Ep. 122: Dog Asked a Question...Is That Bad?

You're tackling a search with your dog. They have found a few hides and there are one or more hides left. Suddenly, they stop and look back at you. They are not near anything, they are not alerting...no, they are asking a dreaded question! Now what?! Is this the end of the world? What does mean?! What do you do?!

In this episode, we discuss the meaning behind our dog's asking questions in Scent Work, what this can look like and how questions are not necessarily "bad", but rather information. Once we catch our breath and calm ourselves down, we can use this information. Perhaps to decide what next steps to take, or ways we can provide more clarity to our dog or maybe identify a weakness we didn't know existed before. Having this information is critical if we wish to continue to progress in our Scent Work training.

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, including training tips, a behind the scenes look at what your instructor to trial officials may be going through and much more. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about when your dog asks questions. Is that bad? 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, you're looking to develop some more advanced skills, you're interested in competing or you're already trialing, even at the upper levels, we likely have a training solution for you. So now that you know a little bit more about me, let's dive into the episode itself.

(00:53):
So in this episode I want to talk about this whole concept of we're tackling a search and our dog asks us a question, is that a bad thing? And I wanted to really delve into this because I think it's important for us to ask questions about the question. Anyone who's taking any kind of training with me knows that when I'm presenting, let's say a webinar as an example, more often than not, I'm just going to be posing a whole lot of questions for you to ask so you can have a better idea of what actually may be going on. Because the response or our assessment about what's happening in the moment may be drastically different depending on what the answers are to those questions. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples just made up things to see what a dog asking a question may actually mean and what we may want to do when that question is being asked.

(01:54):
So lemme give you one example. We're going to say that we are being a good mindful and thoughtful little trainer. You've listened to me lament about the importance of being mindful in our training. Fine Santos, I will do as you say, so you have thought about, I want to design a type of confidence puzzle for my pup in order for them to tackle, and I'm going to do that. I've heard through the grapevine that little Santos lady had talked about this thing that I may be able to try using containers where I can have a whole pile of containers, a whole pile of boxes as they were big open empty boxes. And in the middle of that pile, I have a box that is open and has a hide in it. Ideally, if you've never done this before, it's with food would be my preference.

(02:47):
Well, we're going to say that your goal with this exercise is that you are trying to assess, can my dog do two things? Can they problem solve to figure out where the hide is? And two, can they demonstrate the confidence to potentially nuzzle some of the empty boxes out of the way to get the box that's underneath? Right now, how we design this is going to be entirely customized depending upon our dog, the size of our dog, the baseline confidence of our dog, all this stuff. If we have a dog and say, oh my God, I got to just knock boxes all over the place, we probably don't want to promote that. So again, just follow me on this journey. So we have this pile of boxes. There's an open box in the bottom, it's got some food in it. We bring our dog to the start line, we release our dog to search, we give them their cue, and they happily go out and they start investigating this pile of boxes.

(03:46):
Very exciting stuff. They aren't showing any kind of concern. They aren't moving their body in a weird way or anything like that. And they apparently seem to have determined that there is indeed a goodie inside of a box on the bottom of this pile. And they kind of look where it's at and they look at you. You're still standing at the start line and they just kind of look at you, clearly asking you a question. What do we do in that situation? Is that question bad? Is this something that we should be worried about? What happens? Right? Question. Oh my God, my dog asked me a question. Right? It depends on what your dog looks like. Now with the lead up that I've given you, the dog has not shown us or demonstrated any kind of concern. They haven't provided us any kind of body behavior to communicate to us that they're worried about the situation.

(04:40):
There wasn't any kind of hesitancy. There wasn't any kind of the little jerky movements that we can see. Sometimes they're pretty well planted on all four feet. It's not as though there is a lot of weight being placed on their front end and they're kind of leaning back like, oh my God, I don't want to be near this pile. They're just there and they're just looking at us. There's a really good chance that our dog is asking a question, are you going to move this so I can get my goodie? And in that case, our response should be, no, no, I'm not. That's not the point, right? That's not the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise is to see if you, tiny little creature, if you can solve this, if you can figure out how to get to the goodie, put it very well may be that the dog is just going to come to you.

(05:35):
Maybe you didn't hear me the first time. They come up and they look at you, they go say hi, person with thumbs, there's a goodie that's inside of a box, but it's underneath all those other boxes. Can you use those thumbs of yours to move those other boxes out of the way? And in that situation, if this is what I believe the dialogue is between dog and handler as an instructor, I will then tell them, you absolutely can move in. You're going to move in. You're going to pick up one of those empty boxes and you're going to say, of course, Pooky, I will do this for you. And you're going to pretend that you are making the puzzle harder, not easier, harder. And the reason why I say pretend is you're going to pick up one of these empty boxes and you're going to place it on top of the pile, but in actuality, you're going to try to move some of the other boxes out of the way so it actually creates a larger opening to the food box. But from the dog's perspective, you didn't move the boxes out of the way. You added another one to it, useless human.

