Trial Day Secrets- Behind the Scenes

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Welcome And The Big Idea

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Hey everybody, welcome to our podcast. This is actually for July. Yay! I have Alex Woodruff with me. This is Jill Kavasovich. And we have a special guest who's going to chime in on some of our information, and that's Myra Carter. We're going to talk about the secrets of trial success, but it's behind the scenes. So, what are those secrets that go on behind the trial that basically build your experience as a handler? So, Alex, say hello. Hi, guys. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

I'm kind of excited about this concept. It's from our perspective as officials as well as hosting trials. So we really kind of have a lot of information of what's happening to make that trial day work really well.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

And then on the other hand, I'm always going, oh, and also our perspective as a handler, because you have three people here who do trial. And we trial often. And we have our own very big feelings about what happens when we have that hat on versus when we have our official hat on, right? So, and that can be very, very interesting. And we'll kind of talk a little bit about that because we get it, we understand, right? And then sometimes when you're in that official role, you don't always remember what it feels like to be on the other end of the leash. Right. Right. So, okay. So what we wanted to do was really kind of talk about NACSW and the roles that different officials play within NACSW and then do a comparison because that's Alex's just expertise in this area, um, is AKC. So while there may be other venues out there, some of them are just a mesh between those two, some may have more similarities to one or the other. But I think if we just focus on those two, we're going to get a good dialogue about being inclusive of kind of all the experiences you may have doing scent detection sport work with your dog. So, all right. So the first thing we've thought we wanted to talk about is the certifying official. Because as a host, and all three of us have great host experience, that's the first thing you have to do is go out there and hire that certifying official. But understanding more about what's behind the scene and what are the secrets of trial success for the certifying official. So, with any CSW, the certifying official is the person who oversees all the policies for that day, and also is the high placement guru, if you will, right? So, Alex, tell us a little bit about with AKC, how is that different? What is the certifying official? It's actually called the judge, and those two roles are combined. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Well, somewhat. So the way that AKC is set up is you have a judge who is going to be setting your search areas, going to be setting the high. It's very similar to what the CO does in the search. But then the role of the judge kind of ends there. They are just responsible for that single search or the multiple searches that they are hired to

NACSW CO Versus AKC Judge

SPEAKER_02 3:10

do. Now, the policies and how the trial is experienced and all of those other things that the CO is often in charge of. So going to the parking lot, making sure that the briefing's there in the beginning of the day, organizing all the extra little bits that are in relation to the experience of the searches, that now is being pushed to the trial chair or maybe a committee from the AKC club that is hosting your trial. So the experience that you're having when you get to the trial site is going to be a little bit more unique to each club that is offering a trial. So you do get a little bit of a split of roles there. So your experience within each search is going to be by the judge, which is similar to the CEO, but outside the search is going to be a little bit of a different experience.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

So then some of the things that we might talk about, like a host role, is going to be different between the two. So I don't want to jump from thing to thing and make this a kind of a more chaotic discussion. Although it's going to feel a little chaotic, we'll get more, we'll get more information about what we mean by the host role. Um, what are some of the things you can look for as a handler when you decide which trials you want to enter? Now, granted, we really understand that a lot of this is geographic to where you live and that sometimes you may not have choices. And you're going to pick whatever trial is offered in your area. But just so you know, when you go out and you look at the premium and it lists a certain certifying official, it lists the judges. Maybe when you get your volunteer information, if you are volunteering, it will list who the score room lead is, stuff like that. So at least you have some understanding of what the different roles are. Okay. So within a CSW, with the certifying official, there is an education system. There's an application system for you to become a certifying official. And the education actually started. Hey, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it was like 2017, I think is where the first CO school started, maybe a little bit before that. And prior to then, we didn't have near the proliferation of trials that we do now. So it was pretty much a kind of show me that you have interest in wanting to take on that role. And then the senior staff at NACSW made a decision as to whether or not to invite people in to do that particular role. Now it actually is a school. NACSW puts it out there that they're opening that school for a particular year or whatever. They take on certain applicants. Those applicants show why they are interested in doing that role. And one of the big things I think that that NACSW that we do really well is really wanting to have people involved at that level who have a buy-in, if you will, into the organization. They have other interests that they have shown, whether it's as a host or as a judge, or maybe they're a CNWI and doing some teaching. So those sorts of things. So that you have somebody who kind of understands the organization. So it's not quite like, you know, corporate America going out and trying to find the perfect candidate who can do XYZ and not really worried about whether they understand, you know, Jill's hosting school, um, that kind of thing, right? The culture. Yeah. Yeah. So it really is uh trying to get that brought back in, which is we want people who are gonna understand the organization from the get-go, so to speak. So if anybody's interested in doing that, that's kind of uh what those roles come down to, basically. So with the certifying officials, all of these, any CSW has a senior staff committee. It's made up of certain people, and that kind of they do all of the policy decisions for pretty much all of these roles. The other roles we're gonna talk about is judge, score room lead, and then we also wanted to touch on host because that's very interesting. And there is some differences between AKC and NACSW as to who can be a host, how hosts are approved, that sort of thing, right? Yeah, all right. So let's jump into what are the secrets of trial success from the certifying official perspective, yeah, putting on my NACSW hat, right? Okay. So do you want me to start or you want to start? Because Alex is a new CO, but she has extensive experience as an AKC judge, which includes so much of that role.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Yeah, a lot of search area manifold.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

So I would say one of the big things about NACSW and AKC is that the searches are set with the goal to test the level, but for success. And I think sometimes as a competitor, it might feel like everything's against you and that you can't pass this level. And sometimes it's going to be luck, but oftentimes it's our own heads as competitors that kind of get in the way. And I think understanding sometimes that these searches are set with the intent that they are going to test the level, yes, but be successful, that everybody's gunning for you to try and get you to like succeed and win and do it. Nobody's out there hoping that you'll fail. And so I think sometimes shifting our mindsets that way can be really helpful as a competitor to understand that that is the hope. And speaking from both ends, I think any CSW as a CEO, because your day is planned as a whole, it is the experience of all of the searches together that create your success of the day. And that is how they're designed. And so I think having that kind of mindset as a CEO, you are really hoping everybody passes because it is so easy for somebody to make one little mistake and no longer passes for NW1, NW2, and NW3. Versus AKC, because the judges are judging each individual class and they don't have an influence on other searches of that day. And they are basically curating only your experience for that search in front of them. I do find that it's a little bit of a different kind of mentality at times. Like, yes, they want you to succeed, but at the same time, you might have gotten just the luck of the day that every judge is setting a hard day for some reason. And so you might be running from one search to another search to another search and end up not as successful as maybe if it wasn't an ECSW trial, it would be considered overstacked, meaning all of these trials together, all these searches together, just make a very difficult day versus an AKC, they are not connected. And so your experience from one really has no relation to how the next search is going to be sent. So I think having that kind of understanding can be very helpful.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Can you explain that really quick about why AKC is disconnected? So for instance, I can go into a particular trial, and if I'm at the detective level, I can do multiple detective searches that will count separately and individually. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Yeah. So detective is going to be just the one class. So a trial day will only have one detective. You can have two trials in a day, technically. So that could be two detective classes in the day. They're completely separate. They have no tie to each other. You could have in the weekend, I've seen as much as like six searches, six detective searches, meaning like they have two trial numbers assigned for each day, and then you end up with six searches. But you could have six judges for those, you could have the same judge for all sixes, but they are not connected. They are not trying to create this one experience. They are all individual searches with the regulations that are read out for AKC, whether the guidelines or the regulations together. And that is your experience in each search. So they really aren't tied together versus like Elite and ECSW, you have kind of a formulation, but it's an expectation of what you're going to get. Normally, four searches, you're typically going to have unknown searches, a range, a number. Your search length is about the same, kind of spread out throughout the whole day. Number of hides might be a relative range of numbers that you can expect. Versus detective, if we're talking about two detectives in the same day, it's a five to ten. You have minimum of five hides, maximum of 10 in every single search. And they are not necessarily thought about how many you're going to get the day. They're totally separate searches.

