Find Your Fix- Sport Dog Scent Detection Podcast
Hey Everyone !
LOVE THE K9 SCENT FIX PODCAST ?? !!! Join us APRIL 29 2025 live at 4 PM MT and
ASK us your questions to be included in our PODCAST production !
K9 SCENT FIX PODCAST - APRIL EPISODE!!!!
Jill Kovacevich is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Jill Kovacevich's Zoom Meeting
Time: Apr 29, 2025 04:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82786133695?pwd=MxG3aMbQCouZa8AlDCPOksdWX1O7Q2.1
Meeting ID: 827 8613 3695
Passcode: 176087
VISIT US ON FACEBOOK TOO ! Let us know your TOPICS for our next PODCAST !
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1478838949483329/
Find Your Fix- Sport Dog Scent Detection Podcast
TRIAL PREP SERIES - UNDERSTANDING LEVEL SKILL SETS AND MENTAL GAME TRIAL TRAINING- PART THREE
PART THREE- Yes, Part Three ! Who knew this topic would be this expansive. In this EPISODE we take on ELITE to SUMMIT trial prep and include AKC Detective in the mix.
We are looking at the trial levels of Elite Select, Elite, Elite Premier and Summit and the AKC equivalent and the skill sets needed for THIS trial level with a template for assessing where your canine team IS as of now and how to determine what to train for your next trial SUCCESS.
Here is the ASSESS- TRAIN AND MEASURE TEMPLATE to REVISIT from our PARTS ONE and TWO that IS a best practice to apply to your compeition Nosework Team in preparing for TRIAL.
ASSESS YOUR TEAM
1- SKILLS TESTED - What is measured or tested for each trial level;
2- DOGS SKILLS - Is the dog's search work effective and efficient for THAT trial level;
3- PROBLEM SOLVING- Is the Dog's and/ or Handlers problem solving effective for that level;
4- SEARCH WORK Ds- Duration, Distance, Difficulty, Distraction- for the level tested
We cover HOW TO apply training to your TEAM assessment including:
OBJECTIVES
1- PROGRESSIVE TRAINING - Use progressive training level to level and skill sets within each level;
2-TRAIN NOT TEST- limit testing; testing IS blind hides without help; complex puzzles above the dogs skill set; prior to trial- focus on the specific skill sets to train for that level or foundation for the trial level you are entering- rather than training above;
3- TRAIN THE SKILLS- Understand the trial level and its search, hide, time parameters and skills for both dog and handler to be tested
And then break down EACH TRIAL LEVEL by the skills tested at that TRIAL level for NACSW and AKC
LEVEL APPROPRIATE- 4 AREAS TO CONSIDER FOR EACH LEVEL
SKILLS TESTED- What skills for dog and handler are tested for the trial level
SEARCH PARAMETERS- Elements; Search Area; Hides; Time; Distractions
SKILL SETS REQUIRED- to meet Title Level
Hey everyone, welcome to our podcast today for K9 Scent Fix.
Speaker 1:I've got Alex Woodruff with me and we're going to jump right back in.
Speaker 1:We ended in our discussion about trial prep understanding level, skill sets and the mental gain, nw123, elite and Summit and the AKC equivalent, and we fell short of that by quite a bit. We did cover the lower levels. So today we're going to jump right back into Elite Select and the reason we're going to start there is because the Elite Select is really that segue level between NW3 and Elite in NACSW and then Alex can jump in with the concepts of anything AKC that fall in between those two sets in terms of skill sets. So what we wanted to do with this kind of topic was not only understand what your skill sets are, that you're going to be tested on, but then also discuss some pieces of training to get you there. So I'm going to hand it right over to Alex and we're going to just look at Elite Select and find out and I have all the technical stuff I could go through, but let's get some feedback from Alex first on the Elite Select and how it fits in between NW3 and Elite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So Elite Select is really that middle kind of level and in order to be able to compete in that you do need an NW3 title. So that's not the NW3 Elite, the three of them. You just need one NW3 title in order to compete in that elite select, and it allows you to test out those concepts that are going to be in the elite level, but not necessarily as a full day and not combined with a whole bunch of other of the challenges that you're going to see in elite. So it allows for you to play with the concepts and work on them and recognize some holes before you actually do a full-on elite trial or and this is what and recognize some holes before you actually do a full-on elite trial or and this is what I'm seeing a lot of actually in competition. We're seeing a lot of dogs that are elite champions that want to keep playing, and it's a great way to get out there, especially if you've got an older dog to be able to play on a half day.
Speaker 2:Really keep testing and pushing some skills without necessarily overwhelming it, or really just having fun, is what that level is kind of about. I've VCs it, I've competed in it and I've had a lot of fun just enjoying the level, because I think it has a lot of those kind of benefits. It's quick, it's fast, you get through them really quickly. The competitors are normally kind of knowing what they're doing, and so it makes for a really fun day. What they're doing, and so it makes for a really fun day. Skill wise, it lets you continually push things like getting to the start line, having a focused dog, being able to be ready for that search focus and all that stuff that you're going to need in any competition, especially for the skills that you need for elite level. So, jill, why don't you dive into the exact requirements or the skills that are being tested?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, it's that typical sentence that I've been saying kind of at the beginning of all of these, can the team enter into and I'm going to say an increased complex novel environment? And that's because it's an increased complexity over NW3. However, we figure that once you have one NW3, you've kind of at least got that basic concept of unknown number of hides and whether your dog is working distracting environment versus working odor. So that's by increased complexity. It's not as complex as maybe Elite, certainly not as complex as Summit, but it has more complexity to it than we had at NW2 and a sufficient complexity added with unknown number of hides, because in the Elite Select you can have the variable in terms of your hide numbers.
Speaker 1:Okay, so can the team enter into a complex novel environment search area with increased area complexity, meaning we may now have the more cluttered room moving between two rooms. So it's different. It's one step up more than your NW3, but still not quite as, because the idea is that it's a segue. So we could say it's Speed Search Elite, but it's also Speed Search Elite ready for the NW3 team that has one NW3 title.
Speaker 1:Right yeah that has one NW3 title, right, yeah, and then find multiple hides or zero hides, because you still could have a zero or a blank room, right, call alert sufficiently at the correct location to get a yes and then call finish correctly. So those are kind of some of the parameters there. How I rephrase that whole thing and I think that in some regards, by saying can the team come in, have the dog find odor, locate source, and the handler sufficiently understand that communication to call alert in a correct location? And that falls into guess what, every single level. So you can even like generalize it like that, right, yeah, um, so just you know, remembering, because I think so often we forget that that foundational piece of your dog come in with the expectation of finding odor, to search for odor. So it's not just coming into a search area to search willy-nilly, it's actually coming into the search area to find odor, to locate source.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then some of the search parameters. We can have the elements. It can be and typically we have a tendency to have it be more that elite type search area, right. So while it may be an interior, you could potentially even have it be a mix between container and interior.
