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 !
Invisible Odor, Visible Skills- Training the Inaccessible Hide
Hey everyone, welcome to our podcast for January from the Canine Scent Fix. Um, I'm here with Alex Woodruff. Hey, Alex. Hello. And this is Jill Kovosevich. And you know, as typical, we get our topics uh from our last trial experience or whatever. And that could be either as handlers when we went to compete, um, or as judges or as COs and watching some of the problems that we're setting and how our students are doing as well. So from that, we kind of wanted to talk about, we both got going on some trials that we had experienced that seemed like the um problem solving was rather challenging for many of the teams. So um, while we could define that problem solving in just one little chunk of like pooling, um, or it could be problem solving in terms of the types of hides, we've decided that we really want to talk about problem-solving skills for inaccessibles and really talk about um what an inaccessible hide is, uh, where we're gonna start to encounter those, and looking at uh different types of situations that you'll encounter them at trial, because once we understand what we where we see these in trial, then we can build our training progression. Um, and really trying to work on um all the way from even um NW2 is kind of when we maybe first introduce our inaccessibles. I'm gonna even suggest we see it at the ORT, right? Because at the ORT is our inaccessibles that are inside of our boxes and we can have that whole kind of conversation. Some people really feel like it's not an inaccessible, it's actually just a big ass tin or a big, right? It's just a big, a big container for odor, right? So um, but it really isn't nose on source. So I guess that's kind of um, and I'm gonna just uh jump right away to helping ourselves uh kind of define what we mean by inaccessibles first, then we'll talk about the problem-solving skills and go from there. So let's have Alex uh jump in and talk to us a little bit about um inaccessibles and and what is an inaccessible and what do we mean by that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay. So uh I think the general consensus for inaccessible hides is that the dog cannot put their nose on it. And that seems like a pretty standardized uh thought process of how that can work. Um, how it presents in the trial can be a little bit more varied, right? We could see inaccessibles at the very simplest level of a drawer that might be popped open. Um, all the way to, I've seen it in one of my summit trials, we had an inaccessible that was deep, and I would consider it inaccessible due to reach. The dog cannot reach source, but odor is expanding everywhere. And it was about six feet deep inside a big stack of like equipment from a whole music room. So everything was getting cleaned for the summer and everything stacked into the middle of the room and the hides in the middle of that. And so the dog's receiving odor information from many different locations. Um, so we can see all those different things. Another one that's typically put into the same category are elevated hides. They are technically inaccessible. The dog can't put their nose on it, and that becomes a little bit of a gray zone because if I talk about an inaccessible elevated hide for a chihuahua, that's going to be a very different inaccessible hide versus a great dane if we're saying the nose can't be on it. Because that chihuahua, anything at three feet and above is completely inaccessible. They cannot get their nose there versus a great dane, might be able to walk over and put their nose exactly on source. So I think there is that little bit of a difference. And when do we see inaccessibles might be slightly different for small dogs in that sense, but otherwise for the contained, like it's in a cabinet or in a drawer or anything like that, or due to reach because it's behind something, that's going to show up mainly at the NW2. We get the basic kind of level of it, NW3 and higher. And then in AKC, you aren't allowed to see that until excellent level, you get kind of the foundation ones, kind of like NW2, and then master level and above, we get any sort of inaccessible behaviors or inaccessible hides can be present.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and one of the interesting conversations is it because I did bring up ORT boxes being an inaccessible hide. So if we're using that where uh kind of thinking of accessible as being nose on source. So we've done our foundational training of our dogs understanding that what we're asking them to do is to go into a search area, not just locate the target odor, but where it's coming from, right? That is the source. So it could be, and we have a tendency to call that uh there's a whole litany probably of words that different people use, but it could be the hide, the tin, the tube, um, all those sorts of things, right? And kind of what we're talking about is um by training our dogs to do, and Alex and I use the term nose on source, what we mean is literally getting their nose as physically possible close to that vessel, right? So whether the vessel's a tin or a tube or whatever it is, right that we're asking the dog at that very foundational level to get their nose as close to that as possible. Okay, so then when we have a barrier, whether it's the box that we closed on top of that, the q-tips themselves, the tubes themselves, the tin that's in the box, now that becomes, and we shut the box, that becomes an inaccessible hide. So we're also kind of talking about it still having odor availability, right? Right, yeah, yeah. Within, and sometimes we for confuse that, right? We think of, oh, if it's an inaccessible, that means I didn't have odor available. Well, we have to have some quantification of odor available for our dogs to even be able to one um identify target odor as present, and two, pursue that pathway to source, right? And then communicate that that pathway um to source and then source location to us. So that's why we kind of when we talked about this, we were kind of like, okay, well, we'd love to talk about how do we do some of this training and but what we really want to also understand is what we see at trial, then we'll push your training, but your training needs to be progressive building of those skill sets to understand what was at trial, rather than just oh, it was that chair stack, Alex. It was that chair stack and it was a game. And I have to do a billion of them. And I just gotta find that many chairs that are all stacked in the same way, the same kind or whatever. And I'm just gonna put the hide like right in the middle of it and blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah. So sometimes in training is a great time to actually, you know, go ahead and do that, but be willing to understand, hey, uh, that particular stack of chairs must not have been as similar to what I saw at trial as I had thought, or maybe it was easy. So we always kind of rate that too in terms of complexity. Oh, my dog came right in, they knew what the my dog loves inaccessibles. They'll just, you know, come in and get their nose as close as they can. I call it, blah, blah, blah. We don't have a problem with inaccessibles. And yet, what we forget is that the inaccessible has a different odor picture.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It has a different odor picture. You can even have, so let's go back to the stack of chairs. So my stack of chairs can actually give off a massive odor picture.
SPEAKER_01:3D. Like it's every direction, it's slipping everywhere. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:And it's almost like it was a big box that had no sides. How do you like that? Yeah. It's a box. Oh, it's got the framework.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so along the same lines, because I think it's uh quite applicable. You're talking about an ORT box, potentially, it's like a closed drawer, right? It's that contained hide within, it's seeping through the edges, kind of like a drawer does. So it's going to have the same kind of picture. If we look at a buried hide for AKC, it's got plastic sides and that screen on top. So if we're saying, okay, we've got our drawer example of the inaccessible container, buried to me is like that inaccessible due to reach. They can't reach the source. So they now have a large point source, which is kind of similar, like the stack of chairs, where the hide is actually coming out in a lot of different directions, and the dog is trying to understand is the hide coming from this location or is it blowing into and collecting in this location? And then the dog having to separate it where that source is from there.
