look as far as what happens at trials, what your instructor may be going through, as well as some tips that you may have as both a competitor as well as an owner of a dog where you just want to broaden their horizons. All right, let's get started. I want to take a quick second just to introduce myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I am the Owner and the Lead Instructor for Scent Work University, as well as Dog Sport University. I've been training dogs professionally since 2011. I am certified through the Karen Pryor Academy of dog training. I'm also a certified Nose Work Instructor through NACSW. In addition to training dogs professionally for a number of years, I am also privileged to be the judge and CSD coordinator with United States Canine Scent Sports, which is a Scent Work competition organization that was started in 2016 and we are growing very rapidly in the United States and looking to grow internationally as well. In addition to that, I am also an AKC fully approved judge for Scent Work. and I also participate in AKC Scent Work trials as a scoring person as well as a competitor. So I come at this from a variety of different standpoints as not only an instructor and a professional trainer but also as an official and a coordinator of officials and also one of the backstage people for competitions. So I've used Scent Work from a variety of different viewpoints, and I think that it can help me in helping you have a very well rounded approach to Scent Work. So it's just a really quick rundown from me. All right, let's get started with our podcast. So in our very first podcast, what I wanted to do was to put out a question to several of my students and just see what it is when they first got involved with Scent Work, what were some of the questions that they had? And the very first topic that came up was, why is it then I should choose Scent Work in the first place? And then we had a couple of derivative questions that came from that. So in this podcast, that's exactly what we're going to be talking about. Why is it that someone would want to choose Scent Work, in all the various things you now have available to you to choose to do with your dog? Well, the benefits of it, and why is it that you would want to continue playing the game maybe beyond the four walls of your home and maybe actually venturing out into competition? So that's the purpose of our podcast today. We're going to be diving right in. So the first main question is, why is it that Scent Work is so popular? And there's actually several reasons for this. The first is the reason why Scent Work was created in the first place was to provide an outlet for dogs and for all dogs. So when it was first created as a sport by the National Association of Canine Scent Work, otherwise known as NACSW, it was started with the idea that all dogs would be able to do this activity. So right out of the gate you have an opening to dogs who may be reactive to other dogs, who may be environmentally sensitive, who may be blind, who may be deaf, who may have ambulatory limitations, whether they be amputees, whether they be using carts, and also that the handler themselves may have limitations, but they can actually still play in the sport. So that within itself is a very big reason why Scent Work is so popular. It's oftentimes why people start getting involved in it in the first place, is they have a reactive dog for instance. And they find out, oh, there's this activity that I can do that actually welcomes my dog. Where there are some other activities, they're just for safety purposes and for the well-being of everyone, the reactive dogs are told, “You know what? This may not be the best activity for you. It could actually make the condition worse and it could just put everyone else in danger.” So that's one of the biggest reasons why Scent Work is so popular and why people start going into it in the first place. From that jumping off point, as far as why you may get in the door, the ability to actually watch your dog be a dog is really addicting. Having our dogs actually tap into something that is so naturally innate to them, such as sniffing and hunting is an amazing thing and it can have such wonderful benefits on behalf of the dog, but it can also improve the relationship that the owner or the handler has with the dog as well. Again, just to reiterate, people oftentimes will come into Scent Work because they're looking for something for their dog to do, or it could just be that I have reactive dog and I'm looking for something, or it could just be I live in a state of the United States or wherever where I need to hibernate out of eight months of the year because the weather is really crappy. There's winter and all kinds of things. We can't go outside play ball at the time. My dog is bouncing off the walls, I need something to give them to do that will help work them out mentally and physically. And so, we can absolutely do that. Once they realize how great the activity is, they stay in it and it stays so popular because you're tapping into something that your dog is very good at anyway. Which is very addicting on behalf of the dog, obviously, but also on behalf of the handler and the owner. Because you are improving your relationship with your dog, 'cause you're watching them be a dog. And it also is that shift of when your dog is actually doing hunting, they're the one who has to take the lead. They're the one with the nose, so they're the one who has to tell you, oh, the hide is over there. You could try to detail every single inch of your house or your search area. That's not going to work really well. It's an amazing activity. There's so many reasons why it's popular, but again, people oftentimes get involved with it because they're looking for something for their doctor do. Specifically, they may be looking for something for the reactive dog, they're special needs dog, they're sensitive dog or just their dog who needs a job. And then they start really getting engaged in the activity because of all the benefits of it in addition to the fact that it allows your dog to be a dog, it helps improve your relationship with your dog and it gives you a better appreciation for just how brilliant they really are. The next question that I got from one of my students was, why is it that I personally got involved in Scent Work? And is a question that I oftentimes will ask potential officials who were interested in becoming officials with United States Canine Scent Sports, where I will be doing interviews with them as the Judge and CSD Coordinator. Is one of the first questions that I ask, how is it that you got involved with Scent Work? But I can honestly say that very few people have ever asked me. So the reason why I got involved in Scent Work is quite honestly, I had my first Doberman, Zeus, who is the reason why I became a professional dog trainer in the first place, who was not dog reactive. He was dog aggressive. If he could go and murder every dog in the world, he would, and he was wonderful with me. He taught me so much and he was my baby boy and I left him. However, I was looking for things to help improve his quality of life because our life was very sheltered. In order to keep everybody safe, he had to stay home a lot and we couldn't go for walks. We couldn't go for hikes. It just wasn't safe. And then I found out about Scent Work, so I started doing it on my own little bit. I was actually interning at a training facility, so we were involved in a class where he was in a crate surrounded by X pens and we were in literally a closet. That's where he stayed and it was very locked down and we let everybody know, don't let your dog anywhere near this area. And he would come and he had a great time. I can tell you from a personal account that it made an enormous difference in his behavior modification program where you could see that this provided him with the mental and physical outlet that he desperately needed because he was a very smart dog that we weren't able to do in other ways just because it wasn't safe. And he was calmer, he was more relaxed, he was more fulfilled. It helped improve the quality of life that he had for the five years that I had him, and it was wonderful. It had such a huge impact on his life and I became addicted right away because being able to see him work out some really complicated problems and also to learn what not to do. He taught me lots. How not to set hides, how maybe not to do training and things like that. I made mistakes with him and he was very, very forgiving with me, and that's how I got started. I got started like many people, I was looking desperately for something for my dog to do and I fell into it. I fell in love with it and I never looked back. The third question that I got from my students was, why is it that I should choose Scent Work over other dog sports? And this is a tricky question because there's two potential answers, right? The first answer is, well, why do you have to choose? You should be able to do as many dog sports as you like. And then there's reality, right? There is not only finances and time, but there's also how much head space and how many pressures you're trying to put on your own dog. I happen to have a second Doberman, Zeus passed, which was very, very sad and heartbreaking for me and at the very right time I brought in my new boy Valor who I have now. And he is bred and his whole lineage is filled with versatility dogs where they have been able to do a whole number and slew of dog sports and activities and do them very well. It's basically what they're bred to do. We do a little bit of everything together and he's totally fine with that. He can do agility one day Scent Work the next, barn hunt the next, and he could do several in the same day and he's totally fine with that. There are other dogs where if you were to try to throw that many things at them, they would become very stressed. Because everything, it's just so much pressure on one little dog. So this question is a little tricky because you have to ascertain whether or not you and your dog want to do multiple things. And if you don't want to do multiple things then it gets right to the crux of it is like, well, if I can only choose one, why is it that I should choose Scent Work? And I don't want this to become a Scent Work is better than everything else and I despise a lot of the dog sports in blue to them cause that's not true. I prefer Scent