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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.

SUMMARY: Julie Symons is owner and head dog trainer at Savvy Dog Sports and she joined to break down what it's like to compete in a nose work trial, plus we talk introducing handler scent to your nose work dog. Next Episode:  To be released 7/06/2018, featuring Donna Hill, talking about owner-handler trained service dogs and what it takes to get a fantastic recall. 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 have Julie Symons, owner and head dog trainer at Savvy Dog Sports, to talk about scentwork. Welcome back to the podcast Julie! Julie Symons: Hi Melissa. It’s great to be here again. Melissa Breau: I’m excited to chat. Just to refresh everyone’s memories, can you share a little bit about who you are and the dogs that you share your life with? Julie Symons: I’ve been training since the early to mid-1990s. Started out, I think, obedience, like most people probably did, and then agility came on the scene, and then I got my first purebred dog. What I was really drawn to from the very beginning was the versatile sports that I got into with my dog and how much I enjoyed the cross-training. I’ve stayed with the Belgian breed so far and really enjoyed that journey, and starting to look at some other breeds as well. I also incorporated my Savvy Dog Sports training, I have my own training center now, and I just very recently, haven’t really gone public with it, gave my notice at my corporate day job that I’ve been at for 30 years, and my last day is July 6, so that’s pretty exciting for me. A lot of change going on. Melissa Breau: That’s awesome. Congrats. That’s so exciting. Julie Symons: My two dogs that I have, Savvy, who I can’t believe is 10-and-a-half. She’s done everything I wanted her to do. She is a breed champion, she has her MACH 2, she has her TDX, she has her UD, and she has her Elite 1 nosework trial. Right there it shows my love of versatility, and how well dogs enjoy and that we can train across different sports. Obviously all this occurred over her lifespan up to now. I didn’t do it all in one year, obviously. But we’re focusing on nosework now and enjoying trialing her at the Elite level, and just want to see how far I can go with that before she’s just not able to trial. And then I have my baby dog, who’s not really a baby anymore, Drac, who’s a Belgian Malinois. I got him because I thought having two different genders would work out better in the household, and it really does. They get along great. He’s 2-and-a-half, and he’s out of most of his hormonal peak. He was a late bloomer, I think, and I think with boy dogs they mature a little slower. I’m really, really seeing the days of adolescence in our past, and really see the potential in how I can get a little bit more … not that I wasn’t serious, but more serious and formal with his training coming up, so I’m really excited about that. We trialed in nosework and confirmation so far with him. Melissa Breau: Awesome, and that’s reassuring to hear, considering I have a year-and-change puppy, a boy, still definitely maturing. Julie Symons: I wrote a blog about that, I believe, and I saw somebody recently asking and I haven’t had time to reply, but I am experiencing the first time for myself having an intact male. The last year I’ve been busy with other stuff, I’m still training him, but I didn’t put any pressure on him or myself, and he’s really come along. For example, in agility classes I couldn’t get his nose off the ground. Now he stays in the whole class without sniffing the ground. It just was waiting that out and working with him, letting him acclimate, and not putting the pressure on either one of us. Melissa Breau: So, I wanted to talk about trialing in nosework. I know you have this webinar coming up on achieving nosework trial day success, so I was hoping you might start us out by walking us through what a nosework trial looks like. I know it’s super-different than some of the other sports that are out there. What that looks like, how it works, and when everything goes well. Julie Symons: Absolutely. One thing that’s interesting about it, at least in the Nosework Association, which is the main venue that most of us got involved with, is you get maybe 30 to 40 dogs, total, at a trial, and you are staying in your parking lot with the dogs inside because they usually are in locations where it’s not like a training building and you can’t crate anywhere else. So you have to get used to working out of the car, and your dog does have to get used to hanging out in the car all day long. You have to deal with, handle the different temperatures and weather concerns you may have, and when you get there, especially with the Nosework Association, they don’t want a lot of dogs hanging out and wandering around because, as many people know who do nosework, a lot of it is geared toward supportive reactive dogs. In the AKC venue it’s just like a regular AKC trial, but most people are still very courteous of that. A little bit different situation in their locations, but for the most part you’re at a school or maybe a Boys Club of America or something that you’re just going to be waiting outside with your dog. They have a running order, and there’s a briefing, so you meet with maybe the