SPEAKER_00:And I think that part of what's so important about that, guys, is that kind of three-dimensional picture. And we're talking about an odor picture for the dog, where there is, we'll just use that as an example. There isn't just one pathway to get nose on source, right? It's it's that inaccessible that potentially is going to be where the dog needs to do problem solving. And what we mean by problem solving is they're determining that the quantification of odor on the right side of the object is different than the quantification of odor on the left side or in front of it or behind it, that kind of thing. And and we talk about, we use the word bracket to mean where the dog is moving from one side of the object to the other to measure that quantification. So from doing our accessible hides, and I was also going to point out, which is really interesting too, that, and I would think that this is true in the in the professional world as well, that we almost immediately start doing inaccessible hides, the hide under the chair, where the dog, you know, has to literally do some kind of yoga pose to get their nose on source. So is that right? Yet in trial, when we see our dog shove their nose underneath that chair, we typically can even competently call it before my dog gets nose on source. So now, didn't I just have technically maybe an accessible hide that I called as an inaccessible hide? Right. Right. Because I didn't have nose on source. So what we really want to help people understand is the inaccessible hide is that next level hide in the progression after your dog already has very commitment, um, they've got so they've got odor recognition, they've got odor importance, they understand communication of source. Yeah. Is that fair to say? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What else do we want to, right? So if we think of the progression, step number one is dog knows nose on source. Then we have to make it a little harder. So if your dog is coming up, and I like this is step one of barrier training, that your dog's coming up to a chair, the hide is on the other side of the chair or bench if we want to make it even longer. And your dog, here's the hard part. In a trial, if they go to that side of the chair that's closest to them and the airflow is blowing towards them and they alert there, that could be a yes. Very rarely you're going to have a judge that requires them to go all the way around that chair to the other side. Bench, maybe so, but just a simple little chair. But if we think about that in training, what's the next progression? If they are not understanding, I have to go around the chair to try and get my nose on source, then that next step, when it gets to the bench or we get another barrier in the way, now they think that it's okay to alert or tell you the communication, this is the strongest point, reward me here, is on the closer side of the barrier to you versus where is source and trying to get their nose on source. To me, that is the next step is barriers. Can the dog work around a barrier, maybe leaving the odor plume to come back in, which is a little bit more of an intellectual, they have to think about that a little bit versus just driving to source. If I'm talking about like Tana loves to drive to source. So if I had an X-Pen between where my dog is interacting with odor and where the odor source is, if she can push that X-Pen to push against the chair so she can get her nose right on source, she'll do that. That's a little bit more of a drive to source versus an intellectual dog, dog thinking about how do I do this, might look back and forth and say, Oh, I can get around this barrier, going around it to get to source.
SPEAKER_00:So to me, that's like next step. That's a great example, right? And I really think that this is a pure example of where training needs to have in mind clarity for your dog first, right? So our our handler training and our understanding of odor and odor observation, I don't want to say it's really secondary because it's very, very important. But the first thing we're training out of the three things, dog handler environment, and if you're always training in one of those three realms, that's pretty much everything we do, then we're really focusing within accessibles on the first steps for my dog to have clarity as to what we're asking them to do, right?
SPEAKER_01:And that's independent from us.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:We're not initiating go around. We're not initiating that. We're just waiting to let the dog discover how to get to source.
SPEAKER_00:So a really good example of of how I like to frame this for especially anybody who's very visual, is the ball that you place behind the door.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So you're playing ball with your dog, right? And you happen to have the bedroom door that's open where the door is flat against the uh wall going into the room. Right. And you place the ball behind the door and ask them to find it. And you can do that with primary, whether it's food, toy, or whatever it is, right? And even at that stage, you will find the dogs that either will get to then, especially now that we have kind of a, I don't want to call it proliferation, but we do have many um inaccessible hides in the hinges of those doors, right? So yeah, we're gonna do that. So we're beginning, we're beginning to really understand. Um, and and actually they're, I don't want to say they're they're less complex for the dog, quite frankly, yeah, than what we originally, I think, presumed they would be, depending upon where that door is located. And I'll I can explain further about that. But um Yeah, I think that's our direction. It's also that it's just problem solving, right? So if you put their dinner bowl behind that door and told your dog to go find dinner, your dog would figure out how to go around the door to get to the dinner bowl.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but it might take some time if they've never done it before. Yeah, which I think goes right back to this is progression training. We kind of have to do that step, whether it's odor or primary or whatever, that maybe my hide, okay, let's put it into odor terms, instead of on the ground, maybe I put my hide right on the baseboard, right above the ground, so it's not under the door. So it's like, oh, they are close enough. No, they have to get around the door to get their nose on source. And if they went around, they'd be fine. And we're talking about a foot in from the edge of the door. Like it doesn't even have to be at the hinge yet, because then maybe your dog's making assumptions. What I see sometimes is the dog has been working and the team has been working inaccessibles, and the dog is coming to these fast answers and the handler's calling them. And what happens is we start getting a progression of working and alerting further and further away from source without any work. So, does your dog show the work? Do they say two plus two equals four? Or do they just go, oh, it's an inaccessible. There's odor present four? You're going to pay me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're going to pay me. So why I don't need to go to the house. Why should I do the work?
SPEAKER_01:And the handler likes it because the answer's fast. But where the problem is, is what if the odor's not from there? So what if I have a hide on the cabinet sitting next to my doorframe and we're saying, okay, there's odor behind the door, and it's blowing behind the door, and the dog goes, Oh, it's a hinge hide, I'll just tell you this. No, that would be your answer. No. Yeah. Right. Because the hide is on the cabinet. And if your dog just made the effort to go around the door to the right side to try and put their nose behind the door, they would catch a new pathway and go, Oh, it's to my right and connect to the cabinet. But without that work, it just looks like there's a collection of odor behind the hinge.