(06:40):
Now, why is this important in the context of what we're talking about today? Dog asked question, the context in which the question is being asked and the type of question matters because if you had the same exact setup pile of boxes, open box on the bottom, it's got some food in it. The goal is to assess, can my dog problem solve? Does my dog have the confidence to do this? That's what we're trying to do with this exercise. And the dog crosses a start line, they start heading towards the pile. They may even sniff it a little bit, but we start seeing those jumps. We start seeing those twitches. The ears are back, the tail is low, they're kind of curling and like, oh, oh, gross, gross, all of that. And then they look at us. Well, now we have a different situation. This isn't the dog asking, Hey, you with the thumbs, can you come do this?

(07:38):
It's more like, oh my God, is this going to kill me? In that situation, I may say, call your dog back to you. Say, that was a really nice try. Put them back up inside of their crate. Let 'em kind of relax and change the pile. Make the pile not as scary. They gave you the information that you needed. The pile was scary, and we don't want this to be scary. That's not the point. Make it so that they can be successful. And then when they are, they can eat the huge amount of jackpot inside of the box that has the food in it. I hope that makes sense. That same exact exercise, same exact setup. Dogs may ask a question looking at their person at the same exact point, meaning where they are within the space, but two completely different questions are being asked. So this is why I wanted to kind of dive into this, is that I even find myself the way that I talk about this sometimes it makes it sound as though your dog asking you questions in the middle of Scent Work is bad.

(08:43):
And I don't think that's true, and I apologize if it ever came across that way. It's information. It's information that something is not the way that we want it to be. It's either the, hey, you with the thumbs, go do the thing for me. We don't want to be doing the search for our dogs that's not the point, or it's the oh, mom or dad, I think it might kill me. Is this going to kill me? We don't want them to be feeling like that either. It's information and then we have to try to decipher that information again from the furry little alien and then figure out what we're going to do with it. What we want to really consider when we're doing Scent Work is what is the context that the question is being asked? What kind of question is it and what's the best way to respond?

(09:37):
Now there are going to be nuances to all of this, which again makes people want to rip their hair out. It's like, just tell me what to do. And the problem is just like why I was trying to explain what this exercise is. We can have the very same search and two dogs tackle it, and the advice is going to be drastically different, which is what makes dog training so much fun! It's all very dependent. But let me give you another example to try help this make a little bit more sense. Let's say that you have designed an interior search. So there are, let's say three hides out inside of this space. And it is a familiar space where your dog has searched it before, but it's not at home. So it could be at the training center, it can be at a friend's house, it could be somewhere, but it's just not at home, somewhere else.

(10:31):
But they've searched here before. It's not novel or anything like that. And as your dog is searching, they are searching off leash. It's nice and safe and contained, and you are moving along in the space with them and all is well, they find one hide. Great. You go and reward them, tell 'em how wonderful they are. You tell 'em to go find some more and they say, fine, that's fantastic. I want to find more hides. Thank you for letting me. They go forward and they find another hide. Oh, you're such a good little puppy, more reward, happy, happy. You tell 'em to go find some more. And as they start to walk off, they suddenly look back towards you. It's a question. They're not near anything. They are not stuck on the last hide. They're not investigating another hide. There isn't a hide out in space.

(11:25):
They took a couple of steps, they stopped. They looked at you and they're clearly asking a question. Alright, Santos, brilliant trainer lady that you are, what do I do now? And again, you got to ask yourself some questions. What is happening leading up to your dog asking this question, where are you in this space? You may have cued your dog to continue searching, but maybe you cued them to go on because you realized that a whole bunch of treats fell out of their face as you were rewarding for the second hide. And you're in the process of picking those up. And as your dog was walking, they recognized that you were bent over and they looked back and said, what are you doing, right? It's not a big deal of a question, but it's what are you doing kind of thing. In that instance, we would just break the eye contact, stand up and look towards the search area.

(12:26):
And our answer is nothing. Just keep on doing what you're doing. I had to pick up the treats that you dropped, whatever, that's fine. Or maybe you had rewarded your dog successfully and all the treats had gone well down the gullet. They didn't fall out the sides of their face. Yay, you cue your dog on, you may resume searching, please. And as they step off, you step off as well, and they suddenly feel as though you were very, very close. And they go, Hey, what's up? You seem very close to me. Again, why is that? Could it be that we're just a little bit too close to our dog? Could it be that maybe we bumped into them? Did we kind of break into their social bubble? Who knows, right? It's possible. But that would be something that we would want to assess as far as what is this question that's being asked.

