Find Your Fix- Sport Dog Scent Detection Podcast- Training Tips and More !
K9 Scent Fix—Find YOUR Fix- Sport Dog Scent Detection Podcast
JOIN THE FUN ! Canine Nose Work coaching tips and tricks to help fix your training and trial challenges with an open mindset. Offering methods and techniques that might be new to you or outside your "usual". Chatting with the experts, experienced nose work coaches and guest speakers exploring new ideas, how to use them and build solid training resources with Mountain Dogs and Release Canine.
Join us for the LIVE podcast via Zoom - watch for each LIVE podcast announcment and interact with your Hosts Jill Kovacevich from Mountain Dogs and Aleks Woodroffe from Release Canine. Email us at mtnnosework@gmail.com OR aleks.woodroffe@gmail.com WITH your Topics or Comments. We love to hear from you our K9SF Handlers !
Recorded Podcast released within 24-48 hours or during the first week of each month. Look for the Podcast posting at k9scentfix.buzzsprout.com
Find Your Fix- Sport Dog Scent Detection Podcast- Training Tips and More !
The GOOD CALL - Calling The Hide: Training Vs Trial
THE GOOD CALL- or is it ? AI offered various titles to our October podcast- MY ALL TIME FAVORITE: My Dog Said Trash Can : The Judge Said No !
If you’ve ever called “alert” on a hot object only to hear “no,” this conversation is your map back to clarity. We unpack the gap between a fair training call and a fair trial call, and show how to build a dog that presses all the way to source—even when the environment throws pooling, trapping, and convergence into the mix.
We start at the foundation: imprinting, odor importance, and the nose-on-source "good habits" that help keep our reward standards tight at ORT and NW1 on up to Summit. From there, we layer timing and reward strategy—when to mark effort, when to wait for more, when to expect contact, and how to use remote rewards without teaching self-release. You’ll hear practical frameworks for accessible versus inaccessible hides, two-step reinforcement that opens the door and still pays at source, and why revisiting “easy” anchor hides is essential insurance against fringing.
Then we climb into advanced odor problems. Elevated hides get a stepwise progression that favors safety and intellect over flashy stretching dogs, using channeling surfaces so dogs can solve "source is up" cleanly. We dissect Summit-style puzzles where odor pools on trash cans and chair racks, and explain how judges decide consistency and when stretch calls make sense. Along the way, we focus on handler craft: reading behavior instead of forcing a final response, trusting the dog after a no, and managing the clock so you search effectively instead of bailing early.
If you want sharper calls, steadier performance, and a dog that knows the difference between hot air and true source, this episode gives you the blueprint—tight training standards, smart setups, and resilient trial habits. Subscribe, share with your training group, and leave a review with your biggest “aha” from today’s search talk.
Hey everybody, welcome to our podcast. I'm here with Alex Woodruff. I'm Jill Kavosevich, and we're going to jump right in with uh whatever our podcast is. We're both coming off some very busy, busy weeks. Um, so uh we just sort of are gonna do this kind of spur of the moment. And uh for those of you who usually like to jump in on our podcast, uh you didn't get notice, you didn't miss anything. We didn't like even post it. We're just gonna go ahead and record it and uh and get something out there uh for you to listen to. So um, and I kind of came up with this. I just came off of hosting a summit and an elite, and I participated in the elite. It was super fun. We're finally starting to gel together. Yay! Yeah, you guys did well. Getting some consistent scores, so that's what I'm looking for.
SPEAKER_03:But yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so I came up with what was it? Oh, now she's gonna have to remind me, but uh the the hide call. So looking at both in training, uh, what's a good or a fair hide call, meaning a yes confirmation, uh, we got that hide, both for in terms of the dog and the handler, right? Because if you're in a class, that may be the instructor who's making that yes, right? Um, versus in yourself training, you're making the decision of yes, when when is the good call? So in training, it has a whole couple of concepts and and uh perspectives to it, which is really funny, and you can talk about for hours just on that alone. Yeah, yeah. But let's also include trial, right? Because how many times and we as instructors, judges. Yeah, as instructors, judges, self-training, um, and even as handlers, we're often like, but in trial, would that be a good call? And what we mean by that is would I get a yes from the judge and um then have it count on my score? And we often forget that that's entirely different than what my dog may have made a decision on, what may be best for my dog in terms of training of where to reward, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So, Alex, where would you like to start? Should we start with training? Probably because I'm thinking that those concepts in training can help us understand sometimes why we get whatever calls we get in trial. Versus if you possibly, yeah. If we start with trial, you often bend your training to the judge. To the judge, yeah, which is not correct. Yeah. No, which isn't good at all. And boy, we really you really see it, guys, at Elite and Summit when the calls, if you will, or the acceptable decision making for the dog and the handler become broader than nose on source. Right. And I'll just leave it at that. All right, so let's jump right into the training side of it. Alex, give us kind of um some uh a few pointers on on how we can talk about this, and I guess in a mean meaningful way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I do think that there is a little bit of variation or a little bit of flexibility on what people consider, I don't know, like good enough. Is that kind of the word?
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but for me, I have a requirement, at least on my own dogs, to have as much precision as possible in training. So I will be quite patient in training to allow my dogs to get to source and let them understand that it's nose on source that earn them the cookie, and that's really what we're aiming for. But at the same time, balancing effort. So if my dogs work really, really hard to try and figure out where a hide is and they finally have that aha moment of like, oh, it's under the chair, and they start to reach for the chair. I may mark and reward that, which seems a little early, but it was based on all the effort that they did. Versus if they were doing kind of nice and it's working really well and they're understanding the picture and they go under the chair, I'm gonna wait for the nose to get to source. So it's a little bit based on effort, but in the end, the training picture that I want is nose on source, marking and rewarding that.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so how about based on the level?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So talk a little bit about that. So that obviously, right? So it doesn't really whether we're talking about NACSW, NW, even O R T, O R T, N W one, N W Two, N W three, whatever it is, and AKC. But let's talk first about the lower levels. So does that does that decision making and uh I almost want to call it a precision point because and that might be a little bit too specific, right? Yeah. But when you put it into the progression of the dog learning odor importance versus nose on source, right? Because hopefully everybody understands that that's really kind of a progression, right? Because then we even got our imprinting stage, which comes before odor importance, yeah, and then we've got nose on source. So you've got that whole little bit of a progression that you're training your dog. And even if we're using or doing nose work, and I always hate to say just for fun, but mostly as an enrichment activity, both for ourselves and our dogs, and aren't really participating in a lot of trials, we often still will and can adapt that whole per progression piece that we're talking about, right? So even if you're thinking, well, you know, I just kind of I want to just participate in this because it's really fun for me to do with my dog, and I'm really not worried about the judge's call, right? What we can gain from this conversation is is it is part of the progression of learning uh the sport. So it can be just as important to kind of follow these guides, guidelines, or or kind of uh descriptive pieces we have about the progression, uh, whether you're gonna actually trial and or have an instructor say yes and confirm your calls or not. Does that say? Yeah, I agree. Anything you want to add to that?
