E69: 줄리 사이몬스(Julie Symons) - 노즈워크 대회 출전하기

And I'm really, really seeing the days of adolescence in our past and really see the potential in how I can, you know, kind of get a little bit more, not that I wasn't serious, but more serious and formal with some of his training coming up. So I'm really excited about that. And we've just been, we've trialed in nosework and confirmation so far with him. Awesome. And that's, you know, kind of reassuring to hear considering I have a year and change puppy and little boy, still definitely maturing. Yeah. And I actually wrote a blog on that, I believe. And then I saw somebody recently asking and I just haven't had time to reply. But I want, I am experienced first time for myself having an intact male. And, you know, I just, the last year I've been busy with other stuff. I'm still training him, but I didn't put any pressure on him or myself. And he's really come along, like, for example, in agility classes, I couldn't get his nose off the ground. Now he runs, he stays in the whole class without sniffing the ground. And it's just, it's just was waiting that out and then working with him, letting him acclimate and not putting the pressure on either one of us. So I wanted to talk about trialing and nosework. I know you have this webinar coming up on achieving nosework trial day success. So I was hoping you might start us out by just walking us through what a nosework trial looks like, I know it's super different than some of the other sports that are out there. What that looks like, how it works in it all, everything goes well. Absolutely. One thing that's kind of interesting about it is, at least in the nosework association, which is the main venue that most of us got involved with, is, you know, you get maybe 30 to 40 dogs total at a trial. And you are staying in your parking lot with the dogs in the inside, because they usually are in locations where it's not like a training building and you can't crate anywhere else. So you have to get used to working out of the car and your dog does have to get used to hanging out in the car all day long. You have to deal with, you know, handle the different temperatures and weather concerns you may have. And when you get there, especially with the nosework association, they don't want a lot of dogs, you know, hanging out and wandering around because as many people know who do nosework, a lot of it is geared towards supportive reactive dogs. In the AKC venue, it's just like a regular AKC trial, but most people are still very courteous of that a little bit different situation in their locations.

But for the most part, you're at a school or some, you know, maybe a Boys Club of America or something that you're just going to be waiting outside with your dog. They have a running order and there's a briefing. So you meet with the, maybe the host, the judges, and they just talk about some of the logistics and the situations of how the day is going to run. They'll tell you if you're going to have back-to-back searches or you're going to run and then go back to your car. And then they take you on a walkthrough. So you go through a walkthrough. Most trials, you get a walkthrough. Some of them you don't, depending on the level. You get a look at your search areas and then you come back and ask, you know, questions about the areas if you have them. And then the judge or the certifying official, depending on what venue, will go over, you know, how many hides you have, if it's a level of known hides and your time limit that you have to search. Except for AKC, where they do allow spectators, if there's room, you are generally in there searching. Nobody else can watch. There's a few people in the room that are, you know, timing and judging and videoing and things like that. You know, it could be a very low-key situation. And for some dogs, that could be a little worrisome where you go into this empty room with one or two people could actually be more concerning for a dog versus having people around all the time. And then you're just working in that environment. So those are some of the, how like a typical day goes and you end up just, you know, sitting kind of outside your car. You meet your parking lot neighbors because you usually don't know a lot of people, especially if you go out of town. Of course, I know a lot more and everybody does as you go to more and more trials. But it's not like you go with your friend who also entered because the odds of two people getting in, most of it's a lottery system is not likely. So you're usually kind of traveling by yourself and meeting new people. And it's just, it is a really, it's kind of a good question you ask because it's, it is a very different trial day compared to other sports. So you mentioned in there, I mean, how hard it is to get into trials and kind of looking through some of the, the webinar description and some other stuff, it seems like maybe that leads people to sign up for a chance to compete, even if they're not sure they're really entirely ready. So how can a handler kind of ensure their team is truly ready to trial? And I mean, what advice do you have there? I would say luckily, I, at least I know my students are prepared to enter.