SPEAKER_00:And just as an aside, I just want to jump in and say this kind of because it ties so much to the concept of uh when we're working in accessibles, are we then really rewarding a fringe expectation versus I've gotten as close to source as I physically can. I've really tried, I'm committed to try to get to source. So those are two separate things. I mean, because we can honestly say that in most cases, anytime we reward for an inaccessible hide, it is a fringe. Now, the way that you can build that is, and Alex had a really good example, which was the X pen is my barrier, is by the dog does a certain amount of work to get around that barrier or through that barrier, and then you actually remove the barrier so now the dog can push in to get nose on source. That's one way that we call barrier work, right? Which is physically put a barrier you can move, could be the cabinet door. You place the hide right inside the cabinet door. The dog's doing all this communication. If I want to get in, I got to get in. I can see that it's in the source is in here somewhere. Then you open the door so the dog can get nose on source. And when you're first training those hides, you put the hide right inside the door. It's not buried back in the deep part of the cabinet. Exactly. It's not an elevated cabinet hide. It's not underneath books inside the cabinet, it's right inside the cabinet. So sometimes we talk about, oh, I just need to do some one-and-dones and some nice accessible uh level one hides to build my dog's foundation. You need to also apply that same theory to when you are practicing in accessibles. Again, rather than come back from that trial where you had that one in a cabinet and your dog maybe missed the cabinet. And as a CO, I'm doing my debrief video and I'm pointing and I'm saying, Oh, I had it right here in the cabinet, where I really haven't explained it was right inside the little crevice there, or it was further deep, you know. I haven't given you all the information. So when you go to duplicate that height, if you will, in training, at least to be able to build a progression, build the progression, right? Yeah. We just did a really I just want to talk about my doors really quick because a really um easy class that we just did because I was trying to think of ways that we could do this barrier work, and I didn't really want to have to haul like the X pens and all of you know, because some of us we make these really fun mazes and it's got all this stuff inside, and I've got all these tables that are preventing the dog from going inside the circle, and and my hide is on a chair inside the circle, just like visual. So um I just wanted to figure out a way that I could do the same progressive training of inaccessibles, even for my elites and my summit dogs, and have it be fairly easy to do. So I actually had um in the in our exhibit hall, um, we have two restrooms, a kitchen door, and another Storage door. So I took objects and I put the hide on an object just inside the door, like two inches inside the door. And for my lesser um left level dogs, the NW2s, we cracked the door open like three inches, right? So the dog actually was getting a good pathway availability of odor when they went to work that door. And then for the upper levels, we closed the door a little bit more. So then we got the bracketing and trying to look underneath the door and that kind of thing. And then we'd open up the door and the hide was right there. There wasn't another continuing search to be done once the dog entered the room. That's kind of what I'm saying. So that's another way that you can really build this concept of it's an available, accessible hide once you open the barrier.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's important to do something like that. Like, like I like the doors. I feel like I want to do that. I just don't have access to a door like that in my training. I know, but I train my dogs in here. I don't train students, right? Yeah. I X-Bens are easier for me there, but I love that concept. I'll be using it for my dogs. Um, but what I have seen is progression training. And if we go at the right pace, we're not speeding through it, we're not trying to rush it and jump like way too far too fast, is you can reduce the amount of arousal that happens. And arousal then creates these destructive alerts because the dog feels like I should get in there. Yes. Or they give up, right? And those are your two options. And so you are going to get less like pawing, digging, scratching, or biting or aggression on the hide in the hide area. And you'll get less leaving the hide if the dog has the belief that they can get there if they work the problem a little bit longer. And that takes time, that takes that progression. We have to go through those steps and maybe go backwards a few times. And it's okay to go backwards, right?
SPEAKER_00:Um well, and by backwards, it's just it's just the mechanics really of you know going to do the skill set that is just singing the scale to then doing, you know, the full um, yeah, you know, the whatever it is part of the song. So it's really not necessarily going backwards, but sometimes getting that note correct is gonna make the sound of the song much more fluid. So that's basically what we're saying is that I just need to include in my training and in my practices the the doing the scales right on the piano so that when I go to play the concerto, um, my hands are all warmed up, my dog's nose is all warmed up, and we understand kind of what we're doing. And I really think that what happens, there's two kind of theories out there. One is we get our dogs out to train, and we the puzzle appears to be more complex than what we envisioned. And the reason we feel that it's hard, and I try not to use that word, I really try to use the word of complexity. Yeah, because I think if you use the word complex, then you're more willing to say, hey, I just need to make the puzzle a little less complex. Exactly. Right? Build that foundation for my dog to solve the less complex puzzle, then I'm gonna build up back to that complexity, right? Yeah, so it's no different than when you do any skill set, golf, I don't care what sport you do as a human being, or any training that you do with your dog. If you're looking for the perfect spin for your dog to do it on command, or for heaven's sakes, a weigh me and a come by, right? Yeah, um, I'm gonna start with smaller pieces, right? Right. So it's those smaller pieces and big and get building up to that larger progressive piece that's really important. So I think that that's kind of what we're saying. And Alex had really good uh comments about the um we asking the dog to find these inaccessibles, yet we don't want them to get so um demanding. Yeah, demanding about nose on source or being rewarded on source, that then we start to have a pawing or barking or all of those kinds of things. And that's where those removal of barriers can really help. So it may feel like you're going, okay, but didn't you just tell me now I'm helping my dog get to the hide? Well, if you you're gonna do it in a in a way so that the dog is building the skill sets, and as soon as you see one skill set form, then move up. Then if there's a falter in that skill set, then you move back to that foundational piece, and then you so it's a constant ebb and flow for a constant ebb and flow of what you're gonna see for clarity because every dog is different, so it's gotta be clarity for that dog at that moment with that high that you set at that moment.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So I think there's another way that we can look at it as well. I use a marking system, right? So one way would be to open the barrier, and that is basically marking the dog in their efforts to try and get in. Yes. And then we give them access to it, and that's reinforcing, right? Uh, another way that we can do that is with the marker. And if I say yes, while my dog has intent to get in and is in the act of thinking and pushing and maybe putting their nose closer to source and they're thinking about that, and I say yes, it's interrupting them in that moment. You are basically saying, I like this behavior, I want more of it to occur, and I'm rewarding you there. Reward on source if you can open your barrier or rewarding as close to source as possible. But what I find is if you are marking that moment, the intent to get closer, you are rewarding them to try and get closer in the future. If you wait for that alert behavior, so your dog's trying, trying, trying, and says, here's as close as I want to get, and looks at you and you mark and reward that, and that's the only thing you ever reward, the dog is learning how to fringe because you are marking your dog for alerting away from source. And if they have made all the efforts and says this is the closest that I can get, and they've done all the work, it is correct. Like it's not a bad thing necessarily, because I think when we move to the upper levels, we do need some sort of clarity sometimes of is this pooling is this source? What's happening and allowing for that? But I think I find people jump to that so quickly that they're missing all the progression in between and the intent to try and get closer. So if the dog doesn't have the intent and is just saying, I've only worked this one side, maybe two sides, and this is as close as I'm getting, there's odor in there, that's where we start having some problems. So are we rewarding for fringing or are we rewarding for intent to get closer? And I think that's made by your steps, made by your intent to do it. And I think we have to recognize the timing of what we do as a big piece of that, because what we do in that moment while your dog is working really matters.
