Ep. 111: Let's Talk Creative Sniffy Events

Speakers:

Dianna L. Santos and Lori Timberlake

As we play Scent Work, we work to develop skills for the dog, handler and team in our classes and training sessions. Especially for teams who are interested in competing, testing those skills with blind hides, time limits and other potential stressors is key. Traditionally, mock trials and Sniff N' Gos were the type of events that met this need. However, we can all agree the more creative the event, the more likely we are to participate!

In this episode, we speak with Lori Timberlake of Do Over Dog Training about the types of creative events she has offered for her clients and the many benefits of these types of events. Handlers, instructors and event hosts alike will find inspiration from listening to this episode.

Are you looking to offer some creative search events in your program? Contact Lori here to potentially schedule a phone or Zoom consultation. She wants to help you offer more creative sniffing opportunities for your clients!

Lori is an amazing Nose Work instructor, trial official, trial host and competitor. Scent Work University has been incredibly fortunate to host Lori for a variety of online courses, seminars, webinars and eBooks.

Check out a few of her offerings here:

TRAINING AND TRIALING IN NOSE WORK

All-Level Trial Prep Webinar

All-Level NACSW Trial Prep Course

Covering the Search Area Webinar

Elevated Hides for the Vertically Challenged Webinar

NACSW: Odor Recognition Prep (ORT) Course

NACSW: NW1 Trial Prep Course

NACSW: NW2 Trial Prep Course

NACSW: NW3 Trial Prep Course

Skill Building for Elevated Hides Course

Start Lines: From Beginning to End Webinar

BEING A TRIAL HOST

Hosting Scent Work Trials eBook

How to Run Mock ORT & Trials Webinar

BEING A NOSE WORK INSTRUCTOR

Setting Up Your Training Space for All Dogs Seminar Module

PET DOG U OFFERINGS

We are also incredibly fortunate to host Lori for a series of online courses through our sister site, Pet Dog U:

Confidence Building Course

Intro to Canine Parkour Course

Intermediate Canine Parkour I Course

TRANSCRIPT

Dianna L. Santos (00:00):
Welcome to the All About Scent Work Podcast. In this podcast we talk about all things Scent Work, that includes training tips, a behind scenes look of what your instructor or trial official is going through and much more. In this episode, I have the distinct privilege of speaking with Lori Timberlake of Do Over Dog Training about creative sniffy events. So before we start diving into the episode itself, let me do a very quick introduction of myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I'm the Owner and Lead Instructor of Scent Work University. This is an online dog training platform that's designed to help you achieve your Scent Work training goals. So regardless of where you are in your sniffing journey, we likely have a training solution for you. So that means whether you're just getting started, you're looking to develop some more advanced skills, you're interested in trialing or you're even trialing in the upper levels between our online courses, seminars, webinars, and eBooks, we'd probably be able to help you and your dog out. So if you haven't already checked out Scent Work University, I strongly encourage you to do so. But now that you know a little bit more about me, let's dive nto the episode itself.

(01:06):
So once again in this episode I have the distinct privilege of speaking with Lori Timberlake of Do Over Dog Training. Lori is also one of the instructors who shares her expertise on Scent Work University, which we are thrilled with. So without further ado, let's dive into that conversation. So we are delighted to be talking and speaking with Lori Timberlake of Do Over Dog Training. So nice for you people to all listen to someone else other than me. And Lori has such wonderful experience as far as hosting a variety of different events. She's also a trial official. She is an instructor, she's accomplished competitor. This woman is superwoman. As far as Scent Work is concerned, I don't know how she gets it all done, but one of the things that she wanted to speak to us about is this idea of what we can do as instructors as far as allowing our students to build skills. And one of the things that she had brought up was this idea of some creative events. So I'm sure your interest is peaked as is mine. So Ms. Lori, how is it that you are helping your students develop all the variety of skills they need to be successful in Scent Work, so many different skills that they need with what is it you're offering in your program or how you're creating some of these creative events that they would be able to attend in order to get the skills that they need?

Lori Timberlake (02:27):
Weekly classes are so important. We need our students to come to class, whether it's online or in person. You get the skills in class, that's your training. That's when you know where the hides are. That's when you can play around with different things. What happens if I use this length leash and what happens if I do this or what happens if I go? Oddly, all those things happen in our weekly classes, but we still need to do some blind hides. We still need to have a little bit of that nervousness we get at a trial and it's really hard to mimic those types of things in our everyday classes, our weekly classes, and we can do Sniff and Gos and that's definitely one of the things I want to talk about. Sniff and Gos mock trials. But I like to add a little fun and a little twist to some of these events.