And I'm always happy when some of them are even unsure if they're ready. And I assure them that they are in most cases that you have the skills. They may be concerned about the level of difficulty or the differences. And I'm also proud of some of my students who realized I shouldn't move up in a AKC because you can get your novice out on a weekend and then move up in the Sunday afternoon trial, but you might not have taught multiple hides or the second odor. So I really admire my students who realized, why would I move up? I'm just going to run bumper legs or go home early because I don't have those skills. Why would I put my dog in there? But I do see the occasional teams when I've, now that I can spectate in AKC, you know, I hate to see the teams that aren't, aren't prepared either the handlers or the dogs. And I'm hoping that, you know, less of the issue. I think more of it is, as you said, you know, getting into trials is challenging. So when you can only get into maybe two trials a year, and that's changing. So I don't want to scare that people off with, with that type of a cadence, but you just can't make the same mistakes in those two trials a year that you have. And back to being like ready for trialing, if you have a good foundation and you know, the skills that are required at that level, I would say you're ready to enter. You know, we all can run into something that we hadn't expected or just not have a good trial day, but it's mostly just know what's expected and make sure you have, you know, trialed in those novel situations that can prepare you because all of the trial situations you're going to be in are novel and new with new people around. I know you've also talked about the importance of taking inventory of training gaps and handling mistakes. How can a team do that before the actual trial, especially if, like you said, there's maybe, you know, two trials a year that they're, they're looking to compete in? You know, you definitely see your training gaps. They usually surface when you're trialing because that's when, you know, we're nervous. And so we're acting a little different or the place is novel and we just aren't our normal selves. And so that's something that we do have to, as best we can combat that, like, develop good, you know, mental strategies and just realize that everybody's nervous. Just if you kind of go there with the idea of, you know, have to, you know, depend on what your, your goals are. If you just go there and just do your thing and not worry about passing or whatever, you actually usually do pass when you take that pressure off of yourself.

So when you do trial and in some of these training gaps surface, you know, that by purchasing the trial video. So how you can inventory your gaps is either, you know, videoing your blind training searches if you're in classes or whatever, or definitely your trial video. And what you can do, and this is what we did in my, what I should have classes, we had people review some trial videos that didn't go as well. And a trial, I would say doesn't go as well as if you don't find all the hides or if you get a no from the judge, you called an alert and the judge said no. And that's kind of like the worst thing to hear at a nose work trial. So you watch those videos of those experiences and you take inventory. You say, oh, I was crowding my dog. I talked to my dog into a hide or, you know, I never taught my dog to search over four feet. That's why, you know, that's a gap I have. So by watching your trial video is where you're going to really see those gaps. And then you list, you literally want to write them out, list them out. One of the neat things about that class, which I didn't really anticipate was it kind of forced people, but it had them go back, kind of organize all their trial videos. They went back and rewatched them maybe with a fresh set of eyes. And they said, wow, I just sometimes don't watch them a second time or I haven't watched all these. And they were, it was eyeopening to them to go back and not just watch them to watch them, but to watch them with, with a purpose of saying what didn't go well here. And we also, of course, in the class go over what, what goes well, because we also want to stay positive and be aware of how well we're doing. But since we're focusing on trialing better, you have to know what didn't work when you trialed and how to not do that mistake again. When you go to your next trial that you got into. I just was reading something on Facebook also that somebody said, you know, we were like, oh, we always, we always remember that one mess up that we had and we just can't let go of it. And somebody says, you know, I, I drove eight hours. I didn't sleep the night before. I was busy at work. The first run of my day, I just blurted alert. And they're like, just all that stress and tiredness and everything. They just, you know, it was over, you know, kind of a thing. And so we need to not, you know, we just need to be in a better state, go there with the right, I guess, tools and strategies to start off the trial. Well, sometimes it's that first search that is the most stressful, definitely. And maybe we're going to make some mistakes.

So if you just can hold it together and learn to be in that moment and having a plan. And that's what we did in the class is we, we said, you know, people had trials coming up. It was really cool. So we said, what are your goals? What are your goals for your next trial? What are you going to do differently? What are you going to do the same? And these people were just going to trials and passing and placing. And it was, I'm just getting goosebumps talking about it. And it was such a rewarding experience just because we just were looking at the trial experience and just not even really in a different way, but just in a very specific way to inventory and to just know it's okay. It's like, we need to own our mistakes. Somebody actually shared with me that they were, it was so refreshing to have this topic in the class because every time they talked to somebody who went to a trial, they would always blame the trial site, the high placements, the people, the dogs. They were like, nobody's like, sometimes we just need to own where we have training gaps and how we can improve our handling. And instead of, you know, blaming other things. So what were some of the, you know, some of the common holes or some examples of the holes that people kind of discovered? And maybe if you'd just walk us through a little bit of problem solving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was neat. I had a guest, a lecturer, Holly Wichard, from a judge's perspective, she listed what her, what she believed were the common handling mistakes. But these are my lists. So if you want to know what Holly thinks they are, and there's definitely some overlap. But I also just had a recent judging assignment as my first AKC judging assignment in North Dakota. It was fun. And you're in the best seat in the house. And, you know, I was nervous because I was like, I want my high placements to be good. I want my dogs, the dogs to be able to find them. So this is what I actually saw there as well as I see when I'm teaching. I think the number one hole that we have is not covering the search area. Oh, and just to back up a little bit, sometimes your gaps. Are your handling? It's our handling is the problem. If you, you know, cleaned up some of your handling, then that's going to go better. Some of the other, and I can get to those later, are actually your dog skills. So those are the types of gaps that we would find, our handling and our dog's skills. So the number one hole is not covering the search area. What happens is our dog shows interest in an area, and it could be pulling odor, which that means odor has blown.