Speaker 1:If we did that at elite select. It's going to be very obvious where the containers are and how they're in play. They're not hidden right. It's very obvious that it's maybe a combined search. That way it could be an exterior that happens to have a piece of equipment or a vehicle in it, right. So your search areas themselves are going to be closer to the kinds of things we see at Elite, and that's kind of why it's such a wonderful segue to go from. Aw3.
Speaker 2:I also see that they're a little bit smaller in general just because of the time that's required to get through these searches, so you don't have the six minute search or the five minute search. They're much shorter, so the spaces are smaller.
Speaker 1:And the reason for that, guys, is because it still is considered an element specialty, right? It's a element specialty at the elite level, elite select. That's kind of what it's intended to be. So that element specialty is a half-day trial. So to do a half-day trial and, granted, even if I have my entries limited to 20, I've still got to be able to get those 20 people to four searches, right. So you're still going to have those four searches. So this explains why we have the shorter times. It's not because we said, oh, let's create speed searches. It's really the balance between the segue or intermediary level of complexity of search, area of height, placement and then your timeframes right.
Speaker 1:And then your variables will be, because we talked about any element right, small to medium. I'm certainly not going to say you're going to hit much large search areas and then we're going to have increased natural distractions. So what does that mean? It means that maybe I'm going to pick a picnic table area where it's at a you know, middle school or something where children have dropped a lot of food and while I may be removing anything that's hazardous, you're still going to have all those odors of children eating in and around those tables. Right, maybe it's more of the P-zone area that I'm including. Those sorts of things are included in the search area.
Speaker 1:Okay, so then we have a minute to three and a half minutes is kind of the typical. You know parameters there for time and remember too, if it is one minute you're not going to get a 30-second warning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think that threw a lot of people off when it first started popping up.
Speaker 1:But then what the CO will often do, and this is sort of to assist you, but it also can make it kind of complex for the poor timer is we'll say it's one minute five seconds.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So we have actually gone beyond the one minute, so now you're going to get a 30 second, right, so we have actually gone beyond the one minute, so now you're going to get a 30 second.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right, and then that's the way we could do it, so that, or one minute, 10 seconds, whatever it is, so that you still get, because if it's one minute or less you don't get a 30 second, and that is just an added complexity really that we might add into elite or into summit.
Speaker 1:Okay, that we might add into Elite or into Summit, okay. Then when we look at, distractions are a may in your containers and they would be food or toy and they would be of a higher value, closer to Elite, than you would have for, say, nw3.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah. And then this is a segue to where we start to wean our teams off of the title expectation Right. I'm going to certify, I'm going to get my title and move into point system. Right, so it becomes a point system. You need 350 points for your elite select title and then you can repeat it. So once you get those 350 points and any extra points, lovely enough, we'll carry over to your next one right, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So Zeke has his first elite select title from last year and I have maybe a hundred and something points in the bank that came out of that. That's going towards his elite select two. There's no ribbon that says elite select two. You just get to remember that you did it twice.
Speaker 2:It was your second yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of like summit right. Or premiere, yeah Same thing yes, exactly, Yep, Okay, so then. And it also and that's a really good point because the Elite Premier, while it is a separate category, it falls within the Elite guys. Right so it is your Elite parameters, both in terms of your high placement and everything else, and we'll talk about that as soon as we get done with this one. So then, what else have I done? Okay, so?
Speaker 2:the points of that something, I think that's important for elite select, because we're kind of on that oh here's the ribbon moment is there's no like ceremony at the end of it, and I think that might throw some people off, because it's just a little bit different feel at the end of the day um, or at the end of day morning.
Speaker 1:Yep, but the huge benefit guys is after every search you find out.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you know your answer.
Speaker 1:That is really fun, right? Because now and I think it can in so many ways you can still use your ask for help, right?
Speaker 1:Tell me how many hides, tell me where they are before I even go in. But you're also going to get immediate feedback that you can at least take into your next search so that you're not guessing whether or not you missed hides. I mean, obviously we know when we got a no, but the question usually when we get a no is was I close? They're not going to tell you whether you were close or not but if you missed hides, you're going to know.
Speaker 1:Okay, there was other hides there to be found and I called a no versus no. I only had one hide and I called a no for some other reason.
Speaker 2:Which is very much more similar to people's expectation for masters AKC, because you have an unknown number of hide. It's a range and unless you're doing interiors it's going to have a one minimum, but otherwise you may not know and you call it and no, I'm sorry, there's one extra. Have a one minimum, but otherwise you may not know and you call it. No, I'm sorry, there's one extra hide or two hides. This was your closest. You get told where the closest one is. But that kind of feel I think is the same for Elite, slack and Mastery AKC. You do know when you leave the search whether you've passed or not and if you've missed things. Right, although it's points for Elite. So it's a little bit different to lead us Right.
Speaker 1:But that can be so huge in terms of you know, the whole concept is we're talking about train to trial and trial to train Right. So that's where that trial piece to train really helps, because now you're going to actually get feedback from a trial immediately. That should be creating some concept in your brain as to what you can train right.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you still get three no's. Once you get three no's, you'll be asked to leave and it's still. The points are just like with a lead right. So the points are determined based on the total number of hides in those four searches, divided by 100 creates my total points. Number of hides in those four searches divided by 100 creates my total points. And then the, the nose and a false alert and a timeout are half the value of the hide.
Speaker 2:Now is there a minimum for Elite S to keep your points?
Speaker 1:There is, there is, it's 40. Always wait, it's more than 43. Oh, it's 43. So it's the same as Elite. I think it is. We'll have to go look that up. I didn't know what that number is. Oh, we'll have to go look. It's 43? So it's the same as elite. I think it is. We'll have to go look that up. I didn't write it down here. I'll look it up right now, Will you? Yeah, look it up while I keep talking.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the skill sets required. Really, the whole thing that we're looking at here is can and elite is very. There's going to be at least one search, possibly two in your elite, out of four searches that measures. Can you and your dog come in and find hides quickly? That's really what we're measuring there. Secondly, do you still have the stamina, though, after some complexity of problems, to continue searching? You're going to have variable problem solving in one search and typically you'll have one to two elite complexity hides per search, right? So we're going to balance the skill sets that you brought in from three with your elite select.
Speaker 1:Okay, Increased problem solving. You're just going to have the inaccessibles converging, close blank areas, blank search, and notice I said that two ways. Blank areas doesn't necessarily mean that your entire search is blank. But you may have no source in an area yet it may have pooling and trapping in it. So you'll start to see more and more of that.
Speaker 1:High low hides. Distractions may be increased in any search, and by distractions I don't mean just the intentional distractions in a container search, but the we're going to carve the search area itself so that it has a higher degree of natural environment, environmental distraction and certainly then we'll have a higher value of intentional distractions in our containers. So really what we're measuring there is the search equals the find. So there's the equal amount of time spent searching is the equal amount of time spent finding. So it can be considered a speed search. In some regards it's really using the size of NW3 searches little bit increased complexity in terms of hide and really your parameters that you use pretty much for your time in NW3. So I did look it up. What's your minimum points?