(03:16):
So it's not just classes are a mock trial, right? It's adding some fun, it's adding some excitement for the handlers, adding a little bit of a competitive edge sometimes so that they feel that little bit of nervousness and it just gives 'em something to do, especially in the off season. I've got my air quotes up when there's not a lot of trials going on. These are nice little events to fit in when students aren't going to trials every other weekend. It's just something to fill in the time to make sure they're still practicing and getting that little bit of nervousness that I think we all need sometimes.

Dianna L. Santos (03:50):
And so for that nervousness, how is it that you're tying it into some of these events? I'm sure people are like, wait a minute, you want me to pay you money so I could be nervous?

Lori Timberlake (03:58):
Yeah, so lemme talk about a few of the events and how we add a little bit of really, I think adding the competition aspect to it helps with putting some pressure on. So maybe nervousness isn't the word. I mean sometimes it isn't nerve, but the pressure, we don't always have pressure if it's just a class. So we just finished the summer, we did a five week Nose Work league and basically it was just five weeks of travel classes, but we put a little edge to it where we put them all on teams. Some people created their own team, some we put them on teams if they didn't have a full team every week we had a theme and they weren't just regular hides. Think of the first week was close encounters. So the theme was all of the hides were close hides, either two hides close together or threshold hides and it was timed and there were prizes involved.

(04:55):
Anytime there's a prize involved, it adds a little pressure. And then even though the majority were my students, a few people came from other areas, students competing with each other, made it, gave it all a little bit of an edge. And we just did the same thing every week. And I had my other instructors help out so that it wasn't me for all five weeks and every week again, we had a theme. And then at the very end we had our awards ceremony, prizes and all that good stuff. So they had their bragging rights to make it fun. Some of the teams, they all had team names, some made team shirts and it's a bonding event but still a competitive event. And you could take something simple if you're going to offer travel classes anyways, why not add a little bit more fun and twist to it to add some of that pressure, if that makes sense.

Dianna L. Santos (05:49):
That sounds like a whole lot of fun and definitely a way to spice up the, okay guys, we have to now apply our skills and field trip searches, which is so incredibly important. So for this league, was it level dependent or were you adjusting searches for different levels? Was it open to all levels? How did that work?

Lori Timberlake (06:07):
I'm glad you asked that because I was going to go into that a little bit because then of course if we offered it to all levels, and that does make it a little unfair for the more novice teams, although I will say the way the teams were mixed, it wasn't like all the Elite team, the Elite dogs won. So it was a little bit of a mix and you never knew every week who was going to do the best because there were different challenges and some teams did better and blah blah blah. But we did have, and I commend these students, they're not all even my students, but we had a team, one team of four where they were all extremely, extremely, extremely green, very new, and we didn't really adjust the hides for them, but I did talk to them all and said, just being here, just being in a new, and they were totally cool with, let's see what happens.

(06:59):
They didn't care if they knew they weren't going to get any prizes, they just wanted to start exposing their dogs to some offsite classes and different types of challenges. And I've told some of them, if you just want to know where they are, that will make you FEO this week and your score just won't count. They were allowed to drop scores and there's all of that scoring stuff is a whole separate conversation. But if they just didn't care and they, they could get a zero, they just wanted to play. And a lot of them that were new then got to meet a lot of the other students and they had a lot of conversations and learned a lot that way. So even though some of those teams didn't do as good, they learned so much and just loved it and can't wait for the next one. So I thought about for the next one, doing it varying the hides or breaking it down by level or things like that. But the first one we did was just all level and everyone ran the same hides,

Dianna L. Santos (07:57):
Very, very fun. And for instructors who were listening to us, we were like, okay, that sounds really interesting. Now you're inspiring me Lori, I'm thinking about doing this kind of thing. So how many overall teams did you have? Were all the teams members of four, and are there little spinoff things you'd be able to do with this where their strategy are they, and again, I know we're probably getting to minutiae here, but for scoring as far as how they're getting their scores. Is it for the individual dog handlers or for the whole team? Are there some other details that you can give for instructors who are like, I think I may want to try this?