Maybe you even found that hide, but then it also collected further down into an area. Or you just say, oh, this would be such a great place for a hide. And your dog maybe showed a little bit of interest. Maybe it wasn't because of picking up some odor there. And then you're just sure there's something there. So we stay there, and we stay there, and we stay there for, I mean, I just did a class recently, and most of the people in class stayed about a minute and a half in one, like, fourth or third of the search area, having not even covered the rest of the area. And there was no hide there. And I always tell people, if there was a hide there, your dog would have found it within a minute and a half. I mean, and even if there was a hide and they didn't, you need to leave, cover it, and you can always go back. So that's the number one. And I saw that at the trial. Not very many. There was just a few teams that got convinced that there was a hide somewhere. And every dog that left that area and walked about eight feet found the other hide. So they just were convinced, and you just need to cover your search area. And sometimes I think people are nervous. They actually don't realize the search area. Sometimes you don't get a walk through, or it's covered so fast that you forget. And again, when you're nervous, our mind's a little fuzzy. So I have actually asked during a search when I was trialing, just remind me, is this in the search area? So that in case I forget, to make sure that I am covering it. The second thing that I noticed a hole in training is crowding our dogs. Again, when we get nervous, I'm not really sure why we do this, but we stand closer to our dog. Maybe it's a security thing for us too. But what happens is you could be affecting the dog's access to a hide. You could actually be blocking a hide or affecting the airflow. But what generally that says the dog is, because when we're training and we know where the hide is, and this is actually one of my topics in my current class, knows we're coaching, is we need to be good actors when we are running known hides. When we know where the hide is, almost everybody gets fishing food out of their pocket. I catch myself doing that. And so then at a trial, when you walk in because you're nervous, you're crowding your dog, the dog goes, oh, I can maybe... I smell odor and my handler's coming in really close to me and I'm a little nervous with this environment. And the dog offers some type of an indication and you call it. So you can actually talk your dog into a false alert by crowding your dog because to the dog,

it contextually can mean, oh, this is normally when I get fed because I find something. So, and then the third thing which plays into that is you can talk your dog into a hide area. That's a very common mistake because you're convinced that somewhere you're crowding your dog, you're nervous. And the dogs, you know, sometimes our dogs give a little bit weaker indications at a trial. And so we can just so easily talk our dogs into a hide. And the last one that I came up with, I mean, there's many more, but the more difficult one that I'm seeing, I see in training and when I was judging is when to let your dog drive the search and when you need to intervene. That's why I always say that we're 50% a teammate to our dog. We both have half of a role in the job to do. Sometimes the dog, it's better to let the dog drive. And then there's times where you have to intervene and like get the dog to a different search area or cover an area or refocus them if they're distracted. And we won't always get this right. But what I generally see, I know where the hide is because I placed it and the dog is heading right toward the hide. But the handler goes, oh, you didn't cover these chairs over here. Now, that's not necessarily a bad decision because maybe you don't have a dog that doesn't have time to search the whole area twice. You need to cover this area. But it happens more than not where that area was cold and the dog was going right to odor and you just pulled them off. So it's not the easiest call to make in the moment. But I also did this in one of my elite trials where our savvy was going to a hide. I pulled her off. But when I took her back to where I went, she found a hide and I ended up finding all the hides in that search area. So even if you pull your dog, I mean, I'm not talking about literally some dogs. The dogs are building a sign that says the hide is here and you pull your dog off. I'm talking about your dog is working their way toward the area where the source is because they've picked up odor. And then you interrupt them on their way and say, no, come check here. So sometimes that works in your favor. But sometimes I just like, oh, shoot, the dog was headed right to source. So sometimes if I feel like that if the dog is actually working and moving, you can kind of tell some dogs will pick up speed because they pick up odor. And again, we're not going to always get that right, but it's just something that we just need to, I think, continually improve in when to intervene and when to let the dog drive. And again, by videoing and reviewing that is how you're going to progress with that.