Work. I think that Scent Work is something that all dogs should participate in. Whether it just before the game or the activity itself or competition, either/or. But at the same point I do know that there are people who prefer to do other activities such as agility or obedience or dis dog or fly ball or any number of things, and that they want their dogs to do those other activities with them as well. My answer to the question basically would be, this is a very round about way of getting there. Is the thing about Scent Work that's so nice, is it can actually help improve your dog's performance in other dog sports. So if you're in a category where you could still do multiple things with your dogs and there are plenty of people who can. There are plenty of dogs would be able to do that as well. You may actually see that your dog's performance and abilities in those other sports will actually improve because they are doing Scent Work, which is a really great park. If however you're in the category or if it's just the stage of your dog's life where you have to choose one thing to do, my argument for Scent Work would be that it can improve your dog's confidence because they are basically tapping into their own abilities to work out problems. It can improve your relationship with your dog because you learn to read your dog, trust your dog, and allow your dog to take the lead. It can also give your dog both the mental and the physical outlet that they need without overly stressing their bodies. So if they are extraordinarily young, they're very young puppy or if they're senior, this can still be a really great thing for them. So if they're very young, they're very young as young puppies where they're not physically able to do some of the other things yet without you potentially hurting their growth plates or anything like that, they can still do Scent Work and not hurt anything. On the flip side, if you have a senior dog who may have done a number of different dog sports before, but now they physically cannot do those things anymore without hurting themselves. They never have to age out of Scent Work. They can do this for ever. So I'm hoping that makes a little bit of sense. I'm trying, I don't like dodging questions, but this is one word and really is tricky. It depends on what the situation is you have with your dog. Personally, if I got to a point with my boy where it wasn't safe for him physically anymore to do agility, even if he jumps really well, or he wasn't enjoying competition obedience as much or lure coursing was out or anything like that, I would still always place at work. It just wouldn't be something that would always be in our repertoire of things that we did. And I think he would be very sad if we took it out because he gets so excited when we're about to play. I mean, granted, my dog is really excited about everything, but he really gets excited about Scent Work. And if I were to take that out, I think he would be really remiss. I think he would be very upset about it. So when you're evaluating whether or not you're going to do a certain activity, personally, I would try to ascertain how long can I actually do this throughout my dog's life? Is there only a specific period of time I'd be able to do it before becomes too physically challenging for them, before it may become just too difficult, where it could actually be negatively affecting our relationship because everything is just so hard and challenging. Particularly if you're doing competition, where constantly getting harder as you go up the levels, that's when you can start seeing dogs losing their enthusiasm, losing their drive, losing their joy for it 'cause it's no longer a game, it's more of a job. For me personally, I'm trying to figure that out with my dog when I'm trying to pick what it is that we're going to do. So it's a very personal answer to a question. For me from what I've seen as an instructor, but also as a dog owner myself, Scent Work is something that you can do forever throughout the entire life of the dog. So if I had only to choose one thing, I would pick Scent Work. But again that is really a personal thing and you just have to figure out whether or not that would fit into what the lifestyles that you and your dog have. The next question I received was a really interesting one and it wasn't a question from a student myself. It was a question from one of their family members who had heard about Scent Work and had heard about the student like going on and on about it. And they just said a very typical question that I would hear when I was teaching basic obedience classes or family dog classes or things like that when I was teaching in-person classes. And the question was, I just want a well behaved dog, and you're going on and on about this whole sniffing thing. What the Scent Work do that's going to help my dog be well behaved? And it's a very fair question. If you have someone who just lets say adopted a dog, just adopted it earlier this week, their view of having a dog is, I come home, the dog is there, they haven't destroyed my house, hopefully. I will maybe let them out to go potty, I was just working all day. Maybe we throw the ball a couple of times, maybe we take a walk. They're there for bats. They're there for companionship and that's about it. It's not that this dog's life is any less wonderful than anyone else's, but that's their view of what having a dog is. A very traditional view of a pet. They hear about all his other dog sport stuff that we're talking about and they're like, I have no idea what you mean? What's all this thing like you get together on weekends and have easy ups and there's tent cities and parking lots and you travel the country and what? They just don't understand what any of that it's about. So in that view, the question is, all right, you seem to think this whole sniffing thing is great. How is that going to help my dog be better behaved? It's a very fair question. The answer is that it can help give your dog, once again, those mental and physical outlets they desperately need. Even if you are only looking for your dog to be a very well behaved pet and companion. You don't want to do all the competition stuff, you don't want to know about all the dog sports stuff, you don't want to have to study dog behavior forever in a day, you don't want this to become your entire life. You have other hobbies, you have other interests. You're looking for a companion and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. By playing very simple Scent Work games, where even you could just use food, you are allowing your dog to tap into one of the most innate instincts that they have, which is hunting. In a controlled and safe way, you can spend 10 to 15 minutes a day doing this, just using some boxes. It's totally fine, and your dog will be satisfied. It will actually take the edge off. It could prevent them from doing other destructive behaviors and things you don't want them to do, such as destroying your house, chewing up your shoes, stealing stuff, trying to make other activities to entertain their little selves because they're just as smart. When I go out and I look at Doberman puppies, I'm looking for a sport prospect. That doesn't mean that the other puppies in that litter, if they were to go with a pet person who's just looking for our companion that those puppies or any dumber, they're not. They are the same. They have the same needs. They want to be able to use their brain. They're problem solvers. They're very smart little beings, so you want to give them controlled outlets so that they don't do all the things you don't want them to do in the first place. Dog training overall can really help with that problem solving, teaching them how to learn, giving them little problems to solve that are good problems to solve. Things where they're not making up their own games such as, oh look, I steal a shoe and then I play keep away. It is really fun. The great thing about Scent Work is, it's a really simple thing that you can do as the person that can also help the dog. So to answer the question, Scent Work can help your dog become more well behaved because it can provide them with their physical and mental outlet where they are no longer acting out because they don't feel as fulfilled. And you also will change the way that you look at your dog, where you'll notice when they may need something. So as an example, one of the things I would hear from clients was, okay, I come home from work, I let the dog outside. They have to go potty. No problem. They come in, we get all ready, I get their dinner ready, I get my dinner ready, they eat, I eat, fine. Now, I just want to vegetate. I just want to watch some TV or movie. I just want to relax and the dog is bouncing off of the walls, driving me crazy. What do I do? And the great thing about Scent Work is that you could, before you start watching your TV show or your movie, you could do a really quick 10 to 15 minute Scent Work session with your dog. You could even get the kids involved. It's a safe activity for children to do as well. They could hide some things around, the dog does that then maybe end it by giving them a stuffed Kong or a bone and the dog is set, the dog is good. You can watch your movie. The dog is satisfied, everybody's happy. I just want everyone to understand even for people who have been involved in dog training for a very long time, even people who'd done competitions for a very long time, the value of Scent Work is the activity, is the game. Yes, the titles and the ribbons are fabulous. Yes, the competitions are really good. Yes, the competition organizations and the community at large for the most part is very supportive and wonderful and fabulous. All that is true. However, the bigger, better, more important aspect is the activity itself. So if every single dog on the planet, and I do mean this literally, played the game of Scent Work, things will be a lot better. So again, just to answer the question again, Scent Work can help your dog become more well behaved if you're simply looking for your dog to be a good companion because it can provide them with those mental and physical outlets that they need so they're not acting out instead. Another question I received was from a student and I thought it was a very honest question. I appreciate this question, and I think they were a little worried about submitting this question, but I think it's a good one. So the question