SPEAKER_01:So I think we've got there's like so many things in this. It's like opening a can of worms.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so how do we make that into an hour conversation?
SPEAKER_01:Oh gosh, how do we not make it more? Um, because really when we're looking at the call, so what is the call? Um in training, it's where you've decided to reward your dog for whatever they're doing. I think there's the extra piece in there, and not everybody has it, but is the final response or some sort of alert behavior. So there is often the behavior that we as handlers visually see and we are rewarding that. So, where does that fit into the whole spectrum of where the call gets made?
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Because that's now based on the dog's decision, yes. Um, which is more important when you don't know where the hide is. But when you know where the hide is and you have the ability of controlling what you mark and reward, maybe it's not always the best option. Maybe you want to reward nose on source, which maybe the dog gives you a behavior and you have to wait a little bit longer, neutrally, not saying the word show me, but just neutrally waiting for your dog to say, Oh, my maybe I should get closer. And that's what you reward.
SPEAKER_00:So, and a good point on that, with when when we use the words train final response, that might conjure up in some people's mind, right? The actual teaching of that as a skill set. Right. Let me just say that. Whereas we do know that the dog's decision, right, and when they is often the final response, and it may be self-trained. The dog may have self-offered, whatever that is. And of course, then we can get into yeah, and then we can get into the whole discussion of the look at me, uh, what's a good one, what's a what's a tough one, blah, blah, blah. But that's not really what we want to focus on so much for this conversation. It was more kind of think about where the hide is. And if you're training that type of hide, where is your reward zone? Where is your yeah, where is your reward target, right, for reinforcement in that progression.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:With in mind that our training is setting us up so that we can go into trial and be successful. So I think one of the first things we have to do is look at the level. So if we're looking at NW1, for instance, or even ORT, the objectives or even novice in EKC, okay. The objectives there that we're measuring is can the dog and handler come into a novel environment, locate source, and communicate. The dog communicate it to the handler, the handler communicate it to the judge, and the judge confirm it, right? That's kind of the the process, the segment, the pieces that fall together there.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And at every stage of that process, things can go wonky, right?
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So, but I would say we're pretty strong in training for that level is nose on source.
SPEAKER_01:Agreed. And you know what? The hide placement is typically in competition going to encourage that. It's going to be in a location that the dog can get their nose on source. And we're not even talking inaccessible, we're just talking like it's so straightforward and clear for the dog that of course this is where the hide is. And so it takes a little bit less time to source, everybody feels comfortable about it, and the alert call is normally pretty clear on those kind of hides.
SPEAKER_00:And when we're talking about, so I always like to break this down into the three pieces, right? Which is dog, handler, and environment. So that's my kind of trifecta. Like every everything I I think about in nosework, I want to think about how it's the dog is affected, how the handler's affected, right? And what the environment contributes to it. So I think that you just hit the nail on the head, which is we are talking about at this level, odor availability hides. Yeah. Right? So if because you can set what you feel is inaccessible. In other words, I can see it. Yeah. I can see the little tin. Like I got my little tin here. I can hold up my little tin and I could see it. And I got it on the side of a chair, and I'm thinking, okay, the dog can get nose on source. Yes, it's possible, but I could also potentially have it in an environment or under some circumstances where no odor is available on that at that moment, right? We did that.
SPEAKER_01:Like if you had a good wind. It's just pushing it through the chair.
SPEAKER_00:So I had it happen even in just these open exhibit halls, right? So we did this wonderful little workshop down in Kiowa. I had a wonderful stack of chairs, and I decided instead of doing an inaccessible hide in that stack of chairs, I was just gonna set it on the outside of it. Like you could see it. Like I fully thought in the workshop that would be kind of like the anchor freebie hide, right? Something the dogs could just come back to. You could you'd know where to reward because you could see it, because that's so often the challenge with inaccessibles is where do I reward, right? Because now I can't get nose on sores. Man, that high just went wonky. The AC, the HVAC kicked on, and it was spinning it one way, yeah, and the dogs literally were still bracketing the whole stack of chairs. So when I, you know, so watching that the first time, I went, okay, we need to like get this down to a single chair. Right. They needed to take away the whole stack, whatever that was contributing, it wasn't helping my odor availability to the dog to be able to source. So just throwing that out there, right? Even after we say, okay, I know what my good my hide call would be, I want nose on source or nose as close to that source as it possibly can be. It's an accessible hide with odor availability. You may set those in self-training or even in class, and it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It just doesn't work. And you go, No, oh crap, okay, what do I do now? And I think that more and more instructors should just become as resilient to that.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um adjust.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you just adjust it. Okay, thank you for that. That was just our dog in white, and now we're gonna take right, now we're gonna reduce this to a single chair because what we just saw that dog do was not my objective. Right. Right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And if that person, if you want to have that person come back and run the run side, the you know, the exercise again, do it. Don't you know, don't fall back on. Oh, now we gotta all do this really hard high. Wait until our dogs disengage, especially when you're at that lower level. Yep. Okay, so that was NW1. What else would we contribute to NW1? Anything you can think of?
SPEAKER_01:Um not too much. I think it's very easy for a novice handler to very quickly go into again the behavior kind of stuff, yeah, and forgetting it's nose on source that really should be rewarded, especially at that level. And embracing that piece of it and going back in their training again to reinforce it and reinforce it and reinforce it. Because it is so easy to slip into like it things start stretching if we don't reinforce that nose on source, especially at the lower levels. And so then the dog is starting to say, not here on the chair, it's saying chair. And then very quickly it's saying, and the chair next to it.
SPEAKER_00:Or it's saying handler's hand, handler's fist, right? So you just hit, I mean, that's so important, guys. What she just said that you really need to decide before you even set the hide, right? In a class, in your practice group, whatever you're doing. Okay, my goal is to reward nose on source.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Will my dog let me get my reward, whether it's food or toy, to source, to reward. Yeah, right. I've got now a couple, even one is um an elite dog, but it's a lab, right, who's trying to take out the entire fist that has right, and so as the fist comes in and the intent is to open the fist on source, yeah, she's going after the fist. So now the handler is doing this, doing this curly cue with their wrist, trying to get it into the tin to do a reward at source. So it can be very challenging if you've got a dog that's and by when I say mouthy, it doesn't necessarily mean that the dog's trying to like bite the tin or bite you, but they're so food driven, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that they're trying to like they're almost so greedy that they're like, no, I got it, I'll come get it from you.
