The Pathway to Source- Training and Trial Tips and Tricks

We explore how dogs navigate changing odor pictures and what handlers must do to support their dog's odor pathway to source. From haunted houses to school gyms, we share Handler, CO and judging insights, trial lessons, and practical training setups that build dog and handler odor recognition of the multitude of odor puzzles we encounter in nosework and scent work trials.

• defining pathway to source and odor availability
• why heaters, humidity and doors reshape odor pictures
• balancing handler support with canine independence
• single-hide training to build handler literacy
• vessel choice and orientation changing scent flow
• natural versus object hides and containment effects
• staying patient on edges versus rushing coverage
• reframing no calls as odor picture feedback
• practical resets, leash use and area support
• upcoming trials, seminars and community updates

Thankful you’re all listening and learning with us

Transcript

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Setting The Theme And Goals

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hey everyone, welcome to our podcast for November and happy Thanksgiving. We'll I'm sure have lots of things that we can talk about to be thankful for, but um I think that often our topics and today we're gonna talk about pathway to source, trial and training tips. And this kind of evolved uh um from those times when you trial and then you take a few days and then you go, What happened? Yeah, yeah. So so I've been doing a lot of reflecting on the elite that uh Zeke and I did on uh Saturday, I think it was Saturday, yeah. Um that didn't go as fabulously as you become addicted to getting hide after hide after hide in elite, right? But it actually was probably a really meaningful experience for where we are in elite. I like that.

What Pathway To Source Really Means

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Um so, real quick, what we do kind of have a little list here of kind of what we wanted to talk about, but I'm gonna um turn things over to Alex and just kind of get her her spin on our topic of pathway to source trial and training tips, because her reflection more recently has to do with um judging, AKC judging rather than on the competition side.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

When you came up with this topic, I was like, oh yeah, there is so much to talk about on how our dogs move to source, how much they're able to understand that pathway while they are working it. And then really how that might be different when we're training and where we look at those pictures and how we understand them, maybe when we're training versus trialing. Um, one that comes to mind actually is uh I had a search this morning. I was teaching a little class, and we've had so much rain in our area, which is so unusual. We're like a desert, we normally have no moisture whatsoever, and the ground was saturated, not so that we're muddy, but there's just like humidity everywhere. And as a result, uh you could watch very different pathways, and the dogs weren't used to it. So they were collecting odor information for very large expansive area for one crack hide. And it was really cool to watch when the dogs would accelerate towards path, what direction is their nose facing, and then the handlers that knew where the hide were versus the handlers that didn't know, and where do our eyes go and how do we react to the situation? And it really makes you think about okay, well, how are we doing this in a trial setting when we have no clue? And as a competitor, how to try and figure those pieces out and kind of put them together. Um, Chill had mentioned, so you mentioned something about like my judging.

Moisture, Humidity, And Changed Odor Pictures

SPEAKER_00 2:58

I just came off of judging at a haunted house, and that was the most it's so much fun. This is my third time that I've been judging there, and the odor pictures there are so different than many other different locations because it is very consistent. And I find a lot of people say, Oh my god, a haunted house. The dogs must be like startled or there might be some fear points. And honestly, the dogs just smell paint and plywood and styrofoam. And sometimes like people smells because there were people in there for Halloween, but otherwise, uh, it's a pretty stagnant kind of environment. It's not like a school, school is so distracting for dogs, and so setting hides in there is a little bit more of playing and understanding the human perspective of how things are happening because odor-wise, it is so consistent. Every single one of my hides exactly behaved as it should for as long as it needed to, and it's such a different kind of environment that way, that it feels like that as long as you know what you're setting, you can set anything that you need to, and it will be pretty

Judging A Haunted House: Consistency Lessons

SPEAKER_00 3:58

predictable. And that doesn't always happen because I know Jill, you had the opposite situation this past weekend.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Yeah, because I would tell you, so we were at the Delta Um Middle School. Jenny Kiefer from California, from Dixon was our CEO. She's amazing and really talked a lot about this topic, right? Like, so how does the dog come in? How do you recognize the dog as working odor, our odor, right? Birchanus clove or or same with whatever venue you're doing, the target odor, and then working it in a fashion that either um is the pathway to source, and often it's away from source to then come back to source, right? So it's that sorting piece of where they're sorting it on collection pieces. But anyway, kind of back to Alex's question about consistency. So um there we've done Delta Middle School for a number of years. Uh for this year, the odor seemed to be different. This is a very difficult conversation for me to have just as a handler, right? So there's lots of folks who can chime in who were there who were in a different objective viewpoint. Jenny, as the CO watching, would be maybe different perspective, right? Over what we mean by pathway to source, um, even the judges, right? So I think it's very interesting though that um in the past, my experience with that venue has been uh not that it's easy or predictable, but more of that consistent odor pathway being closer to source, right? Not expanding that pathway over a considerable amount of space. And I don't know if it was because it's so dry in Colorado right now, um, it's also cold. So, but we were inside the school,