is, I like the partnership that I experience in agility. Does Scent Work actually offer that same level of partnership? And this is something that dog trainers and dog competitors, I think I've been talking about for a while, for a number of years. Particularly, people who are coming from agility, which is an awesome activity where you really can feel a partnership with your dog. But it is entirely different from the animal that is Scent Work. And the main reason is with agility, you are telling your dog where to go. That's the whole purpose. You know the course, your dog doesn't. You're going to tell them to take the jump and do the weaves and do the A frame and so on and so forth. With Scent Work that's entirely reversed where now it's your dog is taking the lead. That's a very difficult shift for some handlers to do because they're so used to leading to being the lead dancer. It's very difficult for them to take the backseat to allow the dog to go ahead, and they perceive that as a lack of partnership. And also the way that a lot of Scent Work is advertised is that you don't even have to be in the room. You just set the dog loose. You can go be on your computer and doing something else. The dog will figure it out. They don't even need you. And that's not entirely true. Particularly as you continue going up the levels, if you are interested in competition or even if you're just interested in making things a little bit more challenging, it is a partnership sport. You do have to work together. The beauty of it is that as the handler, you actually can learn what it is that your dog has been saying all along. No longer are you requiring your dog to learn human, which they try really, really hard how to do. With Scent Work, if you want to be successful, you have to learn at least a little bit how to speak and read dog. That will only cause you to become a better handler. Any better trainer across the board, regardless of what it is you're trying to do. Because of that, you can see your dog working a space once you understand what their signals are and what everything means. And see, okay, I know that they're in odor but they can't get to it, but I also know they haven't worked the corner on the opposite side of the room and there's a window of it. So I think the odor is getting trapped over where they are, but it may actually be coming from this other corner. How do I as the handler get them over there? That's the partnership piece, where your dog is the one painting the picture and you're there going, well, what about this and what about that and what about this other thing? You can marvel at the masterpiece, but you can also help fill in these little tiny details so that it is perfect. It really is a true partnership if you allow it, and that's the tricky part. So particularly handlers who are coming from the world of agility or competition obedience or rally obedience where the whole point is for you to be the lead person. That is what's supposed to be, it's a test. Can the dog do as I direct them to do? That's the whole point of it. It's a very big shift to completely put that on it's head. Can you follow what your dog is telling you the odor is doing? Can you then read what they're reading as far as where they think the odor is going and what the odor picture may be. And can you then ascertain from a human standpoint all the different factors that could be affecting that and can you help your dog if they need it? So there's long short of it is, in case you haven't realized. I'm very good at giving very long answers. There is indeed partnership in Scent Work. It's just different. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It does. In my opinion, I think it is a higher level of partnership because it's more equal where you are listening to your dog and your dog also listens to you. It's not just a one way communication, which can be really nice. So if I've kept your attention, what you may be asking yourself now if you aren't already involved in Scent Work is, how is it exactly that I would to get started in the sniffing thing that you speak of? And there's actually a number of different ways you can do that. Obviously, Scent Work University is an online dog training platform. So we have foundations at our courses that we offer that are completely online and the way that that works is you would choose an enrollment option that works best for you, either student auditor or watcher. We have them split up in those three categories so you get to decide what works best with your schedule. Students is going to be an intensive learning option that's closely resembling an in-person group class experience. What that means is that you'll have homework assignments that you will have to submit on a weekly basis. Those will be reviewed by your instructor and you will have an interaction with them that is very similar to what you would have in an in-person course. You may also have scheduled chats or other types of online interactions with your instructor and just a more intensive experience. So if you're really gung-ho about it and you have a lot of time and you have a lot of interest, the Student option is for you. If you don't want to have to worry about all that stuff or your schedule simply won't allow it or you're just not too sure yet, a middle of the road option as the Auditor option. And with that, you have still access to all the course material as well as all the course forum. You can even post to the course forum, but you're not required to submit any homework assignments and you won't have the same level of interaction with the instructor. You can still ask questions and you will also receive not only feedback from the instructor but also from your fellow course participants, which can be really helpful. The final category are Watchers and the whole purpose a watcher, why it is you'd want choose that option is if you want to have more of a self taught approach where you didn't have to worry about time at all. If you know that your life is really crazy and super hectic or if you just want a more laid back approach. Every single option has access to all the course material for a full year. Even if there are updates made to the lessons themselves or there's change to handouts or videos or anything else, you have access to all that stuff for a full year. As a Watcher you can come and go as you please. You can see everything including the forum, but you can post to it. So if you're brand new to online dog training, I would urge you to maybe start as a watcher in a course that you're somewhat interested in to see if it's going to fit with your learning style. To see if it's something that you would actually be interested in. To see whether or not you'd be able to apply what we're showing you to, what you actually need to do with your dog. Now that being said, we try our best with how we have designed Scent Work University to apply to every single learning style possible. So people who learn by seeing people who learn by doing, people who learn by a combination. We offer videos and schematics and handouts and text and narration and we try to really give our learners as much information as possible. So that's one option, is where you would be able to start with Scent Work by signing up for our introduction to Scent Work course as a student, an auditor, or a watcher. Now, if you happen to have a Scent Work constructor in your area, you're absolutely more than welcome to take a look at an in-person group training course. The great thing about in-person group training courses is it gives your dog at opportunity to work in that kind of space. Now, personally, I prefer the courses that are set up where the dogs are all within crates and they all have their own turn in the space individually. I prefer that approach because again, this activity is open to reactive dogs. So if you have all the dogs visible to one another and they're all out waiting for their turn, it can get really stressful for the dogs. And I'm also a really big person. I'm all in to safety, so the more safe that we can set things up, the better it can be. However, there are those people and dogs who just wouldn't do well in a group class environment and there's a whole slew of reasons why that can happen. You can be worried about self esteem issues, you can just be worried within the group, you could be coming at it from a totally different standpoint as far as your experience level and doing dog training. And your dog could just be like, yeah, no, I'm not going to work in this kind of space. Whether it is because they're reactive or they're environmentally sensitive or they just don't want to. They're like, yeah, no. There are other dogs here, I don't feel like playing today. So there's a bunch of different things that you can do. You can do online, you can do, in-group classes and if you happen to have instructor in your area, they may also be able to do in-person private classes with you as well where they can come to your house, show you how to set it up and then maybe they can come once a month or something just to see how you're doing. There's a lot of different ways you can get started. What you want to figure out is what it is that you want to do at the end of the day. If you're just interested in figuring out the game, an introduction is that recourse really can be the end all and be all. You can just keep doing those types of exercises for now into ever and that's totally fine. If you wanted to branch out a little bit, you still weren't interested in competition but you wanted your dog to try some other things, they may be doing something like an introduction to set our course and then for Scent Work University, we offer exterior's and vehicles with primary. Meaning that we're still just using food or he can use a novel odor such as birch, anise or clove. If you still wanted to go further than that, then for Scent Work University we offer our advanced skills just using primary, meaning food or you can start going into, well now my dog is going to find birch. Now my dog is going to find anise and now my daughter's is going to find clove. And we start introducing more complicated problems for them to try. It's all about what you want to do, what is your goals are and what is it that you want your dog to do? So there's a lot of different options and things that you can try. Now I know that I talk a lot about Scent Work University because that is our business. That is