SPEAKER_03 11:45

So a good part of that is that whole perspective. When the certifying official comes in within ACSW, part of the culture of what we are seeking to achieve is that continuity. It's not necessarily like using the word consistency across the nation with our certifying officials isn't really a good word because every single environment we walk into is different. So one of the things I love about my role as a certifying official is that coming in, I like to think of it, and this is purely semantics, guys. Yes, it means the same thing. I like to think of it as I am measuring as opposed to testing. And that probably comes from that whole educational background that I have. Yes, I have way too many degrees of where tests have made me very, very nervous. If someone says to me, I just need to measure your proficiency at your spelling, I'm like going, okay, that's not

How Certifying Officials Get Trained

SPEAKER_03 12:40

as bad as a spelling test. Yeah. Right. Somehow you feel like, okay, so then if I measure up to 85, hey, I'm doing pretty good, right? I move the bar past that 50-50 chance versus if they say we're going to test, you're immediately think of 100%. Like you go, oh no. Now, granted, I understand that at our different levels, we have different requirements for 100%. What Alex is talking about with detective, those are 100%. There is no mistake or mist tied or a false alert that will result in a cue at detective. And you can do as many, you can do as many of those searches as you want over a lifetime. You're not capped at exactly. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

But what's interesting is AKC only counts to 10. There are no titles past 10. Uh, so it's just a single title. Okay. Um, there are people in the country that have gotten as many, I think she's at like 150, 160 qualifying runs, which is unbelievable. That's a lot of money. June Mitchell out in the Midwest. Yeah, she's got another. There's a flat coat that has gotten 100 recently.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Yay! Cool. Okay, but APC is not gonna report it. So one of the roles that I, or one of the hats that I put on when I come in as a certifying official, whether I'm at um, and some of this the lower levels may, we may say, oh, they're easier, and actually they're just as challenging to figure out what your balance is. Okay, so in NACSW, what one of the things of continuity that I wanted to talk about is your certifying official is actually coming in with a mindset that I want to balance my entire day. That's exactly what Alex was just describing is that with NACSW, it's not just one search, and I'm trying to balance that one search. In other words, I may have some easier hides and some more difficult hides, and together they make this level appropriate measure, right, of detective. For NACSW, I actually am going to wrap my arms around four, maybe five searches. And those depend on the size of the search, the amount of time, because this is a timed event. We are trying to get those searches done, right? From start of the first dog on the line to hopefully maybe four o'clock, five o'clock at the latest. So, and you're trying to fire through there potentially the it, and we call it, you know, if you have a full, a full trial, those numbers are listed on your premium as to what those would be. Okay, so I'm back to my goal and my role as this certifying official is to make sure that my hide setting is level appropriate. And that's true for both organizations. I need to have that kind of education and experience to be able to say, hey, this hide on this clock is an elite level hide or a summit hide. It's probably not my best balanced MB3 hide. No, probably not.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Unless your clock's sitting on the floor. Very good, right?

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Or maybe it's on a desk, right? Yeah, right. Something like that. So that's kind of what we're talking about, right? Is that whole education piece and really part of the progression in both organizations of being able to move up the ranks because even in AKC, they don't come out where you are automatically certified to be a judge setting hides for detective level. You have to go through the ranks and do the lower levels just like you do with NACSW, right? So Alex right now is going through the the it's gaining the experience. That's how I'm gonna say it because it that's what it is. It's very pilot, right? Of getting her NW one, two, threes and then all the elements or anything that would fall within the highest level being three and on down, right? Yeah, and then once she has a certain number of those, then she can um request to do training for the elite. And then once you have a certain number of elites, you ask to do the training for summit, right? So it's not where for myself, like where I just decided one day, oh, I want to do summit certified uh certifying official. Geez, I think I'll just email Jean Richardson and tell her that I'm good and I'm very good, and she should, she needs to just approve it. I had to go out, yeah, and establish myself being able to do a certain number of those elite trials with the mindset of this balancing the challenges presented on that trial day. And that's what Alex was talking about. It's a full day. So the beauty of that, and most of the trials that I've certified, been the certifying official for, you and you can do this with any, I guess, with any uh certifying official, go look at like their smug mug. It's hard to tell by looking at that what were the difficulties and what were the more straightforward, maybe more basic hives, right? It's hard to tell. But once you gain enough handler experience, you can kind of do that, right? You can kind of go, okay, so the trial that I just did out in Salem, Oregon with Christine Lepsig. She was the host along with her her co-host Bonnie Wolf. I actually had in a pretty uh large size room a crash hide, right? I mean, there was this concrete floor, it had this piece of molding, the molding was able to be removed, and in went the hide. So that hide, we might say, okay, that's not a hide I was set for level one and two, right? That's that's definitely now you're moving up to level three and potentially how what else is around it. So to get to that elite level, I had multiple other hides in the room. Now it became an elite search. The beauty of having that kind of ability to have multiple searches create my balance day, right? And this is if you're looking at, oh my gosh, I I I've got a trial and Alex is the CO, and I just want to, I just want to pass. So I'm just gonna go look at all of her information and see what kind of hides she sets. And then I'm gonna go and practice those hides, right? Yeah, what we know is we're still going to set level appropriate hides no matter what that particular individual as a certifying official may like favor, right? We may have our own little things that we love to set. It's still gonna be based on what that environment presents on that day, right? Yep, yeah, and if you want success for you and your dog, you're really gonna have to be mindful that it is just that. I'm actually competing with Odor on that day in that environment to get that hide, as opposed to I'm competing against the certifying official.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

Because boy, that can really trap you into these brain games. And one of the challenges, guys, of wearing this many hats is you do have a tendency to go into a search, and I've done this way too many times. Wow, that as you're passing by something should be focused on your dog. Your dog is solving the problem. You're going, well, that would be a cool place for a hide. And you become a problem of that. Oh my god, I become so you're probably successful. Yeah, I become fixated on it. I'm not even watching the dog. I'm going, oh, look, and oh, it could be over there, right? And you just it's a rabbit hole, you don't want to go down.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

But at the same time, why we struggle with that, and I think a lot of competitors do this too, because they've seen the hides, they looked at the videos, right? And so you kind of have an expectation. And here's where the problem is you're probably right 60% of the time. Yeah, it's the 40% of the time that's the same.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

I was gonna say it's muscle memory, it's muscle memory that even gets me to recognize now, and we've done enough maybe a year, two years of what we call the unconventional hide, the novel hide. So now you walk by siding of a building and it's got a hole in it, and you're gonna go, oh, that could be one of those, right? Yeah, windowsills now mean entirely different, right? Even if it's the framing in an interior, it means hinges as our other favorite hinges are a new one, yeah. So, and then the beauty of it, go to the flip side of being the hide placement person is that some of those can be very helpful and predictable for us in terms of a certifying official setting hides or the judge setting hides at AKC because we've seen them enough and we have some confidence that odor is going to behave a certain way, right? Yeah, so the thing about the hinge hides, I'll just throw this out there because we don't want to go down that rabbit hole necessarily, is that I can't, it's a wonderful transition hide. It's taking me from one space to another, it's going to populate both spaces. So I get odor

Building A Balanced Trial Day

SPEAKER_03 21:30

going in both spaces, right? And it's often the place where the dogs speed through or the handlers speed through, right? So now I've got a speed zone, I've got an odor population zone that's going through a transition. And yet, once the dog catches it and is able to work that back to source, very reliable.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

