Reading Odor Like A Trial Official: An Active Handler's Perspective

We zoom out from our own leash and talk about what we learn by watching dozens of dogs run the same hide, then bring those lessons back into training. We focus on becoming an active handler who can read odor behavior early, support verification, and make better “stay or go” decisions under trial pressure. 
• learning odor movement by observing many teams and reviewing video 
• defining the active handler and taking responsibility for odor information 
• recognizing odor importance vs chasing a fast dog 
• supporting the verification phase without overhandling 
• using leash length and pace to reduce pressure and improve observation 
• staying present in complex searches and managing NW3 and Elite mental stamina 
• telling working apart from distractions like crittering or sniffing spots 
• training resiliency around non-target odor and trial-like distractions 
• building start line focus so the dog releases into hunting 
• supporting novel hides for novice dogs without “convincing” 
• spotting handler focus patterns and resetting the search when needed 
• using transition zones and walkthrough videos to predict airflow changes 

Let us know if you have any questions and we can clarify those, hopefully. 
Help her find a trial, an elite trial, between Missouri and Phoenix, Arizona. 

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

Speaker 2 0:09

Hey everyone, welcome to our podcast from K9 Scent Fix. I'm Jill Kovacevich, and I have with me Alex Woodroffe. Say hello, Alex.

Speaker 0:18

Hello, guys. Welcome, welcome.

Speaker 2 0:20

So we have a kind of a fun topic. Typically, as things go, we often have a hot topic between the two of us that we discuss and kind of go, oh, this is kind of either driving me crazy or oh, I'm so excited because I'm just on the edge of maybe figuring this out. Trial skills to train from the official's perspective.

Speaker 0:38

Yeah. And it meaning like not just an official, right? Like we see it when we go in, we set hides, we know where they are, we want to see really good, whether it's me judging AKC or CO or whatever, but it's everybody else that's in the search that can watch every dog work that same hide or hides, you will see consistencies. You'll start seeing changes of behavior, and you'll start to see handlers not observing certain things, which then add more value to the things that you're watching. So it's not easy necessarily right away, but the more you watch it, the more you can learn it.

Speaker 2 1:09

Well, and I think that that's a really good perspective, too, because the amount that you can gain about what odor does and how a dog, any dog responds to odor. So they can have different skill sets, right? So you might have a dog that's very responsive to odor. You might have another dog maybe at the lower levels who doesn't have quite that same commitment to odor. But when you watch that level consistently over 20 dogs, oh my goodness, you're gonna go, okay, I can based on those, it's it's that science what you like to say, which is the what this the science methodology. That based on my observations, I'm seeing some consistencies about where odor was going in this search based on using the dog as our odor detector, right? So it's not just our our dog, the dog on the end of our leash. And I think that that that's one reason we wanted to talk about this because as soon as even Alex or I put our leash in our hand, our perspective changes, right? Yep, yep. And so to gain that same skill set, if you don't have the opportunity to observe other dogs, would be watching your videos. And then you have to just be very open-minded about it and not and watch it for the purpose of watching the dog solve the odor puzzle as opposed to how you did. Yeah, it's hard to let go sometimes.

Speaker 2:34

Oh, I shouldn't have moved or I should have done this, but you don't matter in that moment anymore, right? Like it's letting go of going, okay, in a situation like this, let's see what the odor picture looks like and how could the handler have helped? Right.

Speaker 2 2:47

And then that comes back to these are the concepts that are very, very hard to duplicate.

Speaker 2:52

Yeah.

Learn By Watching Other Teams

Speaker 2 2:53

Because we come out of a trial, and even as a CO or a judge or even the host, I look at or a volunteer when I'm watching that many dogs work a particular search. Part of me says, Oh, that's a fun search. I want to go get my dog. I want to run that as well to see how my dog would do, right? In comparison to what you're watching. And in a lot of ways, that you may find the dog work works at very similar, right? Yep. But our instinct is to then say, Oh, I want to go find the school at, you know, the elevation that Leadville is at, 10,000 feet, on a cold winter day, right? You you start to figure out and you can't. Yeah, you can't. So that's what we mean by the concept of it being very hard to duplicate exactly what you just saw at trial. However, you can really grasp some of the uh basics. So that's kind of what we're gonna talk about is what we feel like are some of the basics of what we're seeing across watching that many dogs at different levels that then we feel can be a tip and a way to work on that concept for training. Is that fair to say, Alex?

Speaker 4:05

Yeah, yeah. And it's not so we're thinking about skills, like maybe handler skills or observational skills, or maybe like situational skills for the dog, but we're not talking about like the hide that's elevated or the hide that's a crack hide. It might be how does that expand into the space and are we missing some information, which is a little bit more us-oriented, maybe, and why we might be struggling with looking at that in training.