Speaker 2:There are none that I can see, unless somebody knows anything better, but it's just not jumping out at all in front of me.
Speaker 1:Which you know what I could even. Oh, no, never mind 50.
Speaker 2:It's 50. I found it. They put it somewhere else than the other levels. It's a minimum of 50 points to accumulate the trial. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:There we go, which kind of makes sense, right, because the concept is that we're not going to make it sufficiently complex as elite, but we want it to be a segue, so you're getting used to having that minimum right For point Right, right, accumulation out of the day. Yeah, okay. So the next one would be discussing both elite and elite premier they've gotten one title.
Speaker 2:I find that they're starting to be about the same level and same kind of challenges that are going to be presented mentally. Maybe if somebody was going back and forth between NW3 and Elite S, I think that's kind of the same little time spot that we're kind of working in. So Masters AKC is an unknown number of hides In most of the classes. The elements you have a minimum number of one and a maximum number of three or four, depends on which one. And then for master's interior you have three rooms. It's kind of the old school NECSW interiors we used to do where you had to be clear and you had to get it correct for all three rooms. So AKC, master's interior is that same way. One of them could be blank, not more than them. Maximum of six hides, which becomes a little bit of a mental game as you're playing it.
Speaker 2:But I do find that the individual puzzles that are being presented for Masters level can mimic sometimes some of the challenges that are being created for Elite S, so that they're not really necessarily NW3 level challenges, although they could be. But the difficulty level does kind of match a little bit better to the Elite S and it depends on the judges. It depends on where you're at, on what gets presented. But it wouldn't be unusual to see a five-foot hide in Masters, which you wouldn't, unless it was set really nicely for NW3, you might not get that same kind of challenge necessarily with that same expectation of difficulty of the space, unknown number of hides, all that kind of stuff. So I do think that masters kind of fits within that elitist kind of mindset. Also, the freedom of not having to be perfect, which is a little bit more elitist versus NW3, has that perfection requirement.
Speaker 1:Yes, good point. So one of the things you did just mention, though, that I want to talk about is when Alex said the hide was set very nicely.
Speaker 1:So, part of what we are asking our COs to do, certifying official to do, and or the judge in AKC and it may be in AKC it's a little bit different Alex can reflect on that Is for the hide to be judgeable. So what she means by we might have a five foot hide in NW3, if it's set. So what we don't want to have happen is, as I call it, if you're going to set a high hide, make sure it gets solved as a high hide. What that means is there's clarity for your dog that the source is located up, it's high. So if I set that hide and believe me, it can happen.
Speaker 1:So sometimes when you walk away, and even if you walk away from your elite select and they say, yes, you got all hides and you're going wow, that one hide on the chair was very interesting. I wonder why my dog got it on the top of the chair. Well, it may be that it was a high hide. So always be sure to go look at your debrief videos to really understand that odor picture of what contributed to where you called it, because I think that's often something we miss in every trial is we walk away with our memory of oh, I got it on that chair.
Speaker 1:And then I don't understand what may have been going on with odor and why the judge allowed a call or accepted our call as being correct. Location of source Exactly.
Speaker 2:And I do think that the strength of AKC odor and the typical aging time now it's not every time I've judged where it's an eight-hour search because I'm there all day and there's 50 competitors, but typically most trials are not that big, that's like the largest in the country. So if we're saying a little bit of a shorter aging time with a strong AKC odor, I do think that there is a little bit more precision. I can definitely say that a lot of judges expect more precision. Whether that is possible or not, for Hyde's set isn't always there, but I do think with the stronger odor strength that you do get a little bit more precision on some of those kinds of things that maybe NACSW odor because it's a little bit lighter and it could be in the space for quite a bit longer than maybe a first competitor for AKC, and so as a result you could end up with a little bit of a more broad call that is more comfortable.
Speaker 2:It's like a lot of wishy-washy words going on in there, but for AKC I do find that the expectation is a little bit closer to source than sometimes is available for others and it really depends on the background of the judge. Some judges in AKC you can see a very wide call which would make a lot of competitors uncomfortable to even call it because they don't understand the odor picture, and I've seen that many times. And so in Masters AKC you can see something that's maybe not set quite as cleanly but because the odor strength it can create a little bit clearer picture than otherwise might be seen. And I do see kind of similar hide set for Elite where the odor picture can kind of mimic what we see sometimes with these more difficult AKC hides that can be set in master's level or above.
Speaker 1:So well, and I think I'll bring us back around to just remember. Guys, we're talking about trial. I would still highly emphasize to you that you do not train to meet a judge's expectation or a judge's yes call.
Speaker 1:No because that will just convolute um clarity for your dog. If we can make our training of the different odor puzzles very clear for our dog, however you think that that may be for your dog, I'm not. I don't need to like really talk about specific methodology there. Um, right, um, but just keep in mind because you know how and we all do it Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, it was the yes call for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, I'm going to get ready and I'm working with Zeke on some high hides for elite and where? Where would we accept that? At trial, right, and doesn't really for training, it just doesn't matter, right? So anyway. So I just wanted to throw that in there when we were talking about, yeah, about the judgeability, because while it's important for us to understand that, it may change based on the odor we're using and the location and our airflow and all of those pieces we really don't want to train based on.
Speaker 1:I just want to get a yes from the judge and here's what I want to do Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So anyway, yeah, okay, so that kind of takes us through the elite select Is that. Does that feel?
Speaker 2:comfortable. Yeah, okay, let's dive into elite.
Speaker 1:So, going into Elite, and I want to talk about Elite Premier, secondly, only because it has a few things that are different, but both in terms of its minimum score and its point accumulation to get the title, those are right off the top of my head as to differences. The other piece I want to emphasize is Elite premier is an elite trial. It is not a one day summit and that's been challenging for all of us to learn right, because I think that you go in and you're like, oh my gosh, well, but I look at everybody who signed up here they're all elite champions.
Speaker 2:If they're all elite champions, they should be able to like compete on a one day summit right, yeah, or not even that you can recognize a whole bunch of names that have been doing well at summit. And so then it's, it's hard, because that starts getting in your head yeah, right, even as a competitor. That gets in your head.
Speaker 1:Right, and one of the reasons it got created was in order to give that summit team and that elite champion team an opportunity to do the elite searches, because otherwise they're entering and hoping for an FEO entry.
Speaker 1:So, this gave them their own one day full trial to be able to go in and compete for ribbons at elite level. But the entry is what's the exclusivity? So if you do not have your elite championship, you can enter and potentially get into an elite premier. You would go in as an FEO, which just means then those points don't accumulate towards a title or a ribbon and it's not any different than when your elite champions enter an elite right.
Speaker 2:Right, okay.