I and you know what, and maybe because this is AKC, I have set them in AKC and not have them very reliable. And you would think that they would be more because. Because you've got more odor. But what I find to go everywhere, yeah, is that the there's a large absence of odor on the front of the door. And so as a result, the dog might get into that odor picture and it almost starts looking like pooling. And unless the dog has a good, strong drive to solve the problem as it's presenting, they do kind of leave it. So it's kind of an interesting one. It doesn't always work. I think it requires sometimes for the handler and the dog to have a high experience that it could be there, that they're going to check it.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Right. And some other things too that can help is as a certifying official, I might be looking for certain attributes to that hinge hide that are going to assist in the odor pathway back to source. That would be like a nice flat wall. So I've got the right. Now that might become the high-end elite or the high-end summit hide, yeah, versus definitely not one that I'm going to feel confident about in terms of measuring level appropriate for an NW3.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

And definitely not lower levels.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So really what we understand, and this just goes back to because I can remember talking to several people about why can't the organization, whichever it is, come out and tell us what are the kinds of hides you're going to have at level one? What are the kinds of hides that CEO is going to set at level two, three, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And really they are out there. But part of the whole message here is that once we figure out what are the measuring that we are measuring a skill set that is level appropriate, we understand that trial pushes training and training pushes trial. What I mean by that is my job is to provide, as a certifying official with that hat on, my job is to provide a level appropriate search so the handler can walk away and go, that's what I need to train, right? That's what I need to experience. That's what I need to expose my dog to in terms of an understanding and expectation of clarity. And then once I get that, then my training can really be very objective, right? I get that it's still very subjective with what I do with my dog, but that's kind of the gist of it. The other piece is, and we've seen this definitely with a with NACSW, I don't know about AKC. As we came down through the years, the our dogs have built such great skill sets that then when we created the next level, okay, so this would be when NW3 was first out there, then it became, oh, let's do an NW3 elite, which meant you had to get NW3 three times.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

Then we said, oh, well, let's just create the next division, which is elite. And then of course, when all of us went crazy because you know we reached elite champion, and oh Lord, we don't have anything to do, and we have highly skilled doctors. Let's make some it, right? Yeah, yeah. But each time we added one of those next levels, either skill sets were brought down into the prior. Yeah, the trial skill set was then identified enough to be able to bring it down into the lower level. This is exactly where, and I think the most recent thing we can relate to, and then I want to have Myra chime in, certainly just as a handler, anyway, right? Because she's seen a lot of these changes, is the NW2 containers. Yeah. Right? Like that's the one that's most glare. And we're like, why did they do that? Why is an organization blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Well, let me say this. We are very much understanding the power of for the dog to be able to differentiate distraction. And that if we can do that training at a lower level, then when you get into those more, you know, blind or blind, blank unknown number, yeah. Or blank, unknown number and blank searches at three, you hopefully have experienced what full distraction looks like versus right. Yeah. So and that's, I think, one of the beauties of we're building actually a training template through the trial measuring. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So now we're introducing distraction a lot sooner.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Which makes NW3 more enjoyable then, because you are coming in with a dog that you've already put the skill on, versus if you're in NW3 and your dog does not have the skill to move past distractions, every little thing now becomes a stress point. And then your whole experience at NW3 becomes a little bit more stressful and a little bit less trusting, which is kind of the opposite of where we're trying to aim for for experiences at a trial, right? So I do think that it really helps with that.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

Well, one of the benefits there was when we created the leg, right? The leg for NW3. So you can get that one mistake, whether it's a one mistide, one false alert, right? Those sorts of things, and still earn a leg. And then two legs made a title, right? So, right along with let's firm up what are the skill sets coming out of two, we also relieved a little pressure off of the three. So, Myra, hey, give us some of your perspective because this is going to be more of a and Myra is a scoreboom lead. She's very embedded in lots of other jobs at NECSW. So she's a great person because a lot of this stuff may relate to other things. But it's that putting on that handler hat and going, okay, what were some of the what behind the scenes? What are some of the secrets of trial success that you've seen?

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Right. Well, first off, thank you, Jill and Alex, for having me. I'm really excited to be here. As a handler experiencing some of these changes, I really did enjoy when they opened up Nosework 3. Like it was very structured, I feel like, when they had blanks are only going to be an interior. You will only have distractors and containers and et cetera. And then when they opened it up to anything could be a blank, I think that as a handler to me, it made me more conscious of environmental distractors, watching the behavior of my dog, like, oh man, they're not searching. We really suck at this. Maybe it's because there's no odor availability out here in this really distracting exterior. So I really enjoyed that change and it gave us more flexibility, I think, to like open up our opportunity to watch charistic behaviors in our dogs, whether it was odor behavior or distractor behavior, critter behavior, all of that kind of stuff. I will admit that I made it through Nosework 2 before they implemented the distractors. So I feel a little lucky there because I do have an Aussie that is very, very distractable. Especially by food.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

Yes, especially by food that's in the box.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yes. Also with other dog odor, like that is one of my biggest distractors with him. And it was because of his upbringing. So just being able to observe that as a handler and like on the backside, being able to observe other dogs, whether I'm a schoolroom lead or a volunteer or anything, observe other dogs has really made it an amazing experience to be able to see those kind of behaviors of my dogs and understand what is happening.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Right. Even though, like at the moment you feel like, oh, this is going south. Yes. And we don't always know what to do at that moment. Again, this is that trial experience pushing the training, right? Because then you can walk away from that, and then hopefully, either through a coach or through your own observation of your own videos or whatever, kind of go, okay, we need to work on that. As Alex would say, almost after every single trial I've ever seen her do, we got work to do. Yeah, yeah. Even when she's sitting on a blue ribbon, it's like, okay, here's the next level. Got to get this one going, right? So, and that's um certainly one of those things that I'm looking at because the elite championship isn't always, you know, that wonderful glory thing. Now you're going, oh, now it's summit. Okay. Yep. Yeah. What do we do next? Yeah. So um, so I really think that that's a great perspective that we really are trying to achieve the progression. So I'm really big on progression and and to have those now measured trial levels also put in progression so that when you come in and you're doing an NW1, if we can, you know, solidify those skill sets that are needed for that level, now you have a good foundation to move to two, right? We get into two, and even though I was just gonna almost interrupt uh Myra and say the rules were still there. Well, yeah. So now at Summit, you're gonna get a hundred containers because I'm gonna bring this, and we know I've got a hundred containers as the host. Point blank. I got them.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

I mean, I will say that the containers I've done has been at your trials.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

So, and they're gonna have and any one of her NW3 beef jerky could have those same level of distraction that is at two, right? Once we get into a lead, it bumps it up. We can actually put in things like barbecue beef and right. And then, of course, at Summit, we're gonna go a little nuts and and and really make that distraction. Part of the complexity, okay. So that's where the certifying official isn't saying, oh, watch me get these handlers. You're actually saying, typically, what we're doing is we're looking at our at our entire four searches, and maybe only two have gone by. I just had this happen in Oregon, where I got my first two searches for Elite done, and I went, holy buckets, I just set what I think are NW3 hides. I got major, I mean, the the pass rates on those first two searches, even going in before the end of the searches, were like 80s and 90s. And I'm like, okay, that's I gotta add some complexity here because we had such massive areas, right? I had anticipated that the area itself would be more complex. But because I had odor behaving rather well on that, yeah, right, we didn't have particularly cold uh temperatures outside. I didn't have particularly hot, I didn't have an AC on in this school. So I didn't have this wicked airflow that I was, you know, trying to work with or against, yeah, right. It was just they were straightforward. And I just went, oh my gosh, okay, in my head, and I try not to share this with too many people because they think I'm crazy.