the whole platform that we're trying to talk about and also promote. But with that, I think a common question that people ask is as soon as you tell them, “Oh yeah, no, all of our courses are online.” They kind of look at you and go, “Hmm, does online dog training really work?” And it's a really fair question, right? Because when you think about dog training, you think about someone either coming to your house or you going to a class and doing it. The great thing about online dog training is that yes, it does indeed work. Anyone can have access to it. So for myself personally, I'm originally from the East Coast of the United States. I've recently, over the last couple of years, moved to the West Coast of the United States. That's thousands of miles apart from one another from the two places that I used to live in where I live now. There are really great trainers on both coasts. I obviously only have access to one group of those trainers at any given time and that's really super frustrating. There are days where I want to work with an east coast trainer and I'm on the west coast and vice versa. It's really super frustrating. With online dog training, I can tap into all those really great instructors and I can work with them at any given point. I can have them put together a course and I can tap into that amazing knowledge that they have and apply it right then and there, even if they're thousands of miles away, which is fabulous. In regard to Scent Work itself, there aren't Scent Work instructors in every single town in every single state or in every single country. This is becoming an international activity, which is wonderful, but it is still growing and there's no instructors everywhere. So if you're in an area where there isn't an instructor online dog training gives you access to those people where they could actually get you started. As far as whether or not online dog training works at all, it all depends on how you approach it. With Scent Work University, our goal when I created it was to provide an opportunity to do as much learning with their dogs as possible. I no longer can teach in person because I have very serious neck and back issues. I literally had to retire from training, but I didn't want to give it up. That's why I started this. I started this because I still want it to be able to teach and I still want to be able to have people learn and improve their relationship with their dogs, but it couldn't do it in person. There are days when I never can get out of bed, so that's where all of this is starting from. It's not starting from just, oh we'll give you a little bit of information, hope for the best. We're trying to quite literally transfer what we've done in-person and making that into a virtual experience. Some of the advantages of online dog training is you're able to go through the material at your own pace. For things that I teach, as you can tell with this podcast, I'm pretty long winded. I try to give as much information as I can and I oftentimes will just go over. I will provide more information that anyone could ever want. The great thing about online training is that you can go through it once, you can go through a 20 times, you can pause it, think about it for a little bit and go back. You can watch a video 20 times if you have to. You'll have handouts, you'll have links to helpful resources. You can build off of the core lessons as much as you want to or as little as you want to. The other great thing about online dog training is that it doesn't have the same kind of competitive nature that an in-person dog training class can sometimes cause. And this isn't something that happens on purpose, it's just human nature and I would see it in every single course that I would teach where people and dogs will progress at different rates. Just like with people, dogs learn differently. They all have strengths, they all have weaknesses. But in every single class there would be at least one or two people who'd be really upset because their dogs weren't doing as well as some other dog, even though that other dog wasn't doing as well in another completely different skill that their dog was. They wouldn't recognize that fact. They just all like, “Oh, my dog isn't doing it as fast that dog, what's wrong with us?” And then they would try to rush and then they would try to get into this whole competitive spirit that can really cause you a lot of trouble later on. The great thing about online dog training is you don't have to fall into that trap. You can focus on you and your dog and what you both need and if you have to modify an exercise 20 different ways to Sunday to make it work, you can do that and not feel as though, oh no, I'm the only one doing that. I would still commend people for doing that in class. But there's a whole peer pressure thing, right? So there's a whole slew of advantages to using online dog training and it does indeed work. I have students who have improved tremendously in only taking one course. It's all about how much you put into it and what is you're looking to get out of it. So I hope this inaugural podcast was a little helpful. I know we covered a lot of different topics in a really short period of time, but the whole purpose of this is just to teach everyone a little bit about what Scent Work is all about. And as we go forward, as I discussed before, we are going to be getting into the nitty gritty of tips on how you can tackle certain aspects of Scent Work. We'll also be giving you a behind the curtain look as far as what happens at trials, what happens as far as being an official at a trial. And then I'll also give you some feedback as far as being a instructor. And I just, I think it's helpful for everyone to see the activity of Scent Work from as many different perspectives as possible, just so that we can have a really well rounded view. Thank you so much for listening to us today. I really appreciate it. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.
SHOW NOTES: Summary: Stacey Barnett is an active competitor in nose work, tracking, obedience, rally, agility, and barn hunt and the host of the Scentsabiities podcast, but scent sports are her primary focus and her first love. Links mentioned: www.scentsabilitiesnw.com Scentsabilities Podcast on iTunes Next Episode: To be released 4/14/2017, featuring Julie Daniels. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast, brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today, we'll be talking to Stacy Barnett. Stacy is an active competitor in nose work, tracking, obedience, rally, agility, and barn hunt and the host of the Scentsabiities podcast, but scent sports are her primary focus and her first love. Welcome to the podcast, Stacy. Stacy Barnett: Hi, Melissa. How are you? Melissa Breau: Good. Good. How are you? Stacy Barnett: I'm doing very good. Thank you so much. Melissa Breau: Yeah, I'm excited to talk today. To start us out, can you just tell us a little bit about the dogs you have now and what you're working on with them? Stacy Barnett: Sure. I have three dogs currently. I have a seven-and-a-half-year-old rescued Labrador-ish dog named Judd. Judd, he's my elite dog, my NACSW. That's National Association of Canine Scent Work. He's my lead dog, and we're competing at that level. He's the one that really kind of got me started in the nose work and really made me very passionate about the sport. I also have Joey. Joey is a nine-year-old standard Poodle, and Joey taught me all about building motivation into my training methods, and Joey is at the NW3 level, and I have Why. Why is a mini Aussie. He is about five years old. He has very, very little confidence. He's a rescue. He's got a lot of baggage, and you know, he's really taught me how to build confidence into the way I teach. Melissa Breau: Did you start out in nose work? How did you originally get into dog sports? Stacy Barnett: So how I got into dog sports, actually, I spent a lot of years...you know, I was a horse trainer for a while. I rode in dressage. Melissa Breau: I Didn't know that. Stacy Barnett: Yeah. Yeah. I was really big into horses. Loved horses. I still love horses, but they're just a little bit too expensive for me, which, I know, they're walking money pits, and so I'm a little bit of a frustrated horse trainer. I've had dogs my whole life, and I love training things. So I'm like, well, if I have a dog, I'm going to train it. Then it just kind of went from there. It just seemed to be a very natural transition. I just love doing it. You know, I love the training aspect, what it does for the relationship that you have with the animal, and I enjoy competing. Melissa Breau: What was the first dog sport you dove into? Stacy Barnett: Oh, the first dog sport, I would say it was probably a little bit of agility. I did start out with a little agility, a little bit of rally, not successfully. I don't have a successful past in any of the sports. You know, nose work's really it for me. Melissa Breau: Well, what led you to specialize in nose work? Obviously, being good in it is a big plus, but what led you down that path? Stacy Barnett: I have to say it was a little bit of a whim. I decided, you know what, hey, I'm going to try nose work, and I tried it with Judd, and he gravitated to it, and I just saw this passion come out of this dog, a dog that...you know, he's got a nickname. I call him fragile little flower. He's a washout, and I'm saying that in a very loving way, but he's a little bit of a washout in a lot of the other sports. I tried all these other sports. He's got some titles, but he was really only doing the sports because I wanted him to, and it was to please me. When we got into nose work, he just kind of was like, wow, I really love doing this, and to see my dog so passionate about a sport and so...you know, this inner drive, this inner excitement, this inner desire to do the sport, it made me passionate about it, and then I saw, with my other dogs, the benefits that nose work provides, and it's just become something that...you know, I eat, sleep, breathe nose work at this point. Melissa Breau: So you kind of mentioned the benefits in there. I know that nose work's often referred to as confidence building. Is that what you're alluding to? Stacy Barnett: Yes. Yes. Nose work is not only a confidence builder. It can also help reactive dogs. Nose work itself is very reactive-dog friendly in those venues because the dog doesn't have to work within eyeshot or