Delta Middle School: When Odor Feels Different

SPEAKER_01 6:03

so of course then the heaters were on. Your typical, right? Your typical And it will dry it out even more. Yeah. And in the past, I I now I don't really recall because we we have a tendency to, or we do use the school right when they go off on on Thanksgiving break. Uh so we jump right back in. Uh typically the janitors are still there trying to clean up after the kids, so the heat is on. Uh, we open a door so that we can have easy access in and out of the hall that we do for our entrance. That lets in the 30-degree weather that was outside. And then by noon it got up to about 50. It was absolutely gorgeous outside all three days. Yeah. Um, but it was very, and then of course, um, after we did the elite on Saturday, that was our first day in there. Um, then the second day and the third day we had lower levels. We did do an elite select, which is smaller search areas, right? Yeah, yeah. Yet it can still have the same, you know, it complexity of of an elite hide, and the odors seem to be more predictable for those for those two levels, right? So then it's like you you just keep thinking to yourself, well, kind of what happened? What happened, right? But I think a lot of it too was really um the and I think sometimes as a handler, I get wooed into um my dog's skill set and forget about my own skill set and what my responsibility is, not just for odor recognition, and that means my responsibility as a handler to recognize when my dog is in target odor, when my dog is sorting target odor, what is my responsibility when my dog is closing in on a source zone? So when that pathway to source, right? Because there's the whole pathway where they move away as they're sorting, and then they make that decision to come back and close in that zone again. Um, and I looked at like I've just I had thankfully had um my GoPro videos and was able to look at those right away because sometimes you walk away from days like that. I mean, what just happened? Our high in high-end trial was fairly low. Like, yeah, Jenny felt disappointed that, right? Like, what did I do with my hides? Um, I was like, oh my god, did we

Handler Responsibility Versus Dog Skill

SPEAKER_01 8:33

just do a summit? And I'm certain that we did not, right? We are not ready for that, but it kind of had that feel to it of oh my gosh, going into searches and coming out with two hides. And in one, I did two hides and two no's. I was like, what is what yeah, so then that kind of disjoints you a little bit and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But aside from that experience and trying to pick it all apart just for me, which is my responsibility, it just led me into this thought process of talking today about that. About, you know, what do we do in trial or in training that can expose our dog and ourselves to all the skill sets we need. And then when we get in trial, are there other tips and tricks and skill sets that we should be freely utilizing, or let's say, um, at least respectfully use utilizing? And that would be if I'm gonna see my dog and there's I now you can just see it so clearly, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

The dog showed interest, turned, did a full body turn into a stack of chairs, worked the stack of chairs, and then moved off to get a different hide. Did I in my brain remember how interested he was in that stack of chairs? No. Did we miss that stack of chairs? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Yeah, we needed to come back.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

So, what do you think about those sorts of things?

SPEAKER_00 9:59

So I think like when I think about it, so I was judging at the haunted house in very similar conditions. It was cold out, and I've been there when like it's freezing. I'm wearing my heated vest the whole time because it there's no heating inside, and maybe that's one of the factors that's different. Because I do remember I've played in Delta as well, and the elite premiere I did with Tana there, her first elite premiere, she struggled a lot to just settle into the odor pictures, and it was different than what she was used to doing. And I ran George as FEO, just he wasn't quite in elite yet. But it's kind of interesting to compare because I knew where to hang around, and he ended up finding almost all the hides that day. He had a very fun day, like it was very satisfying. But I think I also knew when to leave and when not to leave. And I think when the odor might not be quite as crisp, um, like that path, right? Yeah, the crisp. That that picture isn't coming with edges that are predictable where they're getting lesser and lesser when you go away and then more as you come in. So then when you know when to stay around, even if it's a general area, versus when you think you need to keep moving, that can really play a huge factor in that odor when it's less crisp, less available. And I think that's probably one of those kind of pieces.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

So would you say that that then? Because this made me think of my debate that's always going on in my head about uh as a sole trainer, if you will, or somebody who self-trains. Um,

Crisp Versus Fuzzy Odor Edges

SPEAKER_01 11:26

well, so does that mean that I should be doing my training, most of my training blind because I want to replicate trial, or does it mean in trial I should be doing more of a clearing method where I just go in and and work this area and he doesn't get anything, then I creep up to another, you know, that sort of thing, almost like like a grid method.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah. Which I've also seen. I had somebody run my detective search, and I think she's had that kind of experience. And they ended up, and it was not just one person, actually, they were really overworking and like detailing to the extreme, presenting a lot of things, sticking around, asking the dog to continue working. And I think that comes from those kind of situations where the odor wasn't quite as clean and the dogs can't quite drive in or give nice clean edges. And so then we start getting worried about a missed hide. So then we stay longer, we work harder, we're putting a lot of us into it, and we stop trusting the dog picture. And so then it kind of makes me think, okay, how can we start addressing this and kind of looking at it from a handling and training perspective? And I always go on the end of, can I train my dog to capture some of these pieces that I feel like I have to handle? So it when the odor is a little

Blind Training Or Systematic Clearing

SPEAKER_00 12:43

bit lighter like that, maybe we're moving through the space and I will handle like I'm handling in a trial. Like I'm gonna follow you around, we're going to move through the space, I'm gonna be aware of my corners. But when the dog starts to push back and say, I'm on an edge of an odor cone, I would like to go back towards a hide that maybe we've missed, as a handler in training, I'm going to try and like see that moment. So I'm very able to respond to my dog's actions and be a better responsive handler to support them with that new direction. Because I think in training or in trial, when we ignore that moment, then sometimes we lose an opportunity to create more confidence in the dog to push against us for those lighter odor pictures.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