(13:29):
In that case, I kind of have the same thing to tell you is break the eye contact and look towards a search area, smile and breathe and kind of apologize in the back of your mind. Sorry, didn't mean to get so close. Or maybe your dog finds a second hide. You reward the dog, you tell them to continue on searching. They take a couple of steps and you are trying to be like, I'm going to give them lots of space. And your dog has gone, let's say 10 steps away from you and you have not moved. You are still at that hide and they kind of stop and they look back at you and go like, are you not coming? Do you see how these are the same action? If we were to describe it very broadly, dog had three hides in space, dog found two hides after second hide, dog looked back and asked question to handler.

(14:21):
But these are three very different scenarios. Will the reaction mostly be the same? Yeah, pretty much. But we have to understand that the assessment of why that question was asked, and then what we may want to do in the future is something that may be different, such as maybe for the first scenario where it was because I was picking up treats, I would want to maybe experiment with using different treats like go easier down the gullet. If it's where the dog was like, why are you up on my butt? Maybe I want to give them a little bit more space. If it's a, why aren't you coming with me? Maybe I want to make sure that I'm doing a better job of matching my dog's pace. Or that could also be a sign that maybe I need to work on some distance work, work on some more independence exercises.

(15:17):
I may have just found out that my dog isn't comfortable with them working away from me. That's a good skill for a dog to have, right? It's a good thing for us to practice. Doesn't mean I'm abandoning my dog or anything like that, but these are the times when we can say, oh, I had no idea that this was uncomfortable for you. I can then design future exercises that can show you that this isn't that big of a deal. That is totally fine. I'm still here. I'm just not right with you, if that makes sense. So in these three examples, the question is not bad, it's just information. The reaction or the advice that I would give to the handler is probably the same, pretty much. The latter one would probably be break the eye contact, breathe and smile. And then as soon as your dog takes off, you're going to want to follow behind them.

(16:12):
I'm not talking right up behind them, but match their pace. Keep six or eight feet in distance of you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But going forward, I may purposefully design different exercises or have different skills in mind or change my tact using different treats as an example, and I'm only able to do that because I assessed the question. Does that make sense? I hope it does, because I just want to make sure that people don't think that the dog asking questions is indicative of bad. That's not true. If anything, it could be a good thing in that it's an opportunity for you to really assess what's going on. Let's put this out of the dog for a second. Let's say from myself, I am an instructor, therefore I am a teacher. If I am giving a presentation as an example, and I'm going along and I tend to put a lot of information inside of my webinars, I'm trying to get better, but it's often times very overwhelming.

(17:19):
The live attendees will be participating, which is wonderful. And I definitely recommend anyone who attends a live presentation with myself or anyone else, doesn't matter through Scent Work University or anywhere else. Participate. Please participate. Ask questions. Those questions that are being asked are going to let me know a couple of different things as a teacher. Number one, if the question is out of left field, it's not even close to the topic that we're talking about. This person may not have been paying attention at all, or they may have just taken this because they wanted an opportunity to talk to someone about whatever it is, which is fine, but it could also be a way for me to assess, did I just totally lose them with what I was trying to talk about? So now they only want to talk about this other thing that would be bad.

(18:14):
I would want to make sure my future presentations were better. Or if the question is more so like a clarifying piece of are you talking about apples or are you talking about watermelons? That kind of thing. That's again, good information for me where I can then take that and say, yes, I'm talking about apples in this case, or if it's a question that is building off of a concept that may have talked about that is reaffirming that I've done what I was setting out to do. I laid down the groundwork and now they are taking that information. The people who are attending live, they're internalizing it, they're thinking about it, and now they're trying to figure out how they can use it. That's the golden nugget as far as a teacher is concerned. If you get those kinds of questions, oh, it's like a little party.

(19:07):
It's like, yay. Did the thing. That's basically what we're trying to do when we're doing training. More often than not, we're not getting these very visible look backs. Were the dog staring at you. Those are very overt, huh? Moments. We're not looking for those. That's not great. But we may get different types of experimentation or different moments where the dog is thinking and pondering or the dog may do something. We be like, wow, that's really good information for me. That wasn't what I was looking for at all. A dog suddenly is like, oh, I guess you want me to bash this box. Like, nope, really would love you to not bash the box. What I'm trying to get across is that questions in and of themselves, they're not bad. They really aren't. They're just information, but we've got to do something with them, and a lot of time it's information that we need to adjust what our approach is, and it may have been just the piece of information that we needed to assess this setup that I have or this training plan that I had or this approach I had, or the assessment I had for where the dog was with their skills or mine or both needs adjusting.