earshot of another dog. They get to work on their own. However, it really does help from a confidence perspective. The sense of smell is actually pretty amazing. It goes through the limbic system, which means that it goes through the hippocampus and the amygdala. So the amygdala is kind of the fight or flight area, and the hippocampus is responsible for developing those early memories. So what happens is, is that the dog is scenting, and the dog is using about one-eighth of his brain with scenting, and this is all going through this system that's responsible for emotion and responsible for memory. If we can develop this positive feeling toward sensing and toward scent, we can actually help to put the dog into a really good space so that they can work, and also, you know, as long as you're working the dog under threshold, the dog is able to continue to work and will actually become more confident over time and actually less reactive over time. I saw this particularly with my little dog, Why. When he came to me, he could not work at all away from the house. He was also fairly reactive to other dogs. Had about 100-foot visual threshold to seeing other dogs. Now, through nose work, he has developed a lot of confidence. He's now able to search in novel environments with very little acclimation, and he's also quite a bit less reactive. He's got about an eight-foot visual threshold now to other dogs, which I think is absolutely amazing. So the behavioral benefits, especially for a dog like Why, they're off the charts. Absolutely off the charts. Melissa Breau: I hadn't realized that part of that was tied into the actual areas of the brain and some of the science behind that. That's really kind of neat. Stacy Barnett: Oh, it's fascinating. It's absolutely fascinating, and also, if you have a dog that has a lot of energy or a dog that might be a little bit on the hyper side, it's really a fantastic way to get them a little on the tired side, because they're using so much of their brain. They also have a tendency to be less reactive in the moment because an eighth of the brain of the dog is being used at the time, so they're a little bit less focused on what they see and what they hear. Melissa Breau: I was going to say nose work seems like it's really unique just even in the sense that most sports, we really want the dog focused on what we're telling them to do, and it's really dog led, right? Stacy Barnett: Oh, it is. It is. It is, and you know, when I tell my students when they're handling, I say try to think of it as 80 percent dog / 20 percent handler. You're in there, and you have responsibilities for the search, but the search is really driven by the dog. We use something called scent theory, right? But again, it's just theory. So although we have ideas of what scent does, we really don't have a perfect representation of what scent does except by watching the dog, because dogs are able to... I don't know if you know this, but they're able to scent directionally, which actually means that, you know, with a human, we can hear directionally. So if I'm talking to you, you know if I'm in front of you or behind you. Dogs are able to do this with their nose, so they really have to drive the search. This is something that we're not able to get in there and be involved in this, but at the same time, we have to make sure that we're covering the search area, and we have to interpret our dog's body language, because we have to be able to say is the dog at source and call alert so that we can get credit for that hide. So it does require a lot of teamwork, but it is driven by the dog. Absolutely. Melissa Breau: And you mentioned reading your dog's body language. I feel like that, in and of itself, is such a valuable thing for people who have dogs who are behaviorally challenged in whatever way. Stacy Barnett: Yes. Yes. Melissa Breau: So I don't have official figures, but at least anecdotally, it seems like nose work is one of the fastest-growing dog sports out there. Do you agree with that? Is that accurate from your perspective? Stacy Barnett: It's growing at a pretty good clip, yeah. Last figure I heard with the NACSW, I think there are, like, 15,000 dogs registered at this point. Melissa Breau: That's kind of incredible. I mean, I'm a Treibball competitor, and I can see just, comparatively speaking, nose work has taken off in a huge way. So I was wondering if you could give us a 10,000-foot view for people not involved in the sport, maybe what venues are out there, anything else that people should know if they're just learning about the sport or just starting to become interested? Stacy Barnett: Oh, certainly. Certainly. Essentially, what the dog is looking for is essential oil, and what we typically use, we use scented Q-tips. So the dogs are able to actually source or actually find these scented Q-tips, and they're hidden. We call those hides. They could be hidden in a number of different elements, and depending upon which organization you're competing in, you might have different elements, and these are just basically different searches that the dog has to do. The searches could be inside a building. It could be outside a building. You know, in some venues, you might have to search vehicles, although we never actually search the interior of the vehicles. We're just searching the outside of them, or you can be searching containers. So containers could be boxes. It could be luggage, or in some venues, they're even burying or starting to bury the scent in the ground, and the dog has to be able to locate the source of scent and then to communicate the location of that to the handler. What we do is we train the dogs very similarly to the way like drug detection dogs are trained. So it's kind of like having your very own pet detection dog, which is a lot of fun. It's really a lot of fun. I mean, as an aside, I was driving down the road the other day, and I saw a couple of police cars pulled over, and I saw somebody putting a Labrador into the back of a vehicle or a policeman putting a Labrador into the back of a vehicle, and I'm like, oh, I know what you're doing. It's kind of exciting. Melissa Breau: Right. Right. In terms of venues or organizations, what does that look like right now for the sport? Stacy Barnett: So that's also growing. So probably the largest organization in the United States currently is the National Association of Canine Scent Work, or NACSW. That's a very large organization. I compete a lot in that organization as well. In the United States, we also have the United Kennel Club, or the UKC, that also has their own version of scent work. AKC is coming out with a version. The trial should be available starting in October of this year. We have organizations popping up worldwide. We have an organization in Canada, which is SDDA. They use, you know, some slightly different odors, and there's a handful of other venues. So, basically, if you want to do nose work, there's something out there and available for you, and it's just growing. Melissa Breau: Is there a lot of crossover between the different venues? Like if you train in one, is it possible to compete in others, or is that difficult to do? Stacy Barnett: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I've competed in NACSW. I've gone up to Canada. I've competed in SDDA. I've done a little bit of UKC, and I'm a Performance Scent Dogs judge. That's another organization that's also growing. I compete there. Most of the organizations will use a lot of the same odors. Some of them use slightly different odors, but it's very easy to get your dog onto a new odor. That's a very easy thing to do, but essentially, at the core of it, the dog is still searching. The dog is still identifying, you know, the location of the hide, and it's still communicating that location to the handler. So although there are small nuances between differences between the organizations, they're all pretty much consistent. Melissa Breau: So you mentioned AKC's new program, and congrats. I hear you've been approved as a judge. Stacy Barnett: Thank you. Melissa Breau: What do we know about the program so far? You mentioned they're starting up in October. Stacy Barnett: It's a new program. The preliminary rules and regulations are out there. There's still I think some discussion about the fourth odor, which right now is identified as peppermint, although I think they're still trying to decide, I think, if that's going to be the final odor. I've heard some things that they might be reconsidering that, but otherwise, it's still the same first three odors as a lot of the other organizations, the birch, anise, and clove. The AKC also is going to have buried hides. So this is where, at the novice and at the advanced level, the hides are actually going to be buried in dirt in a container, and the dog has to be able to pick out the right container. At the higher levels, they're going to have a larger area, and it just might be outside, and the hides will be buried up to eight inches deep into the ground for the dogs to be able to find. They have that. They also have, as a part of the AKC program, is handler discrimination, which is, essentially, the dog is looking for the handler's scent, which is, you know, trained very similarly to looking for an essential oil, but it requires some different skills for that, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I think it's going to provide a lot more trialing opportunities for folks and open up a lot more doors for a lot of dogs. Melissa Breau: Obviously, just AKC's marketing program, in and of itself, is so much more robust than any individual organization can easily manufacture, so hopefully that'll give the sport an additional boost, too. I heard a rumor that there's a new FDSA class in the works, specifically to prep competitors for the new AKC program. What do you know about that? Stacy Barnett: Well, funny that you ask. I was working on a syllabus for one of them this morning. We're actually taking a look at the whole program, and we think of FDSA nose work as preparing the competitor for nose work regardless of what venue you compete in. So we're not focused on just one specific venue. So in order to prepare our students also for AKC, we're going to be making some key changes to our program and adding material. There are a couple different classes that are in the works for April that people can register for come registration that has to do specifically with AKC. I'm