SPEAKER_00:Right, exactly. So and then there's a whole slew of little things you can do that might help with that because it still is really important in my mind that you do reward its source as best you can. And it might be you have to get, you know, something that's maybe easier to deliver, maybe it's thumb and forefinger only, right? And you like it, the dog's gonna think you don't really have much of anything. Um, maybe it's even working on some of those outside of nose work. Put a treat in your hand. Can your dog sit and look at that treat in your hand? Little impulse control. Yeah, a little bit of impulse control, and not that you're going to correct them when they're going nose into source, because that's not the idea. But you'd be surprised how that patience can help them, right? So that every time they see your hand, they're not, oh, it's coming into my mouth. Why should I wait? Right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So, okay, little devil's advocate, different point of view. Um, because for it's funny, I don't teach this, but for my dogs, they have a remote reward, meaning I mark the dog.
SPEAKER_00:No, this is hugely important. This is hugely important.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's just a different way of playing the game, right? Um, so for mine, I say yes when they put their nose on source. They understand that that was the moment that earned the cookie, and not always, but frequently then they come to me for the cookie. In order to make that work, that they understand nose on source is what got the cookie, is the timing of the yes, the marker. Um, or you have a location-specific marker. So I might say the word strike, which means there's a toy held out to the side or get it or whatever. Um, because I know a lot of people are starting to explore location-specific markers. But uh the key, if you're going to have that kind of system, is that you do need that release. The dog needs to know they are done working the sourcing and now they can come get the cookie. I see where people start to remote rewards. So they're rewarding away, and it's almost like I see this a lot in upper levels where people get kind of lazy about their reward because things are happening and it's going well, but there isn't a lot of clarity all the time, and so sometimes the dogs start stretching those calls and stretching what they want to do because they don't have to work to source, they just kind of self-release, we call it and then we're good and we move on. And we got the yes. So why should we worry about nose on source? Right. So I have two comments on it.
SPEAKER_00:The second one, please remind me if I forget, um, after I explain the first one. The second one has to do with the summit level and why nose on source in training is so important for the summit dog. Right. Okay, so the first point is that that remote reward is can be so dog dependent. It can even be handler dependent. You may have a handler that just cannot get there. There's no physical way I can, with whatever my yeah, capacity is, get my hand on source to deliver it. So having said that, it's really important though, that that step of remote reward, and what we mean by that is the handler is actually communicating in some way that the dog's nose as it gets to that source as best as we can see it. And that's where those tins really help because it's a bit of a visual marker for us, right? Versus like a tube or something smaller, right? Yep. So it's actually using those tins, and then what it means is the dog gets the confirmation that the nose on source was completed, and then the reward happens away from that's what we mean by remote reward, okay? So in case you're not clear on what we mean by that. So, and I uh a very good uh friend and student down in New Mexico has a dog who is very high level obedience dog. So she offers all these behaviors and gets so insanely crazy about being rewarded, and they've been doing you know the mega party at source. It's spinning her up beyond her ability to even stay in her own skin.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So we had to introduce remote reward for that so that she won because that can also be the reason why your dogs may bonk the hide, yeah, get overly aggressive on it, yeah. Yeah, because they're they're the time frame it takes the time frame it takes us to confirm what they have done is so long in their magical expectation book, right, that then all these other behaviors start to happen, right? Yeah, so that's one point. The other piece is the remote reward comes in a certain part of the progression, right? So the first part of the progression is that imprinting of odor. Right. We don't want to introduce it before our dogs understand source. Where is the odor coming from? Yep, yeah, right? So you gotta think of it as the molecules, right? It's all that piece of um, you know, evaporation and you know, all those pieces of how it's dispersal and all of that. The molecules are actually um emanating from and coming from those, if you will, the live Q-tips, as opposed to, right? Okay. So we had that imprinting already done, and our dogs understand source, and we've got nose on source. So then we can talk about that remote piece. And what we the second point was at Summit. Yeah, some of the best ways to train your dog to move through pooling and trapping is to do a whole lot of nose on source reward. Yeah, yeah. If it has to be a single hide, it's gonna be a single hide. You want that press all the way into nose on source so that your dog can discern the difference between pooling and trapping and a deep inaccessible, right?
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Or so one of the hides that um our uh CEO, Christina Leipzig, and she set this wonderful. If you get a chance, go look at it on smug mug. It was the oh now I don't remember the name of it. Oh, um she had fun names for every search. Well, we we and we thought them up, quite frankly, over over wine at nine. Oh, okay, that explains that right because we she wanted sales. Well, because they were all like we were using reusing areas. Oh, okay. So I kept saying, Oh, it's the Whitmore search. She goes, wait, we've already used that that name like three times. We have to have different names, right? Yeah, yeah. So it was let it go. Let it go. So the whole concept was we took this massive gym and just filled it with stuff chairs, tables, okay, all kinds of stuff, right? And the concept of let it go was let go the human perception of oh shit, look at all that stuff, right? Yeah. Just let the dog work. But anyway, so one of the exercises we do for inaccessibles and learning inaccessibles is to put a chair in the middle of a circle of a bunch of other chairs, right? It's the barrier. So you create that. So we created this massive barrier of these chairs. Um and what ended up happening, of course, at that level is pooling beyond pooling on all these other chairs that were in close proximity to this one that was in the middle. It was a beautiful picture of how to do that. Okay. And the dogs that had understood nose on source worked the collection and the pooling of all of that larger quantification of odor in all those massive chairs that were around this single chair in the middle. And it was a single chair in the middle to the point where the dogs had to move chairs out of the way to get in there.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. There were a couple of little places that the handler could move in, but for the most part, it was truly one of those, one of those barrier exercises. Right. Um, so it was really, really good for that. And the dogs that you could tell had the confidence to say, the hideous. Well, I'm waiting. Yeah, I'm out on that, but there's no if it were a hide underneath one of these chairs, it would be here, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But we got a lot, a lot of false alerts. And when I say that, it's you feel like, oh my gosh, why would that not be a good call? And that's because the hide underneath that middle chair was very accessible, very available.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And the dogs that were getting the false alerts were out, it was like a fringe call.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Right?
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So it was three, four feet away from an accessible hide.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So there you go. So in training, it's going to be really important to get that um nose on source to train that kind of understanding for the dogs. So we just jumped from NW1 to Summit. Summit, yeah. Right? In one fell swoop. And so, and the call for the judge is going to be based on the consistency of all the dogs that have come in. Right. And the majority of the dogs, if they were given enough time and dog and woman, they can source it. Sourced it.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that was one of the hides that pretty much consistently the teams got. So even if they got a no in the collection, they still wear it. The dog turned right around and got the hide. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was one of those.
