Ep. 125: Strategic Trialing

When it comes to trialing in Scent Work within the United States, there are many competition organizations to choose from. This variety grants us an incredible opportunity: to be strategic. This is true for new and seasoned competitors alike. We can more fully realize the potential of mindfully leveraging our choices, deciding which organization we compete with, when and why and even carefully choosing which classes we sign up for.

In this episode, we highlight how being more strategic and more goal-oriented when it comes to trialing can help unlock future success fo our sniffing team. This topic was inspired by a suggestion Holly Bushard offered during the Improving Scent Work Trials for Everyone Virtual Symposium. There are so many kernels of brilliance sprinkled throughout this 3-hour roundtable event, be certain to order the replay if you haven't already.

Looking for a listing of Scent Work competition organizations both within the United States, internationally and those which offer virtual options? Check out a compiled list here.

Speaker:

Dianna L. Santos

TRANSCRIPT

Dianna L. Santos (00:01):
Welcome to the All About Scent Work Podcast. In this podcast we talk about all things Scent Work, that include training tips, a behind scenes look at what your instructor or trial official may be going through a much more. In this episode, I want to talk about strategic trialing. So before I 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 Scetn Work. So regardless of where you are in your sniffing journey, you're just getting started, you're looking to develop some more advanced skills, you're interested in trialing or you're even trialing at the upper levels, we likely have a training solution for you. Now that you known a little bit more about me, let's dive into the episode itself.

(00:49):
So in this episode I wanted to talk about strategic trialing, Like, what is that? So we were very fortunate. We just hosted through Scent Work University a virtual symposium, which was an event with a very impressive panelist of speakers including Holly Bushard, Kayla Dever, Michele Ellertson, Tony Gravley, Michael McManus, and Lori Timberlake. And they were talking about how is it we may be able to improve Scent Work trials for everyone? Basically looking at it from the perspective as instructors, but also trial officials, competitors and trial hosts, and they came up with such great suggestions. It was a really wonderful conversation. So if you haven't checked that out yet, I strongly encourage that you do. So we have the replay available on the Scent Work University site and I'll make sure I have a link for it inside the posting for this episode. But one of the things that was brought up in this conversation was something that Holly Bushard actually highlighted is this idea about leveraging the fact that here in the United States, we have lots of different competition organizations when it comes to Scent Work, and that means that we can actually leverage what each of those organizations are offering in a more strategic way.

(02:01):
And again, I thought that Holly did a really good job in explaining this, where potentially you may be able to choose certain venues or organizations when you're first starting out. So the example that she gave was CPE allows you to call a false alert but then still continue searching and then if you correctly call "Alert", you would still qualify. That's something that we can really consider for our brand new competitors who have never done this before. Again, it can be very daunting, particularly if they're used to at class that they may be practicing blind hides with their instructor. They're going to be permitted to continue searching and it can be a very stark contrast to suddenly go to a trial and you call a false alert and you're all done. But additionally, if there is that really big gap between, I'm used to either working known hides or I'm used to working in class where again, I may call a false alert, but I'm permitted to keep searching.

(03:01):
Where now I'm in this situation where I know that if I get a "No" from calling a false Alert that I'm done. And not only am I done, but I didn't qualify and depending on where I'm competing, let's say AKC or NACSW, I'm not going to get anything. So that may mean that I'm going to stay in that space longer and I'm going to be really hesitant to call "Alert" even if I'm properly reading my dog. My dog has given me all the communication that they need, but I really don't want to get that "No". So this is one of the ways that we can leverage what the organizations are offering through their rules in order to strategically help people kind of ease their way in. This is kind of the same way that we can just view trials overall is that when we are reviewing the rules, the majority of organizations design their levels to be progressive, that there's supposed to be a certain set of skills and requirements at each level, and if we qualify or we meet all the requirements in level one as an example, then we would be building upon those skills to then potentially address what's necessary in level two.

(04:15):
Basically most of the time you wouldn't be able to be successful in level two if you were lacking the skills from level one. So it's kind of supposed to walk you and your dog through this whole process of how you would be able to be successful at trial. So that's kind of a micro way of looking at it is when you do choose an organization, you can look through those roles and really just make a list, what are the skills that the dog needs and what are the skills that I need as a handler and what are the skills that we need as a team? But then a more macro view is we can do that same exact thing per organization. What types of things do my dog need for them to be successful? What are the types of skills that I need for me to be successful?