Distractions That Shape Training

SPEAKER_03 33:20

I need to make these next two searches for the afternoon more complex because I need to bring in a balance. And you would even be doing this even at level one for that sake, right? Like if you had, you know, it's not that you again want to, I'm gonna get these handlers, watch this. It's more, I need to make sure my entire day is measuring up to the overall complexity and the overall balance for that level. So when you hear your certifying official say level appropriate, we not only mean level appropriate hide, we mean the odor behaved in a level appropriate way, which you don't know until you know. Yeah, right. And then after you watch it, you go, okay, either that worked really well or that didn't work so good, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the next piece would be my either two searches together or four searches together, or that sort of thing. So sometimes when we have the lower level um CEOs go out and they're doing their one, two, threes, and maybe they have a one where they get some really good pass rates, and then they go to do the two, and you you hope that from the one you've learned something about how odor's gonna work in that environment. However, yeah, what is two bring? Two brings now. I have accessible hides primarily in my level one, and that's kind of the same with AKC. That's the novice in the advance, right? In advance, then I get into my inaccessible hides, right? So now do I set an inaccessible hide with less and less and less odor available, right? Because that's getting closer into elite and summit. Yeah. When I really have that deep and accessible where I have the pathway is so skewed, my dog is gonna have to do some serious problem solving. And it's gonna take more than 60 seconds for my dog to even begin to figure out that level appropriate hide. So that's kind of when when you hear the certifying officials say that about level appropriate hides, that's what we mean. When we say level appropriate search, we mean the whole thing. How did my odor work in that search? And again, you don't know until you watch the dogs and you can see either how odor, how the environment affected it, maybe how the handlers and their expectation affected it, that sort of thing. And that can be the hinge hide. So maybe I say, no, I'm willing to put in that more challenging hide because this is what we need to see, right? Right. Yeah. So, and this is when we began those searches where any search for NW3 could be blank. That's really where you go to. You go to that piece of nope, they need to see this. Right. And while it's painful on the handler side, right? I remember so many times those first blank vehicle searches with Zeke. I was just like, oh my God, why didn't they put odor out there? For heaven's sakes. We just, you know, it felt it felt confusing. It felt got you, I don't like the word like cheated.

unknown 36:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

Yeah. But we become so addicted to hides. To the you know what broke, alert, yes, alert, yes.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Colorado, because George did most of his NW3s in Colorado. He saw more vehicle searches that were blank than vehicle searches with odor. And so I became really good at starting to recognize that pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_03 36:43

I just got to elite, not to this isn't a brag guy. This is to bring out the experience. I just got to elite champion with Zeke and realized I didn't have a single blank search in elite, not one elite, because they're not that common. Because, and a lot of the reason for that, guys, is because we need to have an appropriate space.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:05

Again, it's gonna be level appropriate blank search.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:10

So I may have the situation where I've got so much odor out there in my other searches and it's bleeding into this search. Exactly. And it's not be assured that it's gonna be clean. Yeah, and clean isn't a good word because like these HVAC systems are gonna put some trillion molecules into the air no matter what we do. But that's the consideration that the that the CO is really looking at those faces to make sure that I can do a fair, reasonable, level appropriate search that is blank, meaning no hides in that search.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Right.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

Right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

The only one I thought was with Tana, and that was a locker room.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

Yep. I did see um at NW3, Christina Lepsig set a vehicle search that was highly, and it was one vehicle and it was in underneath a horse arena, highly distraction. And rather than put a hide in there, which I thought this was kind of brilliant, rather than put the hide in there, which you do want to train that, right? Right, yeah. The dog gets exposed to it. Her feeling was if I do that, I'm just asking the dogs to put them in conflict. Which is more important? Horse nuggets, birch. Horse nuggets, birch. She goes, I do it blank, there's no conflict. The conflict now came from handlers versus dog, handlers going, find it, find it, find it, and dog going, there's nothing here to find but the nuggets. Yeah, yeah, right? Yeah, totally. So I think is my dog working. That's a really good example of what Meyer was talking about about appreciating having any search that could be blank. Because if we're gonna move up into Elite and into Summit, and at almost every summit that I did with Digger, we did have a blank search, and they were massive. Crazy. They were right, they were yeah, so summit, it definitely becomes part because you've got eight searches to play with.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yeah, because that's the other thing.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

As a certifying official, doing my and I did just do this in the two elites I had in Oregon. I had a blank search in the first day. Yeah. What I did was I did it in the I did it with the mindset that I wanted people to have enough, I always call it hides in the bank.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:33

Right. Like go in and get like your morning, and it was, you know, pretty straightforward. It wasn't like, you know, major tricky or anything like that. I didn't do any what we would call challenge hides, just real straightforward. If you could get around the search area in the amount of time and call everything clean, um, you would have money in the bank, right? Right. So then going into your blank search, it was like, and now I'm gonna go over to my score room lead. Okay. Aside from the training piece of will I recognize my dog is not working target odor, bertanus or clove, they seem to be working distraction, right? Or just really seeking Bertanus and Clove very intently, right? Which can that intensity can can look like they are searching, right? Or searching for target odor. Tell us about what does the score do to us when we call a false alert in a blank search, now at all levels, because and I hate to say back in the day at NW3, and this is back when we had mandatory three interiors, mandatory one of those three interiors would be blank. But all you lost was 25% because it was considered the four elements is what made up your hundred percent. So each one was worth 25%. So even if, right? So so and that scoring on that was just insane for those three interiors, as you can imagine, whatever they were worth. Now it's the blank search, even at three, can cause a negative score. Correct?

SPEAKER_00 41:21

No, not at three. You just get zero. Okay. I might have to double check that. Now you're making me question it. But no, at level three, it's worth so it's the whole hides for the day added up divided by a hundred, right?

SPEAKER_03 41:39

So say I have ten hides.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

That's an easy number. Right.

SPEAKER_03 41:43

So each hide is worth 10 points.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Yep. So at level three, uh blank search would be worth 10, it's worth one hide. Elite and above, it's worth two.

SPEAKER_03 41:55

So and why is that because of the finish call? Probably. Yeah. Right. So because if I yeah, because if I fail to call finish in a leap. So so say I'm out there, I haven't called calling. I I haven't called anything because I'm not finding anything, and then I time out. You still would get negative half of a hide. But I'd only because I missed the finish call. Yes. Right. But that timeout counts as like an error, right? I mean, I hate to say it, but that would almost be a better strategy than getting a false alert. Yeah, then to yeah, and then to and then calling finish correctly because I didn't call call finish correctly. Now I'm really messed up.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Yeah, but that would be the same. Calling one false alert and saying finish, as opposed to just timing out in a blank search, is the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 42:52

Because they're each worth half a value. When we say what we mean by that is right, is the certifying official is going to determine how many hides they're going to have for that trial day over however many searches they're going to do. We divide it by 100 to get our value of what each hide is worth. Correct? Do they do the same or similar in AKC, Alex?