And maybe getting another set of eyes to review. I have some of my colleagues review my videos because I don't go to a regular trainer or a training buddy. Just somebody else that can view your work and say, hey, did you notice you did this? It can be very helpful. Are there other issues that are usually overlooked in training and even when prepping that tend to pop up, you know, kind of just in that trial situation? You know, I think the main thing, if you truly are prepared and you know the rules, the thing that tends to pop up is a novel situation. A surface you never got your dog on before. Or a distractor that they've purposely put in a container or even an unintentional distractor in the environment. That's usually something that pops that can just catch you off guard. And of course, in that area, you want to just train in as many novel locations with as many novel distractors as possible. You're not going to ever train for everything. But as we know, as long as you generalize to the most part and when the dog has confidence with the job, they usually can overcome. They do overcome these novel situations. But I noticed my one dog, Savvy, I didn't realize one year she had no problem going across like a lacquer gym floor. The following year, she belly to the ground. I think it was a visual thing with age maybe. I don't know. And I've had to work that afterwards. So I want to shift from talking about trialing to, I guess, kind of the other end of the spectrum, right? So those early steps. I know we're in the middle, when we're recording this, we're kind of in the middle of the June session right now. And you're teaching intro to nose work this session. And the next session, you have intro to handler scent discrimination in August. So I wanted to ask you what the difference is between those two classes. Yes. You know, they're quite similar in the approach. I mean, a target odor is target odor. So you teach the target odor pretty similarly. We do use the same game, very similar games that make sense for each of the areas. With HD, there's just some different considerations. Like, is it a problem searching in your or training in your area where you live and spend a lot of time? And it ended up not being a problem. But what I found was that I did a lot of nose work searches in my house. So that sometimes I could tell my dog was like, I'm looking for oil and I don't know I'm supposed to be looking for your scent. So we worked through that. Basically, with the two different target odors, we developed different start line cues and search strategies.

So I think the biggest difference between the two is I go into handler discrimination with a different search strategy, different start line. And one of the different strategies is I'm going to probably direct my dog a little bit more because handler scent is going to be heavier and it's going to drop. So dogs are going to pick that up more low. And also the high placements don't go as high as the oil searches. So your dog generally doesn't have to, depending on the dog size, they don't have to search as high. So those are the different things. And I think the biggest difference is just our brain realizing that the dogs can find our handler scent just as easily as oil. But they just disperse into the area differently. And dogs have to be a lot closer to the handler scent, I've found, with watching many dogs run, than they do in oil searches. So are there additional skills that the dogs need to learn, you know, kind of specifically for handler scent discrimination? Does that, I guess, is that kind of an issue for it? You know, I haven't noticed that there was a need for a new skill as much as you needed it. We need to train HD a little bit more frequently to solidify the understanding. So we kind of had to stay with it. And then if I were to trial, I would have to kind of refresh and kind of remind them, whereas oil, I could, at the point when my dogs are, if I just did a real cursory, you know, session before a trial, they're going to be pretty strong. The other thing that I've noticed with HD, though, is, it sounds kind of strange, but the dog really has to be using their nose. And I think with nose work oil, it's so strong and it's so different for a dog to learn wintergreen or birch that they just notice it. So they're like, oh, there's, I noticed something about this, this funny smelling, you know, birch over here. So they pick that up. But when you start doing handler scent, we start with gloves and dogs want to retrieve them, you know, if they're retrievers or they've done tracking. So there's, I think a little bit with handler discrimination is there's a little bit of context overlap, but it's doable to train across the different sports. They just have to get past that the context that you normally think it is, it's a little different. And we have some really neat games to work through those, like put the socks right in a bowl before, you know, if the dog wants to retrieve them, because a dog has never seen a sock in a bowl in tracking or in, you know, obedience and articles. And so we just need to get them to use their nose.

