Ep. 119: Importance of Flexibility

It is all too common to find ourselves making statements such as, "At this stage, I should do THIS" or "After this STEP, I follow this STEP and then that STEP." What's the issue you may ask? Well, this line of thinking is rather concrete. Individual needs of the dog, handler or team, unique factors for that given search, environment or training session or trialing search are not taken into account.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of being more flexible both when we are training and trialing in Scent Work and how challenging being flexible can be!

Speaker:
Dianna L. Santos

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 include train tips, but behind scenes look at what your instructor or trial official is going through and much more. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the importance of being flexible. 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 where you provide online courses, seminars, webinars, and eBooks, all centered around Scent Work. So regardless of where you are in your sniffing journey, maybe you're just getting started, you're looking to develop some more advanced skills. You're interested in trialing or even competing at the upper levels, we likely have a training solution for you. I should know a little bit more about me. Let's dive into the episode itself.

(00:53):
So in this episode I wanted to talk about the importance of us being flexible when we are training and trialing in Scent Work and really we can apply this to all dog training, but the reason I wanted to talk about it specifically for Scent Work is that it's very easy for this activity for us to kind of develop cement boots and become very fixated about a particular thing, whether it's how we're approaching a particular exercise or how we're doing something, how we're viewing a situation, how we're assessing our dogs or ourselves, the decisions that we should make in any given moment. It be very easy to just dig your heels in, be like, Nope, this is the way that we do it and I'm here to advocate. Maybe we try something a little bit different completely recognizing that that is difficult to do and it is challenging.

(01:49):
It goes against our nature as people and it's also, it's a trial and error type of thing where the choices available to you to make will likely increase and change the longer that you're doing Scent Work and the types of dogs that you're doing Scent Work with. So we try to help this make a little bit more sense. Let's say that you are starting a dog brand new in Scent Work, and let's say that you're doing that through Scent, Work University through my Introduction to Scent Work course. Fantastic, delighted to have you. In this course, there's a bunch of prerecorded content, there's different lessons, and in every lesson there's a bunch of different exercises that people are tasked to tackle with their dogs and there's explanations about why and what we're looking for and all that good jazz. However, what I try to stress, and not just that course, but any type of training materials that I put forth is that this is really more like a guideline.

(02:50):
It's not supposed to be this is what you do, step one, step two, step three, step four, and then you're done. It's more so supposed to be you're going to tackle this exercise and we're then going to see how did your dog do? And depending on what your dog did, then maybe we're going to try this other exercise, but we may want to do something else instead. So lemme give you an example. Let's say that for this Introduction to Scent Work course we have, one of our exercises is for the dog to see a straight row of open containers because we start dogs with food, so they're hunting for primary, and if the dog were to come up and they were to find their hides and inside of these open containers, great. They didn't show any fear over the boxes. They weren't checking in with their person every two seconds.

(03:43):
They were able to work away from the person because the handler's going to be staying at the start line. There's a lot that we can assess from a seemingly pretty simple, straightforward exercise size. However, there's lots of ways that we can then build off of that very same setup. We could then potentially change where the hides are from that first run as an example. We can now move them to different open boxes containers for the second run, so now we're making those other boxes productive. I can also change the total number of hides, so maybe we had three hides, so there were three food hides out that very first time. Maybe I can increase it to four or I can decrease it to two or even one, and why would I be doing that? If the dog is solid on what they're doing, then what new skill am I working on or what am I assessing?

(04:42):
How am I stretching the dog? That's the way that we want to try to think about this, but it's even more important if I happen to notice during that very first run that maybe the dog was able to find the first hide, which is like box one and the second hide, which is in box three of a row of five containers, and then they just gave up and then they just came back to me, but they didn't want to investigate box five. Why did that happen and what can I now do going forward to promote the dog? To do that, could I potentially offer a single hide search where I'm incrementally getting those boxes farther and farther away from the start line? Maybe I do need to move in as a handler away from the start line to support my dog, to help them feel comfortable, but then I can make that as a mental note in my mind, I need to try to build up my dog's confidence that they don't need me right there.