SPEAKER_02 43:14

No, because it's all or none in every search. Okay. Right? So we do have blanks. Blanks can only occur in master interior, kind of like the old school NLP3. Okay. It's not required. So you have it's kind of a numbers game, which kind of you can play with. So it's a one room max could be blank out of the three, but you have a minimum of two hides throughout all three rooms and a maximum of six hides through

Blank Searches And Scoring Choices

SPEAKER_02 43:40

all three three rooms, with a zero to three in each room. So when you start playing those games, if you had one room blank, you can have one hide in your other two rooms. But you could also have one room blank, three hides in one room, three hides in another room, and that would be your max number. Got it. Where it gets kind of funky is if you had your first room with three hides and your second room with three hides, you would call finish as soon as you walk into your third room because you know you're done. Or if you had three hides in your first room, two hides in your second room, you know you only have maximum of one hide left in your last room to find. Right. So there are some number games that judges can play. It's not as often that it is done. Like you'll see more of like the judge wants to make sure that the search is pretty snappy. So maybe they do one hide, one hide, one hide in very small spaces that meet the minimum requirements. AKC has actual space requirements versus any CSW is more fit the search to the space. So that can kind of artificially change something. So some rooms might only have a quarter of the room in play with cones out there. And that kind of changes the game a little bit as well. So scoring-wise, it's all or none. So either you call the blank correctly or you call the room correctly, and then you are in or out.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

So this brings up a good topic about, and this wasn't that long ago with NW3 with NACSW. As certifying officials, we had kind of a practice going on, right? Because it really wasn't a mandatory policy about how many hides you would have in your overall your six searches, right? And this is even when the you may have one search that is blank, right? So what was happening is we were really noticing across the entire nation, and I did it too as a handler, right? I would go, oh, 10 to 13. Yes. And if we're gonna have a blank, I'm not gonna have a three-hide search.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:46

If right, and but I really got to get at least to eight. So if I've had the zero blank, I'm doing the same numbers game that Alex just talked about with those other five searches saying, well, right, I'm gonna have some single hide searches there because if I have doubles, I would now be up to 10 or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:09

And unlikely that you're going to have two, three hide searches back then.

SPEAKER_03 46:12

Yes. So now what we made sure that kind of the overall understanding for our membership, and we did this through different kinds of ways to get that out there, was to say you may have may any one search that's blank, but you could also have a range of literally five hides for your entire day, meaning I have one hide in each of those other searches with one blank, right? Wow. Talk about painful, right? As a handler in terms of scoring, yeah, just in terms of scoring, because I would have each one of those would be what 20 point something, right? Oh wait, five into a hundred is 20. Hello, it's not 20 point something, but then my blank is worth what? Whatever. Realistically, it's one error though, in three, right, right, right. So, but that would be a lot riding on each individual search versus right, yeah. So, but we want what we wanted to do, as well as you could have three hides in every search, technically, we could do that. So that would be 18 hides. So now the expectation is you could have zero to 18 hides in NW3. That's what you should be thinking of, right? So it doesn't make sense to go in and try to do the math and say, oh, well, I had a blank, so I'm not gonna have a three hide search, right? And it makes more sense because the whole goal, I think, or not whole goal, but part of the goals at NW3 is can you recognize when your dog is done? Meaning to can you recognize when your dog is in a blank area, right? Because then my dog would be done, right? There's no target odor here. Uh but that whole piece of when my dog is done has a lot to do with the one hide search, the two hide search, and the three hide search. So do I strategically as a handler, and we see this a lot in containers, especially at NW3, right? You make those two really quick passes. Your dog picked up either one hide and you quickly pass over the next row and they don't get another hide. So you call finish and you get out, either because you're too concerned about calling falsees on pooling, right? You really do feel like your dog adequately worked the potential odor picture, but we really see it after you get too hot.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:37

That that you almost like, oh, I don't know. Yeah, I'm just gonna, right? Yeah, yeah. And so really what we want to do is can you stay in the search? Will your dog continue to search? Right, the target odor. Can you also remember where your hides were located? Right. So as now, granted, in AKC, there's is it a penalty or for calling a prior hide again?

SPEAKER_02 49:03

No, it's a fault. So they only count for placements.

SPEAKER_03 49:08

Okay. So you you could still get your cue, okay, but then you might not get first, second, third, or fourth. Exactly. Okay, so that's good. And then any CSW, and this just jumps really quick into our judge training because it's hard as a judge. Oh my gosh. So I forget sometimes how difficult it is until I have that piece of paper in front of me and I have to kind of go, oh, okay. Do I say, do I tell them that they got that high before in my lap? When am I when am I supposed to do it? When am I not supposed to do it? Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:41

And really, it really comes down to think of it this way that when we feel it would be conflicting, that you might not realize it is the same high, then we will offer it. So say it's on an object where it's underneath the object, and the object happens to have it's a table, and I've got two ends to the table, right? And don't apply this to a lead or summit because you could potentially, I suppose, have a hide on each end of the table. I'm talking about, like, you know, at level three, and I want you to know it's a known range or it's a known number. If it's unknown, I might not tell you at all. Right. Because it's up to you to, yeah, and it's up to you to remember that. So with the others, if I feel like it is a hide that stretch call, the call got wider as odor moved, right? Yeah, then I might want to say same hide, right? And as I like to advise in my briefing to people, is whatever you do, make it very clear to the judge what you're asking, right? Because if you say, Did I get this hide? And that's all you say, hopefully you're just gonna get this blank stare where we kind of go, Well, I can't confirm that. Yeah, yeah. And same thing with AKC for several reasons, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

As a handler, if you go, have I called this one already? The handler can't, or the judge cannot say anything to you. You have to call it again, which then gives you the fault. But realistically, you care. So yeah, just displacement.

SPEAKER_03 51:17

And so I think I like missing cares because that's kind of how I look at it too for any CSW, right? That if my dog, because in so many ways, even in training, if we train to perfection and we don't reward our dog for prior falonhides because we really are working on that timed event where we need the dog to move on. Yeah. In trial, things are different in the aspect that we have this big pause that happens before we call alert, not like we do in in training typically. Yeah. Right. And those environments, you just you can get very turned around, especially when you head into Elite, where I'm going to try to put four hides. Oh, no, this would be Julie Rikus's in Bayfield. Three hides on three identical, identical bookcases in the same spot on those three bookcases. I had no idea which one I called. And I still missed one, right? So that kind of challenge, right? And that just goes over in the challenge. It wasn't tricky that she was trying to trick anybody, it just went in the increased challenge. I got a library, it's pretty vanilla. How do I make it more challenging? Here, here's what I'll do, right? So I think that that's yeah, that's very interesting. So I just wanted to point that out because when we talk about the whole concept of some of these pieces, they really do push training. And the more that we can become very conversant with what the different positions do, judges or or COs, it's gonna help you figure out how do you look at your trial day and the outcome and get a more balanced approach to your training, right? Yeah, yeah. Some of the other pieces on judging, though, do we want to talk about that? Because Alex is a new judge.

SPEAKER_00 53:11

Real quick, yeah. I did, I wanted to correct myself. I lied. You didn't lie, you were missing so you can get negative points in a blank three if you false out. That's two false alerts. Right. Yes. So it's taking away 10, like right at in a blank, say everything's worth 10 points. Your base is starting at 10 points if you get it correct. If you get one false alert, you're down to zero. Two, negative 10. Like you're done and you're out. And you don't get the finish call. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:44

Now just rolling over to the judge side. All right. Real quick. But thanks for clarifying that, right? Because I was going, wait, I remember. I did. Hopefully, you don't false out.

unknown 53:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:56

Right. Right. But that's also this is what brought made me think of the judge because often when we're judging, uh like a three and a two, you wouldn't think that would be confusing, right? I get into a two and I'm immediately going, do they get two false alerts? Do I tell them to keep searching? No.

SPEAKER_00 54:13

At a nose or two, but at a level two element. Elements, yes, exactly. Which guess what?

SPEAKER_03 54:21

I'm judging for Alex. This guy's gonna be so confused. Okay. So that's coming from that handler piece, right? So you look at your judges and you go, but my judge gave me a yes on that. I wasn't anywhere close to what the CEO points to in the deep video and says, right, it was here, right? And that can be because, thankfully, what we're asking our judges to do is measure that hide based on odor on that day for those dogs, right? As opposed to the hide is only good on this corner of the table. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:00

And that starts with the dog in white or the demo dog, right? For any organization, because that dog shows you what that odor picture is looking.

