E434: 줄리 사이몬스(Julie Symons) - 노즈워크견이 진정으로 아는 것 평가하기

So I wanted to chat about nose work in particular today and specifically like that idea of evaluating what your dog really knows. So for those who are listening to this who do train nose work, why is that important? Why is it important to know, you know, kind of realistically what your dog knows? Yeah, it's such a great question. And it's going to allow you to meet the dog where they're at, right? So it's going to help you with your training plans and training decisions. Are you putting them in over their head, which a lot of us do? Or are you not progressing them enough to keep them challenged? It also is going to help you when you're trialing your dog. Do you know that if they're distracted or do you know if they're truly working odor? And then it kind of helps you to know whether you need to provide them support or not. Like are they struggling or not? Or are they better, you know, if they're going to be able to figure something out and puzzle through something. So knowing what our dog knows is going to keep them more confident because we'll make the right decisions for them. So kind of with that in mind, you know, when we say no, what do we mean, right? Like how do you define a skill as being really solid or, you know, versus maybe just kind of good enough? Is there a difference? Oh, there's definitely a difference. I think good enough is hard in nose work. And I think to truly know a skill is solid is that you've tested it in all the areas. You've worked with distractions, intentional. And obviously the novel areas will give you those unintentional distractions. You know, running blind searches, having, you know, people set up searches for you, things like that, that you've kind of tested it, right? I think with anything that we do, you need to test that they could do the thing in the locations or types of setups you're going to have if you're going to trial. So that would be novel areas and running blind searches. And like I said, good enough is kind of hard in nose work because the dog is doing the heavy lifting. They really can't rely on you that much to help them. So they really need to know their job. But I also do think that you do need to dip your toe in at times and not be so worried about. I mean, if you say good enough for the level that you're going to or the site that you're going to, I think is fine. But it definitely depends on, you know, where's the trial? What's the site like? How long of a day is it going to be? How much travel is involved? Those kind of things, when you are starting out, you aren't going to have all the skills.

I mean, I took Katniss out to a trial last year before she was a year old. And she got two out of the three searches. I would say she was not ready for the exterior. But it worked out fine that we gave it a try. So she, it was, you know, I knew we might not pass everything. But she's also pleasantly surprised me with her skills. And I had a recent trial with her in a short day for five runs. And she was just exponentially better and more prepared and kind of knew what we were doing. So the only reason I was thinking about this, like, because I'm starting to do obedience again with Katniss. And I haven't been in the obedience ring for a while. And I thought about, oh, my gosh, I'm just going to be, like, so nervous to go back in the ring. And I'm going to want her to be, like, perfect and have everything right. But that's not going to happen, right? Because then you'll just delay. You'll delay putting that off until you really were ready, you know, kind of a thing. So, but you definitely, you know, want to get those key areas of novel areas that they can work around strange people and in strange areas with noises and common distractors that you're going to find. So you want to test what the expectations are. I just finishing up my Nosework 120 class and the last, this last week, we go over what to expect at a trial. And I listed, like, just list and list and list for the different levels what you could encounter. And so you want to just make sure your dog is going to be okay with a slippery floor or working on gravel or working if it's hot or working if it's cold. You know, things like that, working, staging and waiting. Can your dog wait, you know, before it's your turn and things like that. So you just have to kind of, you know, touch upon as many as you can to feel that your dog is going to give it their best try and not be stressed or shut down. So that would be the key thing is that you, you, you know, you know, you're definitely good enough to trial and make a good go at the searches as long as your dog is going to be comfortable and able to acclimate in those environments to be able to work. And I noticed you kind of said something in there about your work with Katniss, which is that you, you didn't really know until you took her. You know what I mean? Like you had expectations. You knew roughly kind of what you thought she would, how you thought she would do. And, and then you waited a while before you tried again.

Obviously there's like a, we don't want to keep trying and failing, but also at some point you have to try and see where you're at, figure out what you need to work on and then go back into it. Yeah. Yeah. And between those two trials, I guess she started three times, right? So one in April last year, and then I did her ORT. I just want to, why I can't remember what month it was. I did her ORT a few, few months back. And I was so nervous. I had people were like, why is she so nervous? And I'm like, cause I just, it's a new dog. You know, I don't know what she's going to do. She tends to be a little wary of strangers and you're walking into an area with strangers. And she was so good. She did really, really well. I was so excited. And so then I had, I got my third outing, you know, they were all spaced about, you know, good three, four months. And so I just kind of built upon that. And, but I will admit that I have put her in over her head because I fall into that trap of having an advanced dog. And so then I throw her at those hides and those search situations. And sometimes she does phenomenal, but other times I recognize that. Okay. And I just, I just say finish. Like she doesn't know that she didn't find things or couldn't solve things. You know, she has no idea. So it wasn't really causing her issues, but I'm sure there's times I've left her in a little longer or she just wasn't quite ready for something. So we always are kind of playing around with that. So I think we need to like, you know, try something out and it may not have been the right thing to do. But then you just step back and then you evaluate it. Otherwise you won't know. Because I do have, you know, students who I do feel don't kind of, you don't progress to the next step soon enough. Then the dog's going to think there's only ever going to be one hide in a search area or something like that. And then they have a lot of trouble working multiple hides or close hides or more than three hides, things like that. Which is exactly what I was going to ask you about next. So, you know, what are some signs that people are kind of falling into that hole, right? That a drill or a skill has become too easy for the dog. They're no longer seeing growth. And, you know, what's the downside to that? You know, working a dog only on the things that they're already super fluent in. Yeah. So a clear sign is that you're always finding all the hides. You know, we still always want to find the hides and training and stuff at trials too. But we really do need to increase their challenges.