host, the judges, and they talk about some of the logistics and the situations of how the day is going to run. They tell you if there are back-to-back searches, are you going to run and then go back to your car, and then they take you on a walkthrough. So you go on a walkthrough — most trials you get a walkthrough, some of them you don’t, depending on the level — you get a look at your search areas, and then you come back and ask questions about the areas, if you have them. And then the judge or the certifying official, depending on what venue, will go over how many hides you have, if it’s a level of known hides, and your time limit that you have to search. Except for AKC, where they do a lot of spectators if there’s room, you are generally in there searching, nobody else can watch. There’s a few people in the room that are timing and judging and videoing and things like that. It can be a very low-key situation. For some dogs it can be a little worrisome, when you go into this empty room with one or two people can actually be more concerning for a dog, versus having people around all the time, and then you’re just working in that environment. Those are some of the “how a typical day goes,” and you end up sitting outside your car and you meet your parking lot neighbors, because you usually don’t know a lot of people, especially if you go out of town. Of course I know a lot more, and everybody does as you go to more and more trials, but it’s not like you go with your friend who also entered, because the odds of two people getting in, most of it’s a lottery system, is not likely, so you’re usually traveling by yourself and meeting new people. It’s a good question you asked, because it is a very different trial day compared to other sports. Melissa Breau: You mentioned in there how hard it is to get into trials, and looking through some of the webinar description and some other stuff, it seems like maybe that leads people to sign up for a chance to compete even if they’re not sure they’re really entirely ready. How can a handler ensure their team is truly ready to trial? What advice do you have there? Julie Symons: I would say luckily at least I know my students are prepared to enter. I’m always happy when some of them are even unsure if they’re ready, and I assure them that they are in most cases. They have the skills, they may be concerned about the level of difficulty or the differences, and I’m also proud of some of my students who realized, I shouldn’t move up in AKC, because you can get your novice title on the weekend and move up in the Sunday afternoon trial, but you might not have taught multiple hides or the second odor. So I really admire my students who realize, Why would I move up? I’m just going to run bumper legs and go home early because I don’t have those skills. Why would I put my dog in there? But I do see the occasional teams, now that I can spectate in AKC, I hate to see the teams that aren’t prepared, either the handlers or the dogs, and I’m hoping it’s less of an issue. I think more of it is, as you said, getting into trials is challenging, so when you can only get into maybe two trials a year — and that’s changing, so I don’t want to scare people off with that type of cadence — but you can’t make the same mistakes in those two trials a year that you have. Back to being ready for trialing, if you have a good foundation and you know the skills that are required at that level, I would say that you’re ready to enter. We all run into something that we haven’t expected, or just not had a good trial day, but it’s mostly just know what’s expected and make sure you have trialed in those novel situations that can prepare you, because all of the trial situations you’re going to be in are novel and new, with new people around. Melissa Breau: I know you’ve also talked about the importance of taking inventory of training gaps and handling mistakes. How can a team do that before the actual trial, especially if, like you said, there’s maybe two trials a year that they’re going to compete in? Julie Symons: You definitely see your training gaps. They usually surface when you’re trialing, because that’s when we’re nervous and so we’re acting a little different, or the place is novel and we just aren’t our normal selves. That’s something that we do have to, as best we can, combat that, like, develop good mental strategies and just realize that everybody’s nervous. If you go there with the idea of, depending on what your goals are, if you just go there and do your thing and not worry about passing or whatever, you actually usually do pass when you take that pressure off of yourself. When you do trial and some of these training gaps surface, you know that by purchasing the trial video. So how you can inventory your gaps is either videoing your blind training searches, if you’re in classes or whatever, or definitely your trial video. What you can do, and this is what we did in my Shoulda Woulda class, is we had people review some trial videos that didn’t go as well. A trial I would say doesn’t go as well is if you don’t find all the hides, or if you get a no from the judge — you called an alert and the judge said no. And that’s the worst thing to hear at a nosework trial. So you watch those videos of those experiences, and you take inventory. You say, “Oh, I was