Speaker 1:So at this point it is, can the team enter into an increased, complex, novel environment, right? So this? Is even potentially more complex than the elite select, because elite select it was my segue, right, my segue between NW3 and elite. This is purely elite With increased area complexity find, increased complex multiple hides or zero hides, call, alert and finish correctly. Okay, my parameters for my searches. They can be size and complexity. Can be large. I'd say small, medium and large, and you could have a small one inside of a large one.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. And then time score for title, and all of those can be different.
Speaker 2:Right, and all of those can be different right.
Speaker 1:We can also have any element or it can be combined, so meaning that you could have the containers with the interior.
Speaker 1:You could have even containers with an exterior stuff like that. But if it is containers, even in that we're going to make it very clear. So it's not an Easter egg hunt. We're not going to take containers and hide them underneath things and ask you to go find the ORT box, right. So if it has containers in it they're going to be set separately, right. But you certainly could be looking at these hundred boxes, right, a hundred boxes in a container search with high value distractors in there. By high value I mean the barbecue beef, the steak, right, the tortellini, whatever, yeah, high value cheese, those sorts of things inside of those distract containers as a distractor side of those distract containers as a distractor, right. And what I really feel like here now we're starting to branch into more searching, less finding, and what I mean by that is the whole concept originally of nose work was intended to to depict what professional dogs do, and professional dogs really do search more than they find, right, I mean, if you're a drug dog, human remains.
Speaker 1:Whatever your whole task, and even SAR, your whole task is to go out and do more searching than finding.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:However, when we created this sport, we created it as a man made, person made um, you know, know, contrived search, yeah, and we did that by making birch anise, clove or whatever, um, essential oils you are hunting for on a q-tip. And then we created these hides. And then, you know, originally or not originally, but at different uh types of searches in elite, you may have what we call the easter egg hunt, where you could literally go in there and, yes, there are seven hides. You're given five minutes and it's just alert, yes, alert.
Speaker 2:Yes, alert.
Speaker 1:Yes, right. And then it's almost the challenge of remembering where those hides were. Have you already called that hide, those sorts of things? So those can all be parts of that complexity. So the variables oh, we didn't talk about this in the elite select. With the elite select you are going to have one that is known, one that is a range of hides and two potentially that are both unknown. So we try to make those the variables. And that's the same in elite. You should have two searches that are unknown. It's possible you could have more. It that's the same in elite. You should have two searches that are unknown. It's possible you could have more. It's possible you could have less. But that's kind of the range we shoot for. And then also give you the complexity of known or range, which, quite frankly, over all the years of doing three and then coming into elite, typically for me I'm very comfortable with the unknown number of hides. I'd rather know how many I got is super, I don't really care about right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how many I didn't get, and so sometimes the known number can do that, because if it's got one hide that's more complex and you don't get it, you're right away like concerned.
Speaker 2:It feels, bad.
Speaker 1:Well, here's an interesting concept when I was in now I don't even remember where I was, which is sad. Oh, I think I was in New Jersey just a couple of weeks ago and I set a range and there was one hide that misbehaved. Well, I hate to say it misbehaved because it did what it was going to do, right, but there was one hide that in this search a lot of folks didn't get. So when they call finish, they go oh, I missed a hide. And I said that was a tremendously beautiful search with your dog.
Speaker 1:If this had been an unknown number, you would be ecstatic yeah, exactly, to have just done that search and gotten three hides. So, even though it, was a range of one or no number of four, and they only got three. Oh my gosh. So if that's anything I could impress upon people is when you do get the range or you get the known, focus on what you're getting in that search and be ecstatic about what you get, because it could be that no one else got the other hides, right, right.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't matter then.
Speaker 1:And it's not so much that we measure ourselves by others, but that's where the placements come from right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's also information of that hide?
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly that's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:That hide just wasn't working yeah right or it could be.
Speaker 1:in this particular search I had four hides and folks found different hides but, my timeframe just wasn't quite enough for them to get all four hides.
Speaker 1:So, they slammed the three hides really nicely, got the three hides within that time frame called finish, got out and missed a hide, but across the board I think only one or two teams out of 30 or out of 28, I don't remember if it was a full trial found all four hides. So you should be ecstatic for your dog for going in and doing such a wonderful job. So let's see what else is?
Speaker 1:on our little list here. Okay, so Elite, when it first came out, we were. I don't even think that when it first came out we had an Elite 1 and Elite 2. I think Elite 3 and Champion got created after a lot of peer pressure. Yeah, I hate to say it, right Right about 2015, 2000.
Speaker 2:That seems how it's been right.
Speaker 1:It's how it's gone right, yeah, where we're going. Okay, so now we have these really talented dogs. What are we going to do with them? After an elite one and an elite two, we got?
Speaker 2:to have something else.
Speaker 1:So now we have an elite one, two and three right. And then we have an elite champion. Elite champion is the 1,000 points and that ends the elite level. Right, and it works, the same Dogs kind of average like the max end.
Speaker 2:Every once in a while you see 100. It's very, it seems, a little bit more common now, but in general it's not that common and you've got your minimum of 43 points right. So if you kind of think of how many trials you need to get to a thousand and you're kind of averaging 70 points, it's not bad, that's great, right, um, and I think that's how a lot of people kind of work their way um to get right.
Speaker 1:Well, and when you go to set your training goals, to be thinking of, you know, even for your first trial, what. What you would like to see is it? Hey, I just want to. We often say I just want to keep my points. No-transcript do I have. You know, what types of searches do I do better in? Maybe I go and do a few elite selects to see if the smaller search area and that is more suited right to where we are at in our training and I build my training off of those results rather than jumping into elite and feeling like I'm doing I don't want to even say poorly it could just that you're doing less than optimum right for that trial level, because elite really is, can be.
Speaker 1:I mean. So some of the emphasis of coming out of three is I can't wait to get to elite because at least at elite all it is is a point accumulation. I don't have to worry about being perfect on that day or even getting only one error and getting a cue or a leg. I can just go in and do what we do, and it's more fun, it's more relaxed. Yada, yada, yada. I really talked to quite a few NW3s this past weekend about.
Speaker 1:I really feel that NW3 is based more on miles than title, and that's how we should be approaching it, that you want to be able to, and that's why we have three, threes so that you have the opportunity over time to accumulate the skill sets that are in NW3, so that as you get to elite, you are prepared.
Speaker 2:I have to say so I just wrote a blog post on this this past weekend because that was kind of our journey and it felt. I looked at our numbers. We're at almost two years in NW3. We didn't trial super often. We had a few where it was maybe only a month apart, but typically it was about three to four months between trials. But we needed those miles. We needed those miles for maturity he's young but also to build the skills in between. So after every trial I was able to take that list home, work on those things. I once got told to work on the thing that you do best to make it even better, and so then it allows you to feel more confidence and that thing is fast done and then you have more time to work on the rest of it and then you can keep working on those skills.
