Ep. 121: Perspectives and Blind Spots

It is far too easy to develop blind spots when training or trialing with our dogs, working with clients, designing searches as a trial official, finding or running trials as a host or evaluating rules or regulations as a competition organization staff member. Our perspective may be rather limited, causing us to not see the fullest and most accurate picture possible. This skewed perspective may then color the decisions we make, the training plan we put together, how we evaluate our team's progress and so on.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of obtaining outside perspectives. Even having a family member or friend set out a hide for us every now and again may be incredibly enlightening! Our hope is this episode will cause everyone to consider how their perspective may be slanted or incomplete, what their blind spots may be and how they can further illuminate their "map of possibilities".

Training on your own? Check out the Considerations: Training Scent Work on Your Own Webinar.

Looking for an outside perspective? Use our video review and Zoom consultation services to receive helpful feedback from our instructors.

Are you an instructor, trial official or trial host? Schedule a Zoom consultation with a trusted colleague to get their insights and perspectives.

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 training tips, a behind the scenes look of what your instructor or trial official is going through and much more. In this episode, I want to talk about perspectives and blind spots when we're talking about Scent Work. 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 we provide online courses, seminars, webinars, and eBooks that are all centered around Scent Work. So regardless of where you are in your sniffing journey, maybe you're just getting started or looking to develop some more advanced skills. You're interested in competition or you're even competing even at the highest levels, we likely have a training solution for you. So I should know a little bit more about me. Let's dive to the episode itself.

(00:51):
So in this episode I wanted to talk about the concept of perspectives and blind spots. We're talking about Scent Work, ugh, another Santos Pontification podcast they say. I think this will be helpful. I just recently did a live webinar called Considerations: Training Scent Work on Your Own and one of the things that we talked about in that very jam-packed presentation was this idea about perspective and that we absolutely can develop blind spots when we are training. And I think that's true regardless of whether you're training on your own or not. It's also true if you are an instructor or a trial official or a trial host or maybe you work for a competition organization. This idea that any one of us can have the proper insight and knowledge about everything in any given moment is false. We all have our own perspective. We all have our own series of experiences of whatever it is that we're doing, and that's going to color how we may see or perceive a given situation.

(02:01):
And that's particularly important to keep in mind when we're talking about Scent Work. There's so many different things that we're trying to keep an eye on that we're trying to understand and interpret to figure out, well, where are we as far as the skill is concerned and why is that not going the way that I want it to? And I want to go and achieve that goal and all these kinds of things. But if we're not seeing the full picture or we're not seeing the fullest picture possible, we may then come up with conclusions about what's going on or at least how we're going to address it. That may not really be what we want to do. So what do I mean? This can really apply to anything that we're talking about with Scent Work from practicing and training to trialing as well. And no matter why you may be playing his at work, you're playing his at work for an enrichment activity for your dog, you're trying to help them develop more confidence.

(02:58):
You're practicing the trial or you are already competing. It doesn't matter why you're playing. We all can fall into these pitfalls. So let me give you an example. When I am training, I train 99.9% of the time completely by myself. I'm the one designing the search. I'm the one running the search. I'm the one cleaning up the search. I'm the one evaluating the search and all the good jazz. It's me the whole way through. And that can be problematic for a whole bunch of different reasons. But one of the things that can happen is if you are the only one designing your search, you as a designer may see a certain space a very particular way. And the way that I try to describe this in the webinar, and I've talked about this I think before in other podcasts, is I've tried to remember what it's like playing a video game where you may start the video game and you have very few abilities and skills.

(03:58):
You basically can do close to nothing and you're supposed to acquire skills and abilities the more that you play and the better that you get. But one of the common themes with video games is in the very beginning, you may have a map that you earn so that you actually know what this world is comprised of. And more often than not, that map is going to be in the very beginning, extraordinarily small because again, you can't do anything yet. But as you're acquiring different skills and different abilities, you suddenly open up other parts of the map and you also are acquiring these different abilities where maybe now you can interact with more of what you see. And if you can interact with stuff more, you pay attention to it more. So there may have been parts that you saw at the very beginning, but you didn't really take in.

(04:51):
They were there, they were visible, but they were meaningless to you. So they just kind of faded off into the background. But now that you can pick something up, throw something, smash something, whatever, now suddenly you're looking for those things. Those tiny little bushes, I can shake those bushes and get coins out of them are whatever, Santos, what does this have to do with Scent Work? The same thing applies when we're designing our searches where depending on where we are in our overall journey about learning about Scent Work, but even our journey with each individual dog or how we've been dealing with our trialing experience, what type of other learning we've been doing, how long we've been working in this space, there's a whole bunch of different factors. If we're looking at a space, it's kind of like that map. Only certain parts of that space are probably going to light up to us as even possibilities of where to put a hide.