SPEAKER_01:So something that I like, I like to say kind of along the same lines of in training, we have a almost 100% faith that your dog is going to get to source. Like that is what you are aiming for in training is your dog is going to get to source. And you've built that into your whole trust system. So you get to a trial and you have to believe your dog, right? Because otherwise, it is so easy to start slipping into do I believe my dog? I'm going to pull my dog off. Um, I need to test my dog, I have to say, show me, or something like that. But that happens because of our trust, and it's starting to degrade because maybe in training we're seeing our dogs fringe a little bit. And where I see normally a problem, and fringing meaning alerting away from source. So coming to their decision point away from source. Um, and where I normally see that as a problem is the dog gives the communication, I'm an odor, kind of fringey, so not quite on source, and then the handler does something to tell the dog to get closer, whether they step in, whether they say, show me, whether their hand. Yeah. And so as a result, the dog is using that cueing system to continue. They don't know how to do it by themselves. And so, do you truly have your dog working to source on them own? Or is it I get to the edge, I tell you I'm at the edge, and then you have to tell me to get closer. And I think that's where the breakdown typically happens.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I think one of the biggest things we can take is a takeaway from that of what do I do in training for that? Are you telling me I really just should stand there and wait? But but on the other point, too, is you may have skipped parts of the progression. Yeah. So, and that's what we really saw. We looked at it, we went, okay, we've got a lot of dogs who are spending a lot of time working inaccessibles and deep inaccessibles, suspended hides, right? Yeah. The more these these higher complex odor hides more than they are the single chair accessible hide where they press in.
SPEAKER_01:And it's possible that it wasn't even skipped, it's just not being revisited. I see that a lot for higher-level dogs. Yes. Is that you are like so obsessed with these harder complex problems, and they take time to work. Yes. But then we're not reaffirming like the easy stuff. Like the chair in the middle of the room that puts odor to the edge. Yeah. And now all the dogs are working edge odor when the height is just in the middle. And it just takes turning around and the dog finding the line. Exactly. Yep. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But what I meant by um missing it is for your lower levels, right? So we think, okay, for hide placement, I'm going to do nose on source, so I'm just going to put it on. And granted, at trial, those nose on source accessible hides are typically, we got to hide the hide, right? Yeah. So you can't see it. So it may go underneath, but it's going to be in an area that is going to be very distinct to the dog that they have gotten as close to source as they physically can, right? Yeah. Now, granted, you're going to have the short dog who can't get up and put nose on store. You're going to have those kinds of things. So our guidance would be work with the dog you've got. Oh my gosh, if you've got a a a little one, right? Yeah. Then you're going to reinforce nose on source a lot with hides at their nose height.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Where they can do it. In open boxes, uh, get however it is. And you can do a lot of the I call them running bunnies. They're really kind of stagnant bunnies. They're bunnies all sitting in a row. Right? It's almost the whack-a-mole thing, right? Yeah. They're just there and just line them up and put the tins out there, right? And let the dog just get time after time after time, nose on source, nose on source, nose on source. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And then, and then, yes, will you get some? Because then you could get a whole litany of discussion of, oh, but won't I get blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you do these exercises with hopefully like one objective in mind, right? Yeah. And if you've like either burned too much time at it, or your dog starts to offer you stuff where you're going, oh, I don't want that, then you just adjust it. You have to be resilient, both as a handler, as an instructor, and as you know, your self-trainer, to say, okay, that went a little wonky. I didn't really want that paw. Right. Why did I just get that paw, right? Or whatever, you know, happens there, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So now we're into even at NW2. NW2, we're going to get the introduction of an inaccessible hide and multiple hides. And this is what? Advanced, advanced, and kind of and then kind of NW3? More excellent. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because advanced you shouldn't see an inaccessible hide. The highest height is three feet, which technically is almost inaccessible for a short dog. Right. Um, we're kind of borderline there, but they don't consider that inaccessible. Okay. Most don't. Um, so excellent is gonna be that level that you start seeing that.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So even when we start to work on the inaccessibles, right? So when you start to do those in getting ready for your NW twos and threes, and oh my gosh, I could have that hide in a cupboard. How am I now going to do nose on source? Um, what I just explained is that chair in the middle of that cluster of objects can be wonderful because you let the dog work it, work it, work it. You see the bracketing, the dog continues to want to get in, and then you open the door and let them in.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_00:Open the door and let them in. You can do it with a c cabinet. So this would be the next step in the progression. Exactly. So the dog's actually gonna work one that they can't get to, and then you're going to say yes when they made their decision, they've gotten as close as they can, but the reward is still gonna come from opening the door and rewarding its source, right? So it's almost a two-step reward because your yes or your acknowledgement that they were right, yeah, it is a marker, yeah, right. And it did happen away from source, right? But my reward sequence is going to take it into nose on source.
SPEAKER_01:And still have it accessible. Yep, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you get your your food right on nose on or your your toy right nose on source.
SPEAKER_01:Right on source, yeah. And something that, I don't know, I not everybody's like this, is for inaccessible hides, I frequently won't reward or mark a final decision on the dog. I like to interrupt because I really want the dog to think it's the effort to try and get closer, it's the enthusiasm to try and get closer that earns them the reward, not a final decision. Because I do see, especially with more novice dogs, that if we start putting a lot of value on their decision for those inaccessible hides, that they're going to come to it too quickly. And then that starts becoming fringing on other types of hides because they're not doing the work. It's like show your work.
SPEAKER_00:And I think that's part of the progression again, right? So I'm really big on that. That yeah, no matter we can't really think of the prior skill set that we um solidified as being the first step of the next progression. It's the next progression actually starts with the steps that came before that prior skill set.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So, you know, and I always go back to the other sports that I know, right? Which is teaching skiing. Even if I have somebody who can do a snowplow turn, I'm still going to do just a basic snowplow before we start to turn or right. You always go, you know, and we always hate to use that word go back because really it's it's just revisiting the solid skill sets you already have to add to the skill sets you're adding, right? Yeah. And so that's that whole piece that Alex is talking about of rewarding for the effort. And then there may come a point where you're rewarding for the effort, you've already bridged into a more complex hide, right? That now, if the dog gets very reliant and has a great expectation about just being rewarded for the effort, right? Yeah, then you'll start to get fringing where the dog's making their decision away. So now we just want to interject in that how do I get the hide a little bit closer, or how do I communicate to them, right? Right that effort. Their effort becomes more. Does that make sense? How do you say that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I find like effort you can capture as a behavior versus the end behavior. So there's two behaviors that you could capture there. And I find that a lot of people with inaccessibles is they're waiting for their dog to look back, to freeze, to sit, whatever it is, right? And that's the only answer. And so it's trying to figure out where's that balance in between, and you might be going back and forth. Um, I find with the more deeper inaccessibles, I want my dog to keep making that effort. Now, there is the other end of it, is you may not get to the point where you have to ask for a behavior at the end. You can just read the dog, and I think that's uncomfortable for a lot of people. But inaccessible hides might require for you to just read behavior and not wait for an answer. And I think that's where there's a disconnect and where do I call it and what's yes and what's a no. And it's all based on is the dog just shortcutting because that's what gets them the cookie and they're frustrated and they've done some effort, and then hey, I hit my 10 seconds, I should get a cookie now. Um, or are they trained that any effort and continued effort can they keep gooing it for a minute to try and get closer to source and now it's on you to call it?