Speaker 1:That's bonus, because the benefit too of that is it's often building a greater foundation in the skill sets that the dog has clarity versus going oh I, and often what happens is we don't know how to train the thing that we are weakest at yet and we won't know really, especially as self trainers, how to train it until we have solid foundation on the other stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Right, so that's that's if you're going to take any one nugget away from you guys. Start looking at your prior trial, high trials in video and asking yourself what do, what are our strengths, what do we do really well? And start working on um. You know, building that in terms of strengthening that um. So these other things that are the same um, which is three no's, uh, the false errors, timeouts, are all half a value of the value of one hide, right? So it's number of hides divided into 100 gives me my point value per hide. Again, the skill sets find hides quickly, stamina, variable problem solving in one search, multiple hide complexity in one search. Now, the one thing that we start to add into elite is increased problem solving.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. And then when we get to summit, is increased problem solving yeah, right. And then when we get to summit, everyone says, oh, it's all based on increased problem solving.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I would get a headache and go. Our dogs have been problem solving since level one, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The ORT. What are you talking about? Right, it's the challenge of it, right, and it's that. Well, it's that odor complexity. Yeah, right, and it's that. Well, it's that odor complexity, right? So if you really don't know kind of where you are with your problem solving, you know, just get with someone, especially to look at a trial video because we can look at that and really be able to sort out.
Speaker 1:okay, this is kind of what I'm seeing and typically in my mind the increased problem solving starts with the dog. So this goes right back to what you just said which is let's build more clarity for the dog in terms of so, if I'm going to make my list of the types of hides I could have at elite, they would be inaccessible. Converging close hides.
Speaker 1:Now notice I didn't say close converging, because those can happen but proximity they can also be yeah, you can have close proximity that the dog didn't find a convergence point close to either hide. They had to go way out, right, yeah, so I think we get in our brain that when we have close proximity hides, the dog should go from one to the other and it may not present itself on that day at that moment in time in that search. That way, right, yep, we will have blank areas, we will have high odor areas, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so clusters of odor like four or five or six hides on one little area.
Speaker 1:Yep, and then we could potentially have blank area blank search, and then we could potentially have blank area blank search high low distractions may be increased. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah.
Speaker 2:Triangles, lines, all of those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:As often happens, though, with our observing or just looking at the debrief, is that we can't tell what odor did from those hide placements. So just keep that in mind. So, even if the CO says I set this as a converging close proximity, if we didn't watch the dogs work it or have a video of our dogs working it. It may be hard to tell kind of what that skill set was.
Speaker 2:All right. So I think this is a good time to interject detective, akc detective, which is their top level. So detective is open to any team that has a master title with an odor search division, which would be scent work, container master or interior exterior buried, whatever it might be. Typically, as an instructor I recommend that you get an interior or exterior master title before really diving into detective, but it really depends on the team. The search area is going to be 2,000 to 5,000 square feet, so quite a bit larger than any of the other search areas. Exteriors can get up to pretty large size and master level but with detective you have an interior and exterior search area. That's required and they have to be contiguous so you're working from one area to another and you can go back and forth however you would like. There is a minimum of five hides always in searches and a maximum of 10 hides for all detective searches and almost anything goes for high placement. I'll dive into like what's expected for that afterwards. Search time is always between seven and 15 minutes, so they are quite a bit longer than an elite search typically. So even at the low end of seven minutes that's pretty rare to see an elite search at seven minutes. Typically they're going to be five or six minutes at the top end, so that is a long time to be searching but there's only one class if that's all that you're running that day versus elite. You're looking at four searches and then there's no 30-second warning in detective Same thing as master's level. That is something that is being challenged. But you can self-time. Any odors for AKC can be used.
Speaker 2:Off-leash option is always available for detective. It is something that as a handler, you do have to consider. Is there an area that is possibly not safe outside and maybe you want to put your dog on leash? As a judge, I have had the door closed between interior and exterior areas, which give a little bit of safety for teams if they would like to make that choice at the door. There is no requirements for where those hides have to be, inside or outside, so it is throughout the whole space. You can see exterior spaces that are completely blank and the door is closed, so you get little leaks of odor from the interior space, but you can have a completely blank area whether it's inside or outside. Let's see distractions. You have four to six intentional distractions and those can be like food. Food can be hidden, toys could be hidden, finish call is required, all that kind of regular stuff that's in any other competition.
Speaker 2:The goal of the detective class and I'm reading this straight from the guidelines is a complex search with the added challenge of a large search area incorporating interiors and exteriors. The detective class is intended to provide an ultimate challenge for the handler and dog. The handler will experience unknown number of hides, large search areas and complicated odor problems. This level is intended to showcase the team's teamwork Teamwork right, so it's not just finding hides. Competitors should not encounter hides that are indistinguishable from each other, which would cause double calls, or the handler assuming that two hides are one, and the competitors may encounter challenging odor problems with converging odor, elevation, eddying, pooling, channeling etc. The judge responsible for choosing the location of hides within the search and clubs can't partake blah, blah, blah, so that kind of goes into some of those details and then the standard for judging is appropriate hides for the difficulty level of the class not visible, steady, can't be knocked or skewed by searching dogs, and stable, meaning the odor is not likely to saturate nearby areas, making the larger area correct. Stable hide will remain consistent throughout the duration of the trial and not change as the trial progresses. So that is requirement, I have to say, because I've judged 50 runs in detective. Those are long days. That is like 7.30 in the morning till 4pm, and so to set a search at that difficulty level that is still very stable can be difficult. It requires a lot of forethought and trying to anticipate changes in the sun, heat, things like that.
Speaker 2:Fix and go is a new rule that did just come out I think we were at a year now and if you get a no in detective, you're done. So you don't get a no and then you continue searching, you're done, and that really sucks if it's right away. A no, and then you continue searching, you're done, and that really sucks if it's right away. So if you get a no, you can now say I'd like to fix and go. You have to say it and the judge will demonstrate an area or point out an area that you can go and work an additional hide, whether it's the one that you're already working or another hide nearby, and you have until the end of your detective time to work that hide. The judge may offer a little bit of guidance if it looks like your dog is struggling and you would like to continue working it. So the guidance is normally not necessarily coaching, because you can't expect your judge to coach it, but it might be the hide is a little bit deeper or they're almost there, that kind of stuff, and a little bit more guidance on that. So fix and go. It just allows you to work that one additional hide and then you're asked to leave the search area For detective because of titling.
Speaker 2:You do need to pass it 10 times to earn a title. Right now AKC only has the one title to achieve. But there's a lot of people out there that have continued playing it because it's the top level of AKC and if you would like to continue playing, you're allowed. You don't get a letter saying you shouldn't be doing this. You're allowed to keep playing, spending your money. Maybe in the future AKC will put numbers on those titles so that there are additional numbers, but otherwise they're just there to play and kind of continue playing the game. So detective and where it fits kind of in the grand scheme of things, I do consider it like a version of one elite search and if you're playing a master's and you're playing all the levels of master's in a day plus the detective search. There isn't the requirement, like for NW3, to be perfect throughout the day, but it is very much more similar to an elite day because you have a lot of searches and asking for a lot of skill throughout.
Speaker 1:So then what does the fix? And go that a lot or similar to our ask for help. You don't accumulate the score from that one hide, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're done.