(05:50):
And what's interesting about perspective is you could bring in someone else into that very same space, and I can almost guarantee you that they're going to find other places that they could put hides. Let me give you an example. So again, I train 99.9% of the time by myself, and it occurs to me every now and again, my brain turns on and goes, I should probably have someone else set some hides, but I live like a hermit. So I asked my husband, I'm like, do you mind just setting out a hide for me and the tiny terrier? And he said, sure. So again, we're hunting for food. So I give him the treat and I'm like, okay, you can put it somewhere in the backyard, that's fine. So this is a blind search. He knows it's the backyard somewhere. He knows roughly the kinds of hides that I set as far as where they could potentially be and things.

(06:43):
So he sets the hide and he comes back. He's like, it's like, all right, alright, it's all set. Perfect. So let my little tiny terrier go. And he's like, yeah, let me find where the papa put the tree. And as he's working, I can tell the general area that this hide is in just from my dog's body behavior, which hey, pet myself on the back, I could read my dog Kudos to me, and I can tell that he's working in this particular corner, and that's interesting. So now I'm doing what you're not supposed to do and I'm looking for the treat. So I'm looking generally, so I can tell that from what my terrier is doing, it's elevated so it's not on the ground, but where he's looking, it's not like on the fence. And I'm like, huh. And then it dawned on me that there was a plant ahead of the fence and my husband had balanced a treat on top of one of the flowers, and it was a brilliant placement and it was a wonderful sourcing exercise for my tiny terrier.

(07:45):
It was a really, really, really good learning opportunity for him. And I was just tickle pink and my husband was like, you seem awfully happy about this. I'm like, and because I feel so stupid, that's why I'm laughing and smiling so much. It's not because I'm happy, I'm thrilled for my dog, but I'm just so amazed that this analogy that I've been using for years of, oh, your map light's up and whatever, that's literally what happened here. I've been training in this backyard with this dog since I got him, and I've never ever used this plant for a hide. And it's as though that plant had not been lit up yet. I'm like, wow, you are just seriously. And in the webinar, I show a little diagram, all these other places that I know I put hides and it's just like that corner didn't exist.

(08:37):
It's like, what's wrong with you? But that's what I mean is that I had developed a blind spot and I needed someone else's perspective to recognize that I had this blind spot of where I could put hides. It had never dawned on me to balance the tree on the flower, never in a million years. And that was brilliant of him to do that. And my dog, again was a fantastic sourcing exercise for him. It was so good. But that's what I mean is we can get very easily stuck in a rut because we're looking at the picture the same exact way all the time. Our map is not fully lit up, only lit up with the skills and things that we have in that moment. But someone else may come in with a different set of skills and suddenly the map is twice as lit up or like, oh, I had no idea.

(09:30):
So this is where I can be really helpful for you to even practice with family members or friends who may not know anything about Scent Work. You can give them some general guidelines as far as what to do, but just give them a hide and just say, Hey, can you put a hide in that area somewhere and just see what happens. Worst case scenario, if it looks like your dog doesn't have a hope or a prayer of finding it, just do what Sue Sternberg and Dana Zinn describes as a happy exit. That was a really nice try. Do a nice little party with them, put them back inside their staging area and then go with the person. Can you show me where the hide is and then see if you can make some kind of adjustment. But this can be so incredibly helpful for you for a number of different reasons.

(10:16):
It can open up a world of possibilities that for spaces particularly that are familiar to you, you be like, why didn't I ever think of putting a hide there? That's so silly. But it can also be where you're working in novel locations, different ways of looking at spaces. You may find yourself falling into patterns, which when we're training on our own can be really problematic because our dogs pick up on those patterns and then suddenly we go to a trial and what do you know? We were training for patterns instead of the odor can be anywhere. And well, the hide setter didn't know about our patterns that we were training and they said a hide that was outside of the pattern. So we are very good at finding chair hides and not so great at finding other hides, darn, that kind of thing. So that's one reason why I think it's really important to keep in mind this idea about perspective and blind spots is very easy to fall into.

(11:09):
I think we all do, and the more that we can recognize that possibility and work against it or at least account for it and then come up with some other solutions, the better that could possibly be. The other way that this could potentially help is if you are an instructor where you're able to get the feedback from other colleagues as far as what they may see when your students are running or if you're doing a certain exercise or if you, let's say as an example, you are doing a group class and you've filmed all of your students doing a particular exercise and then you send it to a colleague and just say, what do you see? This should be a trusted, reputable colleague who is not just going to take the opportunity to cut your legs off from under you. Constructive criticism is good, nasty criticism, not so much.

(12:01):
But what they can do is they can point out what they see is working, which can be extraordinarily helpful, but also maybe patterns that they notice that all the students are doing. That could be a good thing or could be something that you want to work on, but you may not recognize it yourself. They could also say, you know what? That's a really cool exercise. I had never thought about that. Could you potentially build off it this way, this way or that way? Or they may say, that's a really cool exercise. I had never thought about doing that. Can you explain why you are doing this and not in a, why are you doing that? But more like literally, can you explain this to me? And the more that you can do that, the better it is. We should always have an answer of why we're doing something, and if we don't, then maybe we don't do it.