And I think that there's a uh even a list, right, that you could make when we're talking about um really training the pathway to source and that being, I think one of the easiest ways to explain what we mean by that is odor recognition, both for the dog and for the handler and the responsibility of odor recognition on both. We often talk about odor recognition being, oh, the dog just comes into a particular search and goes, aha, birchanna's clove, whatever other odors I'm hunting for are here. I'm talking about something more than that. I'm talking about really recognizing the the whatever pattern, if you will, that odor presents to them in that moment, right? Which is very difficult. We don't train for the absolute specific moment that we may face in trial. We train for the variables, right? And somewhere in that whole odor memory for our dogs becomes a recognizable sorting puzzle that our dog works through, right? So in training, we're gonna try to expose all those pathways. So I think it's really two couple things there when we're talking about that. One is, and boy, am I ever guilty of this, because I often run my dog after class, right? After class, and I have a multi-level class, but nevertheless, and so this last one, what did I do? I put out 10 hides. I had out 10 hides. Now, granted, they were in like little pods, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

So separation.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

So we right, but theoretically they weren't, right? I mean, because as long as it's still in the same building, it really doesn't matter. They're still all kind of in, you know, just because I pause and take my dog to the next search and then release, does

Building Dogs To Push Back On Handler

SPEAKER_01 15:18

my dog really no? Aha, it's a different search. Ignore all that other odor that could be, right? So that's one is um I really could and should, coulda, shoulda, coulda, shoulda, woulda, yeah um do singular hides more often and do those more complex puzzles that is just a singular hide. Yeah, absolutely. And then secondly, give my dog the kind of support. And sometimes I think we get confused when we mean support, we feel like it means just follow the dog. But I think if we're and and I I didn't mean to really use the word just, but what I'm trying to say is we put the emphasis on following the dog as opposed to uh supporting an area, supporting an area in which the dog is working, right? So in other words, I if my dog moves out of that area, I'm going to ask my dog to complete that puzzle. And that's why it's so important to do those singular hides, right? Because then if my dog on or off leash is moving out of that area, in training, I'm gonna take the amount of time that we need to take for my dog to recognize they need to come back. And then the only source pathway they need to come back to is the source pathway for that hide.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Right. Yeah, yeah, right for sure. I'm teaching a independence class right now. So my online class is all about independence, and that is such a big thing that we do single hide, because it is really hard

Defining Odor Recognition For Teams

SPEAKER_00 16:53

to teach unless your topic is multiple hides. But if you want to teach distraction work, if you want to teach independence on inaccessibles, you really need to be able to go, okay, we just have one hide out there. I need to see it, I need to learn what this looks like, independent of me, and allowing the dog to show those pictures, and we can start developing that library in our own minds of what that looks like. So yeah, I'm totally with you on those single hides. I think they're so important.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Because and it's again, that's the beauty of having a body cam plus the video services, right? Yeah, plus hopefully your memory, right? Variable. Yeah, but so I'm in the gym, I come in the gym, right? Yeah, yeah, and I can I can feel the first working of this first hide he gets, which is on a step.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

And he moves all the way to the back of the gym, does this big arc that comes around to the opposite side of where we entered. Did one of those curve out into the space and then back into this little alcove.

unknown 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

And that little alcove is where the chair hide was. Ah, yeah. Deeper, yeah. Right? And then work that and was I'm at least at least after looking at my GoPro, I feel pretty confident about this. Then he was working that down the bleachers, if you will, that one hide. He was investigating the quantification of the pathway to source on either side, 360, whatever it is, and then ran into the next hide, took off for the next hide on the basketball.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

And then we forget about that first edge.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Got that hide, and I just kept going around the perimeter the other way. Yeah. I didn't go, oh, let's go back and get that other hide. Right. Nor did I yeah. And I, you know, and sometimes when you have that really strong pulley dog, it's hard to just leash limit them and say, Yeah, no, come back here. But where I sh could have done more support for the area around the chair was more

Single Hides And Area Support

SPEAKER_01 19:04

in immediate proximity to the chair.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Shortened up his leash, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Shortened up his leash. And of course, he showed interest in a trash can that he just rejected. And right away I was like, oh my God, I don't want to stay in here long enough for him to get a false alert indicate on that trash. Right. So there's all that stuff going on in your brain, and you just sometimes wish that we had the nose that they have.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Oh, I know. But then it wouldn't be the sport that it is.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

No, it wouldn't.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Yeah. That's what's so fun about it.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Okay, so okay, let's look at if I want to be training for these variabilities, what kind of different things? Because I like setting hides. If I can set hides to train some of this stuff, then I think we can kind of address that. So what kind of factors to look at them? For me, my list is going to be environmental pieces that I want to be playing with, as well as specific hide placement pieces and then some elements about the actual odor that I'm setting out. So maybe I don't know. I'm like, my mind goes to the odor specifics first, maybe. And it might be what odor I'm picking. Birch Anis are about the same when we look at vapor pressures and how they interact. Clove is not that far off, but if you're an AKC, Cypress is significantly different. And so it's going to have a different picture. What about how many Q-tips or how strong of a hide? That's going to affect how much odor you've got and where is that picture going to show up and how are the dogs able to work it back? Um, but also what vessel are we putting it in? And then the hide placement itself. So there's so many different kinds of hide placements that we can choose that would affect those kinds of things. So front of a chair versus the middle of the chair versus the back of the chair. Where is the chair sitting? Is this sit that is the chair in the middle of the room? Is it against the wall, or is it like in tucked in a corner, like that one that you were dealing with, uh, in a cubby? All of those things. And then is it nose level? Is it lower? Is it higher? Higher is going to expand a little bit further, but so do low hides. Low hides like expand across the