Speaker 1:You've already. I hate to say DQ'd, but that's basically what it is right, you already did not Non-qualified, right, yeah, okay. And then that's more just for a training, um, so that you have some.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's also. It kind of sucks if you've got this big search and it's 10 minute search and you know you've got a minimum of five hides and you go in and your dog fringe alerts very quickly on something and you get a no within the first minute. It sucks. So to be able to say can I get a high nearby to work is kind of nice.
Speaker 1:As a competitor. How could I even decide? Do I decide based on what I know about a judge and whether or not? Because you just? I mean, that's a pretty complex challenge to place on a judge to say, oh, you're going to have eight hours, eight hours of this search and not have it become, and what we mean by when she was talking about the.
Speaker 1:What's it called in the language they have Stable, stable. So you don't have the bleeding, if you will, you don't have the stretch call, you don't have the hide that's underneath the chair that sat there for eight hours and now is proliferated so much odor elsewhere in the search that now the dogs are alerting elsewhere other than that chair. And I'm not saying that any all hides being there for eight hours are absolutely not going to be clear for the dog as to where sources.
Speaker 1:That's not the case. I'm just saying it puts a lot of responsibility on that judge to say I shall not have this happen in my search.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have to say I do think AKC strength lends itself to being able to be more stable. It's just the number of molecules coming off that Q-tip is almost the same concentration at the end of the day as the beginning of the day, and so that source is much clearer. I think you end up with a saturation point of if it's on the underside of a chair that's covered in fabric, that fabric is almost saturated in that odor at the same level at the beginning of the day within 20 minutes as it has four hours in five hours in. And so the dogs are understanding that picture and working to source pretty predictably.
Speaker 2:And I've seen that, if I'm judging all day long is the calls don't really stretch too too much. Every once in a while it's like set in an atrium with a ton of sun. Yeah, it's going to start moving. There's a lot of movement in the airflow in general, but as long as they've been pretty reasonably set with clarity, it shouldn't be moving too much. I do find that elevated hides are going to have more variability and that can cause some bigger problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and well, and I think that you know initially I would my brain goes to because I'm embedded in a lower intensity of odor with NACSW, right, my brain initially goes oh, that can't be, alex, you've got more odor on the end of that. But it totally makes sense in this regard.
Speaker 1:The dog knows. Yeah, the dog knows. And whichever one we're training or doing right Dog knows. And the whichever one we're training or doing Right, and even in some of the workshops with Holly Bouch, is because it's I hate to say it, but it's an easy way to create my pooling and trapping is to build up my intensity over a shorter duration of it sitting there, I'm going to get more molecules moving to other spaces other than my tin or tube.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And so it creates. It's kind of an easy way to create that pooling and trapping problem or pooling problem, pooling and trapping or just trapping.
Speaker 2:But I think also and this is we're kind of getting off the topic, but I think when you're using the stronger strength to create that pooling and pooling away from source or pooling near or whatever, I do think that the dogs understand the source much more easily when it's stronger. So you get the complexity of the problem, but then the answer is so much clearer when they finally figure it out. And that's where it's kind of a benefit to use a little bit stronger odor in some training. But I do find it's hard to reuse a space because you do end up with lingering odor and residual odor on sources. Good point, Yep, it's just considerations.
Speaker 1:But that also makes sense because our dogs are constantly measuring and sorting, yeah, and part of the measuring is getting that data, that odor data, right, which is the quantification.
Speaker 1:I've got 10 molecules of birch right here. Oh, over here I only have eight. So therefore I must be further away from source. I think I'll move back to the 10. Move to the 10, move up to 12. Oh my gosh, now I'm on source, and that is a highly obliterated example of what our dogs do. But I put it in simple math right, it's still there. Yeah, because that's basically what they're doing. So, okay, right, it's still there because, yeah, because that's basically what they're doing. So, okay, um, yeah, and lydia commented that she felt that that helped, happened at a trial at which she was at and the. It will happen as well, guys, at any csw. It's not saying that one is better than or more trustworthy than the other. They are just different, and you just need to understand the concepts of of which venue may have the variables of odor within them, because and I and I think who knows what we'll we'll say about all of this another 10 years from now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we'll learn so much more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if anything, we're perpetuating our dog's olfaction DNA.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Okay, now we're going to move on to the top. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think we've kind of covered elite premier right.
Speaker 1:There's nothing really additionally different other than you've got a higher standard to keep your points um and the ribbons are super pretty and it's, isn't it, 450 yeah, 450 for one title yeah for one title, and then you can repeat that yeah, um, and then I don't know if can they carry those over. Like the elite select, do those points carry over? So if they exceed I believe, so yeah, I think so. Yeah, we'll go over to the next one, just like the Elite Select. So really those were the only differences. The ribbons are gorgeous. Jenny designed those oh they're gorgeous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you wanted to make them something that you felt like it was, you know, something different, something special, and it certainly is. So okay, now let's jump to Summit. So you know, this became coming out of 2017 Nationals Invitational. So the National Invitational was exactly that, which was the NACSW's last National, meaning that you had to get the invitation to come and compete at nationals. You had to acquire a certain level of whatever it was at that point in time. In 2017, it was intended to be the top 40 teams in the nation. It ended up being getting 90,. I think it was a 93. Maybe in Elite got you into the top 40. And the reason I know that is because Digger had an 87.9 or something like that, almost so close Like 45.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We opted for Dog and White, so that worked for me. Okay, so for Summit, this kind of became created again, with poor Amy, jill and Ron saying, no, we're not going to create another level. For God's sakes, people, get over yourselves. We need to stop this at some point in time, because the more we create this, it dissipates the lower levels, quite frankly, either, because you know at some point in time you're going to have an attrition, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:it's kind of what we thought, um, and then what kind of happened when we got to summit and we still don't have? We'll still have some summits that don't fill, meaning that they have 28 entries available and they may not all fill. But I really think that, and what I felt very strongly about as a host is that we need to keep offering these within our areas, because if we don't, then it is kind of meaningless what we ask them to do. And it really does become this next and final skill set if we can get it to be consistent and build the training to match that trial level.
Speaker 2:Now here's the challenge Now.
Speaker 1:we can do three summits, get in FEO, but you can't get be in a title position in more than three in one year, one 12 month period. Okay, and so you know what that kind of did was. I think in some regards created this lull in terms of their training, which is wonderful. Why the elite select and now the elite premier. Yeah, yeah Would offer these opportunities for that summit dog to continue doing really meaningful training in a trial setting. Right, yeah, yeah, and it's not the two day, but anyway, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I think also, kind of talking along those same lines. It's not ncsw or akc, but I know you've got uss hornet and I do the scent trials.
Speaker 2:This year it's mystic edition in sedona, but I think we're also trying to fill that void a little bit for those upper level competitors to be able to go out and have a lot of fun, take some risks, but push skills, push their limits a little bit and figure out where those holes are. So the next time that they're in a elite premier or summit trial, that they're coming in a little bit more confident and being tested in a trial setting because it's hard to mimic that in training- Well, and I hear a lot, so I don't have any upper level instructors in my area.