Speaker 2 4:29

So, one of my big mantras is that I feel like when we talk about handler and handler responsibility, what Alex and I are really gonna try to do a really good job of giving you a good discussion about is maybe what we can call the active handler. Other folks have called it the intentional handler. It's really being that proactive and having the same deal, same degree of responsibility for odor recognition, odor importance, and odor availability and understanding what those differences look like, right? Because often we say, oh, those are skills I'm gonna put in my dog, put on my dog. And if my dog has strong enough skills, I don't need to worry about it. Wow. Well, but NW1 is where you get the foundation to start building that. And if you can build that at NW1, your perfect, your absolute passion for it, your right, your commitment to it. By the time you get to the end of NW3 and Elite and into Summit, you already have that as an expectation for yourself that I am responsible for watching and observing my dog work odor and have the same. So when my dog shows odor importance, right, which is wow, that's important. What I just went by, that would be odor importance, right? Then does the dog have odor recognition, maybe to differentiate one hide from another? And then thirdly, what if I don't have that much odor availability? Can I recognize those visually as an observer of each of those phases of a particular search or a particular hide pathway to source?

Speaker 6:08

Yeah. And we're not talking about, so like you said, we're not talking about overmanaging a search or taking over search. We're also not necessarily talking about presentation-based handling, right? Like that could be in this boat. Personally, I use some presentation in my handling, but a lot more with Tana than with George. And I find presentation-based handling is a style. It's maybe more prevalent in certain areas than others or based on your trainer. But at the same time, it requires being active if you're observing and basing off the dog, versus we could just present all the objects in a space. I can tell you it's not going to work so great in a lot of summit searches because the spaces are just so large. But it can be a system, right? So that's not necessarily what we're talking about, but it could be a piece, right? Just recognize it. And presentation doesn't have to be hand presentation. It can be you stay or we all do it in some form or another, right?

What An Active Handler Does

Speaker 2 7:04

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So as soon as we have an expectation based on our experience, that you kind of bring that to the table, right? Yeah. But what I really like about what you just said is that really what we we were focused on was if we have from the start line, saying there's just one, I'm just going to explain this with one hide. And there's one hide, there's a pathway of odor that the dog is going to work, right? From the time we tell them to search. They were probably working order before they got to that. But just looking at it as that kind of a continuum, which is from the starter from the release to the time the dog makes that decision of having located source sufficient for us to understand as a handler the communication, right?

Speaker 7:47

And the dog too.

Speaker 2 7:49

Yeah. I gotta say that because that when you get up in the upper levels and you're dealing with pooling and trapping, can be part of the whole, like you're just watching them move along, and this is all hunky-dory. And then when they get to that zone, is where you go, oh Lord, I have no idea if this is pooling or is this an inaccessible? I have no idea if I'm downwind or if I'm right over on, you know, left or right of this hide. So, so there's all those pieces that move along. But what Alex was just talking about is when you get to the act, if you're thinking about active handler being, um, I'm either gonna handle my leash a certain way, or I'm going to present an object a certain way, or stay in an area a certain way, that's at the other end of that continuum, right? So our observation has to start with the release back. Yeah, yeah, right, for sure. And then that's going to help you identify the odor importance of where your dog is in that continuum. Because if you're just hunky dory hanging on, I wonder why I like that word, hunky dory, but anyway, right? That's the second time I eat. Right, it might be, yeah. But right, you're just sort of I'm along for the ride. Like, and yeah, and I think it's reasonable for all of us to feel that way when we have very energetic and committed dogs to odor, right? There's gonna be parts of your search where you're gonna feel like, oh my word, I have no idea what we're doing. This is all dog, just go, you're doing a great job, right? And follow. Yeah. Right. And then there's gonna be that piece of where once you get into that communication, your dog is communicating information to you. Yeah. Do you understand that communication? That's what kind of we're hitting our head, you know, saying this is where we're seeing some skill sets that you can really adapt by being an astute observe observer of either, and it's either, and you can do it in training if if that's all you have available. Do it in training where you're observing other dogs working the odor puzzle that you're setting, as well as get video, even in training, and watch your own dog, right? Yeah, and that's gonna help.

Odor Importance And Verification

Speaker 10:02

It's decisions we can make in those moments, right? And that's what the handling is is a decision moment that the handler can make. So I watch my dog going along, they're chasing odor or just moving and hunting, and then they're slowing down, maybe a little change of direction, peeling away from a wall, starting working. I can make a decision, and this is where I find a lot of handlers when I'm watching detective search that I said a few weeks ago. There is a hide under the handle. It was a nice, like tight where you can kind of grab it on the top and the bottom, and the handle's on the outside, and the odor was really like presenting really nicely across the wall. I saw every single dog show a nice change of behavior underneath that door. Dogs would line, run down the wall, peel off of the building right at the hide, come out, and the handlers are still moving forward. And then because they're moving forward, the dog continues on, finding a little bit of a bracket. It starts converging with another one. And then we keep running down, find another hide, and leave that first one. But the information was there. It's a beautiful direction change off of a straight line. And I think if we can start recognizing that that should have value and maybe we revisit it, turn around after finding the hide, your dog's probably still thinking about it, and we can go back down.