Case Study: The Chair Hide Miss

SPEAKER_00 21:05

whole thing sometimes. And nose hides are gonna grab, like height are gonna grab their attention. How tall is your dog, right? All of those kinds of things about the high placement. How much um is it open? I like open hides or tight hides, right? So, how open is there containment at that location where you stuck the hide, or is it like side of a post? So I think a lot of that kind of stuff will have a factor and I definitely touch, like environment, environment is big.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah. So I like to think of it in exactly what you're talking about in uh three segments, if you will. And I kind of do this with all my training, which is training for the dog, training for the handler, training environment, right? Okay, yeah, the environment, I think, is really that whole piece of taking the first two pieces into as many different environments as you possibly can. Like if it's raining, get out there. And expect that the environment is always going to be your um final variable that mostly affects what you're doing. So you can do all this training with the dog, you can do all this training with the handler, and then ultimately it's the environment that makes the search, right? Yeah, it right. And whatever odor's gonna do on that day, at that moment, at that time, for that dog, for that handler is just exactly that. But one of the words or coupling of words that help me kind of think about these things is odor availability, because that word doesn't necessarily mean we're just talking about odor strength or we're just talking about um uh the pocket of source, it's everything. Here's a really good example. So I'm talking to Jenny about how we did, and I said, but you know, odor just wasn't available. And she goes, Oh my goodness, are you crazy? Odor was everywhere. Yeah, and so both of us were thinking of different things about odor availability. I was actually thinking about there just wasn't a clear pathway for my dog to source at that moment in time when my dog came in closer to source to work that particular chair height, right? Yeah, yeah. It was actually a a stack of folded chairs, so they were all folding chairs that were all upright.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Um, but there were only like four or five of them, just kind of leaned against um it should be a straightforward inaccessible. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

But um it kind of filled some other stuff in there, but it also lofted out into this massive uh room, right, that had really nothing else in it. It was a gym, and this was just along the wall of a gym. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

So that kind of that those two words kind of we use them a lot, and and yet

Odor Strength, Vessels, And Placement

SPEAKER_01 23:55

it they mean so many things. Yeah, yeah, right. So even what you talked about odor strength, um, I know that probably in training uh and the hides that I make for training for myself in my class is not necessarily the same as what comes in a CO kit from any CSW, right? Right. But nevertheless, if if in training, what I can do is at least have some variables with that, right? Right?

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Which is that variability.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Yeah, and often how do we measure that? We measure it by smelling it, right? Which is that the best measure? Maybe you just set up allergies today. Do I not you just set the hide and let your dog tell you about odor availability from that particular hide or whatever? Um, you did talk about the vessel you put it in. So there's the whole debate about I can remember that for a very long time most of my hides um have been in tubes, right? Because I always felt like, oh, look, I can direct where odor's gonna go out of this little tube. Just pinch this end and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then um, I did a that webinar on diffusion and about the surface area and realized that you know what, the tin can really help me because then I get this whole surface area of odor collection at source. Yeah. So you almost, right? And then, like you said, you replace it under the chair. Oh my god. Now we have a whole nother so okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Up until now, I use a lot of metal tubes when I'm judging AKC because it's single hides or single q-tips, and so it fits into a little metal tube. I can fit it in locations. I'm not worried about it being picked off by a dog. It's pretty safe, it's nice and stable. Up until now, I believe, and I realized this this weekend, the majority of my hide placements with the tube are literally horizontal because I'm worried about that q-tip falling out. Yes, occasionally up and down, but normally they're horizontal. And up until this past weekend, or it's two weekends ago, I set the one hide. It was a counter height hide. It was like a popcorn booth at a movie theater kind of thing. And it was tucked up underneath the corner of the counter, but it was up and down because of the structure of where the counter was. And the Q-tip was facing down. I made sure that it wouldn't fall out. That hide shot down. As in, like it didn't matter the height of the dog. Every single dog would get right up underneath it and go right up top. And up until this point, I really haven't seen that effect of it, but holy smokes.

Tubes, Tins, And Vertical Versus Horizontal

SPEAKER_00 26:25

And I think all the other factors of that space allowed that to happen. But I was like, oh, I wonder if this is more of an effect of it up and down. I would have loved to run the exact same search maybe a week later with it sideways with a different group of dogs and see would it actually create as much of an up and down kind of elevated picture versus uh I thought it would be a little more of an expanding hide curling around the corner and into a bunch of machines, like a Pac-Man machine and stuff. And so I didn't know if it was, I thought it was going to curl around with the motion of the people going through that space, but it was so available right below it. And I think that might be the factor of how that hide was set physically.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