Judging Tools And Dog In White

SPEAKER_02 55:10

And in any CSW that's done with a handler and team that are basically blind to the search. They don't know what's going on. So it really gives you information about how the search presents to the handler as well as to the dog. And it really gives you an honest kind of look at that. In AKC, the demo dog is possibly the judge's dog. It's possibly somebody blind to the search. And I've seen it done well, I've seen it done poorly. It really depends on the knowledge of the judge watching that team. And if it is their own dog, how much leading is happening? Because that can happen. You can, and I think this happens in any CisW too as well, honestly. Because, hey, can you go over there and search over there again? Can you stand there? Can you can you just wait for a little bit longer, maybe face that wall? You can coach anyone to find any team in some ways. And so it's just being aware of that impact, right? And so the vast majority of situations, demo dogs are amazing and they tell us so much information. They don't even need to find the hide to give you that information that you can use in those moments.

SPEAKER_03 56:14

I agree. And that's one of the things, you know, when some of the as a handler, right? Like when there's a hide and you later learn either no one found that hide, or very few teams found that hide. Some of our thought process immediately goes to, well, what did dog and white do? Did the dog and white find it? When we use dog and white, we are doing a couple of things. One is just the odor picture. Is odor available to that dog? And you can measure that based on any pretty much any level dog. I can remember doing certified being a CO for Alex, and it was NW1. And our and our dog in white was an AKC handler who had never done vehicles. Yeah. Right? So the dog didn't didn't like locate that, it didn't have any context of where to find that hide on the vehicle. And she was so apologetic. And I said, Oh my gosh, you the dog is telling me everything I need to know, right? It's telling me, and and I get Jenny Kiefer gets in my Kiefer gets in my head a lot about the dog is telling you what odor's doing. And that's what dog and white's all about. On that flip side, right, is we do want to coach dog and white because what we're trying to do is find out what is my most efficient team, right? In terms of two things there, we're measuring odor and we're also measuring time, right? So, and I may, you know, I may go, okay, I want you to go over there and see what kind of distraction I have over there. But I also don't want to put hopefully the handler and the dog in any kind of conflict either. So yeah, and you don't want a false alert. Yeah. And then, you know, and and granted, there's sometimes as a handler, when you're doing dog and white, you're very much like, oh yay, I get to kind of go do a mini trial and just let me call the hide, blah, blah, blah. Right. Yeah. And really the goal for the CO is not to test you or your dog, right? And we're going to call those hides very quickly so that when we feel like the dog has basically located the hide for purposes of our demonstrating odor to ourselves and odor to the judge. Right. Right. Right. So we have both our judges there or one of the judges who's going to judge that search. Now, putting on my judge hat, that can be really tough, right? Because and especially, so as a certifying official, one of the things I've really tried to get much better at is how do I get around almost to watch the first dog? Because I can't watch the first dog in both searches because they're going to start at the same time. Yeah. So it's okay after lunch when one starts and then I can go what, right? But how do I get over there to make sure both searches work? I have communicated correctly to my judge of where my eyes are located. Because in containers, that can be rather challenging, right? Yeah. Unless I placed it, you know, in, oh, it's on the basketball court on this line, right?

SPEAKER_02 59:16

The red line.

SPEAKER_03 59:17

The red line has the red container on it, right? That's right where it is. Because what you get turned around. And one of the things I really enjoyed in Salem Oregon again at this last I learned something every single trial I certify, do a certifying official for. The judge really liked to write what order the teams found the hides in.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:40

Right. And it helped initially I thought, oh my gosh, that's like nerdy. I'll never get there. I'll never have that capacity to do that. But it really helped the judge remember which hides they got when.

SPEAKER_02 59:56

Yeah. I do that actually to judge detective. And so on in AKC Detective, the judge has to create a map. And then the competitor gets a copy of that map to walk away with what hides they found. So I like to write the times next to a list of which it almost looks like an NACSW list because it allows me as a judge, especially if I'm judging 50 detective teams and my brain is getting tired by the end of the day.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

I know exactly which ones they found because I've actually written down the time when they found them. Helpful as a competitor, you can kind of keep track of how long it took, how long between hides. But that kind of information could be really helpful as a judge to stay on track when things start getting confusing.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:38

Then in here's another little tip as a judge. In my NW3, what I found helpful was, and this was in Bayfield when I was judging there, to mark where my false alerts occurred. Because in three, what happens in NW3 is you can get those two false alerts and keep searching, right? Or one false alert you keep searching, you get the second one, you're out. But a handler can get both hides. So say there were only two hides in the search, right? Yeah. They come in, they get a false alert, keep searching, they get a hide, they keep searching, they get another hide, they keep searching, and then they get another false, right? Yeah, yeah. So later on, I have the handler come to me and say, We didn't, you have me down getting two false. Right. I got the two hides. I only got one false. Now, as a judge, my job is either to remember after just judging 38 teams.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:38

Or we have to go, I have to ask the CO and we have to, well, I'd get with the CO anyway, but look at video. And then we might or might not have an A CSW video of it. And the handler might or might not have their own video of it because I can I can review that video. So what I've learned is if I can write it down, that's going to help me when that handler comes to me and says, you know, I think this is an error. I only I got both hides and only got one false alert. I can say, no, I distinctly remember I wrote it down. You false done this and this. The other reason I really like it is as a handler, those score sheets sometimes are really the biggest piece of our performance. Information. Yeah. Yeah. And when you just put it in data, which means I had this many misses, I had this many false alerts, I had this many hides that I scored out of the total hides available, it doesn't always give you that good picture versus if you look at it and go, oh, look, I faltzed on the table that was across from that hinge high.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:44

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:44

So now I can at least make the assumption, the training assumption, that that was pooling, right? That that the dog and I, whether it was overly me or overly the dog, had interest in that table because of odor accumulation at that object, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:00

So it can really help with that. So this might be a good time to pivot a little bit to talk about score room. And I'm just gonna quick because AKC, those score sheets belong to the judge. And as a competitor, you never see your score sheets other than detective map. And so that those little notations, I make notations on my score sheets as a judge to help me keep track of okay, it was the first container, then it was the last container. So those kinds of things can still happen, but you don't get your score sheet. So talking to Myra, does it bother you guys in the score room to see extra notations on it? Does it make it harder to read and do the scoring?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:40

I yes and no, maybe, of like if you're checking the false alert box and it's clearly that you checked a false alert, even if you're marking below it where it was, as long as you're not like writing over the top of it, right? Like we're if you stay outside of our areas and use the appropriate symbols in the correct areas, then we'll understand it, right? Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:04

So I I have seen on our sheets, so aside from the gentleman who this last weekend did one, two, three, four, five, right? Yeah. For right, I you have a tendency to use a check mark, right? Which is like the what is it, the Nike, the Nike thing, yeah, right? And an X for no. I've seen other judges do yes, no. Yep, right, right. So, you know, one of the things, and and granted, there is no policy of where the score room lead says to the judges, would you please just use this, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:37

Yeah, right. What's the easiest for you to read?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:43

It is differing for judge. Like some, yeah, you get used to the judge. Like some yes or no's are fairly simple to read, others that are like very scripty. It's like it's I don't know the difference between those without actually reading it.

unknown 1:04:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:58

So as long as there's just like a clear definition between yes and no, and that's only on elite summit sheets, right? For nose work three and down, like I've seen them do like little hash marks in like an upper corner as they're counting as the dog goes, like one, two, three. And then at the end, they'll write a big number at the bottom of like how many are actually found.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:21

If they miss that number, then it can get confusing. It's like, well, are you where you're supposed to count your hash marks?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

See, and I I do hash marks, and so in a three-hide search, I will have 111 written there. One, one, one. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yep. And and that's easier for me, right? Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:43

So if you do hash marks in the whole thing, like big hash marks, if you just mark one, two, three, yeah, I can see there's three hash marks.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:50

But a lot of judges will do both, and then we have to interpret which one's correct. And yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:57

So one of those other messes at as a judge. Just so that handlers understand why it can be very important. And I I used to tease, I can't remember who it was. She'd come to the start line and she'd go, Mary Beth with Scout. Just like that. Like, like and she didn't say her name, her number, but like what she was in the running order. She would just introduce herself. Mary Beth with Scout. We're going to search now. Right. And I'd always be like, oh my God, that was kind of dramatic. Yet it was information.