Lori Timberlake (08:36):
Absolutely. And I will say, this was the first time I've ever done anything like this and it went well, but certainly lots of room for massaging things and making it better. Next time I'll talk about scoring and how we did it for summer a little bit. It was open to 10 teams, 10 teams of four. We ended up getting six teams. So we had 24 regular people involved, handlers and dogs. And then we also had an alternate list because there were a lot of people that wanted to play but couldn't commit to at least three weeks. So I had an alternate list and I put this all in a Google group and I also made a Facebook group. And so they could, any week that someone on the team couldn't search, they could look for an alternate. And then I had a list of alternates in their contact info in a Google sheet that they could all see.

(09:28):
So we had a few alternates that ran almost every week. I even gave a prize for most dedicated alternate, and he's all on board. He's like, I'm definitely doing the winter league. He's like, that was awesome. I think maybe he just didn't know what it was before it happened, but he really enjoyed it. So yeah, so the way we did it, it was a five week league and the teams were required to do four weeks. If they could do all five, they could pay extra to come the fifth week. But either way, for all teams, their lowest score was dropped. So if they came five weeks, lowest score was dropped as a team. If they only made it four weeks, then that bi week just didn't count. So it didn't count against anybody if they missed one of the five weeks. And for scoring, I did team scores.

(10:16):
So we gave away prizes based on the team, but I also did some individual for second and third place for just individual handler and dog teams. So I did one big spreadsheet and then I broke it down every week into teams and then dropping the lowest score. Also, each team, I'm sorry if I'm rambling now, we could also drop the lowest score each week. So if there's four people on the team, the lowest score dropped. So if they couldn't find an alternate and they just ran with three, then they were fine. Or if they had an alternate, no matter what, the lowest one was dropped. So we did team scores and dog scores and that was pretty much the way we did. And we also gave away some fun prizes like furthest traveled. I had someone that came from over an hour away to do the league. What were some of the other fun ones? Team that caused me the least amount of administrative work. Cause there's a lot of emails, it was a lot of work involved. I was very happy that my Instructor stepped in so that I didn't have to do every single week. I didn't have to judge every week by myself, but I still had to do all the administrative stuff by myself. So it is a little bit of work to get this all going, but definitely worth it and super fun.

Dianna L. Santos (11:30):
That is very, very, very fun and so creative. One of the things I wanted to ask you was a couple things. One is what were you noticing as far as how their skills were progressing along the different weeks and how you were able to, or potentially for the winter one, what types of puzzles that you're going to choose? Would it be because of what you know that your students may potentially need, the patterns that you're noticing as you're officiating various trials? How are you going to design the winter one, if you know at all?

Lori Timberlake (12:08):
Yeah, I definitely try to think of things we see in trials, kind of going over all of the levels. So the first week when I picked that close encounters, I know for the Elite Summit teams, close hides are an issue, but threshold hides are something to work for everyone. So I think we had three searches that week and gosh, it's so long ago now. It was like six weeks ago, how can I remember that far? But anyways, yeah, so it was a little bit of each. Then we did a hundred container challenge with lots of distractors. So we know everybody's all concerned about the NW2 distractors changing, so we just did 101 of my instructors did it, so I think it was like 90 something containers and just all kinds of food distractors. So that really helped a lot of teams. They were proud of themselves for the ones that they didn't hit on.

(13:00):
Food and time management, all those kinds of things. So yeah, definitely things we see in trial. We did one week all vehicle searches. One of my instructors did that and he did some definite puzzles. We actually talked about it yesterday and he said, ah, next time I won't make that one as hard. So he made that one pretty difficult. But one thing we learned from that, and we did debriefs also in our Facebook group after each week so the students could see what happened. And for a lot of the teams, it depended on airflow and the wind at the time that they searched and some of the teams did excellent, found all of them easily. And then when wind kicked up, it was swirling everywhere and teams had harder time. So being able to see that and learned from that and not just walking away saying, oh, we did terrible in that search, but then to then read a debrief and say, oh gosh, this is what was happening with those hides and that's why that happened and now I know what I need to work on.

(13:56):
I think was a real good learning experience. And then we did speed searches, which really helps again, if you're doing element trials and you got those short times and I think it just helps motivate our dogs, get 'em moving faster. I like even some of our slower dogs, we could always speed 'em up just a little bit. And those speed searches add lots of pressure too. I can say from experience, that was the week that I got to run a dog and it was super fun, but a lot of pressure on those speed searches. And then the last week we did that search was amazing and it was just one big giant search that was a big maze with all these dead ends. So it was a lot of time management covering your search area, different puzzles, I had a suspended hide in there, I had inaccessible.