And so when we talk too about training versus trial, what we're talking about with trial is competition, is getting behind your dog it with the leash, right? You are the the master of the leash, your dog is on the end of that leash, and what that looks like in terms of of that pathway to source. We're not really, but um, to train it, we do have to step into this and put on this hat of being uh someone who places hides. Yeah, yeah, right. So so I think that's often what can happen in training as a competitor, as a handler. We get we jump to the to the whole concept that we did this with our podcast last time, which was um the good call, right? We jump right to, well, just tell me what the what the CO or the judge would set. That's what I want to train. I want to know exactly how many Q tips are on there. I want to know exactly how they make their odor. I want to know exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. Um, and I think that so many of those points are human concepts. Yeah. Right? Because we, I think, fall into that whole zone of just not being able to comprehend exactly how our dogs do what they do. So, and

Trial Mindset Versus Training Mindset

SPEAKER_01 28:18

granted, in training, we do want to get for consistency, we want to expose them to as many variables as we possibly can. And we want to duplicate the sort of things we are going to see at trial to a certain extent. Right? So in any CSW, we use for trial in the CO department consistently across the board. Everybody uses our three Q tips. Our Q-tips are prepared by the organization and they are sh um come in a kit for the CO to use, right? So with vessels or with the vessels, and you get all we can use tins, we can use tubes, um, you know, and you can ask any of your COs like what vessel they used or chose to use. So one of the interesting things for that is I will often um even at elite No, even at my lower levels, I'll make one of each. Yeah. I'll make a tin and a tube before I go set that hide. And especially because on the morning of setting trial hides, you often don't want to be taking time to run back to the score room or wherever you've kept your your odor kit and go, right, oh Lord, I need a tin now. My tube isn't sticking, and I do have metal. Or I can't get that right. So I can't make it small enough, yeah. So I often make both. And then sometimes there is no thought process to, oh geez, I'd love I wonder if my odor will go down.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 29:49

You're just making the it's where I was gonna put it, and I don't really know for certain what odor's going to do until I see the dog's. Work that hide. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

But realistically, like the same tubes, setting them up and down on a hinge. That's frequently how you set those. They're not necessarily consistently up and down kind of odor pictures. They might be scattered across the horizontally. So yeah, it's it's interesting. There's so many variables. Um, I do have one hide type. I don't use it in judging, but I use it all the time in training. And it's those 3D printed plastic.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Yes, I like those.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Like they're smaller and they're like around, almost bullet shape, but they're a little bigger than the true bullet kind of hides. But they have two or three holes in the top. I find odor sticks in those a lot in certain conditions. And when I set those hides out versus a tin or a plastic tube, that I end up with a very different picture. It's almost more contained in those. Yes. And I and I've started seeing some more of those plastic ones, the 3D printed, where they might have an extra hole near where the magnet is. And I think that's supposed to help with some of that movement. But I've really seen them hold really tight. And so you can create some of these like box in box in a corner kind of situations with just a different vessel. And so I've seen

Plastic Vessels And Containment Effects

SPEAKER_00 31:08

that with those kind of vessels.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Well, and what I like about those two is I think that we again, we especially coming off a trial, we go, oh, I have to find out exactly, you know, I didn't do so well. So now I want to find out exactly. I want to find a classroom, I want to find a gymnasium that was just like the Delta gymnasium, and I want to set it up exactly like Jenny had it. And I'm gonna go in there and train it so that we have an opportunity, and then it's to do what?

unknown 31:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

You want an opportunity to rerun the trial run?

SPEAKER_00 31:39

It's an opportunity to do totally for us.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

My goodness, right? That's such a human construct to do that, right? Now, on the flip side, it is some good thought process there as a handler and as a self-trainer or even a student in another class to ask those questions of how do I look at this trial and how we performed, how our skill set matched up against Odor. I like that picture because I like that better than comparing myself and my dog to how the other competitors did. I mean, that's sometimes that's helpful to at least determine what Odor did or didn't do on that particular day. Maybe there was some consistency, right? Yeah. So we did have for this particular elite trial lower than maybe typical, certainly typical for elite scores, which would tell us that most of us were leaving a significant number of hides. True.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

But there was also a low number of hides compared to a lot of elite trials we've seen recently.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

And the interesting thing though with leaving hides behind is it's not necessarily doesn't necessarily mean that you should somehow become an overmanaging handler.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

That's the hard part.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

It could be and a lot is recognition of the odor picture the dog is showing you at that time. And having trained that picture for yourself as a handler, right? Not leaving all that decision making just up to the dog, but taking

Avoid Chasing Exact Trial Replications

SPEAKER_01 33:17

some of that odor recognition and that odor puzzle. So I like it even better than that. I can recognize the odor's present. But do I recognize the odor puzzle my dog is working? And can I have enough confidence in my dog and in myself to stick with that problem until we solve it? We had a really good one that was up underneath a shelf in the locker room, and I got a no on the door jam right next to it, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Because it was an accessible hide up underneath that shelf. That's a legitimate, not that any no isn't legitimate, but right, it wasn't a no that that should have been a fringe, let me just put it that way, or should have been a stretch or anything like that, right? Yeah. We he was working it and he stopped to work something and I called it too quick or whatever. But he kept working and he was he was really challenged by this particular odor puzzle. I recognized that I was close. As soon as I got that no, said, Hey buddy, let's keep working that. I'm saying this in my head, let's keep working this. And then he kind of was just doing this circle. Like I wasn't giving him new information. I was asking him just to like nose poke it a hundred more times, right? So I actually moved off, went back to the kind of the entrance into that room, turned around, he came back in ahead of me on his own, making his own decisions, and was able then to source it.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Right. Yeah, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