crowding my dog, I talked my dog into a hide,” or “You know, I never taught my dog to search over 4 feet, and that’s why that’s a gap I have.” By watching your trial video is where you’re going to really see those gaps, and then you literally want to write them out, list them out. One of the neat things about that class that I didn’t really anticipate was it kind of … not forced people, but it had them go back and kind of organize their trial videos. They went back and re-watched them with a fresh set of eyes, and they said, “Wow, I sometimes don’t watch them a second time,” or “I haven’t watched all these.” It was eye-opening to them to go back and not just watch them to watch them, but to watch them with a purpose of saying, “What didn’t go well here?” We also of course in the class go over what goes well, because we want to stay positive and be aware of how well we’re doing. But since we’re focusing on trialing better, you have to know what didn’t work when you trialed and how to not do that mistake again when you go to your next trial that you got into. I just was reading something on Facebook that somebody said. We were like, “We always remember that one mess-up that we had, and we can’t let go of it.” And somebody said, “You know, I drove eight hours, I didn’t sleep the night before, I was busy at work, the first one in my day I just blurred an alert, and all that stress and tiredness and everything, it was over.” So we need to be in a better state, go there with the right, I guess, tools and strategies to start off the trial well. Sometimes it’s that first search that is the most stressful, definitely, and maybe we’re going to make some mistakes. So if we just can hold it together and learn to be in that moment and having a plan, and that’s what we did in the class is people had trials coming up, it was really cool, and we said, “What are your goals? What are your goals for your next trial? What are you going to do differently? What are you going to do the same?” These people are going to trials and passing and placing, and I’m getting goose bumps talking about it, and it was such a rewarding experience because we were looking at the trial experience not in a different way but just in a specific way to inventory and to just know it’s OK. We need to own our mistakes. Somebody actually shared with me that it was so refreshing to have this topic in the class, because every time they talked to somebody who went to a trial, they would always blame the trial site, the hide placements, the people, the dogs. Sometimes we need to own where we have training gaps and how we can improve our handling instead of blaming other things. Melissa Breau: What were some of the common “holes,” or some examples of the holes that people discovered? Maybe if you’d just walk us through a little bit of problem-solving? Julie Symons: Yeah — this is neat. I had a guest, a lecturer, Holly Bushard. From a judge’s perspective, she listed what she believed were the common handler mistakes. But these are my list, so if you want to know what Holly thinks, there’s definitely some overlap. I also just had a recent judging assignment, as my first AKC judging assignment, in North Dakota. It was fun. You’re in the best seat in the house, and I was nervous because I was, like, I want my high placements to be good, and I want the dogs to be able to find them. So this is what I saw there, as well as I see when I’m teaching. I think the number one hole that we have is not covering the search area. Just to back up a little bit, sometimes your gaps are your handling. Our handling is the problem. If you cleaned up some of your handling, then that’s going to go better. Some of the other, and I can get to those later, are actually your dog’s skills. Those are the types of gaps that we would find: our handling and our dog’s skills. The number one hole is not covering the search area. What happens is our dog shows interest in an area, and it could be pulling odor, which means odor has blown, maybe you even found that hide, but then it also collected further down into an area. Or you say, “This would be such a great place for a hide,” and your dog maybe showed a little bit of interest, maybe it wasn’t because of picking up some odor there, and you’re sure there’s something there, so we stay there and we stay there and we stay there. I just did a class recently, and most of the people in the class stayed about a minute and a half in one-fourth or third of the search area, having not even covered the rest of the area, and there was no hide there. I always tell people, “If there was a hide there, your dog would have found it within a minute and a half, and even if there was a hide and they didn’t, you need to leave, cover it, and you can always go back.” So that’s the number one. I saw that at the trial, not very many, there were a few teams that got convinced that there was a hide somewhere, and every dog that left that area and walked about 8 feet found the other hide. So they just were convinced, and you just need to cover your search area. And sometimes I think people are nervous, they don’t realize the search area, sometimes you don’t get a walkthrough, or it’s covered so fast that you forget, and again, when you’re nervous, our mind’s a little fuzzy. I have actually asked during a search when I