SPEAKER_00:So I love all of that, but I'm a little confused, right? Okay. So no, I'm just gonna like do a little advocacy here. So take it. I just heard everything you said, and it was okay, as long as I have the intent to when I'm supposed to reward my dog, and my dog has the intent to continue to pursue source, that's when I should reward when the dog is working it.
SPEAKER_01:Forgot it.
SPEAKER_00:That's exactly what I was gonna say. So part of what we're talking about when we talk about if if you're supporting a fringe, you may be supporting your dog has already made a decision and is no longer pushing, pressing, pursuing source. They've already kind of stopped. So if your timing comes where you say, Yes, or good dog, or whatever, and you're gonna remove that, and and you're rewarding away from source, meaning you're not opening the door and actually rewarding by putting your treat or toy, thumb and forefinger right on source, right? Right thumb, seriously, nose on source. You just bring them right into it. Yes, you can think of it as luring, um, or but at that point in time, it's actually part of the reward process because the decision making that they've already gotten as close as they can has already happened. Right, right. So that's kind of the piece when we're talking about the two differences is are you rewarding after your dog has stopped communicating? Or are you rewarding, marking um however you want to do it, right? And it may even be um that you're already gonna get your um open up the door and get your treat right on source, but are you doing it during the communication process? So that's kind of I think what Alex is suggesting is that if we're waiting, and sometimes that's tough because we end up waiting the dog too long. Like it's it's almost like you know, you're asking for that perfect sit. You get you get three and four of them, and you're like, oh God, we're so hot. Let's do one more and one more, and the dog goes, Oh, I think I'll go over here and sniff the ground, right? Because you went too far. They can't get to source.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, they leave, right? Because the reward's not happening. And that's where progression is important because it's probable that you've upped the game too much. Yes. And I go back to hard-to-reach hides often. So deep accessible or accessible if they go around to the third side. And I play around with airflow a lot, meaning airflow is blowing my hide through a barrier, and my dog has to work around that barrier to the correct side. And I find that that's the piece that we always have to be working, no matter the level.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, absolutely. And granted, we understand that sometimes it's okay, you told us all about that. How do I set it up? Right. Often we don't know until we know, right? Because I've done that in a class too. Okay, we're gonna do inaccessibles and try to create pooling and trapping. And we go in and we set this whole thing, we square that's gonna be the greatest in the inaccessible, the dogs are gonna have to bracket, and then they're there and they nail it right away. And I went, okay, that's too basic. We got to make it more complex, right? Right. Or you try to create one that you the dog can work around, and now the dog is working for far too long, right? So you so when you see that, it's it's you have to be able to say um a couple of things. If you have, and you have to adapt, I think, your own feel-good, because whatever Alex or I might say, you might go and try, and it might feel like, oh my god, my I'm gonna break my dog. There's no clarity here for me, there's no clarity here for my dog. Then go back to whatever is builds clarity for you and your dog, right? Yeah. And then if you need to get more resources, reach out and get more resources as to what the next step is. I think that one of the real challenges that we do from the very beginning with odor imprinting is we take our dogs into an environment where target odor is present and we wait them out. Yeah, when you wait them out and the dog is not fully engaged in that odor, being present and wanting to pursue target odor, period. I don't care what their skill set is, I don't care if they're kind of like confused yet or whatever. If they're coming in and they are moving to distraction, we do not have the basics that we need for our dogs to be working inaccessibles because there's less quantification of odor available. So we have to have right. So and it it can happen even with your elite dog that you've been training at these high algorithm problems, and they're going in there and they're solving this amazing stuff, and we're forgetting to just build a foundation back up so the dog has great expectation that guess what? Source hands, source pace, not just odor, source, source pace. That's why I want to continue to pursue the rabbit down into the hole that's buried in the box, down into the or into the cabinet, because that rabbit is in the cabinet, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think it's uh I think the other piece to consider is not all dogs are the same. So I kind of mentioned this about Tana before. She's a drive to source kind of girl. Um, at a recent uh detective trial, the judge set a hide. I want to say it was six feet back away from the surface. There's like carts in the way, it's under a shelf, it's way back in the staging room. And she's just working to source and she's just continuing her way, weaving between everything and got back to source. For her, not inaccessible. But most dogs are not like that. Some dogs are, and it makes it easier to call these things.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:But we need to train these for the majority of dogs, not like that one, but with intellectual kind of understanding of I'm bracketing, I'm assessing how much odor information is away, where is the odor source? And you'll start to see their nose direction start pointing towards source. And this applies for any inaccessible hide. As the dog is working, they may expand to understand their situation, but typically they'll come right back in and the nose will turn left if the hide's to the left, and the nose will turn right if the hide's to the right. And between those two points is your source. And so you let them continue working until they have communicated enough sources in there. It's not coming from somewhere else, blowing to there. And then we can call that. What I do find, and I judge enough teams in detective that this does matter, is the dog or the team that calls a hide that is essentially fringe a hide, like it's fringe information. Like if it's a huge table, the big science tables that we have that are like three feet by four feet or six feet of the huge tall tables, and the hide's in the middle. If the dog comes up, works one side of that table, alerts on a leg, team calls it, they get a yes, it's inaccessible, it's within what's acceptable for that hide. The dog has not communicated it's inaccessible. The dog has communicated that the hide is present, they got a yes. Typically, that team is the team that will call again on the other corner, thinking, oh, maybe there's a second hide here because the dog never showed the work at the beginning. So if we consider AKC, that's a problem. That second hide is now a fault, right? In NACSW, it's yes, again, potentially, they might not tell you the number, depends on what kind of search it is, or it might you've called that one already. Not as huge of a deal. It's a bigger deal in AKC because it hurts a little bit more if you want placements. But if your dog is going to show you the work, you don't have the extra time wasted in it. You don't have all that extra calls and then that stress of what happens when you call that height again. So I definitely see that. And as a judge, I've learned to kind of accept that because as a judge, it's like, but your dog didn't really understand it was inaccessible. I don't want to give you a yes because that's not the challenge that was set. But I also know that that team typically will then have problems elsewhere. So it's not necessarily going to be a slam dunk. Um, and I think that's hard sometimes as a judge to sit in that position. Because I know we've got people listening that might set hides as an instructor or as a judge that have those kind of thoughts of, well, if I give you a yes here, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00:So this is a great part of this conversation. And some of it was we did the is it a good call? So that's one of our prior judge, our prior um podcasts about the judge call, right? So it's really making sure that, and I got a couple of things that are just so so great that Alex brought up. Um, but the judge call, just make sure that what you're uh training isn't pushed entirely by what you experienced in trial. That would be my first comment.