(14:38):
So it was a little bit of everything and that was a week. So talking about the different levels where if you wanted more time, you could ask for more time and just lose a little bit of points. So it's strategizing, I could find this many more hides, but I might lose a few points. So you have to think about if you think about Elite and Summit where sometimes you need a little bit of strategy, but then for the newer students that just needed more time to get through that they could ask for more time just to let their dogs search a little bit more. So we did try to vary things and I will again think of all of these things for our winter one, what are we seeing in trials? I mean, we'll definitely do something containers again, definitely something with food distractors. We might even though it is winter and buffalo do some exterior searches because if you're going to enter a trial in the winter, it's going to be cold out there. So we got to get our dogs used to that. So yeah, I have a few ideas, but it is going to be based on things we're seeing in trials for sure.

Dianna L. Santos (15:33):
That is just amazing. This is such a brilliant idea. So I just hope that everyone who's listening can really appreciate just the well-rounded approach to this very creative league that you're talking about. I love the fact that first of all, it's all about learning for the participants, but it's learning in all these various different ways where obviously they're doing the learning by doing the searches, but also having it in a team set up is that that's a different type of learning than having the debriefs in the Facebook group where they're able to again, walk away with more information about what potentially was happening in the searches is just so incredibly important. Having the ability to really lean into the idea that you can use a little bit of strategy to promote people to be strategic with their actual searches, to highlight what the dog may need to do as far as the skillset, but then also really with all of this, it sounds as though the handlers really do need to step up as far as what they need to do to develop their own skillset as well. Really well done, Laurie. This is very exciting

Lori Timberlake (16:42):
And I just want to briefly go back to, because I made myself a little list here so I wouldn't forget things. And I think sniffing goes and mock trials and run throughs, they're all important and we do those occasionally also, but you pretty much, you go and it's just like a mini trial. You go, you get the hides or you don't, sometimes there's some coaching, sometimes there's not. It just depends on who's running them and everything that's going on. But I think a lot of times I don't like doing Sniff and Gos or mock trials close to a trial because what if the student doesn't do good and they're like, well, I just suck. I should just drop the trial. I should just not do this. I'm not going to pass anyways. Where I think with this league it was more learning and not just a pass or fail type thing, even though it was a mock. So as much as those are important, and I like doing those too, I like these kind of more fun events that you come away with a lot more learning, I think.

Dianna L. Santos (17:43):
Yes, and I think that that is a fantastic thing for people to really underline, particularly for instructors, is that all of these different avenues that you can take your clients down are all valuable in their own way. But if we can, like what Lori just brilliantly said, if we can find ways to help them really learn and insulate them from having their confidence chipped away at, particularly if it's right before a trial or preventing them from falling into all the common pitfalls that we see where they do something, they get a little unsure. So then they start going down this path where they just keep getting more and more unsure and then they start having more and more issues, then you're trying to build them back up again and it's just kind of a mess. Whereas this can allow them to again, still develop skills for them and their dogs and they're doing all that learning. And it's still in a way where again, as you mentioned, you're still injecting a little bit of pressure, you're injecting a little bit of that competition stress as it were, but in a more protective way. I think it's really, really, really valuable. So what's some of the feedback that you got back from your clients?

Lori Timberlake (18:55):
Oh my gosh, they love it so much. They cannot wait for details for the Winter League, which I've told them I do not have time to work on right now, but it's coming. We will have one. We just got to find some more indoor locations. I don't think anyone contacted me and said, well, that wasn't fun. Everybody loved it. My husband made fun of me because the last week we have a brewery restaurant right across the hall from our current training center. And so we decided just to go over there and have drinks and appetizers and go over the awards. And I was calling it the awards banquet. My husband's like, that is not an awards banquet. But everyone had so much fun because the patio was dog friendly, they could bring their dogs. I mean, we had 15 dogs on the patio, all behaving. I mean, it just was such a nice way to get my students together that maybe don't see each other either on a regular basis because they take different classes at different times. And I mean think they can certainly tell me if I am incorrect, but I think everyone had a great time, they loved it and they can't wait to do it again.