So I felt really good about that. So sometimes when we get a no, it can be more an indication of that odor puzzle at that moment in time didn't provide clarity either for my dog or myself, or together our collaborative effort for us to get that hide, if you will, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

So when I come away from um, when I come away from trials, and one of the things that I kind of try not to fall into, which is my goal is to get absolutely no no's, so then I'm not willing to call anything, right? It's like I'm leaving all the decision making to my dog if that's gonna be my rule for the day. On the other hand, it's I don't want to leave any hides behind, so I'm going to take away maybe some decision making from my dog as to their working the odor puzzle and do maybe closer to some overmanaged handling. So somewhere in the middle of those two is that piece of collaboration between I recognize what you're doing, buddy, I see that we need to solve this puzzle, let's not move on to the right, because if I have a close proximity hide,

Recognizing The Odor Puzzle, Not Just Source

SPEAKER_01 36:10

and I did in this case, that was I guess you could probably say might have been easier for him. Yeah. But I was I was short on time at that point too. I'd already gotten a 30-second call. Huh? So I'm solving the last bit of this piece that we'd been really working on right away. And I'm like, you're not leaving. Even I I almost was to the point where I said, even if we have to take a time out, we're already right. So yeah, yeah. Okay, because that would have been okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

I think a lot of it comes down to, and this is almost opposite of where people feel to do, is when we're starting to miss hides, it can be a sign that we're rushing.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Right. Versus slowing down a little bit and having a little more patience for what our dog is doing in that moment. I find a lot of people, especially when they start like, okay, I missed a hide, I have to now handle more, is that they start uh not having the time to give to the dog for the odor information they're giving. And then we start forgetting what is the priority of the search? The priority of the search is not to cover, yes, we need to cover the space, but the priority should be the dog's odor information. So in the moment, if your dog is showing you odor information, we shouldn't be then trying to also handle them. And it's figuring out, okay, where is that balance of is this odor information new or is this old? Like old meaning a found hide. And so then if we can recognize that the dog is starting to work back to a found hide and the dog does not have an understanding or a need to be re-rewarded on source, could we trust our dogs to go past that found hide to tell us and maybe anchor and say, okay, this is this piece, there's another hide in here, and I have to work it further. Um, I find it kind of comes down to curiosity. The more that we can be curious about our dog's odor information in that moment, the more likely we are going to have that patience to work it out and maybe start really looking at what happens and saying, okay, my dog's accelerating in this direction, and then they're expanding back towards me. Maybe I shouldn't be standing where I'm at. Maybe I should walk towards where my dog's accelerating towards, and we can start working closer and closer

Patience Over Coverage: Don’t Rush

SPEAKER_00 38:24

to source, even when the hide is a little more elusive. And so it's having that patience and that curiosity and really watching the dog's direction and odor information.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

And I really think we can do some of that in training, right? And that goes back to that single hide or the known hides.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yes. It doesn't even have to be blind.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

No, I think the known is important because at some point in time you have to gain handler odor recognition. And even though someone can do what they think are I mean, maybe you might call them double blinds, right? Which is I'm gonna have somebody else set the hides, and I don't want anybody in there that knows where the hide is at all, and I'm gonna watch. And quite frankly, we do this a lot with um dog in white. We do it a lot with even after we've set the hide, we still don't know how the dog is going to solve that puzzle, right? Right. Um, and certainly when you have that objective viewpoint as the judge or as, right? I mean, yeah, while we would love for everybody to get every hide, we're still looking for that consistency. How did the dogs work this puzzle?

SPEAKER_00 39:29

I think that's a good little point, and maybe it's a little off topic, but it kind of ties in. When the CO and judges are watching in NECSW, the dog in white, or the AKC judges watching their demo dog or any of the other venues, the goal of watching those dogs is not the hide. The goal of watching those dogs is to watch the odor information as the dog is working it and how they're solving it. And that gives the information of does this other chair need to be shifted? Does that uh table, right? Like it's those pieces of information that are most key. The hide is the hide. And yeah, at the very end, like it might matter, it might not, honestly. But the rest of it matters so much more. If the dog is showing no changes of behavior as they're moving past it, there are some questions, and we have to be curious about that as a judge, as a CEO, to go, um, there's no change of behavior. Is it because the odor's not available? Is it because a slight tweak in the environment? Is it because there's distraction that I could be adjusting the in the space? Like there's a ton of popcorn on the ground. Could we clean up some popcorn to make the hide a little bit more um productive?

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Or like there could be odor available everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Right? So it could be that environment too that that one hide populated, but it didn't populate enough of a clear pathway to that source, right? So then I may have to either, and sometimes we talk, we have I think every individual person has some definitions that they use for their odor. When I say containment, I don't mean that the odor is in a sealed container. I often mean I have a little source pool at source.