was trialing, “Remind me, is this in the search area,” so that in case I forget, to make sure that I am covering it. The second thing that I notice a hole in training is crowding our dogs. Again, when we get nervous, I’m not sure why we do this, but we stand closer to our dog. Maybe it’s a security thing for us too, but what happens is you could be affecting the dog’s access to a hide. You could actually be blocking a hide or affecting the airflow. But what generally that says to the dog is because when we’re training and we know where the hide is — this is actually one of my topics in my current class, Nosework Coaching — is we need to be good actors when we are running known hides. When we know where the hide is, almost everybody is fishing food out of their pocket. I catch myself doing that. And so then at a trial, when you walk in, because you’re nervous, you’re crowding your dog, the dog goes, I smell odor, and my handler’s coming in really close to me, and I’m a little nervous with this environment, and the dog offers some type of an indication and you call it. So you talk your dog into a false alert by crowding your dog, because to the dog it contextually can mean, Oh, this is normally when I get fed because I find something. The third thing which plays into that is you can talk your dog into a hide. That’s a very common mistake because you’re convinced that somewhere you’re crowding your dog, you’re nervous, and sometimes our dogs give a little bit weaker indications at a trial and we can so easily talk our dogs into a hide. The last thing I came up with, there’s many more, but the more difficult one that I’m seeing, I see in training and when I was judging, is when to let your dog drive the search and when you need to intervene. That’s why I always say that we’re 50 percent a teammate to our dog — we both have half of a role in the job to do. Sometimes it’s better to let the dog drive, and then there’s times when you have to intervene and get the dog to a different search area, or cover an area, or refocus them if they’re distracted. We won’t always get this right, but what I generally see, I know where the hide is because I placed it, and the dog is heading right to the hide, but the handler goes, “Oh, you didn’t cover these chairs over here.” Now, that’s not necessarily a bad decision, because maybe you have a dog that doesn’t have time to search the whole area twice. You need to cover this area. But it happens more than not where that area was cold and the dog was going right to odor and you just pulled him off. It’s not the easiest call to make in the moment, but I also did this in one of my Elite trials where Savvy was going to a hide. I pulled her off, but when I took her back to where I went, she found a hide and ended up finding all the hides in that search area. So even if you pull your dog, I’m not talking about literally some dogs, the dogs are building a sign that says, “The hide is here,” and you pull your dog off. I’m talking about your dog is working their way toward the area where the source is, because they’ve picked up odor, and then you interrupt them on their way and say, “No, come check here.” Sometimes that works in your favor, but sometimes it’s, “Oh shoot, the dog was headed right to source.” So sometimes I feel like if the dog is actually working and moving, and you can tell, some dogs will pick up speed because they pick up odor, and again, we’re not going to always get that right, but it’s something that we need to, I think, continually improve in when to intervene and when to let the dog drive. And again, by videoing and by reviewing that, that’s how you’re going to progress with that, and maybe getting another set of eyes to review. I have some of my colleagues review my videos, because I don’t go to a regular trainer, or a training buddy, just somebody else that can view your work and say, “Hey, did you notice you did this?” can be very helpful. Melissa Breau: Are there other issues that usually are overlooked in training, and even when prepping, that tend to pop up just in that trial situation? Julie Symons: I think the main thing, if you truly are prepared, you know the rules, the thing that tends to pop up is a novel situation, a surface you never got your dog on before, or a distractor that they’ve purposely put in a container, or even an unintentional distractor in the environment. That’s usually something that pops that can catch you off guard, and of course in that area you want to train in as many novel locations with as many novel distractors as possible. You’re not going to ever train for everything, but as we know, as long as you generalize, for the most part, and when the dog has confidence with the job, they do overcome these novel situations. But I noticed with my dog Savvy, I didn’t realize one year she had no problem going across a laquered gym floor, but the following year she bellied to the ground. I think it was a visual thing, with age, maybe, I don’t know, and I’ve had to work that afterwards. Melissa Breau: I want to shift from talking about trialing to, I guess, the other end of the spectrum — those early steps. I know we’re in the middle of … recording this, we’re in the middle of the June session right now, and you’re teaching Intro to Nosework this session, and then next session you have Intro