(12:52):
But the other reason why this is helpful is they may see certain things with certain clients, whether it's the dog or the handler or the team that we have a blind spot on as an instructor. And I don't think this is something that we've talked about enough, if at all, but it's natural for us as teachers to view ourselves as a teammate to our client, which I think is appropriate. I think that's a good thing. I think we are. But because of that, we can develop blind spots for certain things. We may know an entire history of a team. So let's say as an example, we have a human client that we know has been dealing with all kinds of stuff in their personal lives. They've overcome so many different things and they're so dedicated and they're so focused and they're a great client, other stuff, and their dog has been dealing with so many behavioral things.

(13:45):
They've overcome so much, they're a rockstar and we are their cheerleader for this team. That's great. That's a good thing. Sincerely, that's great. But because of that, we may have blind spots to certain things that an outside perspective wouldn't and say, oh, do you know that for this client, they actually did a pretty good job on this search, but they keep going and messing in with their treat pouch or this dog is actually really good, but I think that they're not quite as keen as I think they could be. Do you think you could do X, Y, or Z as an example? And as instructors, we may not see that because it's colored by all of this other information and history that we have with this team. We want them to be proud of what they've accomplished so far and we want to support them and what they've accomplished so far.

(14:40):
But sometimes what can happen is that makes it so that we don't appreciate where they can further improve, if that makes sense. We're so happy with where they are now, but someone else may say, well, I think that they can go three steps higher if they do X, y, or Z. So recognizing that these perspective and blind spot opportunities as far as a disconnect between what someone else may see as far as a colleague is real, and we should be leveraging their insights to then see what kind of adjustments we potentially can make. Because just because someone notices something doesn't mean that you have to upend your whole training system. That's not true. Someone may have a suggestion. That doesn't mean that you have to take it, but it can give you insight of what else may be going on and maybe then you can come up with another solution.

(15:32):
Going back on the client side, if you are training or trialing either or doesn't matter, submitting training or trialing videos for an instructor to review, and ideally even someone maybe you're not working with all the time. Again, someone who's reputable, someone that you are pretty darn certain, they're going to be giving you good feedback. That can be really, really helpful as well for the same exact reasons. It's another pair of eyes and they can have that different perspective and avoid the blind spots that you may have both for what's working and what we may need to work on. So as an example, for myself, I'm extraordinarily self-conscious about my handling. I, as far as I'm concerned, my leash handling and my long line handling is trash, and I'm very concerned about how I move in the space. I know that I can be very stationary a lot of the time because my body's so broken and yada, yada, yada, because I can get so fixated on those things.

(16:35):
If I submit a video to a colleague and they're like, your timing was really good here, or You did a really nice job moving in this way here, here and here, that is enlightening to me because I'm looking at it with the filter of I'm terrible, but they're seeing something maybe a little bit more accurate. So having these opportunities to submit videos, both training or trialing to someone, again, a reputable supportive, in my case colleague, but an instructor, someone that you trust who is going to be constructive. It's not about sugarcoating, but we don't need someone like, oh my God, you're terrible. That doesn't help anything. That could be so incredibly helpful to have that feedback. It can kind of push through where we may have in my case, just like a film of, ugh, how terrible or a film of everything is hunky dory when actually isn't, when there are things that can be better, but we're only looking at it from a certain perspective.

(17:38):
So I hope that kind of sort of makes sense that this tendency that we can have of having a very singular type of perspective and that can force us to develop blind spots that could be holding our team back. And if we're only relying on basically that incomplete information to come up with suggestions or ideas of how we may want to address what we think our team needs to further improve, it may give us the wrong information because we're not seeing the full picture or the fullest picture possible. Again, I don't think that anyone on their own has the full picture. I think that you need actually lots of perspectives from lots of different people in order to get a more full picture about what's going on. I just wanted to throw that out there that if you are particularly working on your own, I think it's extraordinarily imperative of us to take the initiative to make sure that we are getting that outside perspective.

(18:39):
But even if you are working with an instructor or maybe you're practicing with friends a bunch, ask what they see and get those different perspectives every now and again. It could be really helpful. Again, even something as simple as looking at a space together and then just saying, where would you put a hide? And then they may say, X, Y, or Z. Wow, I never even thought about the majority of folks. I was thinking about this stuff over here. And they may say the same thing to you. I never thought in a million years to put a hide over there. And then you guys can bring your dogs out and put out some of those hides and see what happens. All fun stuff. So let me know what you guys think about this. Do you ever find yourself wondering, am I always looking at Scent Work in the very exact same way?

(19:22):
And is that helpful? Or maybe would having a different perspective every now and again help. I would love to hear your comments or thoughts about this if you have any. If you're just like, please, Santos, just let us hear someone else speak for a little bit. Don't worry, we are going to be getting some additional interviews outside speakers. Stay tuned. I'm very excited about what's coming up. And we are also going to be continuing our spotlight series. So if you have any individuals or businesses that are giving back to the Scent Work community, please let me know. I want to speak with them more positivity that we can share better. But I've taken up enough of your time. Please give a cookie to your puppies for me. Happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.