Known Hides To Build Handler Literacy

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:12

And that and that can be that, yeah, and that can be that helpful thing. So a real good way to experiment with that easily on your own is a folding chair where you put the hide literally up underneath the lip of the of the seat, or you put it in the middle of the seat, and you're gonna see differences on a table. Or on the arm of the seat. Yes, on the table edge or in the middle of the table, two entirely different odor pictures. Yeah. So, and I think that you nailed it on the head, which is we are responsible as a handler to have odor recognition. You don't leave this entire search up to your dog to determine not only is odor present, where's the greatest quantification of odor, and how do I possibly get my nose as close to that source as possible so that my human can have enough information to say alert. Because that's really why we train nose on source. It is for purposes of this sport and humans getting the hand human handler getting enough, not that there would be another kind of handler, but the handler getting enough information. Okay, Tana's tried, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So tips and tricks maybe on hide placement. I like to tell my students to experiment with vessels that they don't normally experiment with. So if you always go out there with a few tins, they're magnetic, and that's how you set your hides, you're probably setting kind of a similar picture all the time. Go out there with a tube or go out there with no sticky anything. Um, and that will change how you're setting things because realistically, like this morning, I had a shrink tube and a natural environment, no sticky anything, no magnetic any sources. So a hide went between the bark and the tree. A hide went between bricks in the wall shoved into some dirt. I had a crack hide. And it really changes the way that you interact with the environment when you have a different kind of hide. Now you're presenting with different types of odor pictures that are going to have different kinds of availability to them.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Yeah, I think another good way to do it is do one, and that's taking your um idea of going into a search area and not adding any objects to it. Yeah, placing your hides what we might call on natural, and I always kind of chuckle at that because is a brick wall of the school a natural object? But what we mean by not on our standard objects, chairs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then if you have the luxury of bringing in any objects, run that same search on another day, or if you can later on in the day, with the hides on objects and watch the difference. So they're actually on uh,

COs, Demo Dogs, And Adjusting Environments

SPEAKER_01 44:05

you know, the ladder, the wheelbarrow, the right, the chair, whatever it is. Yeah. And look for the difference. And I've often thought of that too of um how I'd like to, you know, run one search with it in one and have the hide primarily try to be in the same place. But then when you add the object, what does it do and how does it change?

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Yeah. Comparing that changes of behavior, what does it look like when the odor is blowing to the wall versus when the odor is in the wall, right? On the wall. Um, so those are gonna be such different kinds of pictures, and yeah, definitely worth doing for sure.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Well, it's a broad, broad topic, guys. So when we're talking about pathway to source trial and training tips, I think what we just covered was be curious, go out there and do whatever. Don't be, I think that we get too stuck in. I just want to pass, I just want to have no no's. I just want to, and notice each of those phrases started with I. So really to train for our teamwork and to be a team player with our dogs, uh, we have to, I think, really important that we take on uh the responsibility of odor recognition and really understanding when our dog's in odor. I believe that that's so helpful to do that with known hides first, graduate to unknown. Don't test your dog, don't test yourself. Anytime you do blind hides, you are testing your knowledge of your dog. So you should have some um, you know, foundation of what that is and do that fairly for the dog. And you should have a great foundation with your dog for odor recognition and odor drive at that point. Um otherwise you're testing the dog unfairly.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

And then using that recognition to figure out what kind of pathways are typical for that, right? And we can develop those patterns in our own brain. And I think we've talked about this in the previous podcast is those patterns, right? So recognizing what does the pattern of an inaccessible look like? How does that pathway work? Is the dog able to get those sharp edges and push in, or in a different kind of situation with more humidity or the barometric pressure changing? How does that look? And kind of creating those pictures of your recognizing odors there, what kind of pathways do those look like?

SPEAKER_01 46:28

And I think that that's the real goal, because the that's this is the animal taxis, right? This is how are dogs detect uh even prey, right, when they're hunting in the field. And then how do they work towards that source, where the rabbit is, whether the rabbit is in its den or it's behind a bush or wherever it is. How does the how does any animal hunt

Containment, Availability, And Pooling

SPEAKER_01 46:53

to get to that prey, right? And they do it by measuring the quantification of odor. Um, and uh this is so such a human construct to say uh right, left, they measure it right and left, they measure it up and down. Um it's mostly because that's what I see, but it is truly a 360 field. It's not right, there is no way that we can really ever um get it laterally or horizontally or vertically and understand it. The pathway source is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

I think that's the hardest thing for my brain is it's constantly moving. Yes. Odor pictures are not stagnant. And I think because our brains work on a visual field where everything is stagnant and they're not moving, that when we're trying to envision these things, that was just that fraction of a second and it's already moved. It's already changed.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Well, and I think that sometimes too when I use the word pathway, right? Immediately what comes up in my brain or when I say, Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think of, you know, I'm on the road and I'm gonna wait for the the ramp off the highway or onto the highway or where I turn right or left. So it's very, very uh ingrained in us. Um how many of us will actually drive and not even it's so becomes so automatic for us to drive, we're not conscious really of what road we're on at a particular point in time because we're thinking over the things, but we're driving quite safely and we are going in the correct direction. Well, that's the automatic um way that our dog's uh olfaction system works. So they don't that way, yeah. So they're not coming in and going, oh, I need to go right to measure, right? They're doing it based on quantification of collection of odor in a particular area. And we often call that pooling. So then we could walk away from this trial and I could say, oh my gosh, that was just a massive pooling problem the whole day. Every hide had a pooling problem within it or without it. That's true of every single hide we set. Exactly. Yeah. So it wasn't that, you know, and granted, as we move up in the ranks and you get into a lead, um, you're going to find, and and in AKC into the higher levels, you're going to find that that is our goal as a CO or the judge, and as a self-trainer or the instructor, is to set that level appropriate hide and create more pooling or create, right, the pooling that is disconnected from source, right? That becomes an even more complex puzzle. But ultimately, it is really recognizing that odor puzzle with our dog in the moment at that time, what that puzzle presented, and then using our training to help us in trial collectively, together, collaboratively,

Experiment With Nonstandard Vessels

SPEAKER_01 49:40

solve that puzzle, which ends up with an alert and a yes.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

Yeah.

unknown 49:46

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 49:47

Anything else you want to add?