Score Room Realities And Paperwork

SPEAKER_03 1:06:30

Right? Because what am I going to do as soon as I and as soon as I hear that versus, you know, I hear we're team one. Then I go, Well, I know you're team one. I already got right. And then I'll just start writing. And I don't realize the little number up in the corner here says two.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:47

Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:48

It didn't say one. Versus somebody comes to start line and says, Mary Beth and my and this is Scout. I'm going to go, Oh, look, I have Jane Smith written here.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:57

We've got a problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:59

We should get a volunteer to announce everyone. Like we do. Like it'll be lucky.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:03

But just understand that like in medieval times. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

We have arrived.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:12

We could all have our own little horn. Like we have different tones for, right? So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:20

Well, I appreciate it as a judge. Not that I like as a competitor, as a trainer, I'm like, use whatever equipment works. But as a judge, if I'm sitting there and they have their name on the side of the harness, it's kind of nice. Because then I can look down and I go, oh yeah, that's goat. Okay, good. So not necessarily like as a trainer, there's a lot of dogs that hate harnesses. So like I wouldn't want you necessarily to put that on. But I'm going to tell you, as a judge, totally separate from all my other roles, it's kind of nice because then I can verify it as it comes in. The hardest part is like AKC all Americans. And then you get four in a row and then three golden retrievers.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:56

Oh but you wonder who you have to find any border collies that are all black and white, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:01

Or Aussies. And they're all got fuzzy butts. Judging for Asuka. Yeah. There you go. They're all yeah. Yeah. So the other thing that's challenging, this is again what we want to do is kind of tell you a little bit about behind the scenes, the secrets of trial success. And often what do we do? We talk about the snafuos.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:21

So that you can appreciate the secrets, right? So judging, one of the things that can be challenging is when we do those back-to-back searches, right? Yeah. And this is something that Myra's come and summer Davis, our other score room lead from Ountain Dogs often has come to know that when I'm judging, I want it collated. Like right. So in Bayfield, I have it collated. And then Alex is like right behind me trying to grab my collated sheets so she can score run. And I'm like, wait, this no, I I'm not ready. Yeah, you're the your organization is driving me crazy. Yeah. And it really wasn't a big deal, but I I get because I think I haven't judged a lot. Like an okay, here's a really good example. And I'm gonna pick on on Laura Bush a little bit. Love her dearly, right? Yeah, she's got her little her little pack. In her pack, she has a stamp that has her name as a stamp. As a signature. The first thing she does, yes, her signature is she stamps all of her sheets. So she doesn't have to sign any of them, right? Then she's got white out in her little pack. So if she checks the wrong box, she's already whiting it out and fixing it. Yeah. Me, I'm just sending it back. Just sending it back, right? Or that it gets sent back to your certainly. Oh my gosh. She goes, okay, what is this mess? And I'm like, oh, okay. So not only did I fail to mark finish, yeah, I have right, I had done it. So so when you get those sheets, sometimes as a handler and you look at them, you go, what happened here? A lot of that can be that. And then there is the one, you know, when we have a lot of FEOs or for exhibition only, I like to call it for entertainment only because that's typically what Zeke and I are. I identify, yeah. Yes. Are the challenges of when the judge actually when you actually make that mistake and you score the wrong information on the wrong sheet. It's a pain. And and the benefit is that we have such a great support team around the judge that as soon as we catch it, if you will, so there are those times when all of a sudden you're in that last gate getting ready to go into the start, and you see the score room come in, right? And it's taking an inordinate amount of time for them to just fix a sheet, right? Yeah, that could be part of what they're going over, which is okay, what do we know?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:57

Well, and it might not be one sheet because it happened four dogs past, and so then were some of them correct, some of them weren't, and then we have to go back, right? And maybe you have to look at video to figure out which dog was which had that in the past. Yeah, yeah, that was fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:11

Yeah. So, but we are trying our best to make sure that the and the beauty is then at the end of the day, in any CSW, you actually get your sheets.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:21

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:22

Right? You get your sheets. The beauty, I think, the biggest thing there for me is not just number of hides found in whatever my errors might be. The comments, and they can be kind of important sometimes, you know, and I'm so bad as a judge. I'm not one of those who can actually like coach and write a meaningful comment. So you're gonna get a lot of things like, well done, good job, nice try, right? Because I'm I want to be very supportive and very enthusiastic about every single dog that comes in there, every single person who's willing to walk across that line and say, find it and experience all of whatever it is, whether they love it or or it's trial pressure for them, whatever it is. I want them to know them doing it on that day is way better than sitting in front of the TV with their dog. They got up and they went and did something with their dog, right? Yep. But the challenge there is then, so just trying to figure out where to put that information. But uh, what I love on my score sheet is my time. So even if I get a timeout, right? I like or or false out. That's probably right. Even if at two I false out, or at all the way up, even at one. So say it once I get one, I get a false, but I called it in three seconds, and then when they put down zero, zero, zero, three. And I'm like, okay, that was fast. I didn't let enough time go by, did I? Yeah, right. So that can be so your sheets can be very, very, very helpful, especially for further training or for your coach and your your instructor to look at to say, okay, let's look at what are some of the consistencies that we're seeing, either in how you're using your time. And that was really my big push through elite, which was I wanted to increase my competency. Unfortunately, sometimes competency is measured by the number of heights found, right? Took me to elite champion to grapple with and be willing to accept, right, that it's not perfection that's measuring that, right? Because the field of how everybody did is some indication of what Odin did on that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It could also be what are the competency of the teams in your area. Know that, right? Yeah. Especially as we launch new things across the nation. But it's very helpful for me to look at that and go, oh my gosh, okay, I missed Laramie's a really good example. I missed two hides that in my head, and even on my video, which I wear a GoPro, I can see my dog had. He basically had being the kind of border collie he is, if he has zoomed across a couple of those hides, even if he backtracked and worked it, got caught up in the next one and then got caught. So it's an avalanche effect, right? So the dog, when rather than stick and tell me about the first one, he moved on to the second one. Rather than stick and tell me about that one, he flew into the other room. So I had those two hides that in my head, I said, You've got to come back here. And what did I do instead? I spent two minutes in this silly, small, very blank room. Yeah, there was no hide in there, and we went around in circles for two minutes, right? And then I left a minute something on my on the clock, called finish, right? And still had a minute and a half, which would have been adequate time to say, hey, buddy, yes, I'm going to lead you because I recognize that we had significant odor interest back at the start line that, right, that we didn't get to. I feel like you have found done a great job everywhere else. Let's go revisit this, right? Right? And go over. Um, so that's where I think that that information can be very helpful. And you know, those pieces are your judge is being supported by the judge's steward, right? Who is getting the right person to them and telling them who that team is. And then, secondly, your timer. So, and one of the things we try to do as a certifying official as well as the judge is place those two people in a sufficient spot so they can do their job, right? I can see the team, I can call time appropriately. My judge, uh, my team is going to hear my 30-second warning, I'm going to hear the finish. And if you've looked at a lot of these more recent, um, not even more recent, but elite searches and summit searches, if those searches are so large or so congested with stuff. So in the construction search in Oregon is a really good example, then we might have to have the judge repeat it. Right. So, yeah, you might have that lag of a millisecond while the judge repeats the finish, right? Yeah.