(20:33):
So as an example to use one of the other scenarios that I brought up earlier for the dog who is showing us clearly that they were working the interior, we have rewarded them for high number two, we've sent them off. We didn't move. The dog goes off 10 steps or whatever it is, and then says, Hey, hello, are you coming with me? This is a wonderful opportunity to say, I had no idea that my dog wasn't comfortable or wasn't certain what to do at a distance from me. Perfect. Now I can start using some exercises where we can work on that specifically. I hope that makes sense. So I want people, to kind of wrap this up, I want people to look for those instances where your dog may be asking you questions. Again, this is why videoing is so, so, so helpful. Truly, I cannot recommend videoing enough.

(21:29):
Your memory is not good enough, and also you may not know how to react to the question in the moment. You want to be able to review the video, watch it back, and then think about it, what led up to it? What type of question was this? What would've been the best reaction for me to have? What was the best answer I could have given to the question? And then what should I be doing going forward? But as a general, and I'm going to have people say like, okay, Santos, can you just tell me? Should my dog be asking me questions throughout the entirety of a search? The answer is no. The answer is, if our dog understands what they're doing, then no, they shouldn't be asking us questions every two seconds. That would be an issue that we want to deal with. It's still information.

(22:21):
I don't want it to be considered as bad, but it's definitely not what we're striving for. At the same point, I do want our dogs to know that they can communicate to us and that we'll listen to that communication, that having that channel open is better than them just assuming we're going to ignore them or that we're not going to listen. So as an example, if a dog is working an exterior space and they're trying to work an elevated hide where there are some objects near the elevated hide, the dog could potentially climb up onto in order to reach source, which would be fantastic. That was maybe why it was designed the way that it was. The dog is completely permitted to do so. It's safe to do so, it's stable. The whole jam in that situation, if a dog clearly knows and is demonstrated, they've bracketed, they looked at, they basically are staring at the hide and they're kind of like, Ugh, I don't know if I'm allowed up there.

(23:32):
If they look back at their handler, the question is, can I go up there? I sincerely hope the handler would say, yeah, you're allowed to go up there. Potentially providing some, maybe moving in, potentially waving their hand towards the objects. That's a good little puppy. You can go up. It's okay. That kind of thing. That's fine. That's a good thing. That's why I'm saying is that, and I'm sure that I've fallen into this pitfall now that I'm thinking about it. I don't want questions to be viewed as a bad thing. They're not. They're information, and I don't think that we want to squash down on communication between the dog and the handler more. So what we're looking for with the absence of questions is that the dog knows what they need to do. That's really what the crux is. That's what the goal is. There aren't any need for questions because a dog already has the answers.

(24:31):
That's our goal. But to think that we're going to get there immediately is not true. There may be a bunch of questions as you're getting up to that point. So I hope this helped. I think it was a perfectly great inquiry that I received of, well, our dogs, if they ask questions in a search, are we bad? No, I don't want anything to be assessed as bad per se. It's more so than it's information, and then we should be assessing that to figure out how we can build on it in future exercises. So I hope that helps. If you have more questions about this episode about questions, we are posting this up on our website as well as our social media. You're more than welcome to post any questions or comments that you have there. We'd love to hear from you. We are also going to be continuing our spotlight series where we talk to individuals and businesses that are getting back to the separate community, like, oh, thank goodness.

(25:34):
We need less Santos pontification, please. We're also going to be doing some more interviews with outside speakers, which I'm thoroughly looking forward to. If there's another topic that you guys are interested in for our podcast or if you're interested in a particular topic for what we offer through Scent Work University, the library there is enormous. It is very, very large, but there's something in particular that you were interested in, a given topic that you would like for us to talk about, whether it be an online course or a seminar, a webinar, or an ebook, please contact me at dianna@scentworku.com. I'll then work with our instructors to meet that a reality for you. Everything that we have been offering over the last many months have all been topic requests, and everyone has been taking me up on this offer, and as a reminder, when you do, I give you a gift as a thank you in order to ensure that we're offering what you guys need because the whole point of this whole thing. So please feel free to reach out. I definitely want to make certain that we're putting together what everyone needs. But as always, I want to thank you also very much for all of your support. It's amazing how many people are listening to the podcast. It just marvels me to no end. So thank you very much. Please give a cookie to your puppies for me. Have lots of sniffing fun, happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.

#allaboutscentworkpodcast #dogaskedaquestion #arequestionsbad #scentworktrainer #noseworkinstructor #noseworktrainer #learningaboutscentwork #learningaboutnosework #scentwork #nosework #scentworkpodcast #noseworkpodcast #scentworktraining #noseworktraining #trainscentwork #trainnosework #scentworkofficial #noseworkofficial #scentworktrialhost #noseworktrialhost #scentworkcompetitionorganization #noseworkcompetitionorganization #onlinescentwork #onlinenosework #virtualscentwork #virtualnosework #scentworku #scentworkuniversity