Speaker 2 11:13

And this is what I'm calling odor importance for the handler, handler, right? Alex even described that as has value, right? So this is what I'm seeing a lot of at the upper levels where the dogs, and one is that we've come into this with an expectation built from levels one, two, three, yeah, right, where there's only three hides in a search, right? Right, right. Where the dog works beautifully, hide to hide, hide to hide. And they only really have to sort three. Then you get into those upper levels where there's a lot more, and it even if there's less than three hides, we're gonna set it so that you're going to get an odor picture that is much larger, much more complex, much more prolific than what you would see at those hides at level three. However, we're still addicted to the nine-second hide, right? Yeah. Which is, you know, you come in and you really are waiting for the dog to just go in there and get your first hide. And to go a minute and a half to two minutes before you get your first hide is very nerve-wracking. It's uncomfortable. Are you able to maintain the same level if your dog is searching and doing their job and giving you an odor response? That's important, that's valuable. So, so it's really becoming very confident and comfortable with the continuum, not just the alert phase, not just the source identification phase, the end of the whole phase, right? Become very passionate about wow, this is very cool. Look what my dog's doing, right? Exactly. But boy, did you ever hit the nail on the head with what I saw of a lot of dogs who come in and they work a hide and then they move off that hide. Now they're in the verification phase. Right. Yeah, right. Expanding just a little bit to be. Exactly, to verify. And if we are not supportive of that verification, often they can get caught up in the next odor overlapping. The next odor pathway to source, and they move on past that height. Our choices at that point are either remember where that happened, go with the dog and come back.

Speaker 13:28

Exactly.

Speaker 2 13:29

Or you actually use some leash limitation, is what I may call it. There may be people who use other things.

Speaker 13:36

You may not even need to hold or call your dog or anything. You just physically do not take a step with your dog. Right. You saw the information, your dog was working, they start expanding. The instant you take one step in support of that expansion, you might be leaving with your dog. And it doesn't take much with some. Versus if all you did was pivot, stay in the same spot, watch your dog go out, they find that edge and they start coming back in. You don't have to move.

Staying Put Without Leash Conflict

Speaker 2 14:01

And one of the things you can do with your dog, because this can be very dog style specific, right? Yes. Is try to figure out what your dog looks like when they're about to do that 180, right? You're starting to see that flank, you're starting to see that curve, right? You're starting to see that arc back, right? And so, and that's the minuscule pause. We're not talking about necessarily using what may appear as a more harsh or more purposeful leash limitation. I'm not going to let you go beyond this five foot leash, and you're just going to have to come back, right? And then you're kind of then you take the leash and you move it into where you think the highest. And now we do have a great presentation of right. And that may have just created conflict for your dog in terms of what they were doing and the information they were gathering. Now it's, oh, you want me to go check out that spot. Okay. They defer rather quickly. Right.

unknown 15:01

Right.

Speaker 2 15:02

Yeah. So we're not suggesting in any way, shape, or form this is easy.

Speaker 15:07

No.

Speaker 2 15:08

It's not.

Speaker 15:10

I think where we miss the ball is we're not recognizing that in training. Because what do we do in training? We know the hide's there, so we don't leave with the dog. So then we're not expanding. And so now the dog is coming back and it all works great. Or, and I've seen this, I've got a student that does this, and I kind of yell at her a bunch. Is the dog does do this big chase and big expansion, and she keeps following. And so it's actually created a habit in the dog to stay big. Yes. And then it's hard to read. And so it's trying to find this middle ground of okay, I don't know the answers. I'm doing a guided blind search, which I do a bunch with my students. And so I might tell you, like, stop moving, stay there. And the reason why I'm saying that, not because there's a hide nearby, but because the dog's in that expansion phase, any extra motion is now propoting more motion, right? And so everything's just getting bigger and bigger, and we might move on again. And so it's just learning to do that, but being very aware of it in the moment. Because I think when we start training and we set our own hides, we're running our own dog, it is so easy to lose that perspective because we just are so fixated on the dog's nose and we are fixated on immediately and then waiting for the hide. We forget about everything in the middle of the point. Everything in the middle point. Yes, yes, right.

Leash Length And Handler Speed

Speaker 2 16:27

Well, and that's an interesting. So just even looking at the words. So when I talked about using the leash in a manner that may create conflict for that dog, right? That's on the one end of the continuum. And the other end is I'm not offering any information for the dog in communication to what we're doing at that point in time in the search, right? Like a dragging leash. Yeah. Or it's loopy, or I'm just, and this is the other piece because we've got, and granted, it can be pretty breed specific, right? But you may have a dog who's just so passionate and so even sometimes aroused by that level of odor in that search that they really want to move to the North 40. Exactly. Right? I have one. Right. So we both do, right? I mean, quite frankly, most the we're getting to a point now, I think, with our basic training and nose work. Sometimes we even promote that, right? And then I'm not saying it's right or it's wrong. I'm just saying for that search at that moment in time, based on what you're seeing, you may have to make a decision, as Jenny Kiper would say, to slow the roll, right? Because our dogs are coming off of that pathway. Yeah. And they're making that decision that the quantification has gotten greater. We have down that other side, if you will, if you want to think of it in terms of a now you're headed downhill, right? Now you're building up momentum. And if we're moving as quickly as the we perceive the dog to be moving, yes, right, then we may be avoiding a compromise there of where we could be actually offering some information that's in support of source.