doing one that's going to be Introduction to AKC Scent Work, and in that class, what we're going to be doing is actually practicing each of the different elements and learning how to do buried hides and learning how to really, you know, work the dog using the challenges that AKC is going to provide, and all within the guidelines of AKC, and Julie Simons is going to be doing a really great class on handler discrimination, because she has an OTCH. So she's done a lot of scent discrimination work. So she's able to actually take her obedience side and bring a lot of that experience to the table as well. So we're going to have a class on handler discrimination, and then we're also going to be looking at our core classes and saying what do we need to do to help to make those more applicable to people who want to also trial in AKC? So there's a whole lot of stuff going on with that, and I think it's really going to position our students and really put them into a good position to be able to take advantage of AKC. Melissa Breau: I think Denise had mentioned the goal is to offer enough classes between now and October that, theoretically, FDSA students could be competing when the first trials are available in October. Is that right? Stacy Barnett: Yeah, I think that's about right. Yeah. Melissa Breau: So my understanding now, being a nose work competitor, is that there are very common methods out there for teaching the fundamentals. Just based on my research at FDSA, you guys use operant conditioning. Can you explain a little bit what that means, and maybe what some of the other things are out there, what maybe the advantages are to that method? Stacy Barnett: Yeah. Sure. Certainly. Basically, what I want to do is preface this with all methods work. There are a lot of methods out there for teaching nose work, and I have to say that all the methods I know of are based on caring for the dog, and they're really positive in their approach. So I do want to say that all the methods work, so I'm not one to say, you know, one method works and one doesn't, but I do think that the method that we teach at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy is a fantastic method, and it does use operant conditioning. So, basically, the dog learns clarity at the get-go. They learn kind of a cause and effect relationship. They learn that putting their nose on source or on the source of an essential oil, right, the odor from the essential oil results in a cookie, or I use cookie generically. I use things like hot dog. Exactly, that's still a cookie. A hot dog cookie, but what they learn is that they learn very clear from the get-go that their action results in reward. It's a very, very clear way of teaching nose work. We also introduce hunting very early on, so they understand the discrimination to find odor. So, for instance, we'll start out with containers, and they can actually pick out the correct box with the odor in it, and then we build hunting into that approach so that the dog also learns that they have to search for it, and it's not just selecting one box out of many. One large method uses hunting for food initially, and then they use classical conditioning to pair odor with a food and then wean off the food so that they just have the odor. So all of the methods do work, and they get you to the same place, but I have to say, I think our method, it's very quick, and it's very clear to the dog, and I think, from a clarity perspective, clarity builds confidence. So I really think that the method itself has to build confidence in the dogs. The other nice thing is that, you know, as the dog goes up in levels, food is used as a distraction. So if we start the dog on odor only, the dog never feels that they can self reward on food, right? So food is already out of the equation. We don't have to teach the dog, okay, I know you've been searching for food in the past, but now food is no longer an option. So I think it's a really clear way of the dog being able to understand what's going to result in a reward and understand exactly how to play the game and how to win the game. Melissa Breau: Now, I know that a lot of the questions I came up with, because I don't compete in nose work, were a little bit beginner things. So I wanted to make sure we included something for the people out there, who are probably your number one fans, who are actually actively competing in the sport. I was curious if there's one skill or one problem that you find people having issues with again and again and what you recommend or how you typically suggest they tackle that? Stacy Barnett: So, I don't actually necessarily see a particular skill. Actually, well, I do see a skill that I see that people have a hard time with, but I'm going to talk about this in two stages. So the first thing that people are focused too much on is skills and not enough on the foundational aspects of good training, and this is just what I see in general. It's not focused anywhere specifically, but it's just what I see in general. When I teach, I use a framework, and that framework is built like a pyramid. So, at the bottom of the pyramid, the first layer is confidence. Then on top of that layer is motivation, and then the third layer of that pyramid is skill. So you don't even get to skill until you've built up a good foundation of confidence and motivation, and then the final layer of that pyramid is stamina. So what I like to do, you know, when I'm taking a look at a dog and I want to see does the dog have an issue, and what kind of problems is the dog exhibiting, I try to take a look at this framework of confidence, motivation, and skills, and stamina to try to understand where the breakdowns are occurring. A lot of the time, the breakdowns do occur in confidence or motivation, and it really isn't skills based. So when I see a dog that's struggling in nose work or having a really hard time with one thing or another, what I'm finding is it's not a skill usually. Usually, it's an issue with a motivation issue or it's an issue with the dog's confidence, either the confidence in their skills or the confidence in their environment, and I find that if you remedy these things, that then the dog is able to tap into their skillset, and they're actually able to be a lot more successful. So that's kind of the one side of things, because I like to, again, diagnose based on that framework. The other side of things, if we're going to talk about specific skills, then, that I think a lot of dogs do have a problem with, it's a fundamental skill that I think sometimes we don't pay enough attention to. Is, actually, when the dog is searching at the higher levels, they have to be able to search and source more than one hide. So what I've actually taught my dogs is once they find a hide and they get rewarded for it, that hide is essentially finished. So the dog is able to then work on the next hide, versus if we say find another, the dog might just go back to the previous hide and expect reinforcement. So there's a certain amount of training that has to be put in place so that a dog can effectively search for more than one hide. This is especially important if you're working on converging odor where the scent cones overlap and the dog might have to work for finding multiple hides within a small area. So, by being able to give this dog this skill and if the dog has the skills, they're able to find a hide, search, find another hide, search, find another hide without being enticed back to an original hide, and I find that that's a really core skill that is really essential for being successful at all the levels. Melissa Breau: Well, I'd imagine that's something that's incredibly hard to teach, because you're rewarding the dog for a behavior and then expecting them not to repeat it. Stacy Barnett: It's actually not that hard to teach. Melissa Breau: Really? Stacy Barnett: Yeah, it's really not. Dogs are really smart, and we have to give them a lot of credit. Each hide has a different scent profile. So they're not only looking for birch, anise, or clove, but they also can smell, you know, where the hide is placed. They can smell it's in a tin. How much QuakeHold is used? A magnet, a Q-tip, everything. So there's a whole scent profile associated, and they realize that once they get rewarded at that hide, that hide, yes, it's valuable, but the next hide is even more valuable. So we teach them to actually go to the next hide as being something even more valuable, and then they start to realize through training that a previous hide is no longer valuable. So it's really just working with the value that you place on what's going to be reinforced and what's not going to be reinforced. Melissa Breau: To round things out, there are three questions I've asked everybody who's been on so far. I wanted to make sure we got to them. So, first, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you are proudest of? Stacy Barnett: I have to say, that has got to be quitting my job and doing full time nose work. Melissa Breau: Congratulations. That just happened, right? Stacy Barnett: It is, and I'm completely free of corporate. I just love this sport so much, that now it's my complete...you know, this is what I do for a living. I train dogs in scent detection. That, I have to say, is my biggest dog-related accomplishment because I just finally figured, hey, I have one life to live. I could either be semi miserable in my day-to-day job, or I can really embrace my passion and work on something that I love, where, I know I'm working 24/7 it seems, but I love it, and to me, that's a really big accomplishment because it also means that I can share this passion with other people, and I can share this passion with my dogs. Melissa Breau: So what does that look like? Obviously, you're teaching through FDSA. I know that you're doing some seminar work. Are you teaching locally as well? Stacy Barnett: I do. I do. I have about a dozen live in-person classes. I teach seminars. I do webinars. I write a blog. I do the podcasts. I have to say, though, that the bulk of what I do is teaching with FDSA, but this has just kind of become all encompassing, and it's really what I do, basically, day in and day out, and I absolutely love it. Melissa Breau: So, for those who may be local to you, where are you based? Stacy Barnett: New Jersey. I'm in Northwest New Jersey. Melissa Breau: Okay, and then for those who are not close to you, what's the best place to go to find