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Secondly, would be boy, that is a great example of the table with the hide right smack dab in the middle. And as a summit CO, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna set that time and time again. And the reason I said it is because odor goes everywhere. That is a complex, inaccessible hide. That is not a oh, that's easy for the dog to get underneath that table and get nose on source. It's the pathway to source that's more complex there. Odor is going everywhere, and it's challenging for the dog to um understand that. So the way you build that um in terms of communication that you will understand as a handler is you set the first one on that leg, right on the leg. That's where the first hide goes. Dog goes in, and yes, it's it could be an inaccessible because you have it up, tucked up under, and maybe for your dog, whether it's a short dog or small dog or a you know older dog or whatever, where the dog actually can't get nose on source, but it's right there on the leg because you're gonna have source containment, you're gonna have a larger pocket of source, closer to source, that the dog can define, the dog can differentiate from outer going. Find those edges and bracket it in. Exactly. Then you maybe so maybe you've got one of those plastic tables that's got got that honeycomb stuff all underneath it. Or maybe it's a metal table that's got the legs coming down. Now you move that hide the next time you get a chance to do that training. Uh you move it a little bit further in. It's just like a chair, right? So with the chair, we're gonna start those hides on the edges around the edges, and slowly work to where we're now doing it, smack dab underneath the bottom of the seat. And then maybe even more complex than that is around the back side of the chair against a wall. Those are the progression pieces we're talking about, right? Yeah. So it just you should have this visual in your head that um goes from the outside uh sourcing where the dog can work their pathway to source further into it being more complex as that hide gets moved more inside. So if it's a cabinet, you're gonna start with it on the outside of the cabinet. Then maybe you move it to the middle of the two doors where the two doors open. Then maybe you move it so it's just inside, but I've got the door cracked like by you know a quarter inch or whatever. And the hide's like just inside on the door. The tube is even squeezed in between the two doors. Yeah. Now I'm gonna then I'm gonna put it on the shelf right in front of the door handle. Or so it's always moving it. It's so, and of course, coming from a skiing background, I'm constantly going, I'm gonna move from my snowplow on the bunny hill over to how I turn my skis to survive the mogul run, right? Yeah, and with the winter olympics coming up, right? You're watching for that, right? Because you can bet that those guys are still like, you know, they're still working that basics uh to get the body to understand this the response and the stimulus from the environment. So basically, that's what our asking our dogs to do is to recognize the odor information based on their experience so that we get what we call an automatic response to target odor. That automatic response then becomes our communication. So this is another good reason why you want to slowly build up, and it is part of that stamina piece, right? So, how long will my dog will stay in pursuit of source at a high that they can't quite get to? Resiliency to continue figuring it, yeah. Yeah, the tenacity to keep pushing in, right? Um, I call it the press, really work on your press. Um, Michelle Ellerton calls it the pursuit, and um Alex likes. Push, pushing in. The dog is attempting to push through the odor pool, right? Through all the odor information to get closer to source. So that their final communication, I'm as close as I can get, is literally as close as they physically can get, right? Yeah. So I think that's hugely important. That that's kind of breaks down that whole problem of okay, so maybe I have been rewarding a fringe answer, right? Yep. Letting the dog get out the not just the calculator. You're letting the dog get Google AI.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_00:Chat GBT, they didn't even type it in. They just talked to their phone. They just talked to their phone and said, So where's the hide? Oh, yeah. It's right here. That's good enough. And they're sitting and telling you, or whatever their alert information or behavior is to you, for you to say, Oh, yes, right. And it's tough because without that progressive piece that we just talked about, you could get the old the dog sits and looks at you or looks back at you or whatever information they usually communicate to you where they get a yes. Yeah. And then you just sort of stand there and ignore it and go, Oh, I guess I need more. I guess I need more, right? And the dog doesn't really want to give you more. And now you're in that we have a bad pattern, right?
SPEAKER_01:Because then we start cueing the dog. So now the dog is learning to fringe and say, Oh, there's odor here present. And you go, show me more.
SPEAKER_00:And then the dog working, which is my you know, phrase that comes out all the time. Keep working, keep working, keep working. And the border collie looking at me like, okay, you want me to do another spin around this, the around the you know?
SPEAKER_01:So if you are in that position where you notice your dog gets close to a source, it's starting an inaccessible, gives you an alert, and you're like, I need more, and then you cue your dog. So you are restarting that. So you're saying search, you're stepping in, you're lifting your palm, you're saying search again, show me any of those things. You're probably needing to go back a step so your dog thinks they can get to source, and you're not in.
SPEAKER_00:And that's and that's those simple not involved, right? Not at all that is a dog solving source closer to source without handler involvement. Yeah, right? Um, so and that can be those barriers. They're just they're really fun to do, by the way. They are fun. Maises are really fun. Yeah, and mazes are really fun. Yeah, so so that guys, I think I'm gonna ask Alex, but I think we kind of really I this topic, I we could both talk about this for several more hours. This is part of part of what we wanted to do today um was to really also do a QA. So I put out on uh the K9 Cent Fix uh Facebook page a request for um questions that we could then answer. So um we're gonna jump right into those, and then obviously, if this podcast spurred a whole bunch of questions that we didn't get a chance to solve because I'm already further along in this conversation than I told, oh, let's let's do the last half of it on these questions. We've already blown past that halfway mark. So yeah. We want to jump into these questions. So I'm gonna let Alex kind of introduce the question. Okay. Uh we have the first, we've gotten kind of in segments, we've got the first few that pertain to our topic that we're talking about now, and some others that talk about a different topic. So let's just let's just jump on these.
SPEAKER_01:With that in mind, if anybody has any others that they want to be answered, and it's like, I don't know if it's a full podcast, but I do have a question. I'm curious what you guys have to say. Uh, you can easily add it to the posts that are already there, and maybe we'll throw out another one in the future. Um, and I'll be collecting them and I'll keep them in a little spreadsheet and we'll pop them up at the end of some of these uh podcasts. All right, so looking at, we kind of pulled aside four that look like they would really pertain to what we were talking about today, and we've kind of talked about a little bit already, but maybe it's kind of nice if you've asked asked this question. And I've kind of reworded a few of them just to make them a little bit more neutral so um more people can understand from the point of view. All right, so the first one is how can I tell the difference between pooling versus inaccessible based on my dog's behavior? Is there a good way to teach our dogs to recognize the dis difference?