Speaker 18:15

So, in an example of this, and I've been coaching a bunch of my students with this recently because I've seen it become a bigger, bigger problem. People get fixated on the exact length of leash and cannot give more leash out as their dog is accelerating away from them. I really don't think you need to chase your dog down if the space is only like 20 by 20. You don't need to accelerate. You have leash in your hand you can let out typically. Now, if you're running on a six-foot line, it's going to look a little different. But I find a lot of people are maintaining almost six feet of leash in their hand and decide to run after their dog in that moment. What does that do? It means your dog might catch a little bit of odor, have a tiny little change. You are all moving way too fast. They may want to slow down. You're still pushing into them. And so we don't get a change. We don't get to observe anything. From an outside, I can see that head drop. I know where the changes of behavior are normally going to happen with every other dog that ran that. But because you're running into your dog, it's not going to happen. Instead, letting the line out when they're accelerating, as you come into them, you're a steady pace behind. Now you get to pull in that leash. And now the dog has the room to make the changes. The dog doesn't feel pressured to keep running around the perimeter.

Being Present Under Pressure

Speaker 2 19:23

Well, and an added bonus to all of what you just said isn't just giving the dog more leash so that they can move further away from you. It also allows you to observe. Yes. Right? Yeah. Because what you're watching isn't just the behitty bitty behavior pieces of the dog. His tail went up, the ear went down, the nose went right, the nose went left. It's the whole direction and body position of the dog in relationship to the search, in relationship to the wall, in relationship maybe to the corner that we just went by, right? Yeah. So, and I saw this a lot in the last so I've done. We had I did a CO'd for a summit in Florida, then we did Laramie. Um, I was host, but I love doing that because then you get to right go and observe. And typically for me, when Mountain Dogs is hosting, it takes a lot of work on behalf of everybody. So as a host, I'm typically either in a search helping with that search, or I do get to see a lot of dogs run, which is a great benefit. And then I just CO'd the summit up in Montana. And if I were to take something that I'm seeing out of those three pieces, now granted, part of what we're saying there is, oh, those are very high-level dogs, and but we really feel confident in saying that those pieces can be brought into your training at NW1 at Novice, right? That if you start observing these, how does the dog move in odor at a much earlier stage and become very responsible as a handler for understanding your dog, it's gonna make a huge difference when your dog gets to summit. Okay. Having said that, what we're seeing is the dogs now have such a huge expectation at the upper levels of getting to source, right? Yeah, yeah. So they're coming, even when they get a hide and they come off that hide, man, it's like you know, somebody, it's a race and then and they just hit the start gun. They just fly off of that one hide for the next hide. Okay, so in this case, there were in maybe not so many in Laramie, we had pretty cold weather, okay, and our odor was very condensed. So, you know, Jean Richardson was the CEO, she was setting in accordance to what she her the environment she had available. Right. Yeah. In Montana, I had a warehouse where I felt it was very reasonable to have quote unquote close proximity hides. Right. Okay. Yeah. I'm not gonna describe them now. Necessarily is converging because believe me, sometimes even if you have two chairs right next to each other, we had a little lunchroom that we did as a two-hide, close proximity two chairs, right? Those dogs had to move almost to the back of the room to differentiate to find the separation the pathway between those two chairs, right? Yeah. However, as a handler coming off of that one chair, if you can again have that awareness of what Alex was just talking about, of not having the dog fly off of it and you're going to basically chase with them. Right. Yeah. Right. And you slow your pace coming off of your hides when they do get a hide, they're going to learn, especially in training, if you start to do this, they're going to start to learn to recognize that other pathway in that's infiltrating with the hide they just got, right? Like where's the differentiation? Oh, and then they may actually be able to turn and come back to that other uh close proximity hide sooner at a different vantage point in the in the search, right? They might not have to go as far out to the back end to then decide which one's which. So I think those are just, and it's not necessarily that you want to become the crystal ball person of a search at a moment in time, really staying in the moment with the dog, right? So Sandra Tung even talked about doing that on her second day in Montana, where she said, my goal was to be present. What we mean by that is, and it's it's it's hard. Oh, it's really hard, especially when the puzzles are more complex, right?

Speaker 23:41

And we want to think ahead, right? We want to oh, this meant this, or this is this. And something I quiz my students on, and it's the same concept, is well, was this odor belonging to that? Or where was this odor coming from? Or what was going on over here? And I find a lot of people will say, Oh, it was that one. Right. So, like we're so fast to make an assumption that when we see some odor and we have a hide nearby that it's gonna be that. And we don't even want to go back, we don't want to investigate it because our brain is just trying to attach meaning so quickly instead of being curious in that one little moment. If all we do is change that narrative in our brains to, okay, cool, we got a hide. Is this from that? Right. And all we do is face it and ask our dogs that question by facing it. The dog will go in and go, it's totally fine, we're done moving on, or they go, Oh, there's another. And that's the only way that we can ask them that question is we have to be curious. If we make that assumption and expect our dogs to prove there's another one, we're gonna miss it.

Speaker 2 24:42

Yep. I think I like those words, right? And I think that part of that too is in the moment, is really staying active as that observer so that you're not leaping to what I'm seeing right now means this. What I'm seeing right now means it's pooling and trapping, it's not source because we just left a hide and it's in sufficient close proximity to where I am right now. It must be that hide. Rather, saying to yourself, and everybody's gonna have different narratives that go on in your brain.

Speaker 25:14

Yes, right?

Speaker 2 25:15

Exactly. So I have a tendency to try to do, and this is now I'm putting the leash in my hands, right? Because I think that part of what has to happen in nose work, especially to be a self-trainer, to be a good coach, to be a good trainer of others, yeah, is that perspective, right? To do that is to have this, have that perspective of this is what it looks like from here, which is so much more difficult when your hands are on that leash.