SPEAKER_00:Right. So the a really good example is any one of us could, whatever our dog's favorite thing is, steak or a ball or whatever it is, right? And you throw it out there in a field, right? How long will your dog continue to pursue for that versus having you go show them where it is? Right? And there's that huge balance of just getting to the point before your dog disengages, right? Because when your dog finally goes, okay, and it doesn't necessarily mean that the overall problem was too too hard for the dog. Typically, in my mind, it means we had a lack of clarity. We didn't have the expectation built with the dog for the dog to understand, like Alex was saying, about the continued pursuit. Michelle Ellerton uses the words pursuit. I love the word press. So, and they're they're really the same thing pressing into source and continuing to pursue source, right? So imagine if it really was prey that the dog needed, a rabbit. What the dog's going to continue, even if the rabbit is stuck underneath a whole bunch of uh twigs and that sort of thing, they're gonna continue to try to get to the rabbit if they're hungry enough, right? Yeah. Um, as long as the rabbit doesn't scare them, I guess. Some of my rabbits might scare, scare a lot of dogs, because we have we have we have jackrabbits that are like the size of Espa. Oh yeah. They're huge, right? Yep, yep. They're about the size of Izzy. I was looking at them today going, yeah, you're about the size of a jackrabbit. And of course we're starting to see them now, right? Because they'll turn white the winter and they start to come out. Yeah. So anyway, okay, enough about rabbits. But that's the point. So if anywhere along the line there anybody becomes, okay, I'm either confused by what we're doing in class, I'm confused by what happened at trial, I'm confused in my self-training, then just try to get a hold of somebody who you feel that might offer you some objective information or take a video and watch it yourself, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So, and then and then we just add back in what were the skill sets that my dog did very well, so that my dog's decision of the hide call, my dog's decision of the hide location has clarity. Yeah. Right? All right. So what about an elevated hide? So that's so that was really kind of one of the pieces that I think certainly happens in training. And I think a lot of it happens because we don't really apply the progression of one foot, two foot, three foot, four foot, five foot, right? On a flat wall versus on an object versus whatever. Boy, if you did that, if you went in and you did your first exercise with say you do have at least a two foot, it's head the head height, two foot dog, um, and you put the height at two feet, and then you brought them back out, you moved it up another foot, yeah. Right? Yeah. Or next practice session, whatever you want to do. Now it's at three, then you go to four. The dog's gonna understand that odor picture. You are building that odor memory for the dog to understand, versus you all of a sudden are putting it at five or six feet on a flat wall, and then you're having the dog work for a long time. Five minutes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It can look really flashy, but it doesn't. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But then the piece is what am I going to reward? Where my dog can learn how to communicate to me that the hide is up. Or even work that picture.
SPEAKER_01:Because I think that's very intellectual to work an elevated hide above their head. I agree. Versus to drive to source.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Then what do we get? We get a glance at it. We go, oh, that's good enough. Yeah. And we start taking that. Or we get um, they just kind of sweep underneath it and maybe um go to another um object or something. Here's the other piece. If you're going to train elevated hides, you should be making sure that the hide is going to be solved as an elevated hide. Yep. If you're gonna set it right, I mean it doesn't do any, but you can use like a chair right underneath it the first time. Absolutely. Then take the chair away, and now the dog's gonna go, oh, yep. I remember that picture for a climb or a cato board, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like you don't even need a chair, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Any of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Yeah. So I have like what I kind of say is for elevated hides to make them sourceable as much as possible. And that's kind of like a weird word, but sourceable meaning the dog has a 99% understanding of exactly where that hide is. And it doesn't always have to be nose height to be that. You can get to the point, like, not all dogs are gonna jump up with their hind feet on the floor, front feet on something. So, okay, fine, thinking about that.
SPEAKER_00:But maybe the stretch indication and they don't have to, right?
SPEAKER_01:And I think maybe that's like within the same conversation of an elevated high does not require a dog to stand up on their hind feet because who's to say that the dog doesn't have a back injury or neck injury or an ACL injury, right? Like the sport is for every dog. And so I don't think that that should be part of that requirement when we're looking for how a dog indicates elevated, but the dog has to indicate up and they have to understand how to work it within a relative kind of picture. But going back to that sourceability, I can use channeling down. So if there's some sort of way for that odor to come down to my dog's nose, whether it's on the backside of a post with the wind blowing into that post, the dogs then really have a nice picture of the odor coming off and then can come right back into where that hide location is. And I can achieve that.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, sorry. Yeah, even texture on a wall, right? So brick, a brick wall can be great because it's got those grout pieces that come down. Yeah. So you can find like things like that where you look at it and go, oh, odor can change just like when you're teaching a crack hide. Yeah. So when you're training a crack hide, right? Yeah, um, and those might even be a little bit easier, right? Because we can bend over and get nose on source. Yeah. Um right. And we can we also logically, I think, have a better sense of when it is rewardable, right? Because then the dog is gonna get, at least for ground hides, their nose right on it. But it's still that same concept, except that we've now gone vertical with our hide and our channel coming down to the dog.
SPEAKER_01:But I think it's worth spending a lot of time where it's still sourceable to your dog. Like your dog is only an inch away, and they can really understand it. And spending a long time. Like George, I spent a year and a half at that level. Yeah. And then I put him in the leap pee last fall, and he found that height, I want to say it was eight feet up. And he was worked it beautifully. He found all the edges because he understood how to work it intellectually, right? Not just driving to a source and then getting frantic that he couldn't put his nose on there.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And we really saw that. And this isn't to pick on the teams uh for Summit, because the object in Summit, and you're gonna see that elite, but what was the difference between Elite and Summit? Um, as a CO for Summit, our objective is to create these very large pooling and trapping odor problems that are converging and pooling and trapping. Yeah. Versus at Elite, you might have one that's just that. One hide, right? You're gonna have one hide that's your complex hide typically. I mean, you could have more, but but not I mean, at Summit, there's no there's no ceiling, there's no bars to uh let's put it together. Yeah. So, you know, if you want to see kind of some of those, what they look like, I I highly suggest you go look at the smug bunk. Yes, it would be wonderful to um see a dog working those, and you might have friends who were in those trials and did a body video. You uh might even be able to ask them about the video services so that you could see a dog work it. But we really felt like because the dogs got into those problems but then peeled off right and went to another problem and just like you had we actually had uh a suspended hide on a table, that chair that was inside of the um uh barrier. Yeah, and then three one another one that was elevated. So now I've got a suspended hide, an elevated hide, a cluster hide, if you want to call it, inside of a barrier, and then two that were in big chair racks that were like deep. I mean, it wasn't deep in terms of feet back against a wall, but it was within. It was within. Yeah, that was the five hides in the search.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a lot.