Speaker 1:Well, it makes sense that typically we do not have a class that has six to eight summit teams in it we typically do not right. But it doesn't mean that just because you don't have a summit class, that the class is filled with your same level, that the instructor in your area doesn't understand how to set some great hides or great hide placement. It may be, and I think this is very true, for as you're getting closer to elite champion and into summit, you should and I'm going to use the word should and it's a challenge for some people you should be your best trainer, your best self-trainer, If you're going to reach that level and you want to continue to excel and continue to expand your skill sets and I'm just going to say enjoy yourself at summit, because it can be difficult if you're struggling.
Speaker 2:So, yes, enjoy yourself as well.
Speaker 1:But you also have to understand how to set these hides, how to build this complexity, and if you can't do that in your own training, then you need to expose yourself either to volunteering for more summit trials so you can watch more dogs working summit searches, right, okay, so now we got to jump back and tell you just about what is summit. Okay, can a team and this is really the stamina and the longevity of searching is really what you're looking at here Can a team complete two days of searching novel, complex, highly complex environments with larger and very large, even extremely large areas and no limits on search or hide complexity, meaning that you could have all of those types of hides that I described in Elite put into the same search? Yeah, the cap is off. There is no. This is right. This is you know.
Speaker 2:Anything goes, yep.
Speaker 1:You need to be able to find complex multiple hides with hide number variables, call alert and finish correctly hide number variables, call alert and finish correctly. One of the things I learned very early on and this is back in 2018, might've been one of the first summits that mountain dogs had. We had it at Estes Park, right yeah? Was the challenge of my dog working a very complex odor puzzle and me saying we don't have time to solve that digger, please, let's go. Let's go get the low hanging fruit. And guess what? There was no low hanging fruit in that circuit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's that challenge of how. How do you read that complex hide? How do you know if you've spent enough time on that complex hide? How do you get? How does your dog work to get to the lower hanging fruit, if you will, if it's there? To come back around to that more complex hide, yeah, so the search parameters, as again I'm going to say it can be anything from small to extremely large, right? A mix of your elements. Now, it's fair game to have a suspended hide over top of an ORT box.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, oh yeah, it showed up the call on the ORT box is a no. When it's collection is no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Because it's collection is no. Yeah, right, because that's not the source, so that is legitimate. The hides variables unknown, known or range. Yeah, really looking for creating the pooling and trapping problem. One to eight minutes is typically in some of our time parameters, guys, and I think when we're talking about detection, some of what can happen there and it may change over time, if AKC gets a larger pool of people trying to do detection on one day, right, you just may not be able to fit.
Speaker 2:It's limited.
Speaker 1:However many 15-minute searches in that day, it's limited however many 15 minute searches in that day. So that's really what pushes our one to eight minutes is because we've already capped the number it's 28 so we're already saying oh my gosh, if I had four um eight minute searches, that's 32 minutes per team way too much 20. Yeah, I'd be there till, like you know. Okay, that's that's, and that's just one day. Not to mention you would totally wear out the teams and now you want them to do it all over again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't think we've said that summit is two days two days, yeah, so really working on your stamina, can you, as a handler, to keep that mental mindset? And this is what I never got to do with Digger. I never got the chance, and that's just because he passed. And that's what happens with our dogs, right, he passed before I was able to do more summits with him to learn how to. It's not like it's duck or water off a duck's back and you just throw away your first day, but at least go okay. Here's what cause at the end of the first day you're going to get your score sheet. You're going to know how you did on your searches after day one.
Speaker 2:Not in relative, but just to yourself.
Speaker 1:Yes. That's important you still don't know right, and hopefully you're still not like everybody, running around sharing their score sheets, which may happen, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it does Right.
Speaker 1:So it's not really the competitiveness with others as much as it is at that point with yourself and that's saying to yourself okay, so we left behind, we missed five hides or we got three no's in pooling and tracking, you know, and sorting through that problem and going okay, my goal for tomorrow is clean slate, right.
Speaker 2:Clean slate.
Speaker 1:We're just going to build more points. That's what we're going to do. We're going to be positive about building more points, and I think that mindset can be so helpful. I have seen more teams because the reason why we're talking about this guys, in terms of competitiveness, is only 20%. The top 20% of our title teams and we'll explain what that means earn their summit title. So it really doesn't matter how many points you accumulate on a given trial over two days. It's really where you are in the mix of all of the other teams that have been searching those two days. So, and by title teams, what we mean is, while we have 28 slots available, we may not have filled it, meaning we may not have 28 title teams, we may have 20. So we figure out 20. So if it was only 20 teams, it would be 20% of our title teams. So, and then we have this little grid that tells us how many of those teams would then be entitled to a summit title based on the top scores.
Speaker 2:Boy, that was very convoluted to explain, but it normally it's like five yeah, four Right, yeah Right, kind of what we're looking at but it could be as four right. Yeah, right, kind of what we're looking at, but it could be as small as three, right?
Speaker 1:Or two, it really depends. Yeah, so distractions are again, they're going to be whatever. And one of the things that I really realized, even going into Elite at NW3, when we're setting up the searches as a CO and I don't know how AKC handles this searches as a CO and I don't know how AKC handles this, but the lower levels, we may actually either remove areas out of bounds because we find them too distracting. A vehicle search is a really good example. If I've got a vehicle that my you know NW3 dog and white or whatever showed me was highly distracting, I might remove that vehicle right, because that's not what I'm measuring. I'm measuring can the dog come in and locate source on a vehicle within unknown number of heights? So I'm not measuring whether the dog can work through distraction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but at elite and summit I'm probably leaving that vehicle in there right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, the no is not as impactful too. Exactly Right. The no is a risk and you have to read your dog and understand it. Versus the no in NW3 could mean another month of being able to figure that thing out again. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and at Elite and Summit, the no may mean you're close, right, you call it in a fringe. It may also mean you're in a total pooling and trapping zone and you're not close to source at all, or it means you're in no odor and you have kept your dog there and they're trying to get out of there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that happens too, those false alerts, because they just don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so then over the two days the handlers have to verify their scores three times over two days. So the first time you do it is at the end of day one, the second time you do it is midway midday on day two, and then the third time you do it is when it's all done. And one of the reasons why we do that is because we have no real way Once you say that only 20% of these teams are going to title. There's no way for us. We're not going to take ribbons away from people, titles back away from people. So you either need to dispute it while the CEO and judges are there and we can get, and we get video of every search so that we can then verify it, or you just let it go and we don't worry about it. Right, Right? So the problems, types of hide, placement is all the same. It could be the inaccessible, converging, close proximity, blank areas, blank search, high, low. You can't.