Dianna L. Santos (20:03):
That's really great. Well, congratulations on doing such a wonderful event. It's very creative. And again, it's also that aspect of that social aspect of allowing everyone to get together and to learn from each other, to build this little bit of a community. Having the team dynamic is really interesting as well. And the fact that you were mentioning for the newer teams that they can also be around more experienced teams. And I honestly personally think that having experienced teams around more novice teams helps too because it helps them see, oh, remember what that was like. And also be impressed when those newer teams, they don't have all the preconceived notions that we may have when we're more experienced and they're also more likely to be excited and to be really into it. Whereas the longer that you're in something, it's just like, oh, well, we're just doing Scent Work. Whereas someone who's newer is like, oh, this is the best and that could be really contagious. So I think all of this just is amazing all the way across the board.

Lori Timberlake (21:04):
A lot of fun.

Dianna L. Santos (21:06):
So were there any other types? I know that you're just doing a million different things all at once. Obviously you've done this league, which was a huge undertaking, but very, very successful. Were there other types of events that you've put together for your clients and as far as trying to help them develop the skills that they and their dogs need?

Lori Timberlake (21:23):
Yeah, I have a couple more I'll talk about and then I'll stop. I can go on forever. But another really fun one that we got a lot of positive feedback was our mystery at the museum. We've done two at a local museum and then we did another just at my training center in the mall, we called it Mystery at the Mall. So I'll talk about those a little bit. They were fun. I found this museum, it is supposedly really haunted and we did not encounter anything, thank goodness. But they've been on all the ghost shows and stuff like that, and it's a really nice site. They love dogs. The first time I went to meet with them, I was greeted by three beagles at the front door. So she has dogs that are there occasionally really, really nice place, wonderful people to work with, but can't have a trial there.

(22:16):
It's just too small. Their parking is either street parking or a lot when they do big events, they use a lot and they shuttle people down, but they had a little parking lot for four to six cars. And I'm like, you know what? We can make this work. So I started trying to get creative and I'm like, what if we do, and I've done it different ways, but we'll do it as a team event again because we can get four cars in. I also wanted to do individual prizes and things at the end. So each dog got their own score, but then we put the team scores together. And so the first time we did it, I kind of bought one of those escape room type puzzles online that kind of spelled everything out for you because I didn't know exactly what I was doing.

(23:00):
So I used their little game and cut out and laminated all their stuff. And then we had little plastic flashcards that I had, little cards I had laminated that my judge would give out too. So they all got, as they found their hide, sometimes the hide itself was a clue. Sometimes if they found a certain hide, they were given a card with a clue on it. So we gave them a certain amount of time. Each team got to run all of the searches. I think it was four searches, and they did 'em one after another after another. And then they would go back to their vehicle and then they were given kind of a story and then they could put all their clues together because not every dog got every hide. So they would get all their clues together and try to solve the puzzle.

(23:41):
And if they solved the puzzle, the team got an extra prize. So that was really fun. So then I could bring in one team an hour so those four cars would leave and I could get four more in. So it was a really neat way to use that space. And it was still about as long as if we had had 40 people there all day running all the hides, and instead we just had 'em go in and out and as it turns out, we had to cancel it the second time due to covid. So then when we came back, it got up again. They were just opening up. So it worked out great that we only had four people there at a time. So that was really nice. And then when I did it at the mall every high, so I made it a big giant maze and it was Halloween decorated and I had the lights dimmed a little bit, which I wanted it to be safe, but also a little spooky.

(24:29):
And a lot of people said that that threw them off. And the creepy music I was playing threw them off, which you might have, there's been searches even at a NACSW trial, we want things to be safe, but sometimes there's a lighting issue or whatever. So it's important. How often do we think to practice in a dimmer space? It's not something I typically think to do. And having creepy music playing. So with that one, each hide the first letter of each hide made up a word and they could get a prize that way. So that wasn't really a team event that was just all singles. And then we did another one at the haunted museum teams again, where it was a story. So none of the hides had anything to do with the story. So that threw them all off as they were searching, they were trying to remember what they found in the name of the object, which was causing a little multitasking.

(25:25):
And then when they got done, all of those hides they found had nothing to do with the story. So I was still playing with their mind a little bit. And then with all of these, I think of my high placement where I'm not just placing hides around a building, okay, we're going to do close hides here. I want one inaccessible, I want some easy hides for the lower level teams. Can we get one high hide in somewhere? Is it safe to do that here? So I'm trying to think of all the things they would see in a trial and put them in these searches too. So it's learning, it's a little bit of stress, it's a little bit of competition. And then the fun mind games I play with, the story had nothing to do with the heights.