SPEAKER_00:So I you just really love this because we talk about what we just were talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that whole communication piece. And I really wanted to run down that rabbit hole. But then I thought, oh, we got these questions, and this first one may help us answer that next piece, which is what do you mean by communication?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, what does it look like?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So the handler odor observation is key. And both Alex and I have have webinars, courses, all sorts of resources on how to build your handler skill set of understanding odor and odor observation, meaning your dog's response to odor, right? So, um, and part of that I really think I've always said that as handlers, we have as much odor recognition responsibility and odor importance responsibility as our dogs. Yeah, it's not train the dog, and then we just are deer in the headlights waiting for them to do their final thing. You may have that dog, hallelujah for you. Yeah, yeah. You're probably not listening. Even if I have that dog, I find it so fascinating to watch multiple dogs work the same problem. It's cool. Yeah. And every dog has something different they're gonna offer about where they gathered their information. And I can just remember Ron gaunt for going on for hours. He'd have us searching our with our dogs and saying, look at that wonderful communication. And I go, What communication? I don't care what you're talking about. The dog's just going right and left and not finding source. And he goes, Oh my word, you have a lot to learn. Right? So the going right and going left is the communication, right? Every object that your dog makes any kind of directional response to. Uh Alex was talking about you can see their nose go right or their nose go left or their head cast up, head cast down. All of these, if they are a response to odor, it starts with the nose and moves back down the body, right? So if you're fixated, oh my dog, this really reminds me of um oh no, I can't remember. Anyway, but uh a dog who the handler very much focused on the tail, right? So we've got we've got your um dog whose tail just vibrates when they're in odor. Well, that tells us when they're in odor, but that may not tell us when they're on source. Right, right. Maybe when they're on odor, it's a slower pace, and then when they get on odor source, it starts to vibrate. Right. Um, so some of that can be very telling in the lower levels, but as you move up, does that become consistent all in and of itself? Or is it you're also watching where the dog is putting their head in relationship to the tail wagging? Does that make sense? Yeah. So the communication is everything your dog does from the time that you release them into a search to the time that they make a decision that they have concluded their search to this source. Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. Um, and it can be the bracketing that happens as they're working all of those um pieces moving around an object. By bracketing, that's what we mean. It's it's either, you know, 270, 360, could even be. They can move all the way around it. Maybe it's only 180, where they're going from one side to the other side of a chair up against a wall. Right. Um, the edges, we talk about that, we use that word, meaning they get way out on one side and they make a decision to turn around and come back from that one side. Then they go to the other side and they make a decision to turn around and go back. I'm already looking at those two points and saying, there's my bracket points. Right. There's my two points that the dog is attempting to isolate source odor in between point A and point B. Yeah. And tip communication.
SPEAKER_01:So if we're saying, okay, love the communication. Now looking at an accessible hide versus an inaccessible hide, how might it differ? If it's like an inaccessible in a stack of chairs, it might look very similar. It might just take a little longer for your dog on that source to figure out where they're going to settle. That could be one example. But what if they don't have as much access to the object? It's deeper within whatever it's doing. So there's something in the way, it's a stack of pallets or something, and the hide's in the middle. You're going to probably, so if it was an accessible hide on the corner of the pallets, they're going to decrease their bracket size probably much quicker. Intensity will increase as they're getting closer and closer to that location, and you're going to see a lot more animation with their behaviors. Each dog's different, right? So some animation might just be that they get a little stiffer. Um, so it really depends on your dog. But if it's an inaccessible hide, they might take longer, they might stay much wider. I can tell you if it was a stack of pallets and you had access 360 and the hide's in the middle, my dogs might continue going around and around, trying to access and see is there somewhere. They might start settling then on the downwind side, going back and forth and just having to pick a point. So you might start seeing that kind of behavior. If it was elevated, um, and we haven't dived into a lot of elevation in this podcast. We're kind of keeping it with some of the other inaccessibles, but you're going to see possibly an expansion at some point. So it feels like they're working, working, working, and then they move away because they aren't getting closer to source. So then they are verifying is source actually coming from here or is it collecting? So they might expand. And I find a lot of handlers follow their dog in that expansion and then walk away from a hide and say, My dog can't do inaccessibles. When in fact, if you were out of the picture, your dog would expand, arc back around, and then continue working it. And I think that's the little piece that maybe sometimes as handlers we don't see or recognize and we might just need a little more patience to hang with.
SPEAKER_00:And progression again. So one of our next questions is how do I recognize when my dog is in pooling order versus trying to source a high hide? So this is exactly what Alex was just talking about. Well, the first one I want to do is let's try to set a high hide or an elevated hide that isn't as complex in terms of its pooling um plume, right? It's not, it's not the high hide suspended from the exhibit hall. Exactly. No other objects anywhere in sight. So a way that you can do that is sometimes we think of um, oh my God, and I so for many, many years, pooling the word pooling and trapping just made me nervous, right?
SPEAKER_01:I think a lot of people, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's nerve, right? Why can't I just understand which it is? And it's actually building the clarity for the dog first, yeah, right? Because then as you get the clarity from the dog that they understand the difference, you're gonna do a lot better in understanding how your dog has to solve that puzzle, right?
SPEAKER_01:And how do we build the clarity? Progression.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And granted, understand that it's not so even like someone who posts, geez, I just did my first what NW3 trial, it was frustrating. I feel like I don't know um what to expect. So one, don't blame yourself that you didn't pass the test, yeah, right? It's let's figure out what we need to train with our dog first, right? Yeah, yeah. So for for me, like um with the high hide and understanding pooling, my challenge right now is I have a dog that will um come into the pooling uh cone and then wants to move out quickly to do a verification. So he's moving in and out of this elevated hide quicker than I can perceive. Yeah, um and know that it's actually something. Yes, as opposed to um he's just exploring an uh on a horizontal plane higher above the other objects type thing, right?
SPEAKER_01:So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So um, so really coming to grips with how to train that is again, we go to the flat plane wall, we put it, you know, three feet off the wall, now it goes six feet off the wall, now it goes eight feet off the wall. Um, your dog's gonna have to develop. Does your dog is your dog willing to stretch up to get to that hide? It is it more of where your dog says, no, I can't do that. This is how I need to communicate where it is, right? And if you continue to feel like, because I actually have felt like uh in training, I feel like my dog nails um those hides, but in trial, and granted, I also have a tendency to to consider how many of those hides we get in trial, because you're not gonna get a ton of them. No, you're not gonna get a ton of them. So do I really sometimes it's more of a time decision. Yeah I'm deciding to move off of that hide to get a look at what else is in this search area and hopefully remember maybe to come back. If you need this as a training, I don't need to do that. I don't need to move off. If my dog's gonna lose stamina, then what I should be doing, and I did this even just a couple of weeks ago. I actually got the hide down to where the dog could, and I do have one who thinks who does is able to uh stretch up to the hide, right? So that he can still get his nose on. That's where I had it. I paired it. Yeah, I put a hot dog on it. Yeah, oh by God, he went hot dogs, excuse me, and he did it on his own, understanding that that was the full stretch. Now, I'm not gonna do that every time, and I do not advocate um pairing your inaccessible hides. That wasn't my point. And that's the challenge here. Yes, yeah, that's the total challenge. Yeah, how do you how do you break down what is the clarity and the progression for your dog based on the environment where you set that hide?