Speaker 25:45

Also, the mental aspect of it, yes, like the mental game, the mental stress, the endurance mentally. NW3, I find if I'm not competing in it for a few years, you almost like lose a little bit of the understanding of this is really hard, especially the first time through NW3. I think as you go through again and again, if you've got a lot of dogs, it might be a little bit easier because you don't feel that same stress. But for like new teams to feel perfect for six searches over a long day and you don't know what to expect. You don't know when you're done. Oh, that's a lot.

Speaker 2 26:21

It's a stamina and that stamina carries into elite and elite carries into summit. Exactly. So even if you don't have goals to get to summit, uh-huh, if you at least see yourself going into elite, these are important concepts, right? So staying in the moment is that narrative in your head where you go, I see that, I see that, I see odor, I see that odor information. That's good information, right? You're not because even by saying that, and you may say, Oh, that's kind of meaningless. What do you mean by that? You're actually being an active observer, right? Right. As opposed to, oh, you know, my dog is um slowing down because he wants to go back to a prior, right? Or trying to say it. Yeah. Or as the dog comes into a prior found hide, your whole head is going, oh, I'm not going to reward that. That's a prior found hide. And yet the dog may be using that in close proximity to differentiate either another close hide or the end of a pathway of where it crossed into. It's not quite a convergence, it's more just a tendril that came in around source, right? So they're actually doing a considerable amount of outer differentiation and discrimination between the two types of hides that you've got to. And our brains jump to. You got that one. Yep, exactly. And that's the problem. And I think both. That training, well, that training at three is so huge, right? Yeah. So sometimes we think, oh, I just want to get through three so that I can be an elite. And yet, if you can come to embrace NW3 and whatever the level would be at AKC that's similar, right? You know, it's like this weird balance between excellent and masters. Okay.

Speaker 28:09

Because excellent hide placement is pretty similar to NW3. Okay. But it's the unknown nature of it and that pressure that's going to be a little bit more like masters. And so it's like this weird blend between the two. Okay.

Working Or Not Working

Speaker 2 28:21

So, right about there, for those of you who are at either level, if you can embrace being there, and once you feel like it, you don't get to a point where it's like, oh, it feels easy, because you we don't know what we don't know about that trial environment on that day, right? So anytime I think you come in feeling really cocky, yeah, really overcompetent, right? Then you're either overfacing your dog and underutilizing your handler skills, or vice versa. You'll start to overhandle and have the dog just follow you. And boy, you can see that happen in your search too. That's another good uh video analysis, right? Because you watch yourself and oh, we were getting that hide and we're getting that hide. Oh, this is the part where I had no idea what was going on. And you have a certain amount of stamina and tolerance for that, for being humble and really not understanding what your dog is communicating. Yeah, and then there you go. Now it's like, okay, we have to hurry up and get a hide. Come here, right? Yeah, exactly. You can just see the phase change, yeah, right.

Speaker 29:27

To being, oh Lord, you just so here's a new concept or a different concept that we haven't talked about, but kind of along the same lines. Do you know when your dog is working or not working? Because I find that that's often where people are struggling, especially if we're going from lower levels into it. But I've seen this even top levels. They're assuming that their dog is sniffing pee. They're assuming that grass eating is just grass eating, right? It doesn't have collection, it doesn't have arousal purpose. It's just like, oh, it's fresh grass. My dog's eating grass. Or we just assume that the dog is crittering for some sort of reason, but we're not recognizing it as the dog is actually thinking and working. And when we find those moments, we take over, right? That's that I need a little more patience because my dog slowed down and maybe they're sniffing the ground too much or they're sniffing that post. Yes, we need to know the difference of they may pee on it and we should release some pressure, maybe we should go on. But also we need to understand when the dog might need that moment to stop and think and sniff. And I've seen it even with the dog stopping in the middle of the space. And if you give them the chance, they might be scenting left, right out of their nostrils. They find a direction and they go right to the hide. Versus handlers go, why are you stop moving? Keep moving, keep moving. Because it's so uncomfortable to have a dog stop moving.

Speaker 2 30:43

And I think that that's a really good on the other side of that continuum, which is have the mindset that you're going to default to your dog is working odor. Because even if there's a small gap in the time frame, right? So yeah, you can probably show me the video, you know, and this is our defaults that I got in Benson with Zeke's nose in the mouse hole. Right. Like, yes, right. Like, and it in so many ways, you look at that and you go, I should have known the difference. What was I doing, right? Right. But I was watching a very fun and very consistent odor pathway right up to that point where he got into a corner and in the corner the mouse took over, or whatever happened, right? Right, right. So that would have been a very good time not to open my mouth and just have some patience and say, okay, is let's wait if he's gonna come out of that.

Speaker 31:37

Yeah, yeah. Right. And I find in that moment, so it's like the switch between working to not working, and then they might flip right back into working, or maybe they flipped to not working because we put too much pressure because we got really close, because we're anticipating a hide's gonna happen.

Speaker 1 31:52

Right.

Speaker 31:52

And so then they drop down into the distraction. Maybe they're smelling dog odor because everybody else has sniffed that spot. And so then when you release that pressure, the cookies might leave. They go, Oh, let me get back to work. Sorry.