Dianna L. Santos (26:09):
Oh my goodness, you have so much fun torturing your students.

(26:13):
This is such a great idea. And I've actually seen the posts about the mystery searches. I'm like, that sounds very interesting. So the fact that, again, you're taking these opportunities of the museum or the mall and you're finding these very creative ways to again, help your clients, they're still developing the skills that they need. They're, again, having these interesting dynamics of searching in dim lights or hearing this booking music or having the need to multitask. All of that is very important as far as, again, if you're trying to prepare for trial, but it's making this thing that can seem very, oh, I'm going back to Scent class again, and we're just going to go around, we're going to find hides and very ho hum. Like, oh, who cares? You've done it once, you've done it a million times. But this is making it so that it's fresh and new and exciting and fun and approaching it from another direction.

(27:11):
So again, I think this is another fantastic example of something that instructors can be taking as a point of inspiration as far as what you could be doing to make your programs a little bit more exciting and fun for your clients. And ensuring, again, safety of course, we're still doing mindful hide placement, everything else, but it can allow your students to experience this learning in a different way so it doesn't feel like learning. It just feels fun, but, and their dogs are still learning a whole ton. That is amazing. I'm just blown away by this creativity

Lori Timberlake (27:48):
And I'm not a creative person, so I don't know how these things pop in my mind, but they have been very fun.

Dianna L. Santos (27:54):
Well, I would argue that you are rather creative miss, because I wouldn't have been able to think of these things. Were there any other events that you wanted to talk about

Lori Timberlake (28:05):
And then some of the regular ones that I know a lot of people do, but I just want to talk about my fox when I do them. Like the hunter container challenge. I know a lot of clubs do those. A lot of businesses do them, and I've done a couple of them, but again, I don't just put out random hides. Like the last one I did, which was a bit ago, I had two or three rows of containers that were completely blank. So what does your dog look like when you're going up and down all those rows where there is nothing? And then I would do clumps of three close hides or something like that. So even when I'm doing something like a hundred container challenge, I still want to put some thought into the hides and how I'm doing 'em and not just randomly, okay, I'll just put out five hides and spread 'em out throughout my hunter container challenge.

(28:57):
So that's something else I do. I'm working on, I have not done this yet, and if anybody else has, feel free to send me any notes you have. But I want to do a hundred chair challenge, and I may do a hundred containers on chairs because containers on chairs seem to be something that a lot of dogs have problems with. I mean, we do 'em all the time in class anyways, but we don't usually do a hundred. So again, we'll probably add the high value distractors in and things like that. I know you were very involved with the USCSS and I host some USCSS trials, but a lot of times for holidays I like to do, you can do, do two runs to, I dunno what you want to call it, but I would do two games. And again, I would make the games fun, but also something that I'm like, gosh, we really need to work on. I like doing Double Dog Dare a lot with a lot of proofing and we can make it fun for Halloween and everyone has to pick a card where they're a monster or something like that. It's fun, but still learning and still competition. And with USCSS, it's nice, then they get a ribbon at the end. So that's another fun thing that I've done. And yeah, I mean anything we could do to make it creative. I mean, sniffing goes and mock trial still very, very, very important. And I will still continue to do those, but anytime you can add a twist and make it a little bit more fun, I think the students really appreciate that and learn a lot from it.

Dianna L. Santos (30:29):
And I cannot agree with you more. And I think it also for our fellow colleagues, if you are feeling is like, I don't know what to do with these students anymore. I love them, they've been with me forever, but I've run out of ideas. I don't know how to set up any more searches or learning for them. I'm kind of stuck is that these are the kinds of creative ideas that can really inspire you to approach this from a different angle and can reignite your love for this because that can absolutely be part of burnout of, I don't know what else to do. I feel as though I'm kind of just going in circles. I don't know if my students are progressing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But doing these kinds of really creative approaches with these different events that Lori is talking about and approaching it from different angles so that your clients are doing all this learning and you can then see where the strengths and the weaknesses are.