SPEAKER_01:And their history, right? Like their foundation training. So if you don't pair in general, right? You've never paired, I don't pair with my dogs. So I'm going to do more reps where they're understanding the picture, yes, and I'm not going to push them faster than that, right? And we're going to go. So I do a lot of hides at the height, about two to three inches above their nose. And that might be so I have dogs that love to reach up with their front feet and they're going to stretch. Like that's how they love to interact with their environment. So it's two to three inches above their nose at that height. That's the max height for a very long time until I see no arousal, until I see they know how to communicate that. And it's just, it's part of the game and it's fun. But if I have a dog, so Tana's a little tight in the hamstring, she's almost 10 and her back's not the same, right? So for her, I'm teaching her how to do it with four feet on the floor and teaching her how to work all elevated hides with four feet on the floor. She might pop up, put her feet on things, but I don't need it because they should be able to communicate with four feet on the floor in elevated hide and to the level that I can understand it. So for her, it's two to three inches above her nose with four feet on the floor. And how do you know? How do I know? Because she can come in and freeze underneath source. Okay. And communicate with her ones.
SPEAKER_00:So she makes a commitment to a particular location. That yeah, so so that's the key. Always not, yeah, and it's not necessarily because with the one of our questions on here, too, is a train final response. Yeah. And that could be an answer for your dog, right? Uh or you as a handler. Um, but it just you gotta remember that any of these tools, yeah, if I'm gonna pair, I want to know why I'm pairing and what I want to accomplish by pairing. In this case, what I really wanted to accomplish by pairing wasn't the specific location. It was actually stick to source. Yeah. Is popping in and out of that odor pool, right? Coming in and almost giving me what I would call a pop and go. And he did this at level one, um, where he gets so aroused about the odor picture, right? That he's doing his, oh my God, do you know it's here? Oh my god, do you know it's here? Oh my god, do you know it's here? And I just went, oh, I'm just gonna stick a hot dog up there because he rarely like gets hot dogs, rarely. Yeah, yeah. And then what the other thing I'll do is take his toy and I'll play tug with it at the source, right? Right, yeah. So that there's some reason for him to have an expectation of staying, making that decision and staying at that. So you see, so already that's a part of the progression that right, it wasn't just communicating, right? Then it was also stick to it sufficient for a silly human to understand the stick, to then figure out the location with confidence enough for me to say, alert.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And I think there's also, and we do this as we move up in levels, is we get shorter and shorter with our rewards, especially in trial situations. Yes, I like to reward, uh, it's hard in trial to remember it, but especially in training, the effort that it took required, I want to match that with the reward, right? So if my dog spends 30 seconds working in inaccessible high, trying to find as close as they source can get, and they're working on working and working, and they finally come up with a space that they've narrowed in and they're centering in on that bracket, and I go, I love that. That's great. I'm gonna reward that. It's not just one cookie and go. It has to be like 10 cookies, one after another. And oh my god, you're so awesome! And maybe I'll play with my dog there, and maybe we end there. There might be another simple chair hide. I don't care because maybe the point of my training session was that inaccessible. Let me reward the hell out of it, and then we can move on.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And then on the flip side, once you get that commitment there, then maybe we may even have to reintroduce moving on. Yeah. Especially like so. I've got a couple of summit dogs who now are so fixated on the pooling problem for the deep and accessible, yeah, that they're spending too much time in the odor pool, just satiated in all this odor and not getting out far enough away from it to then measure the problem solving of going to find source, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I think that's a big thing, is I see that a lot. An inaccessible hide, especially for a dog who feels like they need their nose on, they don't get that satisfy satisfying. I can't even say things today. Um, but they don't get satisfied. There we go. Uh they don't get satisfied that they're there, right? And so we're rewarding them a little too early, and they feel like, but I can get more, but I can get more. And we often train that. Yes. So when you can't get more, I think we do really need, and Holly Bouchard had a really nice like she has a cessation kind of cue. Okay, we are moving on. And I think it has some good value there.
SPEAKER_00:And I think it has a lot of good value.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I've started doing that with basically resetting, so I might hold my collar and I face away and we're done this hide and move forward. And it's almost like a start line again. It is. And that seems to help.
SPEAKER_00:I've had to do that with Zeke many, many, many times where I literally, as I'm rewarding for that high. I gently have a hold of his collar and I gently cue okay. Yeah. Whether it's okay, find more, whatever it is. Now, when you go to train that foundationally and do it even with your summit dog, have a hide that's like right next door. Yeah, you're not gonna release them back into a massive odor pool. You're releasing them to get to another hide and find it.
SPEAKER_01:And you may have to lure them away with your cookies so they're not even realizing.
SPEAKER_00:And you may, right? If you're doing it by yourself, because I've done that a lot, and it's really kind of fun outside, which is you just throw one tin, you go get it, you're rewarded, hold their collar, pick up the tin, point them in one direction, throw the tin the other direction, start it again, right? And if you want it to be a quick one, you only throw it three or four feet away.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:It's not right. So um there are ways to do that, there's creative ways to do that. Um, and I think that the coming up with the release, go find more, can be uh very important for those higher level dogs. And sometimes we forget that. We just, you know, we've been throwing out these massive puzzles for them for years, and then we forget, oh geez, maybe we can let's see that summit search is you know, it may be eight minutes, but I got a lot of landscape to cover.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so our next question is Handler caused false alert. So how and this is maybe even a assumption, presumption, right? Yeah, that you caused it. Um, how to support a dog without creating a false alert? So um, you know, just trying to read into that what it may be from. Um, what I would first want to do is if you have video of it, please can can I look at the video, right? Because the video is gonna tell me things like um, what is the dog's response to odor? Do I have a dog, primary dog training issue here first? And that the proximity of maybe the handler to the dog became a distraction or more important to the dog than source, um, right primarily just because we don't have enough clarity of foundation in the dog, right?