And if they want to retrieve the sock, then we actually start getting it, you know, maybe covered inside of a container. So that's generally the difference. And I do like a neat little thing that's different is a lot of people pair, you know, food with the odor. It's very common with certain articles, but I've gone to pure shaping of only the target odor. So what I actually do is to get dogs to actually use their nose when I have like four or five socks, because in the handler discrimination, we use a cotton sock or glove. I actually rub food on the cold items, like completely opposite of one of the methods. And I tell you, it works wonderful because, because the item with your scent on it happens to get food crumbs and food smell on it just because we're refreshing it with our food hands and dropping crumbs on it and stuff. So what's becomes unique about the hot sock is that they are cotton. They all have some food smudge on it, but only one of them has your scent and it gets the dog actually using their nose. And even with scent work with oil, I find some dogs, we have to kickstart them using their nose, not their eyes, not thinking a container is a pivot box or, you know, what to do with a box. So, but generally, and I, but I found that more with handler discrimination where we need to, we need to find a way to jumpstart their seeking about, their seeking scents over their retrieving. So I was kind of wondering, are false alerts more common when training handler scent discrimination, especially since, you know, so often we're probably training in a usual training environment where maybe handler scent is kind of all over? You know, again, I thought that was the case from training at home. I did find when I went outside into the fresh air and I was doing exteriors with this little tiny cotton ball, I was amazed at how well the dogs did. And I just think the airflow probably helped and, you know, maybe being, being outside of where I live, but it, I never had my dog truly false. They would false where I had placed a hide just before it. This is a lingering handler scent. I think false alerts are comparable across the two. And I would say if you're not prepared for handler discrimination, but you, you're a nose work dog and you enter a trial too soon and the dog sees these boxes at, which contextually for years has meant oil. And you send your dog out there and they, they, they're thinking I'm looking for oil, but they can't, and they, they, they just aren't clear that it's your handler scent. And they might false because they can't find anything. And then there is a judge's scent there.

And I do think sometimes they fall for the other handler scent. If that's not thoroughly trained, because it's sometimes hard to get access to other people scenting talks for you. But in general, I'm going to switch the other way and say in nose work, oil work, we do containers for the rest of the dog's lives. And, and, um, handler discrimination for AKC, you only do containers for novice. And then you're out of there, you get three legs and novice. It's like everybody has a party because we, we want to get out of the boxes with our socks and we get into interior searches and we get that scent outside of a box. Um, whereas in nose work, oil searches, you have container searches in every level. And I do believe containers have the highest false alert rate. Um, and because boxes become such a context of, of being reinforced. So dogs who are nervous or unsure if there's a distractor, they do tend to false on containers. So I think it's comparably, they have the risk of false alerts. I know the class kind of discusses both UKC and AKC. And I was just curious what maybe some of the differences are in the different venues. So UKC only does HD in a box. So they never moved to, you know, scent outside of a box. And then novice, it's only your scent. There's no discrimination, um, with, with, with the judges having a scent out there. Um, another thing that's different with UKC is they actually, um, similar to SDDA in Canada is you have to actually indicate your dog's alert behavior. Um, in UKC, you also have to say what your search command is, how you're going to cue your dog to search. And that might be how they start. Maybe they start the timer. I'm not sure. But in the novice class, they actually don't judge that part, but you still have to provide it. When you get into advanced and excellent, they are going to judge you on that. You, um, use the search command you said that you do, and that your dog alerted in the way that you expect to call it. Then those other search levels, though, every box has a discrimination scent. So in, um, advanced, they have the judge sense about puts a scent of glove of theirs in 11 of the boxes. And then yours is the hot and the 12th and the advanced level. Each of the competitors that are there with you provide their, you know, scented sock and they're all out there when you search. So everybody else's sock is out there and they must, they must group them by, you know, groups of 12 or whatever. I haven't trialed in UKC. It's, there's just none in my area. Um, so it's kind of neat that that's a little different, but then that ends there.

They just, they don't, they don't search for this outside the box. That's all super interesting. I've got one last question though, here for you, and it's a little bit different. Um, it's a new question that I'm asking returning guests each time they're on the podcast, uh, because hopefully it's a question that you could actually answer more than once and have a different answer. So my question is what's a lesson that you've learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Yeah. Um, so I thought about this and because I'm now training more, um, locally and I've either returned to sports I've used to train or I'm extending into some area, other areas is that found date that dog training is dog training. And no matter what sport you do, or if it's a pet class or, um, a puppy class, uh, you have the same foundation skills. You need the same skills and concepts, um, as your foundation. So many of them apply to other sports. I mean, I've always kind of knew that, but, but since I started, you know, delivering the curriculum and talking to different groups of people that are coming in with, with different goals, but I'm, but I'm teaching the same thing. I'm teaching the same thing to them as a foundation. And so that was something that I very recently, um, just was reminded of how, how it's not really that different what you need, um, across the different sports and just even for a pet dog. Um, but it's, you know, acclimating it's, it's your mechanics, it's, um, building your dog's motivators. It's having good cue control. It's just all of those things are common across all of the sports. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back in the podcast, Julie. Oh, you're welcome. I enjoyed it. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Donna Hill to talk about owner handler trained service dogs and teaching a recall. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast and iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fensie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fensie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Today's show iso. Thank you.