to Handler Scent Discrimination in August. I wanted to ask you what the difference is between those two classes. Julie Symons: They’re quite similar in the approach, I mean, a target odor is a target odor. So we teach a target odor pretty similarly. We do use the same games, very similar games, that make sense for each of the areas. With HD there’s just some different considerations, like, is it a problem searching or training in your area where you live and spend a lot of time in it, ended up not being a problem. But what I found was that I did a lot of nosework searches in my house so that sometimes I could tell my dog was like, I’m looking for oil, and I don’t know I’m supposed to be looking for your scent. So we worked through that basically with the two different target odors. We developed different start line cues and different search strategies. I think the biggest difference between the two is I go into handler discrimination with a different search strategy, a different start line. One of the different strategies is I’m going to probably direct my dog a little bit more, because handler scent is going to be heavier and it’s going to drop, so dogs are going to pick that up more low. Also the hide placements, they’ll go as high as the oil searches, so your dog generally doesn’t have to, depending on the dog’s size, they don’t have to search as high. So those are the different things. And I think the biggest difference is just our brain realizing that our dogs can find our handler scent just as easily as oil, but they disperse into the area differently, and dogs have to be a lot closer to the handler scents, I found with watching many dogs run, than they do in oil searches. Melissa Breau: Are there additional skills that the dogs need to learn specifically for handler scent discrimination? Is that an issue for it? Julie Symons: I haven’t noticed that there was a need for a new skill as much as we need to train HD a little bit more frequently to solidify the understanding. We have to stay with it, and then if I were at a trial, I would have to refresh and remind them. Whereas oil, at the point where my dogs are, if I just did a real cursory session before a trial, they’re going to be pretty strong. The other thing I’ve noticed with HD, though, is it sounds kind of strange, but the dog really has to be using their nose. I think with nosework, oil is so strong, and it’s so different for a dog to learn wintergreen or birch that they just notice it, like, I know there’s something about this funny-smelling birch over here, so they pick that up. But when you start doing handler scent, we start with gloves and dogs want to retrieve them, if they’re retrievers or they’ve done tracking. So there’s, I think, with handler discrimination there’s a little bit of context overlap, but it’s doable to train across the different sports. They just have to get past the context that you normally think it is. It’s a little different, and we have some really neat games to work through those, like put the socks right in the bowl if the dog wants to retrieve them, because the dog has never seen a sock in a bowl in tracking or in obedience scent articles. So we just need to get them to use their nose, and if they want to retrieve the sock, then we actually start getting it covered inside of a container. That’s generally the difference. I do a neat little thing that’s different is a lot of people pair a food with the odor, it’s very common with scent articles, but I’ve found the pure shaping of only the target odor, so what I do is to get dogs to actually use their nose when they have four or five socks, because in handler discrimination we use a cotton sock or glove. I rub food on the cold items, completely opposite of one of the methods, and I tell you, it works wonderful, because the item with your scent on it happens to get food crumbs and food smell on it because we’re refreshing it with our food hands and dropping crumbs on it and stuff, so what becomes unique about a hot sock is that they are cotton, they all have some food smudge on it, but only one of them has your scent, and it gets the dog using their nose. Even with scent work with oil, I find some dogs we have to kick-start them using their nose, not their eyes, not thinking the container is a pivot box or what to do with a box. But generally, and I find it more with handler discrimination, where we need to find a way to jumpstart their seeking sense over their retrieving. Melissa Breau: Are false alerts more common when training handler scent discrimination, especially since so often we’re probably training in a “usual” training environment where maybe handler scent is all over? Julie Symons: I thought that was the case from training at home. I did find when I went outside into the fresh air and I was doing exteriors with this little, tiny cotton ball, I was amazed at how well the dogs did. I think the airflow probably helped, and maybe being outside of where I live. But I never had my dog truly false. They would false where I had placed the hide just before it, since I’m lingering handler scent. I think false alerts are comparable across the two, and I would say if you’re not prepared for handler discrimination, but you’re a nosework dog and you enter a trial too soon and the dog sees these boxes out, which contextually