(05:42):
That should be a goal, and there are some dogs where to them they're being being able to work away from me maybe three feet and that's a lot. Whereas other dogs, it could be 30 feet, a hundred feet and they're like, I'm good. Neither is better or worse depending on the individual dog and depending on their personality, where they are in their journey, what our goals are. What I hope you're kind of seeing with what I'm trying to explain here is that even for our online course, which is prerecorded, everyone is seeing the same material. They're encouraged to view it through the lens of their dog and then to make modifications and adjustments and to also view these exercises as more than just a one and done. It should be a, here's the value of this exercise as is. How can you now build on and change this going forward from now until the end of time when you're doing a Scent Work with your dog?

(06:49):
That's the power of being flexible because if instead we have a very strict, we do this, then that, then this other thing and then we're done, you're missing out on a lot. First of all, how do you know for certain the dog actually understands after you've done step one, step two, step three, what happens if the dog was indeed confused? If you only have the option of step one, step two, step three, well maybe you just repeat step one a bunch of times and hope for the best, but maybe there's some in-between thing in between step one and step two that would actually help maybe as you're going along, your dog does okay with step one, step two, step three, but then you find out that your dog is struggling or they seem confused, or maybe you need to work on something for yourself as a handler, but at that point maybe you're farther along, so now you're at step 50, whatever, so things are really super challenging for you and your dog, but now you as a handler have to work on some stuff for yourself.

(08:00):
Does it make sense in that situation to have your dog in a position where they're trying to tackle a really super complicated search? Well, we're kind of floundering and flailing around at the end of the long line trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing. I would argue probably not. This is where flexibility comes into play of instead of just saying, well, we are going for an NW3, we're going for an AKC Master, we're going for enter in title number, therefore we must do blah, blah, blah. If instead we're able to say, these are the skills that my dog has right now, these are their strengths, these are their weaknesses, this is what we're trying to work on. These are the skills that I have right now. These are my strengths, these are my weaknesses, and this is what I'm working on right now.

(08:53):
How can I best accomplish that? And then once I tackle it in whichever way I thought would be a good idea to do that, what was the result and do I need to make any adjustments and if I do, what are those going to be and how is that going to help us further progress? I hope that makes sense because with Scent Work, there is a lot of opportunity for us to get very sticky, to have those cement boots on and just like, no, this is the way I must do it, but I'm telling you that at some point there's going to be a dog. There's going to be for instructors, there'll be a dog, there'll be a handler, or there'll be a team that what you've done forever in a day doesn't seem to work for whatever reason. It's just not gelling, and if you're not an instructor and you are a handler, maybe you're competitor, you're just a dog owner who loves that work, there will come a time where you have a dog or even your current dog.

(09:56):
It just doesn't seem to be meshing what you're trying to do. We have to then make an adjustment and if we're just looking at this as though it's a manual as though it's a recipe, you put in a pinch of search and a pinch of hunt and a little bit of elevation and poof dog is good. It's not really how it works, and it's very frustrating for people. This is where it depends, drives people up the wall and why there are some answers that instructors may give that makes him very, very, very frustrated. They just give me an answer. It's like, but I can't give you a definitive, you're going to do this all the time. It very well may be that you get advice that's really good for right now in this exact moment, and then you're probably not going to do that again going forward.

(10:51):
That's really hard and it's difficult to know when that's going to apply. It's also doubly frustrating for people when they have multiple dogs, particularly if there are multiple dogs at different stages. So if you have a upper level dog and then you bring in a new dog, or you have another dog that's brand new to Scent Work, maybe they've been hanging out on the couch and doing other stuff and you're like, you're going to do Scent Work too, and you're like, okay, what's that? While you have your Elite champion who's just like, yeah, I'm totally great, is very difficult to make those shifts, and we also forget about all of the steps that we may have taken in order to ensure that a foundation was solid. We may just assume, oh yeah, well, I know how to do this. This makes sense for me, the handler, the trainer, therefore dog, you will learn through osmosis here.