SPEAKER_01:And maybe it's a behavior chain problem where yeah. So perhaps the dog is taking your presence and orientation where you're facing within the search as part of the cue of where to work. And we haven't really either done independence work or we haven't proofed ourselves out of that picture. Can your dog work a hide beside you? Can your work dog work a hide behind you? Or do you always have to be facing them? Like, yeah, it's good handling to be facing them, but if they cannot push away from in front of you, then we have an extra piece that we have to be going back and training and cleaning that up.
SPEAKER_00:And the support, I think there's a whole um dissertation we can write about the word support, right? Um, so I think that that's that's why I would right away want to go back to can we get some um in the moment and try to look at what happened in that moment at that point in time that created the false alert. Because it could also be that when we say handler caused false alert, I'm gonna presume that the handler is feeling like the dog did some definitive behavior.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Is is it actually a false alert or is it a look to the handler for information? Is it a few of the things?
SPEAKER_00:And the handler misinterpreted, yeah, right? And the handler actually has um a lack of understanding of either the dog observation of odor, observation of this dog, observation of that problem, um right, that then caused them to right. And then sometimes, quite frankly, it's let it go. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think also another piece to remember is if you are working known hides all the time, you may not realize, and I find pooling is a problem for people that don't realize their dogs are working pooling all the problem all the time. And we think that it only shows up in trials, but realistically, it can show up in training. And what's happening is our dogs are ready to leave and we're already turning with them, or we have started that behavior to leave away from it. Um, so we have to figure out where to go from there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I so much of this, even if we just run down this list really fast, um, and we really want to answer more of these questions, guys. But in the next one was final response. And again, some of that comes from, and I know that these questions are so earnest, and you're so much like, I just want, I just want a kind of a clue of what I should do next. Um understand we it's always kind of hard to answer it verbally anyway. Um, but you know, any any of us would love to look at videos of of what happens. But the final response so a dog know is nose nudging or pushing or pawing on containers. Um, does that, you know, is there something I can do about that? And again, that could be the dog's response to odor or to the delay of the reward. So we would need to figure out like where it's happening, when it's happening, and and would that work? Um so we are seeing more and more, um, we are seeing more and more of the concerns of dog's response to source. And it starts kind of with those ORT boxes. So we've got a whole list of questions here that are really, really good. And what we'd love to do is let's pick them up on our next podcast, guys. Um, in between, if you have something there that was just like, oh my gosh, I've got a trial coming up and I can't stand it. I gotta know the answer. Please feel free to email us either individually or together or whatever, and we'll try our best to either get a session scheduled with you to help um kind of get you some answers or point you in a direction um, you know, that can at least get you some of those, some of those resources. So Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow. So many good stuff. So here we go again. So we start out this conversation, and I'm saying to Alex, really, I don't know if we can talk long enough to cover all of that, right? And I feel like we really didn't even um get to the certainly the upper levels of of how do you solve the problem of pooling and trapping from inaccessibles at um Elite and Summit. So that could be a whole nother whole nother topic. So let's find out from Alex what she's got coming up. I've got some stuff coming up, and um, because we're almost uh headed right into uh trial season. Yeah, Alex, what do you got coming up?
SPEAKER_01:Um well, I'm in the middle of trial season. I'm judging next weekend in San Diego, so that should be fun. The little one's running. The little one kind of that she's little in every way. So uh we're having some fun there, kind of testing some things out, seeing how she's doing. And uh I've got a CEO gig in Georgia. I'm really looking forward to. I think it's a double NW3. So that's gonna be really fun. Yeah. Uh and then I've got a webinar coming up with uh Scentwork University, and that one's on what did the judge say? Um, so we're gonna break down uh those judge comments and how can you turn around? How can you mentally deal with it? How can it maybe help training or maybe let it go? So that should be fun.
SPEAKER_00:Are those comments like made during the trial on your sheet or on your sheet?
SPEAKER_01:Okay. We're definitely gonna look at, but in AKC they say them verbally as you're leaving sometimes. So we'll break those ones. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the interesting things with NACSW is like the debriefs, like they aren't as important, and it's so challenging for us to as a handler look at them and understand meaningful information from those. Like we just point at the chair and say the hide was right there, and you're like, I don't understand how I missed that, right? Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:It's a chair, yeah. Yeah, and then I was asked to do a three-week class with Fenzi, so I'm kind of looking forward to doing some sort of scent work thing there. So that should be fun.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I've got um, what do I got going? So we've got um trial season starting up in March, right? That starts with with um Grand Junction. We've got that one posted. I've got a bunch of others way behind on all of my um getting my calendar finalized and that sort of thing. Um, but I also have a webinar coming up on Scentwork University, and we picked how do I analyze the metrics of elite? Um actually um it's gonna pertain to every level, and that's how to look at your trial trial performance um as a measure to figure out your training. That's really kind of my goal. Um, and and it covers everything. So, and Alex is really good about, you know, when you look at this and then you break it down and you look at okay, what what was my score? How much time did I take? How many hides did I get? What did I miss? So those are considered metrics, right? Um, and so it's really using some of those things to help us figure out maybe what are our training holes. Um, so that'll be fun. Cool. And then I've got um I'm COing a summit down in Florida at the end of February. Oh, I want that gig. Yeah, you can be tweeting, yeah. I know. Going, well, you watch, it'll be cold. Oh, I know. It'd be just my luck. Although I did post this morning, I think it was minus 15 on my way to work this morning. Yeah, a little bit chilly there. Um then I'm going to I got into Benson. So good. Me too. Yep, that's gonna be our first elite uh for the year. Um, we're gonna be closing in on our elite champion with Zeke this year. So that's gonna be really fun. Um, and what else? Uh so then it's then it's just like every other weekend or something. Then you're driving into your trial season. Yeah, then uh Laramie, we got Summit, we got Gene Richardson coming out to do that. Cool. In May, we have the first Colorado uh uh training fest. So really excited about that. We're gonna have Amy and Jill and uh Kim Buchanan and um and some other folks come out um to do some training with us um at the fairgrounds, and then we're right into all the rest of it, right? Nice so yeah, so we got lots going on. But thanks guys for listening and hopefully uh please feel free to send us your questions. Um and anytime we say anything that like you really disagree with, we we don't mind hearing that either because we're both of the mindset that, and I think we've both uh learned enough human sports, taught enough dog sports, that we totally understand that if if we're dealing with anybody who's really passionate about uh what we're doing and how we do it, um it we love having that conversation, that it's really not a matter of um, well, I'm really fixated on you following my method. So if you don't understand it, I don't want to have the conversation. Um, so we're both very passionate about what we're doing and and would just love to have the feedback from all you guys. So thanks so much for listening. Thanks, guys.