for years has meant oil, and you send your dog out there and they’re thinking, I’m looking for oil, and they just aren’t clear that it’s your handler scent, and they might false because they can’t find anything. And then there is a judge’s scent there, and I do think sometimes they false for the other handler’s scent, if that’s not thoroughly trained, because it’s sometimes hard to get access to other people scenting socks for you. But in general I’m going to switch the other way and say in nosework oil work we do containers for the rest of the dogs’ lives, and in handler discrimination for AKC you only do containers for Novice and then you’re out of there. You get three legs in Novice, and it’s like everybody has a party because we want to get out of the boxes with our socks, and we get into interior searches and we get that scent outside of a box. Whereas in nosework oil searches, you have container searches in every level, and I do believe containers have the highest false alert rate, and because boxes become such a context of being reinforced, so dogs who are nervous or unsure, or if there are distractors, they do tend to false on containers. So I think it’s comparably they have the risk of false alerts. Melissa Breau: I know the class discusses both UKC and AKC. I was curious what some of the differences are in the different venues. Julie Symons: UKC only does HD in a box, so they never move to scent outside a box, and in Novice it’s only your scent. There’s no discrimination with the judges having a scent out there. Another thing that’s different with UKC, actually similar to SDDA in Canada, is you have to indicate your dog’s alert behavior. In UKC you also have to say what your search command is, how you’re going to cue your dog to search, and that might be how they start, maybe they start the timer, I’m not sure. In the Novice class they don’t judge that part, but you still have to provide it. When you get into Advanced and Excellent, they are going to judge you on that you used the search command you said that you do, and that your dog alerted in the way in that you expect to call it. Those other search levels, though, every box has a discrimination scent, so in Advanced, the judge puts a scented glove of theirs in eleven of the boxes and yours is the hot in the twelfth. In the Advanced level, each of the competitors that are there with you provide their scented sock, and they’re all out there when you search. So everyone else’s sock is out there, and they must group them by groups of twelve or whatever. I haven’t trialed in UKC, there’s just none in my area. So it’s kind of neat that that’s a little different. But then that ends there. They don’t search for this outside the box. Melissa Breau: That’s all super-interesting. I’ve got one last question, though, here for you, and it’s a little bit different. It’s a new question that I’m asking returning guests each time they’re on the podcast, because hopefully it’s a question that you can actually answer more than once and have a different answer. My question is, what’s a lesson you’ve learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Julie Symons: I thought about this, and because I’m now training more locally, and I have either returned to sports I used to train or I’m extending into some other areas, is that dog training is dog training, and no matter what sport you do, or if it’s a pet class or a puppy class, you have the same foundation skills. You need the same skills and concepts as your foundation. So many of them apply to other sports. I always knew that, but since I started delivering the curriculum and talking to different groups of people that are coming in with different goals, I’m teaching the same thing. I’m teaching the same thing to them as a foundation. That was something that I very recently was reminded of — how it’s not really that different what you need across the different sports, and even for a pet dog, but it’s acclimating, it’s your mechanics, it’s building your dog’s motivators, it’s having good cue control. All of those things are common across all of the sports. Melissa Breau: Excellent. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Julie! Julie Symons: You’re welcome. I enjoyed it. Melissa Breau: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We’ll be back next week with Donna Hill to talk about owner handler trained service dogs and teaching a recall. Don’t miss it! It 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. Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!

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SDDAエピソード2です！

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!  

Dike and Nate break down what went well for the USMNT against Mexico (hint: very little) and what went wrong (hint: pretty much everything). The guys spend some time lauding Juan Carlos Osorio's Mexico side, before turning back to San Diego soccer with an update on the San Diego Development Academy Showcase, and the College Soccer Panel that was hosted on Sunday Nov 13th by iSoccerPath. You can read about the great work done by Jeff Jaye and iSoccerPath here: http://www.soccernation.com/tag/isoccerpath/ Stay tuned for news about the NSCAA Convention in Los Angeles this coming January! Follow on Twitter: @soccer_nation, @DikeNatsai, and @NateAbaurrea