(05:00):
What type of things do we need as a team? And if I can compare that with what I've been doing in training or just with my experience set, I've never trialed before as an example, then maybe I want to have basically a listing of different organizations that are available to me and I can pick which ones may be the better option. So again, Holly did such a good job with this, so I am absolutely paraphrasing, so I strongly encourage you for lots of other reasons, but definitely check out that Improving Scent Work Trials for Everyone Virtual Symposium, but she was walking through how you may be able to go from, let's say, starting off in CPE if you're choosing between AKC and NACSW. The big difference is that with AKC, you as a competitor are able to choose which classes you get to enter into.

(05:51):
You don't have to tackle everything. Whereas with NACSW, once you've passed your ORT, you have to tackle everything all in one go on that day of trial. So that could be really helpful as well. You can then determine what my dog and myself have really put in a lot of time with, let's say containers and interiors as an example. So I'm going to pick AKC and I'm going to enter in a few classes that are just containers and just interiors, and you can also ease yourself into the length of the day. Another big consideration is again, when we just think about how we practice and train, even if we're working with an instructor, we're typically going to class and there may be, depending on the class set up and how long the class is, the class may be an hour and an hour and a half long. But we personally with our dogs are not searching that whole time.

(06:48):
There's lots of downtime and all of our classmates have to run too, but it's still pretty compressed. You compare that with a typical trial day and it's very long and a lot of it's stop and go, right? Either we're hanging out in our crate anxiously waiting, and sometimes for very long periods of time, and then suddenly it's like go, go, go. And you got to maybe tackle multiple searches back to back to back, and it's a very long day. From a strategy standpoint, how can I set myself up for more success? Choosing something like AKC or another organization like it, USCSS as an example, which also allows you to choose which classes you're going to enter into. So you don't have to enter into everything that's offered on that trial day. You can pick and choose, which is a good thing, and not only that, you get to walk away with anything that you earn.

(07:43):
It's not an all or nothing. This can be helpful for anyone in their journey, particularly for people who are newer. Let's say as an example that you were entering into a NACSW trial. It was your NW1. So you have interiors, exteriors, vehicles and containers, and you pass your interior, you pass your exterior, you pass your container, but you call a false alert on that vehicle search. You're not going to earn your NW1 and you don't really walk away with anything. That can be really, really, really deflating for people, particularly when they're first starting. The same is also true for people who are more experienced. So again, this is another really great way that we can leverage all the different options that are available to us. If you've been doing Scent Work for a while, you more likely than not have called a false alert at some point.

(08:34):
Sometimes we call lots of them. It is normal, everyone has done it. But every single false alert that we call makes us get a hit against our confidence in both our dog, ourselves, and our team. We actively have to address that in training to build that back up again. In addition to that, we may also want to see if there's a strategic way that we can build up our confidence in a trial setting, where we can choose to enter into something like an AKC trial or a USCSS trial where we can pick and choose the classes so we can be in a trial setting. We still have to train, we still have to prepare. This is not just, I paid my money and I got a ribbon. That's not what this is, but it's setting ourselves up for success. You know what?

(09:23):
My goal with entering this trial is for me to put into skills that I've been addressing in training. So let me set this up for you. Let's say that you entered in a different trial with a different organization and you called a couple false alerts so you didn't qualify. You addressed what that was potentially, what the causes were. You spend some time in training to do that, great. Now you're trying to apply everything that you just practiced, everything you just learned in another trial setting, but you want to really build those successful repetitions. You want to make sure that you are indeed where you thought that you were. You want to make sure your confidence is where it is. That's where we can be really careful about what we're entering into. There are also a lot of opportunities with AKC trials. There's just a lot of them.

(10:17):
So you may actually have an easier time entering into one of those. So potentially you could again have this other event where you called a couple of false alerts. You recognize, you know what, this is a snowball. It's rolling down the hill. Let's do some triage. So it stops turning into an avalanche. You do some training. You're building up your confidence again, you're feeling pretty good. Now you're going to enter into let's say, an AKC trial or USCSS trial, and you're going to pick and choose a few focused classes that are giving you an opportunity to apply those very skills that you've been working on. And the goal is, I'm going to be confident. I'm going to trust in my training, I'm going to trust my dog, and I'm going to trust myself regardless of whether we qualify or not, and I'm going to make sure I get video.