(11:46):
Our brain waves will kind of sink and you'll get it. It doesn't work like that. It can feel as though some people that this is very rudimentary. It's like, oh, we're going back to preschool. When do we have to do the fun stuff? And that's where I'm offering myself a ton of webinars covering all these different topics individually because these are the kinds of patterns and ways of thinking and approaches that I just think bite people in the butt unnecessarily, but entirely understandable. It's not that this is like some mystery, but you see it over and over and over again. So what could we possibly do? The big thing is to try to view what we're doing with as an objective a lens as possible and see, why am I doing something? Always ask why you should be able to answer the why. If you can't answer the why other than I thought that's what I was supposed to do, we have a problem.

(12:54):
There should be a definitive reason why you're doing anything in dog training period, but especially for Scent Work, if you can figure out the why, then you want to see, okay, well, how effective is that going to be with the situation before me right now? As an example, if you are trying to work with a dog that you are preparing to get into a novice trial as an example, so now you're doing some field trip searches, you're trying to ensure that the why is you're trying to generalize the dogs understanding this game can happen anywhere. You're trying to introduce 'em to as many different elements as possible, as far as different factors that may be affecting the odor you're trying to get them used to. We can play this game even in places that we're not familiar with. That's completely fine. It's safe. We don't have to worry about it.

(13:48):
Lots of really good reasons why you may want to do that, but if you were to start tackling a field trip search with your dog in training and your dog is seemingly not understanding that they're there to search, instead they're like, Disneyland, this is so much fun. I would hope in that instance that all of us would be able to just take a moment and be like, okay, I need to make an adjustment. I have to shift what I was doing, and there's a bunch of different ways that we can do that. There's a bunch of different options available to us, but simply sticking with that search and pestering the dog, find it, find it, find it, find it right, or trying to restart them 15 times over when they are not focused at all, right? They are just like, wow, I'm not even talking like they are worried about anything.

(14:44):
They're just like, this place is the best, which very well may be. Why are we going to get an argument with our dog? Simply because our quote unquote plan, the step that we're supposed to be taking is field trip searches and you're like, well, Santos, what am I supposed to do? Well, there's a bunch of different options. One is you can scrap searching altogether and just do an exposure session where we're just going to be hanging out in this space, so it's not quite so exciting. Let the dog explore, not searching. We're just hanging out and if they see stuff like, what's that thing? Go check it out together. Let it be a bonding experience for you and your dog, and then visit this place a couple of different times. Then once the novelty will wear off, see if they can do other stuff. Can they do play there?

(15:36):
Can they do other kinds of behaviors there? Can they just hang out with you on a mat or some kind of bed and chew a chew and just watch the world go by for 10, 15 minutes? If they can do those things, then I think we can try searching again, but we would want to then think through how are we going to do that? I would urge you to do a warmup search for me. That's a straight row of open containers with a couple of food hides or parrot hides. If the dog can't find that, then I'm not going to put myself into a situation where I'm basically creating these pictures in both the mind of my dog and myself, a failure that I'm creating, a history that I then have to undo. Why would I bother doing that when I can recognize if I have a dog or not?

(16:33):
If I don't have a dog, I'm not going to push the issue. I'm going to figure out how I can have a dog. How can I change and manipulate the situation so that it can be productive for both of us? That's what I mean about being flexible, but if we have those cement shoes on, I'm doing field trip searches, and that's just the way that we're going. This is the day that I do field trip searches and we just stick with it and maybe we're leading our dog to the hides, we're restarting them. It's a mess. We know it's a mess. It feels like a mess. We're frustrated. They're frustrated. It ain't great. But you can say, look, I checked off on my to-do lists, and I did a field trip search. The quality matters. If we look at training, the same is true for trialing, but if we look for training that's all about skills, we can kind of get away from these tendencies for us to get those cement shoes on.

(17:38):
Now, I am absolutely someone who I've quoted myself as saying that we should be developing purposefully skills in training, not at trial. At trial, we're supposed to be testing skills in theory. However, if we really want to be completely forthcoming about the reality of the situation, it's not as though our dogs stop learning. The second that we step onto trial grounds, that's not what happens. Our dogs are still learning. We are still learning. Our brains are still processing everything around us as is our dogs. So if we have happening or a situation at a trial that's less than great, that's going to be affecting us, which is why I preach so very hard about, we should be prepared ahead of time. We should be doing lots of motivational searches and training where, and I don't mean like quantity. If anything, I would be backing off particularly the closer you get to the trial, but focusing on motivational searches leading up to a trial, and then after the trial quite focused, like we're going to try to see what did the trial screw up?