SPEAKER_00:Whoo! That's a tremendous amount, right? Yeah. For it's just gonna create this massive amount of odor because sometimes I think we forget to to remember, we get so um caught up in where is my dog going to communicate the inaccessible hide so I can have sufficient clarity to call it and get a yes, which is typically that bracket, right? They bracket, bracket, bracket, and then they try to push their nose in.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:We're brave enough because we've seen that communication before. The bracketing is the communication. Right. Uh that that's that press or or the behavior that Alex is saying about continuing to try to get to source. So those are the things we would see. Um, and it wouldn't be much different than if you had um, so here's a really good example um with a a sheep herding dog. The sheep are on the inside pen, and my dog's running around the outside. He continues to run around the outside while the sheep are running on the inside, right? Because guess what? He's trying to get to the sheep. Yeah, so it's the same thing. The odors on the inside, the dogs rotating around the outside of it or bracketing at the points that they can to try to get to the center. So, um, and what and what we find is that in training, if we start to make the innocent, oh my dogs, I'm gonna give that to them. That's good enough. Right. Yep. We just need to know at what point do we ask for more.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What point do we ask more?
SPEAKER_01:That has to be part of it.
SPEAKER_00:What point do we ask for more, right? How do you build that progression so that you get more and more? And um, really using a lot of the available accessible hides either as anchor hides in addition to those inaccessibles can really help.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, right?
SPEAKER_00:Because they'll go over and they'll pop right on that accessible hide and get rewarded. They go back and they'll work that inaccessible hide more. Right. Yep. It's a great tool.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:You call it the anchor hide, but it can work.
SPEAKER_01:I also like to create barrier type problems where they can get in if they make enough effort. Yes. Meaning they go around all the way and they realize, oh, on the upwind side, there's actually an entrance to the X-Pen or whatever it might be. And so you create situations where maybe they just go over some pillows or push past a like gentle divider or something, and they're able to actually access inside to get to source. And so I like doing that at that beginning level.
SPEAKER_00:And we're not suggesting that it has to be the bull in the china shop dog. No, this can be very much the dog, the thinking dog, right? That because Alex has already said a number of times that it's the intellectual hide. This is the one where the dog really has to think, in addition to just having great odor drive, source drive, right? And desire to reach that rewardable um endpoint, put it that way, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so so we got to that's all kind of the training pieces. Now let's talk about, okay, so what is the high call look like in trial, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yep, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, I think sometimes what we get is um just an understanding of when we set an accessible hide, and so there's a two, there's a couple pieces here, guys. When the CO or the judge in AKC, who's also the hide placement um hide setter, sets a hide, and we're going to say to ourselves, this is an accessible hide.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:We have experience and understanding that that is one where the dogs can get nose on source, right? Yep. Then we're gonna hand it over to, okay, now we're gonna start running dogs. And we've also even either ran our demo dog or our dog in white, so that we've kind of tested that theory. Here was my theory. I'm gonna put it on this chair, I'm gonna test it with the dog in white or my demo dog and make sure that um I was correct. They can't actually do it, right? They can't actually solve it the way I thought it would be solvable for that level. Okay. Then I'm gonna watch, as a judge, then I'm gonna watch this, you know, continuous run of one dog after another, one dog after another. And though if I have that kind of hide set and it's working appropriately within the environment, okay, um, I should see it solved primarily the same way.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Right? So now if I get 20 dogs that come in and they are all going nose on source, this is that chair in the middle of that whole ring of other chairs.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:If I was 20 dogs in and never had a single dog that could get to that chair and solve it, I might have to be asking myself, was that really the problem I intended to set?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And then perhaps the call should have been in the band of other chairs. Right. If that was as close as the dogs could get. They couldn't get in any further. Right.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:If I've seen 20 dogs, or even if I've seen just a few at the beginning of the run, right, that are confirming yes, they can get in, yes, they can solve it that way. Yeah, that be may become a more distinct and preferred place for the dogs to make their decision and the handler to call it.
SPEAKER_01:At source. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:At source, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, at the hide placement.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Maybe a better way of saying it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So anything you want to add to that of um, okay, so another example of this kind of situation is like tables and chairs. So if we imagine, like I did a detective two weeks ago and imagine like a it's a it's a clubhouse for a baseball stadium. It was kind of a cool spot, but like any conference room, and big tables, chairs in them, hide placements on a chair, slightly pulled away from the table, on the end, not in the middle of everything. Right. But with the air direction, it's moving it through the tables and chairs. And I got some fringe alerts on one table over and on a chair. Is there odor there? Yes, but not in a way because there is consistently enough dogs that are clearly sourcing right to exactly where the hide placement is on the correct chair. So those ones that are a one table over are going to be a no.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so even though you use the word alert, by alert you meant it was either the dog's indication or the handler reading the dog's behavior that they had at that spot at that location. And they interpreted it as being um the behavior source, right? Yeah, yeah. So we had a couple, I mean, as you can imagine, right? So you've got this whole uh gymnasium filled with these five hides I just told you guys about. And you got to remember, often with an inaccessible hide, like in a stack of chairs, that is actually going to create a larger plume of source closer to source than your single hide under a chair, right? I mean, you you basically just populated and and painted the whole like one of those rolling carts that's all filled with chairs. Now the whole thing is what we call hot, meaning there's source odor that is plentiful, yes, of a higher quantification than the edges moving away from it, right? And it's the whole stack of chairs. Now, all of that odor is also going up into the environment, right? Moving around in the ceiling and coming down in various places.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Which may or may not, and this is kind of a term, but have a line back to source. Exactly. So when you have odor that collects somewhere from above, especially, the dog doesn't have access to where it was coming from. So then it will stay in that pooling and trapping odor that's stuck somewhere without really knowing where it comes from. And that is hard as a handler to read.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and so this is so just if you want to know, that's the puzzle we really try to set up at Summit, which is where the pooling and trapping is disconnected from a clear pathway back to source, because that truly is going to measure, it's not tricky, and sometimes you don't even do it with absolute well with absolute intent of knowing where that spot's going to be. Because you don't know until the environment starts, you know, uh interacting with the different dogs coming in and searching, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, but we did have like one trash can. It was within, I mean, if you just like looked at it for line of sight, like mapping, yes, it had a direct line back to with the cart thing that had the chair cart that had the height on it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:But the dogs did not show you a clear pathway. So that tells me it may be line. It was the next collection point.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. But there's enough interference.
SPEAKER_00:Right. But for whatever reason, it was not clear for the dogs getting back. And that trash can got I a huge majority of the handlers with a false alert. And then we think, oh, well, you know, as soon as one dog false alerts, then it's going to add to the whatever, the attraction. And these other dogs are really false alerting on other dogs spit, blah, blah, blah. I think some of that can have a factor, but I really think a lot of times look at the environment and look at what odor was doing, right? And it was largely collecting on that next best thing downwind.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Right. That was then disconnected from moving back to source. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No, what if that garbage can wasn't a garbage can? Maybe if it was something less logical, a hide would be set on, right? And then handlers might not look at it the same way. It might lower how much interest is on it. I think there's that kind of piece of it too.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, totally, because if it had been something that wasn't, because you gotta remember a trash can is a square or rectangle, whatever, four foot high piece of plastic, right, that is from floor to the top of it, a solid, if you will, surface. It's also surface area collection on that trash can. And if if I'd had a hide on it, that's always what's fun, right? Is somehow if you can do that, which is as soon as you see your dogs faltzing on any one object, get some videos of them working it and showing a lot of interest in this object where source is not. Right. And then the next runs put hide on it.