your webinars, and your blog posts, and all that stuff as they come up? Stacy Barnett: So I have a website. It is www. ScentsabilitiesNW.com. I also list all my online classes there through Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Those are listed there. My webinars are listed, and my seminars schedule is listed as well. I write a blog. The blog is pretty informative and seems to be well read, and that's on my website as well. So I definitely recommend that, or just contact me. I'm on Facebook. I love chatting with people, so go ahead and reach out to me, and I can point you in the right direction. Melissa Breau: So the next question here is usually my favorite of the whole interview, which is what's the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Stacy Barnett: I have to say the most impactful part is, actually, I have to credit Denise with this. It's training the dog in front of you. It is so easy to take a dog and try to apply a recipe to it and try to train each dog the same way, but that's just not going to work. You know, even when I look at my own dogs, each one of my own dogs is such an individual. Judd's kind of a rock star, but he has a little bit of a fragile past. Joey had some motivation issues. I had to really work through some really big motivation issues with him. Why comes to me with a whole history, whole baggage behind him, and he had to really learn how to be confident. So in order to set out the way I was going to train each dog, I had to understand what that dog came to the table with and what kind of history the dog has. So understanding where the dog that you're working with as a starting point can really help you figure out what is the path forward. So I think that that's probably the best piece of training advice I've ever had. Melissa Breau: And our last question, who is someone else in the dog world that you look up to? Stacy Barnett: There are many, many, many people. I have to say, from a detection side of it, I really look up to Randy Hare. He's a professional detection trainer, and I have his DVDs. I watch his DVDs. I've learned a ton from him. At some point, I would love to be able to work with him in person. You know, just learning a lot from him. I look up to him. That's on a detection side. On the other sports, I have to say, every single instructor at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy I look up to, because I started out as a student. I didn't start out as in instructor. So I've learned so much from each and every one of the instructors, and all of that information, all of that knowledge, I've been able to transfer and translate a lot of that into how I teach nose work. So I just find that there's so many people, that I really can't identify just one person, you know, people that I look up to. Melissa Breau: Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Stacy. I really appreciate it. Stacy Barnett: Well, thank you for having me. Melissa Breau: Absolutely. It was great to dig a little bit into nose work, and hopefully we'll do some more nose-work-focused stuff in the future — and for our listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll be back in two weeks with Julie Daniels, one of the foremost names in dog agility in the US. She was one of the early champions of the sport and helped many clubs throughout the country get up and running. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!
Join me for a discussion with Holly Bushard, an ex-K9 Narcotics handler! Holly is now a successful NACSW Elite handler, NACSW and AKC Judge... let's hear about her takeaways and discover what we can apply to Nosework handling.
Listen to this sample broadcast by Kesslyn Brade Stennis, PhD, MDiv, MSW entitled "Commissions to Complete the Mission" originally recorded on October 28th, 2013. Twenty minute audio samples of NACSW podcasts are available to anyone while the full length podcast is available to NACSW members.Podcast Summary: In this session, Kesslyn explores the commission of Christians in social worker to complete the missions to which they are called as both social workers and people of faith!The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's October, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to a full version of this podcast and other great resources.
Listen to this sample broadcast by David Pooler, PhD entitled "Joy in Social Work" originally recorded on September 18th, 2013. Twenty minute audio samples of NACSW podcasts are available to anyone while the full length podcast is available to NACSW members.Podcast Summary: In this session, we will explore how social workers find great joy in their work. We will examine aspects of positive psychology and appreciative inquiry that inspire and inform our thinking about joy in work. Come and find out how you can find more joy!The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's September, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to a full version of this podcast and other great resources.
Listen to this full length broadcast of Mark Robinson talking about "The Importance of Engaging Fathers in Social Work Practice" originally recorded on October 27, 2012. Podcast Summary: The research is clear. Children do better in every measure of development when there is a responsibly involved father in their lives. This workshop examines the unique contributions of fathers to the health and productive development of their children. In addition, this presentation will address the challenges that practitioners face in engaging fathers in effective service-delivery.The full audio was originally published as the August, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this sample broadcast by Angela Gaddis, PhD, LCSW entitled "Resiliency or Recovery: Helping Individuals Develop Resiliency Skills originally recorded on October 18th, 2013.Podcast Summary: This workshop is designed to teach skills to clinicians and non-clinicians working with children and adults experiencing traumatic stress. It will focus on factors influencing resilience from a systems perspective and using strengths perspective to assist individuals restore balance to the body and mind after traumatic experiences.The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's July, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this full podcast, as well as other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this sample broadcast by Judith Gonzalez, PhD entitled "Switch to the Fearless Mode" originally recorded on October 28th, 2012.Podcast Summary: The purpose of Esther's life in the Bible was to demonstrate to Jews living in exile that it was possible to achieve success in the country of one's exile without giving up one's identity as a woman and a Jew. Esther saves her people, brings about the downfall of their enemy, and elevates her kinsman to the highest position in the kingdom. How do we apply these concepts to our life and work?The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's June, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this full podcast, as well as other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this full length broadcast of of Stephanie Spandl talking about "One Family Under God: A Theological Perspective on Immigration for Christian Social Workers" originally recorded on September 30, 2013. Podcast Summary: Immigration policy is a complex matter that deeply and personally affects families and communities and requires both justice and compassion. This podcast explores the international, political and social context of immigration today, scriptural and theological foundations to guide our response, and current policies and practices that invite response.The full audio was originally published as the May, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this sample broadcast by Dr. Michael Phelps talking about "Spirituality, Child Trauma, and Expressive Arts" originally recorded on October 27th, 2012.Podcast Summary: This session focuses on the relationship between expressive arts and spirituality when working with children that have been traumatized. The presenter's experiences with children at a large homeless shelter and an orphanage in Mexico will be highlighted. The more we learn about the connection between the arts and spirituality, the better we can help children heal by encouraging them to access the strength that comes from their faith.The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's April, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this full podcast, as well as other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this sample broadcast by Dr. Jacqueline Dyer talking about "Perspectives and Approaches to Domestic Violence in the Church" originally recorded on May 13, 2013. Podcast Summary: The domestic violence community has often disparaged clergy for not providing appropriate support for women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). However, little is known about actual clergy practice and perspective in relation to this issue in their churches. This presentation provides information on both clergy perspectives and practices regarding IPV. Activities that parallel clinical best practices are also identified. This session is designed to increase cultural competence regarding Protestant Christian African American churches and clergy, in relation to their efforts to help congregants who are victims of IPV. Last, the presentation identifies recommendations for improved social work outreach and collaboration with receptive clergy for the benefit of their congregants.The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's March, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this full podcast, as well as other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this full length broadcast of of Linda Plitt Donaldson and Kathleen Belanger talking about "Addressing Racial Disproportionality through Catholic Social Teachings" originally recorded on October 27, 2012. Podcast Summary: Catholic social teaching is a rich resource for all Christian social workers to root their values and practice models in scripture and the life of Jesus Christ. This workshop includes an overview of Catholic Social Teaching and apply CST principles to the problem of racial disproportionality in child welfare.The full audio was originally published as the February, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this and other great resources!