Speaker 1:When I say close proximity, you may have a room that is the size of a closet with three hides in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean that's so. That's part of that skill set. Okay, this is definitely searching more than finding. The majority of the time spent in the search is searching rather than finding overall, given the size of the right, given the size of the search area, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's kind of it, for no, there's one more Bonuses.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, bonuses you don't get to see anywhere else, but oh, they're fun and provide a twist. Maybe too much sometimes, because it can kind of change a whole trial or make or break a whole trial. But yeah, bonuses are different.
Speaker 1:And you can tell where Alex's competitive edge lies. Guys, she just said make or break a trial. I would be happy as a clam to just walk away with fourth or fifth and not a title.
Speaker 2:No, but I've seen the only teams that get summit are the only teams that get the bonus. We've heard that a lot and if you don't get the bonus, then you have no chance on the summit, right, right?
Speaker 1:So I did get some competitors saying to me with the Georgia Cummings summit that I did was, well, you know, trying to toss up. Should I accept some of the challenges? When we do the twist or the bonus search Some of it, we just say there is a bonus hide in here and you don't really get the option to say I'm going to opt in or I'm going to opt out right.
Speaker 1:It's just you either get it or you don't. Right, Some of the other games that we've even kind of embedded into the search can be really fun and they're more intended to kind of lift you up than to make you feel tricked. But if you haven't done a lot of summits and you haven't really done some of these twists or bonus searches, you may feel like, oh, if I'm given the option to opt in or opt out, I don't want to lose any points, so I think I'll just opt out, right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Because I don't want to lose anything. Typically, we're not you, you're not going to lose anything because of the bonus. You just don't get the bonus.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. There aren't any twists where you go negative and affects the point of expression you already have.
Speaker 2:I've been negative because it was a blank room and I called a false. I was just going to get there. I was just going to get there.
Speaker 1:So the one challenge to that is if we have a blank, and that's because the negativity is built around the understanding of a blank search Period. So we didn't change the scoring, just for the bonus. No, no. Because of that. That's kind of what I'm saying is that so and that's been typically okay.
Speaker 1:We have a large area, it's all blank. If you call the bonus correctly, you will then be led to another little area where you can, you know, pick up additional hides right and then you may get your hides there, because at Summit and at Elite, actually with a blank search, you are gaining points for your correct finish call Right In the blank, and the correct finish call is worth two points, two hides, two hides, not two points, two hides. So it's worth two hides. So if I get a false right then I can't call finish correctly. So now I have gotten my half a value of one hide for my faults Right and then lost my two hides for not calling finish correctly. So that's how that gets scored. So if you're really interested in that piece of the scoring, that's what you want to look into. It's more the scoring piece, yeah, but otherwise you could have. What are some of the other twists?
Speaker 2:I like the no response.
Speaker 1:So the judge didn't confirm. I love, love that that's the double blind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was really fun it really required a team to trust each other. Um, other ones might be, um, moving through spaces, I can't remember what the one that we did in gunnison, um, I think, oh, it was mother may. So each room you had to correctly call, and if you incorrectly called finish, then they said you have to keep going. And so then once you got to that last one, yeah, we've done that with vehicles.
Speaker 1:Big pieces of machinery were to move to the next piece of machinery. You had to say to the judge may I go on I? Would like. May I move forward? Yeah, Because you don't want to say finish, right? Oh, by the way, while we're on this, I just want to throw out there really fast and one of my last elites I had two teams say to their dog, let's finish this area, Don't do it.
Speaker 1:Do not do that, because the biggest reason I want to say that is you're asking the judge then to interpret what you mean by that finish call, and it really isn't. If the timer hits the stop button on that, because they heard you say finish, we are going to stand behind our timer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, you said the word happened so fine, Even in training. Train your brain not to say, okay, let's complete, let's keep working, let's work this room some more, whatever you verbally want to say, but just avoid saying the words let's finish this area, Because if that ends in a stopwatch being clipped or the judge says to the timer. They just said finish, which is a discretion on behalf of the judge.
Speaker 1:They are not there to interpret what you meant by the word finish. Finish is the final call. Yeah, so just try to stay away from that. I heard that and just sort of cringed I went oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I promised myself I was going to mention that as often as I could to elite teams.
Speaker 2:I also. This is kind of an AKC judge thing, but I've had teams, I think. Maybe I think I'm going to call alert. Yes, are you calling it or are you not Right? So, and the other one is the whole prior found hide thing right.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, okay. So the way to clarify that is if you have unknown number of hides, we are not going to tell you if you have called something before Period. We shouldn't be. You may get a kind judge, you may forget whatever and they may tell you, but they should just be going. I can't confirm that for you, or we just sort of look at you with a blank stare. You don't get a response. So if you feel strongly that you called a hide already, you should be saying alert Unless you're AKC.
Speaker 1:Did I call it before? Yes, unless you're AKC, did I call it before? And you're still not going to get a confirmation from the judge. If it is a range of hide or no number, the CO may have asked the, depending on you know those areas and that sort of thing may have advised the judge that they may remind you. Yes, you already got that. So, boy, we took you from NW3 guys and Elite Select all the way right up through summit. Yeah, I'm hoping that.
Speaker 2:Um wherever you're at in your journey that you can kind of see where you might be headed, what you might need to do, what might be in your future. A lot of places to go and find the exact skills and maybe examples of those hide sets is the necsw debriefs even you're AKC Like. Those debriefs have so much information and I'm finding that CEOs are getting even better, like every time. I think it's just through use and exposure in the debriefs to explain things just a little bit more detail. With more explanation, not just here's where your hides were, but you're seeing a lot more details that you can use to try and set up your training experiences so that not necessarily you're setting that hide but you can start understanding what was the challenge, why was it set, and then trying to set those similar things for your own dog and testing your own observation skills. Not just setting it to run it and call finish, but test yourself and seeing what those observations might be for each hide.
Speaker 2:Along the same lines, there is an AKC version. It's not highly used but there are a bunch of judges in there. I've put my own videos sometimes in there and it's a Facebook group called the AKC Sent Work Judges Debriefs and you can just request to join. There's 3.2 thousand members in there right now and there's a few judges that post in there and then they give their own debriefs, very similar to what's in any CSW, but maybe even a little bit more detail. There's no time limitations. Some of them are going to give more description than others. Be aware that there's a lot of variation and you can start seeing that within the different kind of levels, not every kind of searches in there.
Speaker 1:Listening to this podcast, what we wanted to achieve was talking about what are the parameters right? What are you being tested on so that you can then build a training you? Know regimen and a training plan so that you can get better prepared and you really do kind of have to know what you are testing for right.
Speaker 2:What's that?
Speaker 1:level of certification and for a long time I called it that I said I'm going to stop thinking of it as a title, I'm going to think of it and more in terms of certification, because that makes you feel like you know. It's not like the 100%. You can kind of go okay, I need to, you know, work on my accessible hides or my inaccessible hides, and that's just part of the certification. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, cool. Thanks everybody for listening. We really enjoyed having you. Hope that you took some nuggets away from our podcast today. All right, thanks guys, thanks everyone.