Timing, Finish Calls, And Flow

SPEAKER_03 1:16:10

And you know, gets it so that so the timer can stop the timer. The other piece that I really try to encourage my timers to do is if you miss the 30 second, give them the actual time you're looking at. Yeah. Even if it's oh shit, five seconds. Yeah. And it feels awful as a timer. It really doesn't go five seconds, right? And I had one when I was competing in Benson. I like to think she was just so enthralled with the adequate job that Zeke and I were doing that, and I had my own timer. I didn't have to rely on it, right? But the problem I had was it's the sailing one that counts back up. Yeah. Of course, I wasn't aware that it had already gotten to zero and was adding time for me. I looked down and went, ah, 10 seconds. I got plenty of time, right? Well, it wasn't 10, but and you hear the time and you go, I didn't get a 30-second warning. Yeah. 30-second warning is a courtesy. Yeah. And all I can think of is things that Jason Hang has said time and time again. Are you really going to turn your search over to your timer? Because if right? Yeah. And then since then, for instance, even with Lawton and Ellie, Ellie has really learned what 30 seconds means. Literally the toy. Yeah. Not she will like insatiably, I want that bumper. Yeah. Right. So we're having going into summit, we're going to have to really work on that because she's going to have to start utilizing that back end. But they've done so good, right? In the first whatever portion of their time allotted, that they very rarely need, quote unquote, their last 30 seconds, right? And then with that, also is the finish alert call.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:04

Or let's call it alert finish. Yeah. Right. And I just applaud that 100%. Because I did that a number of times with Digger, where it literally came right down to it and he was working it. And I would say alert finish. And there were times I said finish alert, meaning I didn't get I didn't get a penalty, but I didn't get that hide either. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you get into those situations, you know, what so here we'll go back to the score side. If I do a finish alert, I haven't lost any. Well, I have lost the points that I might have gotten if I called that hide correctly. And if that hide is correct. Here's a question if that's actually a false, I just saved my butt by calling finish first. Yes. Right? Because now the false doesn't count. Yeah. Right? Okay. Then what if it wasn't? Exactly. Then this is the hide.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:05

But that would be a full value. If I have alert in my head and I can say alert as the timer says time, now I've got the hide. I got the hide, and I'm going to lose a half a value for not saying my finish. So I'm still in the in the plus side. Right? So in those strategic pieces, I'm better if I focus on the alert than if I go, oh my God, time's elapsing. I gotta say finish. I gotta say finish. I got oh finish alert. Oh crap, I said that wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:44

Well, or as a judge, if you hear alert and time at the same time, if it's correct, do you favor the handler? If it's not correct, do they get a no? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:57

Oh. No, sorry, and you don't get a finished call either. So time goes to the runner as best we can, right? So yeah. And I think that, you know, what the interesting pieces there are, and especially okay, this can go back to that very complex search where I have my judge kind of remotely positioned away from my timer, right? Then as a judge, I might really have to like say, okay, did I relay quick enough? And that I think it would favor the handler, right? Yeah. And then if as a timer, right, can I and I and be vocal. The timer, I think that that's one of the things we need to make our timers as a judge. That's your crew. Make them feel very confident and comfortable so that you know, if if they prefer to show you the time and you write it down, fine. If they prefer to say it however you want to do it, but make sure that can you hear me? If I'm gonna repeat the handler's call, can they still hear it?

unknown 1:21:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:06

And part of the reason, guys, this comes to sometimes the certifying official will actually kind of, I don't want to say dictate it, but I do, especially in my elite and summit searches, because I might have a situation where I just can't have the crew, the timer, and or the videographer following the judge.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:26

Yeah, it's too tight.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:27

It's just gonna be too much, too many times you're you're interested, and and it can't be consistent for every team. That's I think one of the biggest pieces. If it's just the judge moving around, that is the judge, and they're just gonna be there, and you have to, you know, deal with that in terms of a training factor. Yeah. If I've got these other two pieces I threw in there, now I've got three people, right? And I've had a couple of those searches where that's their instinct. Their instinct is to one, they do want to watch the search, but the other instinct is to stick with their judge. So you really, as a certifying official, have to go in and give them permission and give the judge permission to basically tell his crew to stay stay still. Just I want you here at the start line. That's where I want you to stay. I don't want you to move. I know you're not going to get to see the search as much, but it's gonna be really important so that we give the dog the freedom to move forward and back and forward and back and in through these spaces, especially if I have a lot of transition spaces. That can if you get a chance to go look at that, it's the C Tech School in Salem. We all, every single one of us, want the opportunity to do a search in that building. Oh my word. It's cool. It was very, very cool. So

Leadville Plans And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_03 1:22:40

the construction was it wasn't just a wood shop. They actually had, I think, four or five sheds that are probably the size of the shed that I have in my backyard that we've been working on for three years. And they're they build it from scratch and they deconstruct it, redo it, right? Cool. Um, and these are 11th and 12th graders.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:00

And it's in just a big, a large, very large room. So you've got like everything in the way. You've got desks, you've got you know, the all the drills and the and the saws and all sorts of stuff between, right? And so it can be very cluttered. We might think of it as cluttered. So that can be, and then that becomes that whole issue as a handler. Do I go on leash or do I go off-leash? Yeah, all the choices, right? Yeah. So cool. All right, guys. Boy, we've really covered a whole bunch of stuff looking at behind the scenes the secrets of trial success. And a lot of this was really focused on the certifying official and for AKC, the judge, and how we look at the entire trial day and all the things that might, you know, affect that. But ultimately, our job as that certifying official is to set level appropriate hides so that we're measuring the skill set for that level, that we're also really providing our handlers with an opportunity to experience something in trial they can take to training so they can turn around and really build that skill set in trial, and then really building that balance of challenges, whether it's within one search for AKC or within multiple searches for NACSW. So hope you've enjoyed that. We'll get this out for you folks. I'm gonna find out is there anything on our agenda? So we have two trials coming up in Leadville, but really, really excited to have Alex come in um and do this first trial. You know, I didn't want her to have a Slack weekend. No, we're gonna be gave me everything five trials because each one counts as a separate trial in three days.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:43

Yeah, doing it. And they're quite full. I took a peek at the numbers. We are pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:47

Yes, yes, yeah. So so we're excited we're gonna be doing doing level two, some element trials for the level two. We've got a one and an NW1, NW2, and an NW3. And we're really happy to, at least so far today. Now, granted, there are some high winds forecasted in stuff in Leadville. Yeah, if you've heard about the fires, but as of today, the school district has assured us that they really want us to come. The community is the economics of any any kind of you know hit like this, it really really, you know, they're getting to a point where they have to, you know, lay off a wait staff and that sort of thing. They feel confident that the town is actually on its way back and really thriving and needs some support. So this is kind of one of ours where we just said, okay, let's just go do it. We are gonna do our best to keep everybody inside as much as I can, um, even for flow. I was telling Myra that I'm gonna try to do the flow so that we're coming in and out of exteriors through the building rather than walk around the building a mile where we, you know, on a nice summer day in Leadville, Colorado, you'd be happy to be out there at 60, 70 degrees enjoying the mountains. But now it's gonna be rather smoky. So we're gonna do our best to take care of that. So yeah. Uh we appreciate everybody listening. Hope your next trial is a you've looked you've gained some secrets, right? Uh, and you have an amazing trial success. Yeah. Anything else you want to say, Alex?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:15

No, nope. I think we're we're ready for this weekend. I think it'll be fun this weekend. And then I'm gonna play out with NW1 with Vespa the following weekend. So I'm going from mountaintop to sea level within one week.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:29

Okay, thanks everybody.

unknown 1:26:30

Yeah.