(18:54):
What did the trial cause as far as loss of confidence, loss of clarity, the injection of confusion or mudding of the picture, where did things kind of get messy and how can I clean that up again? And that should be happening and be expected to happen after every single trial or at least every single trial weekend, which is again, why I think that not trialing every single weekend is probably a good idea, but what I'm trying to get through with this episode to lay out as far as some suggestions for what people may want to think about is this importance of being flexible, that we may have a plan as far as I have listened to the Santos lady pontificate before, so I decided that I want to have a long-term goal. I've splitting that up into short-term goals and that I have this plan in order to do, I'm trying to listen to you Santos, which I appreciate, but understanding that the harder piece, but probably the most essential piece is as you're tackling those things, it's not a straight line.

(20:07):
It's never going to be a straight line, and if you're only following a straight line, I can almost guarantee you that you're missing something. Either you are assuming something is going well when it really isn't. You are sugarcoating something that really needs a little bit of work, or you're not appreciating the complexity that is at work, and it's not that I'm trying to make it so that this is an impossible thing for people to do because it's not, but it is such a rich activity. There's so many different moving pieces, and it can become this wonderful dance that we do with our dogs, and when it's done unity with them, oh, it's really pretty. It looks gorgeous, it feels so good, and handler and dog have a great time when it's not that there's different shades of what that can look like, but it doesn't feel as good.

(21:06):
It doesn't look as good. They may still be having fun, which is great, but it can be better if that makes sense. And the way that you get there is by being flexible and also knowing that you may have glimpses of that. It may be fleeting, which can be deflating for some people. I just want to hold onto that forever, but that's kind of the whole point of this conversation that I'm having with myself is that nothing is permanent. Everything is always in flux. Your in flux, your dog is in flux. Your team is in flux. The ways that trial officials are putting together trials are in flux. The way that we think about training is always in flux. Your schedule isn't going to be in flux. Life happens, right? Your motivation will change. You'll get inspired, and suddenly you're doing a lot of training and then you'll kind of fall off and you'll do other stuff.

(22:02):
There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but recognizing the effect they can have that it may require us to change course to make some changes and modifications that we may simply see more of the metaphor views before more of the map may open up that we didn't even know was there. Like, oh, look at all these other options I have, but we can't do that if we're just wearing those cement boots and saying, no, this is the way that I do it, but there's all these other, I don't want to listen about the other options. Okay, well, I mean hopefully that works, but there's lots of other ways that we can do it. So I'll wrap up by saying this. If you are training, look to see the types of things you're doing for your training, and if you were turned on to a certain exercise or way of setting up a search and it piqued your interest, right?

(23:06):
You were like, Ooh, that sounds fun. I would hope that you tackle it with your dog, and then if it really peaked your interest even after you did it, that you then try to think through, how can I build off of this? What else can I do with this? And also, what did this show me? What did my dog show me from this search? Did they tackle it the way that I thought that they were going to? Did I tackle it the way that I thought I was going to? What kind of skills did myself and my dog gain from this or what was being displayed or what was being learned? How can I confirm that that's true? Is there a way that I need to change this and a shift this so that I'm ensuring that my dog and myself and my team do have the skills that I want that we actually understand?

(24:03):
If we can do that, I think we would be pretty darn well served, and that's my goal as an instructor, and which is why I try to say I'm not looking for ways to have clients stay with me forever. I mean, trust me, I'm flattered that anyone works with me, but my goal is to get people to see themselves and to think and to plan and approach and everything else. Like a trainer, they may never go towards certifications or working with people charging for their services, but they should have the same kind of approach. They should have the same kind of skillset of thinking through all these different things because newsflash, you're all trainers anyway. You're training your dog, you're also teaching yourself. So that requires us to be flexible. If we're being really super rigid and said no, but step one, step two, step three, I'm telling you there's going to be step one A and one a 1, 2, 3, and step Z four five that you didn't even think about.