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Other than like, holy crap, we could do like, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:54

I feel like, oh, we just talked about this for an entire hour.

SPEAKER_00 49:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

We gave no one any answers. I know.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Other than you have to go out there, you have to train it, and you really have to watch your dog. Videoing is a great option.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Yes. Yes. And I think you have to remain a sponge for learning. Curious. Right? So curious. So believe me, it was painful coming off that trial and going, oh my gosh, are we broken? We went in and couldn't find right? 11 out of 17 highlights. That's the big word, right? 11 out of 17 heights. I'm like, what? What just happened? Yeah. And I'm like, hey, a whole bunch of really good stuff happened. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I gotta mention this. Oh my God, Zeke was an absolute master on the gym floor. Okay. Never, not a single, nothing. Such a huge I came out of there with Goosebumps. That was the first thing I said to him is, oh my God, buddy, you just nailed that floor. Not a single, yeah, not a not a single glitch. He just went went for it. So that was you know really so take your wins where you can find them, right? Exactly. Sort out what you uh did well. We often forget about that, which that was what I was talking about. The gym floor, the one hide where we got a no, but then we turned it into a yes because we stuck with it. Right. Um when I look at a couple of the other searches, um, you know, the winning team, if you will, the high-end trial team, they got 11 hides. I just happened to have three no's that I threw in. Yeah, exactly. Right. So yeah, we might not have placed very well, but it's not about the placements, it's it's about the learning. And and I'm really working on building consistency. So I did, I it was a great trial for me to say, here's where my training needs to move us in a direction of where I really need to learn how to do a collaborative handler.

unknown 51:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

Take my responsibility that I've been talking about and be able to do it in trial.

Natural Versus Object Hides Comparisons

unknown 51:55

Right?

SPEAKER_01 51:55

Cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Very cool. Anything else you can think of? Um how about what are you up to?

SPEAKER_01 52:01

What do you have going on? Yeah. So uh now I like to say, oh, so we just finished our last trial for mountain dogs. I'm on vacation. No, I'm not. Um because my mother says to me, Oh, yeah, you'll have more time to come see me. And I said, Well, yeah, sorta. And then I started to list. So I'm gonna be I'm really excited because I'm going to help Jen Fleming with her summit trial. I'll be COing that summit trial down in Georgia.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

That's so exciting.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

Yeah. Um, and we have a couple of our our local mountain dog teams coming to trial with us, which is so that's gonna be just a super amount of fun, and that's the uh 20th and 21st and 22nd of December. And then we leap right into January. I've got another trial I'm COing. Um, and then I start into the ORT prep so that we can get that done. And in between, uh hopefully I'll squeeze in a whole bunch of workshops and then my next trial, Benson. I'm gonna use my priorities so that I get to do a lead at Benson. So I'm really excited about that.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

I have to put those in. Um, very cool. That's exciting. You're gonna have a busy winter.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

And then doing a whole bunch of webinars and online teaching in between. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:14

How about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Um, I've got a really quiet December. I kind of purposely did that and I'm really looking forward to it. So I get to actually compete a little bit at the beginning of set uh December. And then I'm teaching in Benson at a it's like a museum, but it's really similar to the Mescal movie set. So I'm kind of excited about that one. So it's a good two-day seminar, and then I get into judging once I get into January. So two AKC trials in there. Vespa is gonna have her little premiere. I just put in her first entry this morning. So we'll go play a little bit of AKC. She can kind of experiment with that. And I'm hopefully gonna get a trial here, an NECSW trial going. And then I've got some seal gigs coming up too. So I'm excited about that. Yay! So headed out to Georgia in February, and I've got a Sedona here in May, and then I think that's it right now.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

We're putting you on the calendar for what were we doing? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

It was between April or July or something, yeah.

Patterns Of Inaccessibles And Variables

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Right.

unknown 54:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

So but thankful um that you're all listening and really um thankful that you've uh enjoyed our podcast. At least it seems that way because we have a a lot of downloads after two years almost, I think.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Um, but yeah, so we've enjoyed um kind of bringing some ideas to you and just kind of rambling, it seems like, um, sometimes rather than being very concrete. Because that's what I kind we both kind of wanted the podcast to be, um, and doing some reflection, I guess, because we're getting to the end of the year and kind of you always do that at the end of the year. What are you thankful for? And yeah, blah, blah. But um, definitely thankful for our listeners. Yeah, and we've really, and if we we if we aren't doing it, please let us know. But we're really trying to make sure we encompass um multiple ideas and being very inclusive as opposed to any kind of exclusivity in terms of trialing methods. And while either if anybody were to watch either Alex or I uh run a dog or trial with our dog, you might go, oh my gosh, that's not at all what they said in their podcast. Um, know that we're trying just as much as right, because it's such a learning process. The second you stand, you know, step into those handler shoes, it's an entirely different um perspective than it is when you're teaching, training, COing, judging. Um so we're all striving just to be better partners with our dog. That. But anyway, so thanks everybody. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving.