Ep. 123: Scent Work is Hard

There are many moving pieces when it comes to the activity of Scent Work. A common misconception is that Scent Work is easy: train dog to find thing, hide thing in area, dog finds thing, give dog cookie. Yet, to accomplish even this watered down version of Scent Work requires concentrated work and focus. Otherwise our searches will be messy, lackluster and ineffective.

In this episode, we discuss how Scent Work is rather complicated, yet the benefits of embracing this fact, ways it can help deepen our relationship with our dog, make us better handlers and trainers and much more.

Additionally, we discuss a variety of offerings recently released through Scent Work University you should check out:

• Components of Scent Work: Value of Odor Webinar with Dianna L. Santos
• Components of Scent Work: Hunting Webinar with Dianna L. Santos
• Components of Scent Work: Sourcing Webinar with Dianna L. Santos
• Components of Scent Work: Odor Obedience Webinar with Dianna L. Santos
• Components of Scent Work: Dog Communication Webinar with Dianna L. Santos
• Components of Scent Work: Handler Communication Webinar with Dianna L. Santos
• Are Smoke Machines Required Webinar with Judith Guthrie
• Improving Scent Work Trials for Everyone Virtual Symposium
• Influence of Reactivity on Scent Work in Training and Trialing Webinar with Sue Sternberg
• Intro to Mastering Vehicles Seminar with Tony Gravley
• Mastering Multiple Hides Webinar with Michael McManus

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 or trial official may be going through and much more. In this episode, we're going to be talking about how Scent Work is hard. 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 all focused 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 or you're interested in trialing or are even competing 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.

(00:52):
So in this episode I want to talk about how Scent Work is actually pretty hard. You're like, oh, well you haven't done the podcast in a while and we're just going to dive into this. Okay, so the reason I wanted to talk about this is that we've been in the process of providing a six part webinar series talking about the various components of Scent Work, and in each of those presentations I'm trying to highlight how Scent Work is a little bit more involved than we give it credit for. But in doing those presentations, one of the things that I just keep coming back to over and over again as a theme is how if we discount how many moving parts make up Scent Work, I think it's very easy for us to discount how challenging this can be as an activity for both our dogs and ourselves and our team, and that at any point in the process it's possible for things to really break down and then we can become very frustrated or disillusioned.

(01:55):
The dog can become very confused or frustrated, and the dynamic between the team can really start to fall apart. Where you start having this bubbling up of mistrust between the handler doesn't trust the dog, the dog doesn't trust the handler, and it's just all kinds of icky. And I think one of the more complicating parts about Scent Work is that it is deceptively easy. I train my dog to find something, I put that something out into a space, I tell my dog to go find it, they find it, I give them a cookie, right? It's pretty simple. And also because our dogs are so incredible with their sense of smell that they are able to really put concepts together even if we have not helped them along the way, and they can do some pretty heavy lifting that can kind of get us through if we're competing in those lower levels.

(02:53):
And we may even be able to progress fairly quickly. Sometimes at a blinding pace where someone starts, just starts training in Scent Work and then before you know it, they are through AKC Novice in Advance for NACSW, ORT, NW1, NW2 and so on and so forth. And they are just like we're killing it. And then all of a sudden is that they hit a brick wall because now as far as competition is concerned, the higher levels are asking you to basically build upon all these other skills that are supposed to be there. And now you're supposed to do everything kind of all at once, and that's where we can really start to see there are these giant deficiencies or the dog or the handler or the team just have no idea what to do. Wait a minute, this is a completely different, how am I supposed to cope with a search area that's very large or larger?

(03:56):
I have to find more hides in a restricted amount of time. For AKC as an example, I have to be perfect. And then for NW3, I have to be perfect. Wait a second. It's not that we don't have to be perfect for the other lower levels, but because there's a lower requirement, you can really see a lot of teams struggle. And when that happens, all the different parts that go into a search that does feel good, a search where the dog is truly grasping what they're supposed to do, the handler knows what they're supposed to do and the team is working in unison. If that's not happening, then when someone is struggling in these upper levels, it can really highlight just how many parts of that puzzle are missing and it could be lots of them. So I think it's important for us, no matter the type of hat that we're wearing, we're a handler, we're a trainer, we're an instructor, we're a trial official, we're a trial host, doesn't matter, a volunteer, a spectator.

(05:01):
I think it's important for all of us to remember that Scent Work is hard. To me, there's no getting around this. Let me give you my premise. We have designed a sport where we as the human beings are creating the rules for the sport, all centered around a medium, odor, that the people cannot see or experience at the very best. This is best case scenario, we are guessing what's going on, and that's kind of nuts when you stop to think about it because designing all these rules and expectations around something we can't see and we can't experience and can be incredibly dynamic and incredibly difficult. But then from the human perspective, as far as competition is concerned, we want there to be levels and the levels should be progressive. They should be getting more challenging, higher up you go, and then we're putting all these other restraints on it as far as time, number of hides, size of space, again, around a medium that we cannot see, that we cannot experience, that trial officials who are hide setters are continually improving their education.

(06:16):
You have to, because again, we're guessing. So just from that premise alone, it's crazy that any of this works at all because there's definitely a situation where all of our guesses and theoretical understanding could be completely and utterly wrong, and we could be designing searches that the dogs are like, ah, I have no idea where the hide is, and then we would be kind of stuck. So just from the very get go, the fact that any of this works is amazing, but on top of that, the types of rules and expectations that we're designing for our trials don't make a whole lot of sense to the dog, just naturally speaking. So I love the way that Michael McManus talks about this in other contexts as far as training, but if you are doing any other kind of dog sport where there's hunting involved, typically the dog is tasked to go find whatever it is.

(07:10):
Let's say tracking. You have to go find a scented article. The dog finds a scented article. You're then supposed to pick up the scented article so the dog continues along the track. You're not just leaving it there because that would be silly. If I'm asking my dog to go find something, then I want the thing that they found. But that's not the case In Scent Work. In Scent Work trials, again for very good reasons as far as we don't want contamination. We want everything to be as same as it can be, et cetera, et cetera. We're not picking up our hides, so now this is an actual thing that we have to train because it doesn't make any sense to the dog. Another rule is that obviously we don't want the dogs pottying or marking within the search areas. It makes total sense from the dog's point of view that if I'm sniffing, that gets all the bodily functions going.

(08:01):
And also also person, you've trained me that this thing you want me to find, it's completely meaningless without training. But with training, Birch, Anise, Clove, whatever, is now pretty valuable. And if it's pretty valuable, I want to let all the other dogs know, "Hey, stay away from my hide, so I may mark on it in order to make everyone else notice, go away." And that's the other part is that this is an activity that is so innately dog and we're asking the dogs to go find things that are valuable. Sue Sternberg talked about this inside her recent Influence of Reactivity on our Scent Work Training and Trialing Webinar where basically dogs are like, "Hey, this is mine. Go away." And the dogs, are like, "Ooo, I can't go see that because that dog told me that they were going to do some nasty things to me if I bothered their hide."

(08:51):
I mean, the list goes on and on and on. You have boundaries. So for us as human beings, we need to know what part of this space is actually in play. We can have a trial site that includes this giant field. Well, maybe we don't need to be searching the entire football field. We just need to search this little part of it so our handy dandy little boundary flags come out. Well, the dogs don't care about that. Neither does odor, but because we're people, we get so obsessive about those boundary flags that we're holding the dog back and they're was like, "I'm trying to get odor, man. It's going that way. I need to get some information over there so that I can work my way back into source." But that doesn't make any sense to us. Also, the dogs have no idea about time constraints, and we're the ones that are trying to manage the search to say, "Hey, tick tock, we got to get going.

(09:47):
I just heard that 30 second warning." Again, truly the list goes on and on and on. Where if we aren't clear just how muddy all of this can be, how complicated it can be, how confusing it can be from the dog's perspective, and that we don't truly appreciate how much the onus is on us, on the people to be really clear-eyed of what it is that we want and how we're going to translate that to the dog. This can get out of hand really quick. We can find ourselves on some other path, is nowhere near where we want it to be, and the dog thinks that the game is about something entirely different than what we thought. At the end of the day, what I think is important is to strive for these searches where you and your dog are truly in communication, in a conversation with one another, that they are painting a picture for you as far as what they're experiencing in the space and that you are able to actually receive that information and process it, not just staring at your dog being like, "They're doing something", and then you're able to communicate back to them as far as, "Okay, I support you, but what about if we go over here, okay, nope, we're going to go this way.

(11:13):
Not a problem." Whatever. There's a give and take. There is a feeling that you have. Sometimes it can be fleeting where you and your dog are searching almost as a unit, and in my opinion, it's because it is this true conversation where it's you and your dog having a conversation in the search. It's not the dog going around you following behind them on the side, whatever, standing still, it doesn't matter and that you're just waiting for some final thing at the end. To me, that is not what this is about. You're missing so much stuff in between, and that's not...the people who have had the privilege of having these truly insync searches. It's addictive. It's like a drug. It feels awesome because you and your dog are suddenly on the same wavelength, which is weird because we're two different species. It doesn't happen very easily, but it is something that is you want to repeat, and when that's not there, you can walk out of a search even at a trial and say and hear that lovely yes, from the judge you qualified.

(12:31):
You may have even titled and you're like, "I don't want to really remember this one. This wasn't anything for me to remember. This we got by the skin of our teeth. I don't really even know if I earned that cue. That was an ugly search." That's the point, is that it's not merely enough to qualify or even a title. Let's say that you're not competing. Let's say that you're just taking class with an instructor or you're practicing with friends or even practicing on your own. It's not simply enough to find the hide. All this other stuff matters too, right? Because we could absolutely, particularly when we're working on our own or if we're doing things in class, we could quote unquote find the hide, which is really you finding the hide and then pointing it out to the dog and the dog comes up like, oh, great, and cookie, they're not doing anything.

(13:27):
That's the point is that if we were to try to explain Scent Work to someone who has no idea what we're talking about isn't involved in dog training, they're like, "Why are you doing this weird thing with your dog?" There's absolutely a way that we could describe it to someone that if they had to then try to describe it to somebody else, it come across as a really kind of gross thing that it's not this magical, almost seemingly magical activity that all of us are so passionate about. It could quite literally in that translation, that game of telephone could turn into, "Oh yeah, I do Scent Work with my dog." And you're like, "Oh, well that's great. Do you want to do a search for me?" "Sure." And the person goes and they take whatever it is and they put it somewhere and they look at you and they look at the thing.

(14:18):
They're like, here it is. And the dog comes up and the dog does a recall to 'em. They're like, great, here's a cookie, tada, Scent Work. You're like, that's not it. That's not what this is supposed to be. And they would be like, but that's exactly what I was told. That's exactly how you described it. That's the point is that this activity is supposed to be something that is allowing and celebrating the dog to be a dog, but also our ability as people to be able to read and appreciate what our dogs are saying and to be a teammate and a partner with our dog as we're tackling this whole space so that we can find the thing that we want to find, whether that be Birch or scented articles or a piece of hotdog to get there can be really complicated to get there.

(15:09):
There's lots of moving pieces and sometimes those pieces have nothing to do with Scent Work. Your biggest challenge is going to always be the environment one way or another, whether it's the search area itself, whether it's the space, whether it's the weather, the things that make up the space, the space with where the hides are located within that space, whether that space is somewhere that your dog is familiar going to or they're not, you are or not. What things and distractors and activities are around that space, so on and so forth. That's the point is from my perspective, there are so many elements for us to focus on and for us to train and for us to practice and skills to practice as well that have nothing at all to do with odor. That odor should kind of be like step number four or something, or five if you want to think about things in steps.

(16:11):
It's about truly understanding what our dog needs as far as clarity, what motivates them, what makes him feel secure, but also what concerns them, what frustrates them? What makes it so that they are kind of at forks in the road as far as their decision trees of, oh, well, I could do one thing or I could do this other thing. What presents itself like that and what kind of solutions do you have? What kind of tools do you have inside your toolbox? We're just talking day-to-day life. If we don't have the answers to those questions, when I'm just hanging out at home with my dog, why do I suddenly think that I'm going to have these wonderful searches when all that stuff still applies? We're just adding searching on top of it. So as an example, I have a little tiny terrier, tiny terrier, loves to critter.

(17:09):
He loves to just chase all the animals because, terrier, and in daily life, if I'm taking him to go potty outside, we just moved once again and our yard is wonderful, is one of the reasons why we rented this house. But there are lots and lots and lots of critters, and if I want to ensure that he comes back so that we're not staying outside forever, he's not obsessing and so forth, I will have a routine in place so that I will have stuff with me. And anytime that he turns around and checks in, I make a tiny little move and he comes bolting back, and then he's going to get a jackpot So that I'm making myself being with the lady person and disengaging from the critters is a pretty great option. We're do this multiple times a day, every day. I'm not calling him, I'm not doing anything.

(18:05):
It's literally his choice of being like there's a squirrel, there's another type of critter, there's a bird, there's a chance that there was a critter here like five hours ago, whatever. But I look over and there's that lady person I'm going to go see if she has cookie, and he comes and he gets lots of cookies. This helps, and it doesn't just live inside of a bubble because now I'm able to apply that in our searches, which we are doing searches now in this yard. We're hunting for primary, and he's making the choice to stay on his task for searching because all that other work was done outside of Scent Work. And I can also tell because I see him every day, multiple times a day going after critters, I know what critter looks like as opposed to what hunting has looked like. So that's a skillset for me that I have to be able to recognize that it has nothing to do with odor, right?

(19:06):
This is just one example is that there's lots of things that are necessary for our searches to go well, and some of them have nothing to do with searches. So to me, this is just even more evidence of how complicated Scent Work can be, how difficult this can be, because if we find ourselves too far down the path of just focusing and obsessing about those hides, but we're not really clear what it is we want the dog to do, we're not really clear what our role is. We're not really understanding what the odor potentially is doing. We're not grasping what the environment is throwing at us, and we're not really appreciating all these various skills and things that both the dog ourselves and our team need in order to do any of this. Of course, it's not going to work. And yet again, time and time and time again, even I find myself when I'm talking trying to talk up this activity, it sounds as though it's really easy and I just don't think that's true.

(20:06):
The longer I'm in this, the longer I do it, the more teams I see. I think it's actually really complicated, but we'll wrap up this episode with this. I think it's completely doable. Of course, it's doable, right? Lots of people are very successful with this, whether they're doing this for, they're playing a fun game, they're giving their dogs something to do or they're doing trialing. But I do think that if we can appreciate all these different moving pieces and we can give them the attention that they deserve, I think it elevates everything. It brings the relationship with us and our dog to a whole other level. It elevates our training across the board. We can see improvements and even just day-to-day life because now we are better observers of our dog. We are learning to break things down into smaller pieces. We can see when they're trying, we can see when they're confused.

(21:01):
We may have actually been rewarding them for actually communicating to us because a lot of times before we actually can appreciate how important it's to kind of listen to our dogs. Many of us in the human world just kind of ignore them, just like I'm doing human things and they're like, well, you never listen to me, so I'm just going to go entertain myself. And more often than not, we don't like the way they entertain themselves. So one of the nice side effects of being able to train and focus on network and to work on these different components is that we may actually listen to our dogs better. We may have a better ear and an eye for what they're saying, which means that this can improve other training. We can notice what they're saying. We can notice when they're like, oh, what was that?

(21:46):
When we actually would let them focus on something else. Or we can notice when they're getting a little confused, maybe a little tired, maybe we did that. Let's just do one more rep, and they're like, huh, I'm exhausted, and you just had a great session. Maybe then it would key into your head, you know what? Let's just end here. Let's end on this note and we'll come back to this another day. There's so many examples, but this can be a wonderful benefit from Scent Work that we may have been missing because we weren't in a position where it was necessary to develop these skills for us to do well. I think that we should all the time, but Scent Work is definitely an activity that if you want to do well, you need this stuff. And here I'll end with this. Many of us got involved in Scent Work for a whole variety of reasons, but our very first dog that we got to do this game with, they carried our water for us.

(22:43):
They were incredible and patient and saintly, and we can never thank them enough. The second dog that we get has no idea what this game is about, and now we seem to have all of this information, all this knowledge, and that second dog is also saintly and patient and has to deal with a whole lot of stuff as we're trying to readjust. For the third and fourth and later dogs, those are the dogs that if we allow ourselves, can really benefit from us appreciating how much is involved in Scent Work, how we can really truly appreciate where they are right now in their understanding, and we can truly kind of meld into one, if that makes sense. This is why Scent Work is so wonderful. It can actually help us grow as people. It can help us grow as trainers. It can help us grow as handlers.

(23:34):
It can help us grow as instructors and as trial officials and as trial hosts. We can always get stuck in these ruts, but there's something special about Scent Work. It allows you to have a different perspective, but I think that's because it's so complicated. I think it's because there's so many moving pieces, and if you're able to get at least a majority of those moving pieces to kind of work, or at the very least you can appreciate like, "Wow, this is a lot more involved than I thought it was," it allows you to be more empathetic. It allows you to be more understanding of your dog, which is always important of yourself, which again, is something that I'm working on for myself as well, of your team, but also for everybody else, which is really important. And that can then apply to lots of things where you suddenly are giving your dog a little bit more of a break when you're working on obedience as an example.

(24:29):
Or you give yourself a little bit of a break when I just can't train today, I'm just not in the right head space. Good call. Or you give someone else a break when they're a little stressed out at a trial, whatever. The examples go on and on. So to me, to wrap this up in a nice little bow, I do think that there's lots of things involved with Scent Work. I think there's lots of different moving pieces. It's a lot more complicated than I think many of us want to give it credit for, but it is such an amazing activity. It gives so much back to us, obviously to our dogs, and it can give us this greater appreciation that then can bleed over into everything, which is a good thing. So we shouldn't shy away from the fact that Scent Work is complicated. There's lots of different things that we could be working on that there's lots of ways to improve and build. We should be embracing those things because that's what makes it such a wonderful activity. Wasn't this a fun episode to get back after a break?

(25:28):
Like Santos, where have you been? Life. Life is where I've been, but we're delighted to be having the podcast up and running once again. I do appreciate everyone's patience, but we have been offering so many wonderful things at Scen Work University. I definitely encourage you guys to check them out. We have this Components of Scent Work Webinar series that I've been putting on, which again breaks things down to the value of odor, odor obedience, hunting, sourcing, dog communication, and handler communication. We also have been hosting some incredible webinars with our other instructors. Again, Sue Sternberg did her Influence of Reactivity on Scent Work Webinar for Training and Trialing. Superb. We have, there's just so many. I know I'm going to forget somebody. Tony Gravley just did an Intro to Mastering Vehicles Seminar, which was amazing. Michael McManus just did a webinar for us about Masstering Multiple Hides, which was very, very good.

(26:19):
Jill Kovacevich has been doing so many webinars with us lately. Very, very good. Judith Guthrie just came back for her Are Smoke Machines Required Webinar, talking about the various tools that we can use to better understand what's happening within our search areas. Again, very, very good. There's just so many, but the one thing I did want to mention for everyone is that we do have a very exciting event coming up very soon, and it is a virtual symposium where we are having multiple speakers, including Holly Bushard, Kayla Dever, Michele Ellertson, Tony Gravley, Michael McManus, and Lori Timberlake, and they're all talking about how we can improve Scent Work trials for everyone. So this is going to be a three hour presentation, virtual symposium, and there's going to be suggestions and things as far as what everyone can do, regardless of the hat that you wear, trial hosts, trial officials and trial competitors, how we can have better trials or how we can be more successful at trials.

(27:15):
This is supposed to be a more general type of view, is not looking at one organization in particular, just more what we could do at any set or trial, but this is really super exciting. So I really hope you guys check this out. The live symposium is scheduled for February 21st at 3:30 PM Pacific, 4:30 PM Mountain Time, 5:30 PM Central Time and 6:30 PM Eastern. So I'll make sure there are links for all those things inside the replay page for the podcast. And as always, we are very much interested in listening to anyone who is giving back to the Scent Work community, whether it's a business or an individual. So if you know of someone or if you know of an organization, please feel free to contact me. I will then reach out to them and be like, Hey, share the goodness that you're doing. The more positivity we can share, the better. But thank you also very much for listening. I hope you found this podcast episode helpful. Happy training. I look forward to seeing you soon.