Training Resiliency Around Distractions

Speaker 2 32:03

Well, and one of the things that we're really working on there is resiliency, right? So if you want to take any of this conversation and then say, okay, so that's all fine and dandy. I'm glad that you and Alex gave us all this information about what we can do in trial, but how do I train that? Yeah. So the whole concept of the dog going from really working odor, right? Yeah. In a search, whether it was a large quantity, a smoke, whatever it was, and then kind of going into this phase of, oh Lord, did you know that there was a cat here? Yeah, exactly. There was a cat here. Oh, odor, yeah. Sorry. About we are taking that skill set and we are putting it at a lower level so that the dogs then build that differentiation between the target odors we're asking them to find and other odors that may be in that search, right? Sometimes we look at that at NW2 and we go, that's just cruel and mean and unusual punishment. Why is that why is that CO doing that or judge doing that? Why is that particular venue that I'm competing under allowing that to happen? Right. Why should you know? I always had a student who would say, if I'm gonna treat with cheese, oh, how is it fair for me to put cheese in the box for the dog, right? And and I'm not gonna even say without odor present because odor is present on the top of that box in some quantification or another, right? But how is that quote unquote fair? Well, you have a dog that has a very, very sophisticated olfaction system. And we just can do it. Give them the opportunity to experience it, give them the opportunity to experience it and succeed. And if you don't know how to do that in some kind of progressive manner, find out, get some ideas, and don't be worried about, yeah, I'm gonna break my dog, right? Right. And just get it done. And I think that you'll find that the dog's gonna build a great amount of resiliency of how to, you know, experience that differentiation of the odor that's not target odor and yet keep searching, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly for sure.

Start Line Focus And Commitment

Speaker 34:17

So maybe along the same kind of lines is really training the eye on the handler to recognize when that flip is happening, seeing it off the start line, maybe seeing is your dog actually working on the start line? Because I find a lot of people let their dogs into the search and they are so distracted. And then you continue the distraction versus if we in our training build a little more focus off the start line and just like have that patience. If the dog's not working, I'm not starting. If the dog is immediately going to go to a person, I'm not starting. I want to make sure that my dog is at a point that when I release them, that they want to hunt. And so building that into training so that we can expect it in trial. Because I think we expect it in a trial and then get frustrated when it doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 35:01

And I think that's a huge point, right? So you're going to have the trials where you go, oh Lord, what just happened? Right. You know, in terms of here's a really good example. My dog did not commit to that hide. I don't understand why my dog missed it. My dog should stick. They were there. They were there, they were on source, and I had this happen in Laramie at the Elite, where he on video, I can see him go into this corner hide, totally investigated it in exactly the scenario that Alex described a little bit ago of where he went to measure the quantification of it to verify that that because it was in a pretty unusual place in under, you know, the vinyl that's on a corner down at the baseboard. And it was in that corner, and he went to verify it and got caught up with the next pathway and moved off. And did I consciously go, oh, that was an important piece. I should have, I could have, shoulda, coulda, woulda, um, just at least paused in that area and he might have turned to go back in it and come back and instead I went after you know to the one that was calling a much louder picture to him, right? So part of that is really important to at least when we're tired. It's not easy to recognize the exact second, and we get that, but then what you would do is you would look at that from trial, dissect it to figure out okay, in trial, my dog is either not coming off the start line, working odor, sufficient for me to recognize it. And I'm not asking the dog to meet your expectations, but one, it's a communication piece about odor. So if the dog doesn't have clarity as to what they should be doing coming off the start line, let's work on that. Then as you work on that, you're going to gain more and more expertise at watching your dog working odor, right? And you'll recognize it more and more. If then you don't recognize it in a distraction, what's the difference between my dog work crittering and my dog working odor? And it very well may be that your dog's nose went to ground based first on odor, right? Then became captivated by mice or whatever it was. And our pause of going, I don't have any idea what you're doing, almost enabled and empowered the dog to stay there, right? So yeah. So it's really just looking at that and saying, okay, how do I adapt that into my training? So I can recognize it. I can decide, should I support it? Should I stay or should I go? That's the that's one of the wonderful little phrases that just is really easy to put in your brain. Uh, should I stay or should I go? Should I pause here for the millisecond for my dog to potentially respond to odor? Yeah, yeah, and I'm gonna observe that response. Or am I now responding to my dog moving in a particular direction?

Supporting Novice Dogs On Novel Odor

Speaker 37:53

Right. Yeah, yeah. So kind of along the same concepts is novice dog that really hasn't had a lot of experiences, and they go in to start sourcing a hide. It's not where the dog expects it, so then they leave. Right. And so all the changes behavior were there. We expected a hide. Everybody was ready for a hide, and then the dog leaves. Is the dog wrong? No, they just don't really know or have the resilience to finish that picture. I find some dogs are really literal. I have not seen it before. So then they have to experience it, understand it, and then come back to it. George was one of those. First time he sees anything super novel, he struggles to hit on it. And then once he understands it, he goes, Oh, I could get that. That's fine. And so I remember AKC Regionals, he was a novice level at that point. There was a hide in like a big, I don't know, it's like a wheel kind of thing. And the hide was in the middle. So it was only accessible through a small little piece in the middle of it. And he came up, hit the sides of it. There was no odor information. It should be there. He goes away, he comes back. There's no odor information where he expects it. So then he leaves a few more times. That's a moment where me as an experienced handler made a decision to stay at that location and ask him back one more time to let him investigate that place. And it wasn't because I expected a hide there. I really didn't, but his behavior brought in that there was a hide, there was nothing else going on. He was novice, it's one hide. There's no changes of behavior anywhere else. So there's odor present. And he just needed to have a little more time around that. And I think that's where we go. Well, it must not be there. We're moving on. I don't want to convince my dog of it. Well, no, we don't want to convince our dogs, but at the same time, we have to be very aware of what behavior drew our attention. Is it because the chair drew our attention, or was it what the dog was doing that brought our chair? Yes, exactly. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 39:43