(31:28):
So then you can potentially build off of that inside of your program where potentially you're doing something such as the hundred container Challenge as an example. And you notice the issue where the dogs are going down one row of blank containers and they're suddenly looking back at their person or their person is panicking if they haven't found anything yet. Well maybe now we need to work a little bit more on blanks as an example. But having all of this as a way of really evaluating where is everyone now? What are they doing really, really well with? What needs a little bit of work? Where are the holes? And then how can I offer maybe additional classes, workshops, how can I weave all that into future offerings? So I continue to help them progress. So there's so many good applications and again, it makes it feel as though it's not alright, we're going into class, we're having lecture times, so boring.

(32:24):
This is so incredibly creative and fun. And again, those incentives are very important for those human clients, the ones that are paying for the classes and driving the dogs to class. So those prizes are really helpful, but it also helps them feel better. It helps 'em feel as though they are actually doing well. And the team dynamic I really like with a lot of these things is they can learn from each other and they can support each other. And again, the thing that you were talking about with your award banquet in the brewery, I think that's great where everyone can kind of celebrate together and have that moment to really just be like, look at all these dogs. Even if everything else, just forget everything else. We have 15 dogs on this patio and everyone's behaving themselves. I mean, that's amazing in and of itself, right?

Lori Timberlake (33:11):
Yeah, absolutely.

Dianna L. Santos (33:13):
I hope that everyone can really appreciate just how great these ideas are and that you get some inspiration of what you could do with your own program. But if you are sitting there, they sound great, but I don't really know how to do it in my program or well, Lori may not think that she's creative, but I'm really not creative. Is there a way that people would be able to contact you and order fellow colleagues to see, maybe pick your brain, maybe have a session with you to figure out how they may be able to incorporate something in their own program?

Lori Timberlake (33:43):
Yeah, absolutely. I'm open to doing some zooms or phone calls or whatever people need, but I like to help people grow their programs and I am so excited about Scent Work and I want other people to be also. So anything I can do to help, I would love to do that.

Dianna L. Santos (34:01):
Perfect. So what we'll do is when we post the podcast episode, we'll make certain that we have all of Lori's contact information on the actual post itself to be able to reach out to her directly. Again, if you want to schedule a Zoom consultation with her, if you wanted to schedule a telephone consultation with her so that you can try to figure out as an Instructor, how can I do these things? And again, this could be helpful for instructors of all experience levels, whether or not you're just getting started, you're just thinking about adding set into your program, or if you've been doing this for a long time, this can really be an excellent way of injecting some joy and enthusiasm and some excitement into your program. Again, it can actually bring some more people into your program and the more dogs sniffing the better. Was there anything else that you wanted to share, Lori?

Lori Timberlake (34:46):
No, I think that's good.

Dianna L. Santos (34:48):
Perfect. Well, thank you so very much and thank you for everything that you do for Scent. Work. My God, I don't know how you get all this done, but we are much better off because of it. Please make sure that you're taking care of you and your dogs because it's amazing what you do. And I just want to thank you on behalf of everyone, the community that it's amazing what you give back to the community. So thank you, Lori. You're amazing.

Lori Timberlake (35:10):
Thank you, Dianna, you are amazing.

Dianna L. Santos (35:14):
How creative are those events? I'm telling you, Lori is amazing as far as putting together these ideas. They're so creative, they're so fun, and I'm just very, very thankful that Lori has shared some of these ideas with us on this episode, hoping that everyone can get some inspiration themselves, whether you're practicing on your own, maybe you're an Instructor, maybe you're even a host. I think that doing this type of thing, as far as thinking outside of the box, no pun intended, but having these kinds of creative events can really be helpful. And again, Lori is putting the focus on all the right places. The dogs, the handlers, and the teams are still developing really important skills. They're still growing as individuals and as teams, but they are having fun and that's what this is supposed to be. I always am in awe of Lori. I don't know how she gets all this stuff done.

(36:14):
She is going in a million different directions at once, and she gives back so much to the SEP community. So I want to give a wholehearted thank you to Lori. She's an outstanding Instructor. She's a fantastic trial and event host. She is a wonderful trial official. She's one of the instructors through S University, and she's also just a really nice person. So thank you, thank you, thank you to Lori for all that you do. You're incredible. I don't know how you do it, but I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. We definitely would love to hear from you. We'll be posting this up on our website as well as our social media to be able to write any comments or questions that you have there. So again, thank you guys so very much for listening. We look forward to offering more sniffy goodness through the podcast. Please give your pups a cookie for me. Have some sniffy fun, happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.