Listen to this sample broadcast by Dr. Kimberly Hardy talking about "African American Perspectives on Pastoral Counseling" originally recorded on October 26, 2012. Podcast Summary: The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life has found that African-Americans are more religious than any other racial/ethnic group in the country. Born of struggle and resistance to societal injustice, the Black Church developed as a means of providing both a haven from harm and a sanctuary for worship. The Black Church is still critically important for African-Americans, but the roles it plays may be changing particularly regarding mental health. This session presents the findings of a survey study conducted in two phases: an electronic administration and a paper/pencil administration in the pews of several Black Churches in the mid-Atlantic region. The study identifies the perceptions of African-American Christians related to professional/secular and faith-based pastoral counseling. Specifically, the presentation will identify patterns of responses, reveal the preferred source of support for various personal and mental health issues, and specify ways in which to incorporate the findings into social education and practice.The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's January, 2015 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this full podcast, as well as other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this sample broadcast by Dr. Diana Garland talking about "Creating Safe Congregations: Understanding and Protecting Leaders and Churches from Sexual Misconduct" originally recorded on March 5th, 2013. Podcast Summary: This presentation reports the findings of the first national study of clergy sexual misconduct with adults. It will describe how the social dynamics of congregations contribute to, and so can prevent, clergy sexual misconduct. It will explore the dynamics of power and consent in the context of religious communities.The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's December, 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this full length broadcast of of Lisa Thompson talking about "Intervention & Aftercare for Sex Trafficking Survivors: A Holistic Approach to Healing?" originally recorded on October 25, 2012. Podcast Summary: In this preconvention institute offered during NACSW’s Convention 2012 in St. Louis, Missouri, Lisa maintains that the global issue of sex trafficking with its devastating effect on victims is also an American problem of growing proportions. While awareness of the injustice has grown dramatically in the past few years, healing intervention and aftercare for women and child survivors is far from adequate in proportion to the level of need. This workshop will focus on how people of faith of diverse professions have responded on the front lines to develop transformational models for intervention and holistic care for women and children trapped in human trafficking. .The full audio was originally published as the November 2102 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this sample broadcast by Dr. Jim Ellor talking about "Ethical Implications of Living with DSM-5" originally recorded on October 8th, 2013. Podcast Summary: Dr. Jim Ellor from Baylor University explores the values and ethics underlying the DSM 5. He begins by outlining the history of the DSM series, and highlighting some of the changes introduced in the latest version of this diagnostic manual. The remainder of the workshop focuses on four key questions of ethics for and the implications of living with the DSM 5.The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's September, 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this sample broadcast by Julie Woodley talking about "Cultivating Healing after Childhood Sexual Abuse" originally recorded on October 26, 2012. Podcast Summary: This presentation takes you through the pain and healing of childhood sexual abuse. Julie Woodley uses her own story as well as stories of others and video clips of great professionals. Julie describes a journey of healing to listeners to help them understand the dynamics of childhood sexual trauma, and how to invite Christ into their healing through presentation, story and the visual media of storytelling.The sample audio was originally published as NACSW's September, 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this full length broadcast by Jayne Schooler and Hope Haslam Straughan talking about "Assessing/Preparing Adoptive Families to Care for Traumatized Children" originally recorded on October 26, 2012. Podcast Summary: How can we better prepare foster and adoptive families to care for children with a history of trauma? By integrating trauma-informed language into the assessment and preparation process. This interactive workshop will provide participants with the tools to better prepare families and narrow the gap between expectations of the adoption experience and the realities that come.The full audio was originally published as NACSW's August, 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to other great resources for integrating Christian faith and social work practice.
Listen to this sample of Drs. Payne and Dyer talking on "Lessons about Training Black Clergy in Mental Health: What Do We Know?" originally recorded on October 26, 2012 at NACSW's Convention 2012 in St. Louis, Missouri. Twenty minute audio samples of NACSW podcasts are available to anyone while the full length podcast is available only to members.Podcast Summary: In light of the fact that clergy are often front-line counselors, this workshop encourages dialogue about the best ways to collaborate with and to train Black clergy on mental health issues. The presenters discuss culturally competent strategies for 1) approaching clergy members of the African American community, and 2) designing effective mental health training trainings.The full audio was originally published as the July, 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this sample of Dr. Dennis Myers talking about "Congregational and Community Responses to Vulnerable Older Persons" originally recorded on February 25, 2013. Podcast Summary: This audio conference focuses on how social workers and congregations can respond to the impoverishment and isolation that inhabit the daily lives of a significant number of older persons. It calls attention to unique assets that energize congregational responsiveness and demonstrates how effective preparation, vision, attention to assets, care with congregational volunteers, awareness of barriers and ministry design, locate ministry at the point of greatest need and maximum impact. The full audio was originally published as the June Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this full length broadcast of of Kendall Mathews talking about "What's in the Hood of Your Heart?" originally recorded on October 26, 2012. Podcast Summary: In this devotional presentation offered during NACSW’s Convention 2012 in St. Louis, Missouri, Kendall challenges Christians in social work to reflect on and nurture the resources of their Christian faith that serve to motivate, inspire, and sustain them in their often difficult work. Kendall draws on his decades of experience working with The Salvation Army to illustrate the difference faith can make in the work we do as social workers and followers of Jesus.The full audio was originally published as the May 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this sample of Dr. Mary Van Hook talking about "Spirituality as a Potential Resource for Coping with Trauma" originally recorded on October 25th, 2012.Podcast Summary: This presentation addresses the potential role of spirituality as a resource for coping with both current and past trauma. Spirituality in this context embraces a variety of religious and cultural traditions. The presentation also discusses ways in which social workers can help client access this resource.This podcast was originally published as the April, 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to other great resources.
Listen to this sample of Dr. Charles Stikes talking about "Trauma, Change, and Hope in Child Welfare" originally recorded on October 25, 2012. Twenty minute audio samples of NACSW podcasts are available to anyone while the full length podcast is available only to members.Podcast Summary: This presentation is about the impact of personal, social, and natural disasters, as traumas; the impact on the entire aspect of the lives of people, and what can be done to ameliorate the disastrous consequences. It includes what needs to be done to deal with neglect and abuse as trauma, as well as the consequences of social and natural disasters that child care workers have to deal with as they deal with families as victims.The full audio was originally published as the March, 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this sample of Stacey Barker, Ph.D. talking about Preparing for Practice: the Faith Integration Experiences of Christian Social Work Students originally recorded on November 16, 2012. Twenty minute audio samples of NACSW podcasts are available to anyone while the full length podcast is available only to members.Podcast Summary: This presentation summarizes the results of a qualitative research project which explored the experiences of Christian students related to faith integration in their social work programs. These findings are used as a springboard for a discussion of the implications of integration for social work practice. The full audio was originally published as the January, 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this full length broadcast of Lanny Endicott and Dexter Freeman talking about Preparing Communities to Help Our Service Members Return Home originally recorded on September 24, 2012.Podcast Summary: This audio conference workshop focuses on the challenge for social workers of faith to help with re-integrating military veterans into their respective communities. In addition to that, there will be a discussion of current evidence-informed treatment methodologies for assisting veterans with issues of PTSD and related mental health issues.The full audio was originally published as the January 2014 Podcast of the Month. Join NACSW today to gain access to fadditional great resources.
Listen to this sample of Cathi Spooner talking about Faith and Play Therapy originally recorded on February 11, 2010. Twenty minute audio samples of NACSW podcasts are available to anyone while the full length podcast is available only to members.Podcast Summary: Cathi is a licensed clinical social worker and a Registered Play Therapy Supervisor. She has been a member of NACSW since 2008. She will give an overview of play therapy vs traditional talk therapy, theory of play therapy, the benefits of using play therapy in a variety of modalities with children, teens and their families.The full audio was originally published as the December 2013 Podcast of the Month. Join today to gain access to this and other great resources.
Listen to this full length broadcast of John Oliver talking about Equipping Social Workers to Support Clergy Who Are Providing Care for Returning Veterans originally recorded on September 8, 2012.Podcast Summary: Clergy and faith communities are often on the frontlines of caring for veterans suffering from adjustment disorders and mental illness. This workshop will explore a variety of ways that social workers can educate, empower and engage clergy and faith communities to be supportive members of the community's healing team.The full audio was originally published as the October 2013 Podcast of the Month. Join today to gain access to this and other great resources.
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