And I think that that's really the phrase of handler supporting the dog is where we kind of get into this murky, I don't really know what that means. And a lot of it is because it's on a continuum. You have to measure it millisecond by millisecond. So you may decide I'm gonna support this area, and then the dog, dog's response to your support may not be odor related, maybe it's more you related, right? Yeah. So what does that look like and the differences of that, right? And it's really comes to some of that differences in how you're going to hold that leash. And if you're not, if you're running your dog a lot off-leash and that's the way you prefer to do it, then can you also do a voice to ask your dog to come back into areas where you still are? Yeah, because you see that, right? And if you have a dog that very much loves to run that trail of odor, and we're and I don't like to call it chasing because that word in and of itself has taken on some good meanings in some training um areas and then some negatives in some other training areas. So by just by using that word, I'm not saying it's good or bad, right? Right. But it's just moving after it. The dog, yeah, moving, moving in odor away from where you just were, right? So, like, yeah, okay, is it important that I follow at this point in time? Or is it more important the dog I give the dog the opportunity to come back and investigate a potential source zone for working odor closer to source?

Speaker 41:16

Right, right.

Handler Focus And Search Resets

Speaker 2 41:17

Right? Yep, yeah. So, and those are all the pieces that you want to put into your training.

Speaker 41:21

Yeah. I've got one more observation that I think fits within this because you kind of mentioned on that, is the dog going into handler focus? So I've seen handlers get really confused on what that might mean. The dog starts healing essentially as they're moving through the space. Yeah, and so then the handler's going, Why won't you get off me? We keep losing hides and getting frustrated, but they keep moving. So the dog keeps healing.

Speaker 2 41:44

Right, right, yeah.

Speaker 41:44

Right. And so then we start assuming, well, they're doing it because there's no more odor. Well, they might be, but they also might be stuck in the healing kind of moment, especially if you've rewarded it. This is what you want to do, mommy. Exactly. Yeah. Versus, can we just go to the side and say, Okay, ready? Search, right? Like we just start again from the other side of the search area. And just by us stopping moving, right? Telling the dog, okay, we're gonna search again, but from over here, what do you do? And I think that's a big piece.

Transition Zones And Video Review

Speaker 2 42:11

Here's a good example of that kind of on a different continuum, and that's Latin Bishop with her dog Ellie. So in one of her searches in Laramie, 30 seconds gets called. 30 seconds, what does Ellie do? Stops everything she's doing, comes and grabs the tug out of the vest, right? Her word. Yeah. Yep. Just said, oh, 30 seconds means we're done, right? So then now she's going, okay. So that just told me, and it doesn't really matter whether or not the dog was really done, right? The dog made a decision. Yes. That's so that was important to the dog to hear those words. So that's kind of the same concept, right? So we're just trying to say, so we just went through a whole litany, a big long list of things that you want to think about. Yeah. And I think that you also have to look at the search and figure out what are some of the zones where we may need either for our dog to have a little bit greater period of time to gather information and communicate that information to us as the handler and for us to understand that information. That's a lot, that's more than a millisecond, guys, for those three things to happen. Your dog to find information, convey that information to you, you to understand it to know whether you should move on or stay, right? So stay or leave it go. So, really, those areas you want to do is when you are at the start line.

Speaker 43:35

That's a crucial spot to understand. Walkthrough videos, right? Like I'm looking at my walkthrough videos, recognizing transition zones. That's what I was just gonna say.

Speaker 2 43:43

Yeah, transition next one. Yeah, any kind of and and transition can even be between two objects. Yes. So don't presume that it's it's a it's a doorway into another section of the search, right? I set hides for the elite or for the summit in Montana. Where the building and the wall to the river were closer together than they were anywhere else in the search. Yeah.

Speaker 1 44:08

Yeah.

Events Updates And Community Asks

Speaker 2 44:08

That's a transition. That's where airflow is going to be funneled through that space. Right. So that's kind of what we mean when your space either in actual distance and footage, the real estate becomes more narrow, right? Or widens. So that can be a whole nother piece too. So that's that can be very helpful is to look at your videos in terms of how are we doing and then the transition of coming off one hide for another hide. Yeah. So you could just take those. The start line transitions in space and hide to hide. How are we understanding, right? The next odor puzzle in those different areas of a search. And that could be a great place to start for what we're talking about in terms of odor observation by the handler, sufficient to support the dog if the dog is in a source zone. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Cool. So yeah. So that was quite a quite an expansive topic there, guys. That was fun. Yeah. Let us know if you have any questions and we can clarify those, hopefully. We'll have we'll be able to uh answer those for you. We may be able to get some of that in the show notes if we get some of that. So, Alex, why don't you tell us what you've got going on moving forward and then we'll find out what um I'm doing on docs. Yeah, cool.