SPEAKER_02:Put hide on it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And watch the difference in that intensity and that interest and how they work it and get right. So if there really had been a wheel hide on that trash can, what would that look different? Oh my goodness. They would have come in and just said, oh yay, thank you for the hide. Right. Thank you. Right. Yeah. Instead, they were going over there and they were bracketing it, trying to go up and down a wall, and it was like stuck in the middle, and then they just wouldn't back out, and the handlers would just call it, and there you go. Then you get a no. And typically if if they were because at that level too, when you get a no, you have to be very resilient as a handler. You can't have a mental shutdown when you get a no. You have to be thinking to yourself, my dog is correct in that there was a quantification of odor, or they would not have shown interest. I have to trust my dog. Secondly, if that's not a good call, if I did not get a yes on that, it's because that's not the source location that is within the um parameters of that hide.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Right?
SPEAKER_00:So, and then I just say, I'm close. I gotta be close.
SPEAKER_01:There's something, something's creating this picture.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And sometimes not close, right? So if you've got that dropping from the ceiling kind of situation, it may not be close, right? That's very true. Chimney kind of effect, but or convection, but we just have to recognize that what you called is what your understanding for your dog's changes of behavior to be. And I think when we call those things and we get a no, we feel it so personally because we're taking a risk, right?
SPEAKER_00:And those risks are the exact same scenario in Elite. And we ran the Elite first, and I ran it, and I got a no on the on the trash can.
SPEAKER_03:Ah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And as soon as I got the no on the trash can, um, I gave my dog enough room to then move back, if you will, up the odor stream, and he zoomed into an office that was around a corner. There were two hides in there. So that odor was coming out in a plume, running down a wall to a trash can. So we even came across the start line and he went right into the trash can. And to the I know that if I look at my video, I'm gonna go, I probably would have called that every day. Right. Right? Yeah. Because you get so um trustworthy of the direct movement into it, right? Right. And then he settled on it. I didn't even see like a bracketing, right? Right, yeah, and yes, it, but he was downwind. So then I just went, oh, and especially after the search, and I can look at my video, I can understand entirely. One, why my dog worked in that direction, why my dog made a decision of at least stopping and further investigating. Yeah, I shoulda, could have, shoulda, coulda, woulda, used a little bit more patience, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:For that, because I'm at that level while I might have those complex odor puzzles that are not the two-second search and hide. Yeah, right. They're gonna be a little quicker. Yeah. So I called it a little quick, didn't give him the chance to kind of make a decision to move off. But then he moved right back up the odor stream and nailed two hides, right? So I have to look at it in the full end of that. Yeah. Yeah. So was the call a reasonable, fair, and good call of saying no when I called the trash can or when the handlers in the summit called the trash can? Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes, yes, right. And if for any reason, because that's not an absolute either. If for any reason it was like, ooh, that was wonky. If I were judging that trial, I would have given it to them, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Then look at it and take it apart in terms of training and figure out, oh, okay, what were the components? Yeah. What were the components that made it that way, right? Yeah. And what you love as a certifying official is when you have judges who are so interested and engaged in the dog searching that they actually make some notes for you and call you in and say, Hey, I'm starting to see this.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Is that within our objective zone or or are we still in a no zone or right? Yeah. Because we're never never. We're hopefully not going to uh turn a yes into a no. I I don't think that's ever happened. If you get a yes that should have been a no, it's a it's a gift. That's what we call it. Happy birthday, Merry Christmas. You just got a hide, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Now, and that kind of is what happens when you know handlers all share, well, I got a I got a yes there, I got a no. Well, we don't know what the circumstances were at that moment at that time for that dog. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:So you really can't measure your training by what you get in trial other than looking at it in terms of the types of um complex complexity of odor problems you're gonna have and what you can do with your training. I think that that's like huge. Anything else we can think of about saying, oh, here's a here's one. So for the trial. It's what Alex and I would call in any certifying official the stretch call. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So we can go right back to what we were talking about with the elevated hide. Yeah, that's where I was gonna go. I said an elevated hide, but I have a chair right next to it that's just like really, really close. It may be gathering enough odor that in all fairness, that should be a yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Right. Especially if the dog is indicating like the top back of the chair. Yeah. Especially if they can't get up there.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah. And so those can just be a discussion, hopefully, that happened between the judge and the certifying official as to what um because it may have been at the even when you brought in dog in white, there wasn't enough time had passed to populate the whole chair. Uh maybe the A HVAC came out, maybe something, right? Maybe the heat came on, who knows? Yeah. Um, but if the judge is gonna see a bunch of dogs who are indicating on an object that is, okay, that high hide just became a chair hide, um, you may get what we call a stretch call, which is a yes for the chair, but it's actually somewhere else. And a good example of that is a countertop.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Or the suspended hide under a table, right? So even suspended hide under a table, that can be an extremely difficult hide.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And by the time your dog 20, 30 into the running order, um, yeah, a bunch of other dogs may have come directly in and solved it in the left side corner, blah, blah, blah, and your dog hit it in the center or even on the other end, and you still got a yes, it's because based on what the the judge was seeing and the CO um intended that um that became a larger call. Right. Right. Then and now you have to say, oh my gosh, we started out by talking about nose on source.
SPEAKER_01:I know.
SPEAKER_00:Should I be worried about the fact that I just rewarded my dog an entire other side of a table?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Right. And I hear that a lot, and you're not gonna break your dog because you do it in trials all the time. All the time. And then you go back to training, nose on source, nose on source, nose on source. Yep. And that's where that balance, because I think if you do a lot of trials back to back to back, and the dog doesn't understand that, you do get that drift of the dog starting to alert further and further away from source and thinking that that's acceptable. Um, and that's where important going back to training. Now, I do see that teams where the dog really understands two source, two source, two source, um, back-to-back trials are actually where they get momentum and they start really figuring things out and coming together as a team because they're not losing trust on every hide. They're actually gaining trust.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And it's also someone else who's doing the confirmation. So the dog in training, right, is very you're gonna confirm it for me. Right. Right? Yeah, and then in trial it's this third person who gets to say yes or no. Yeah, yeah, right. And I think, and then this is just superfluous, but I really think it's important to come up with your reward system or your reward process for when you do get a no, right? And it should at least be, you know, really praising your dog. I I really feel very, very much that you should accept responsibility for that no and not in any way, shape, or form um be blaming your dog. Yeah. Because your dog doesn't lie. No, they cannot lie, they have no intentional uh perception to actually falsify the information that they saw in the environment. So if the falsification is I wanted to be paid, I had worked enough, that doesn't have anything to do with odor.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Right?