(11:08):
So even if I don't qualify, because there's lots of reasons why we do not qualify, but if you don't call a false Alert as an example, but maybe you time out, right? Or maybe you decide to call "Finish" before the dog has found all the hides, that would still be meeting your criteria. So I hope I'm making sense here that again, these things that Holly was outlining are brilliant, that we can look at trials a little bit differently. We can look at them as tools and opportunities as opposed to just a ribbon. They can have so much more value for us. It can also take some of the emotion out because we're looking at it really strategically and we're trying to use it to further improve our team. We're trying to use trials as learning opportunities and also as opportunities to play, but we're setting ourselves up for more success.

(12:00):
So let's say that we have someone who started off with let's say CPE as an example, and maybe even we're doing something with my organization Cyber Scent Work, because we also offer these opportunities as well. Or maybe you can work with an in-person evaluator or you can do something online. You can choose what level you want to compete in. You can choose to have known hides or blind hides for the lower levels. For our Traditional Cyber Scent Work Program, we do also allow for false alerts. So Cyber Scent Work may be a really good intermediary as well. So you've done something like that. You and your dog are feeling pretty good. Now you're going to go into, let's say an AKC trial or USCSS trial where again, you get to pick and choose a couple of classes and you're not going to be there all day.

(12:42):
You're getting you and your dog acclimated to trialing. You're building up those successful repetitions. You're ensuring your training is where it needs to be. You're being open-minded to see what else you may have to work on. Then maybe from there that's going well, you're going to enter into more classes and maybe you're going to, instead of trying to pair up three interiors, maybe you want to see, can I do for AKC, as an example, a container, interior, exterior and buried as an example. Can I do that and be successful in one trial day if it happens to be offered? And if that's the case, then great. Then you probably would be pretty darn good or on a good footing to do well at a NW1 one. Again, as an example. Is this a guarantee? No, but I think it's a much far improved approach of how we can be more strategic with how we trial, particularly because there are all these different organizations available.

(13:40):
Why not leverage them? Why not use them to your advantage? Now, there is a flip side to this coin. Being strategic also means that we have to be honest about what each organization offers, what the culture is, what the expectations are, what the rules are, how those trials are run, and what's going to be a good fit for my dog. And this is where I would strongly encourage you, before you enter into anything, doesn't matter what organization it is, please volunteer at a event first so you can see it firsthand. It can also give you a better appreciation for everything that goes on behind the scenes, what it takes to put on a trial, and it can give you a better appreciation for other things you may have to work on that you just never thought about. Such as being able to ensure your dog can settle inside their crate when they're not searching, that you can maybe build up a good routine to get your dog to the crate and back out of the crate when you're going into a search area and back into their when they're done.

(14:42):
So you can put together a good potty routine. You can figure out the best ways to keep you and your dog comfortable. You can determine, do I want to try to be social? Or would it be better for me to just hang out with my dog? And that's going to be a personality thing for both you and your dog. We go into a lot more detail again, in that symposium, strongly encourage that you check it out, it was really, really good. But what I'm trying to stress here is because there are so many organizations now, which is new, this was not the case 10 years ago. We should be leveraging this. We should be using these opportunities to our advantage. But being clear-eyed about it, knowing that maybe not every organization is going to be a good fit for me and my dog or my goals, and that's okay.

(15:31):
Not every organization has to be, that's the other important piece. But we can look at what each organization offers and we can look and we can evaluate it in a very sober and objective way. What are the rules? What are the levels? What are they testing? And how can I best leverage this to help myself and my dog go along our sniffing journey? So instead of just saying, well, I have to train and I have to jump into trialing, why don't we break down trialing the same way that we break down training and we can use the various options available to us to basically get to that goal. So again, a huge thank you to Holly Bushard for highlighting this. During the symposium, it was a chef's kiss. It was brilliant, and there were so many brilliant moments. Again, it was a three hour event. So I would spend another with my long-winded self, seven hours talking about it.

(16:29):
I'll make certain that I have a link for that inside of our replay page. You can expect more events in the very, very near future. Going to be reaching back out with all of our panelists in order to dig in a little bit deeper about the various topics that were brought up, and we're going to be talking about some other things as well. But if there's a particular thing that you wish that we would have more of a round table on, please let me know. I thought that, again, this went very, very well. We've gotten a lot of super positive feedback, and I think it's a good way for us to talk about things, to highlight things that we can all do to just improve and to make things a little bit better. So definitely feel free to reach out. But I want to thank you also very much for listening to this podcast episode. My apologies for the delay and a little busy here. Expect we're going to get right back onto our regular schedule of every Friday. There'll be a new podcast episode posted. But thank you so much for listening. Please give a cookie to your puppies for us . Happy training, we look forward to seeing you soon.