Speaker 45:32

So we are wrapping up here in Arizona. It's getting a little bit hotter. So we've got one last NECSW trial this weekend coming up in Sedona. I'm COing it. I'm really excited. It's gonna be fun. We've got a 3, 2, and L1I. So it should be a lot of fun. It's a beautiful site. It's one of those sites. If things go bad, just look at the environment. It's right. Yep. So I'm doing one of those. And then I've got a judging gig in South Dakota. So that will be really fun. Vespa hopefully will be coming with me.

Speaker 2 46:01

And where's that in South Dakota? Because it's a big state. Yeah, Rapid City. There you go.

Speaker 46:06

Yeah. So we should have some fun in Rapid City. It is the third week of May. Yep. And then I've got some showing in there that I'll be.

Speaker 2 46:15

I'll do it there the second weekend in May. Oh, look at that.

Speaker 46:19

And then I've got Flatcoat Nationals. So I'm judging at Flatcoat Nationals for the specialty. Yep. For scent work. And I'll play all the things, fields and agility and all that kind of fun stuff. And just I keep trying to find an elite trial on my way home. I haven't been successful. You're coming back from where? From Missouri. Okay. So I have to drive out to Missouri. When is this? It's mid-June. And like Bayfield is like right there, but I just can't make it. Okay, guys. So help her, right?

Speaker 2 46:48

Help her find a trial, an elite trial. Between Missouri and Phoenix, Arizona.

Speaker 46:55

Like Texas, Oklahoma. I'll go north, I'll go south. But yeah, it would have to probably be Friday or Saturday. Colorado's just a little too far to me to hit for Friday.

Speaker 2 47:03

So okay, so well, Mountain Dogs is almost just getting started, right? When whenever Alex says about it's getting almost too warm in Arizona. Exactly. Okay, so we had snow again today, right? And this has been a very, very weird winter for us, right? Because we had very mild weather until now spring, right?

Speaker 47:23

And now March and April have been opposite weather for us. March was like hot. March was our April weather. Yeah. April has been our March weather.

Speaker 2 47:33

Yeah.

Speaker 47:34

It has been the weirdest two months that we've ever had out here.

Speaker 2 47:37

It's kind of nationwide. Yeah. So we got trials going on. We've got lots that are up on the Mountain Dogs website. If you want to take a look at that, we've got uh Montrose coming up at the end of May. We have Grand Junction Crossroads Museum, which is always fun. Megan Wallace is going to come and seal that for us. Becky's going to be in Montrose for us, and hopefully both Ellie, Lawton Bishop and Ellie.

Speaker 1 48:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2 48:00

They are only 80 points away from their elite champion. So we're hoping to close in on that. I'm a little bit more, I think mine's maybe 140 points, so mine will probably be two trials. So we're trying to close in on that. We've got our sights set on Pueblo Summit if we can not jump into that before you're ready, more as a testing ground to go. Yeah. Oh Lord, this is what we've been shooting for. And are we really ready? Yep. And then I've got the K9 Cent Fix website to launch at some point in time here. I'm still there. Yep, because it's going to be an e-learning for trial training and then a hosting segment there as well. So really trying to help with some of those hosting pieces so we can get some resources that are kind of on a particular place that where you can find it online. And ECSW does a great job. Yeah. It's a very wealthy, valuable site that they have where theirs are. So it's just kind of augmenting that to help you navigate through that stuff. Hopefully help some more hosts become proficient in what they do and get more people into hosting because we always need more trials, right? Cool, cool. So that's kind of all that stuff. We've got then trials after trials after trials after that. Yeah. So I gotta mention Hornet. Yeah. Yeah. Hornet in August. Look that up. It's a one once-in-a-lifetime type venue that you get to go to. I've enjoyed that one.

Speaker 49:22

Yep. Search it. I wanted to mention real quick, I do have a senior sniffer class with Fenzie right now. It's a three-week class. So starting up May 1st. So I'm really excited about that one because it's going to have massage fitness as well as nosework assignments every week.

Speaker 2 49:36

Oh, yay. So we get to massage our dog and have him do nosework.

Speaker 49:41

Yeah. So you can learn how to support your senior sniffer, right? Yay. Kind of themed off of everything that I've had to be doing and we'll be doing with Tana.

Closing Thoughts And Sign-Off

Speaker 2 49:48

She's now you know that's really important because that's quite frankly, guys, that's what the elite premiere was designed to be. Yeah. Not some segue into a summit per se. It's really intended to be a venue that the elite champions can kind of have more assurance that they can get into because the priority entries are for elite champions, or in the qualified entry period, it goes to the elite champion first. So, and actually everything else is FEO. So you might be able to get in, but you won't be looking to title it away from here. So if you have a senior sniffer, look for that and get on uh Alex's class and find out, you know, what you can do to keep your dog sniffing because that's kind of our passion and what we want to do. So exactly. So thanks everybody. Thanks for um listening and let us know what you might have going on that we can help you with, and otherwise keep training. Happy sniffing.