(25:17):
There's so many different offshoots and switchbacks in all kinds of different parts of your journey that you'll go on that is going to be required in that moment, and if you miss it because you're just saying on your path, you may not get the biggest bang for your buck. So think about it. How could you be more flexible? And I'm not trying to say that I am the perfect flexible person. I am not. I don't think that anyone is the perfect anything. I think it's something to strive for to see, okay, so this is the way that I had was thinking about doing this. Even if it went well, how can I make it better? And if it did go well, how could I leverage this? Again, there's no reason to do one thing once and then just chuck it. Okay, well, I thought that this went really well.

(26:13):
How can I do this very same thing and change a couple things? Be flexible to get another type of benefit? I hope this made sense in some way, shape or form. But as always, we'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions or comments about this episode, why is she so ramly? We'll be posting this up on our social media as well as our website, be able to post any questions or comments there. We are going to be continuing our Spotlight series. I'm very excited that we have so many wonderful professionals and business owners that are giving back to the Scent Work community that we're having an opportunity to speak with. If you know of someone or business and you're like, I would love for you to talk to them, please let me know. Contact me. We want to make sure that we're spreading some positivity.

(27:00):
We're also going to be continuing some of our other series, so definitely keep an eye out for that as well. If there's a particular topic that you want us to cover in the podcast or maybe you're like, I really wish you guys would teach about blah, blah, blah, whatever that is, always feel free to contact me directly at dianna@scentworku.com. I will then work with our instructors at Scent Work University to make that a reality for you. We have been very, very fortunate. We have been receiving some fantastic topic requests for the past couple of months, and everything that we've been offering have been topic requests, so I take this very seriously. So we want to offer what you guys are interested in. And one final thing, speaking of our instructors, I want to take a moment to thank all of these very talented professionals that share their time with us.

(27:52):
They're sharing their expertise, their insights. Again, these presentations have just really been absolutely fantastic. They're well thought out, and I appreciate the fact that they're sharing their knowledge or sharing their expertise or sharing their love for the activity of Scent Work. It's a lot of work to put these things together. It may not seem like it and be like, oh, it's just a webinar as an example. Yeah, that's not the case, and all of these people are so incredibly busy. Oh my goodness, they are so busy. They are officiating. They're teaching through their own businesses more often than not. A lot of them are traveling and speaking. I think, oh, I can say this pretty confidently. Most of them aren't even spending a lot of time with their own dogs. That's kind of the pattern for professional instructors and dog trainers. They are putting everything that they have into what they do, and part of that is offering their services through Scent Work University.

(28:57):
So I sincerely and genuinely want to thank everyone who has ever worked with Scent Work University. I see you. I know how hard you're all working, and I want to thank all of our clients who have trusted and put their trust into Scent Work University for letting us partner with them and their dogs to be on their snippy journey. It's incredible. It's amazing, and I'm very humbled by it. I'm also so thoroughly impressed by the range of things that people will take and that they really do seem, I think, to take my suggestion to heart of applying the art of dog training to what they're doing, that we don't have to agree a hundred percent on anything. But if you come at a particular training offering with the assumption that the person giving the information loves dogs and they're trying to help look for the things you think will be helpful for you and your dog and use those, it may even just be something that is familiar to you, but you've never heard it explained that way, use that stuff, and that they're very well maybe stuff you're like, yeah, I just don't think that's going to be helpful for me.

(30:09):
Maybe it's not in line with how you train. You may even disagree with it. Oh, no. Shocking. What I love with our clients is that they're totally comfortable taking the stuff that they think is going to be helpful in using it and being so appreciative for the time and the effort that our instructors and speakers give and providing that information. I do not take any of that for granted at all. I am so incredibly thankful for all of the instructors and all of our clients. I really like the little ecosystem that we built. So thank you. I just want to shout out everyone for being such good people. So thank you so much for listening. Really do appreciate it. Please give your puppies a cookie for me. Happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.