SPEAKER_00:So if you're saying, oh, they're an opportunist, they should have known, well, then your training needs some exact we need some we need some clarity in your training because um the dog does not have the sequence of what you would like them to do and the answers you would like to have them give you. It's a it would be like like handing somebody a math problem and then saying, oh, by the way, the answer is fifteen. And they add it up and it's eleven, and and they say eleven, and you go, no, it's fifteen.
unknown:Yeah?
SPEAKER_00:So right? It's those ones where they have online, right? And they don't put in the parens, so they'll put three plus four times two, but they don't have the parens. Is it three and four times two, or is it the four? Right? Because you could get different answers based on which number. You have to remember the laws and all the formula stuff. So yeah, okay, guys, I think we chewed on that one pretty good. So um that was a topic about um where's the the hide call, like right? Where's a good and reasonable call both in training and in trials? So hopefully our takeaways from our most recent um trials and our most recent training can can be a benefit for you. So we um really are glad you had a chance to join us, and hopefully um this was kind of a meaningful topic. Please feel free at any point in time to um either. I think the email is on our um podcast, uh, but we do typically um respond to those, and we'd love to hear anything that you would like to hear us talk about because Lord knows we can talk, talk, talk.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, yeah, or you can reach out, uh you can reach out at uh Mountain Dog or release canine too. Yes. We both can respond from our website.
SPEAKER_00:And now it's what do you got coming up in terms of you have classes or something coming up?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm just finishing up my first six weeks in the fall, so I've got a week off, and then I'll teach my last six weeks for the year. Um, five weeks online. I think next session is a handling class, which is always fun to teach. And then uh we've got our Copper State trial this coming weekend. So we've got two days full elements, all levels, detective, and then Monday we've got Hall of Flames, which is like a firefighter museum, which is gonna be kind of a cool double detective. Yeah. And then I've got Salt Lake in two weeks doing detective out there, and that's at the haunted house in a little seminar afterwards. So that's gonna be really fun. I love uh judging at that haunted house. Yeah, it's just scary. It is, and we can't get enough light, so then like the club brings out their own lights and stuff. It's a boot, it's so much fun.
SPEAKER_00:I'd have to have I hate to say this. I'd have to have a lab.
SPEAKER_01:A lab? Oh, because you know what? The dogs don't see them because the dogs don't smell anything different, it just smells like warehouse versus humans get weirded out.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, because I was gonna say my poor little border collie would be going, I am not going in there. You go in alone. Right? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then the other big thing that I've got right now is I've got a puppy. So lots of training. Lots of training.
SPEAKER_00:And how old is Vespa?
SPEAKER_01:She's four months now, so just lots of primary.
SPEAKER_00:And she's how different than your other dogs?
SPEAKER_01:Um, she's really similar in a lot of ways, but today I was starting to really notice she's not visual at all when it comes to odor. Uh and I wasn't really necessarily expecting that. Um sporting dogs, she's very visual on seeing planes, but when we're talking about what breed is she? She's a cocker, so an English cocker, field lines. And I do have to brag a little. Her mom won the Canadian Spaniel Field Open two weeks ago, second cocker ever to have done that in 59 years. So pretty freaking awesome.
SPEAKER_00:And what does that mean? She went out into a field and she found some birds, or yeah, pretty much. There's a lot of skill involved, but yeah. Right? Right? Yeah. That's kind of what the field trial is about, right? Very cool.
SPEAKER_01:Mark and reward. Yeah. Very cool.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I got trials coming up. Um both. Um, well, I was silly enough to put three in a row. Literally, three weeks in a row. And then I get a break, and then I do my delta one, and then it's Thanksgiving, and then I might breathe.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And of course, of along the way too, I'm like competing in the elites. Yes. Right. I like set this up so that fall Yeah, so that I can play. And and and what you were talking about earlier, that when it starts to fall together, right? So we're kind of on a roll. Zeke and I are starting to fall into that. And it's not um, I've finally been able to relax on trial day. Kathy will be very glad to do that. Okay. Right? Just hand it over to the crew and stay out of the out of the minutiae. Yes. Do that because that helps a lot. Then I can just be resilient in the searches and not try to be resilient for trial. For the host crew that are doing whatever they're doing. But secondly, it really was um I'm really focused on being more mindful of my time. And that's helping a lot. That's helping a lot because I'm picking up those extra hides. Yeah. Now, what I did, my whole intent was to put the timer on my wrist. Not that you guys want to hear all this minutiae, but put the timer on my wrist and then draw it almost down. Because I did that in Montana where I drew almost every search down to the last milliseconds, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:If my dog was working odor, right? So if it right, and still try to pay attention to what they're doing, he's doing, but also be mindful that I shouldn't call, because I've been pretty notorious for calling finish within just a few seconds after my 30-second warning. Right? So then I was leaving 30 seconds on the clock.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And I wasn't moving around the search area well in terms of I find myself revisiting prior s prior found areas. Right. Prior hide found, right? Because you just graduate and the dog does, and so will you, back to what feels known at that point rather than trying to enter into new areas. Especially when you get into those five, six hide searches. Right. It felt so good to get the alert, yes, alert, yes, alert, yes, alert. Let's go back to where that was happening and away from this other zone. So trying to do that, but I'm still of I still don't hit the start. Like there were several this well, I only had four searches, but there were two times when I looked down and went, Oh, you forgot to hit start. So I hit it anyway. No matter where I was, I wasn't gonna not be timed, right? I hit it anyway, so that I could at least then look down and go, Okay, you hit it like at least a minute late. Yeah, right. I hit it at least a minute late. Um, I hadn't gotten a 30-second warning yet, so I knew that I had, right? So you're still in pretty good shape. You probably got 45 seconds. Um, keep working, don't bail because you don't know how much time you have.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that's helped a lot. Kind of because really what I'm trying to do is build more of an inner sense of that time as opposed to reliant upon the watch. The timer. Yeah. But I need the timer to help me do that. Cool. And I need trials to help train me because, you know, that's just kind of the way it is.
SPEAKER_01:It's good. So it's good. Um, I do have one more thing that I would like to kind of put out there is I am teaching a workshop for canine massage. So not quite scent work, but it's a really good topic for scent work people because after a long day, especially Summit people, um, to get your dog feeling good for the second day or AKC you're doing multiple days, it is worth it. So I just figure I'd put that out there. It's on Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, and the workshop's open right now. It's on November 9th, is when it starts.
SPEAKER_00:And if you sign up during the time when it's open and you can't make it at the time, you do get the recorded link. So this one's a workshop. You can't buy it later on, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01:And this one's a workshop. So um there's a lecture that gets posted, and then the people who have working spots can get feedback.
SPEAKER_00:Sounds wonderful. All right. Hey, thanks everybody for joining us, and hope your uh training and trialing is moving in the direction you want it to go. So um we look forward to talking to you next time. Thanks everybody.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you.