So there's kind of a rule of thumb as, you know, if you're, you know, if you're finding 100%, you're not, you're not training hard enough or you're not progressing your dog. Otherwise, you know, we're not going to develop the new place that we're at, right? So at the beginning I said that knowing your dog's skills is knowing where to meet them at. So we need to develop a new, like a new normal, like a new place that we're training at. Do you have any tips for teams to kind of avoid falling into that habit of only working those skills? Yeah. I would meet up with training buddies. And of course you can find a class or online resources to get new ideas and setups. If you do tend to train alone. I would also just embrace working on some of these advanced skills that your dog is not always going to think, for example, that there's always a hide in a search area. Or that there's never going to be more than two or three hides, like I said earlier. I see this. I see this with teams where they'll say my dog just stops after two hides or something because they've done that for so long. And so in some of my advanced classes I will be like, you're putting out six hides and people are like, what? And I'm like, you can do it because you could also pick up the hides as you go to make it a little easier. And the dogs really love it. And you can set it up with containers which are a lot easier to just find one after the other. So you just need to evaluate where you are and actually push yourself a little bit so that you don't find all the hides necessarily. Or that you might see your dog puzzling at something a little bit longer. Things like that. Are there particular kinds of setups that are most likely to show where the holes may be in a particular team's training? Yeah. Some of the biggest holes I see actually is running an objectless search area. Because we're so used to training, like we train on using a visual, like a lot of visual context, right? Containers or chairs or a lot of our drills have an obvious object for them to check. So we almost, in some ways, teach them to be object focused. So then when you have a search area, like the outside of the building that has nothing but pavement and the wall to the building. And maybe there's some natural things like a big rock or a tree or something. But I find a lot of dogs just stand there and they go, what? Or they'll go to, I had a setup the other day where I had everybody park their cars back from my building. So we used the front of my building. So I just coned off where the big cones where the cars were.

And the dogs came out and they went straight to the cars. And there was a really big odor, I call it odor bomb, like really strong odor set up on the wall under the shutter of the window. But the dogs just gravitated toward these line of cars because there was like visual objects. So that's something that I see a lot or that the dogs aren't always using their nose like we think, right? Because if they're going to objects, then they're kind of doing a selective search. They're not really doing an air scenting search. And I'll see that where I'll do some air scenting drills and the dog does not pick up that odor even 10 feet away. They only kind of recognize it or respond to it when they kind of bump into it. So that's why I love doing some of those air scenting drills to help dogs really work odor in the air. So those are kind of the main things I'm looking at is are your dogs object focused or are they actually working odor in the air? So if we're constantly building these challenges, we're talking about things, you know, maybe the dog isn't finding 100% of the hides or kind of what have you. How do you balance that stuff, setting up those challenging things that push a dog while still making sure the dog is staying motivated and confident and they're not kind of eroding that aspect of things? Yeah. So what I definitely do is after you're doing something more challenging, always follow it up with something really simple. So do a really easy single hide search after you've done something more challenging. Or like I knew somebody who went to a fun match and their dog worked a lot of challenging hides come above their level. So I would have them, you know, go back home and do some really easy stuff just to kind of balance that right. Just to kind of keep that that that and build their confidence back up a little bit. And then you want to incrementally, you know, up the challenge, which is going to be really hard for people, right? Like sometimes it's so easy, hard, so easy to just jump to something more challenging. And I have a really good example. In my Nosework 120 class, Sarah Owings and Miles, a lot of us know them, had a really great setup with one of my air scenting drills. And she did a third step that wasn't even in my lectures. So I talked about downwind drills. You just put a lot of odor out and your dog is literally just downwind. And the dog, you know, can't help but just get it in their face. So her dog goes to it and she was working her dog outside where it's like lizard, you know, lizard land. And he has really strong hunt drive for the lizards.

And then her second drill was a crosswind point to point exercise. So her dog got into the crosswind pretty quickly and sourced it really nicely. And then her third one, she decided to do upwind. So the dog is upwind of odor, meaning the odor is blowing away from the dog. So at the start line, the dog doesn't have any odor information, but it just did the other two. And I don't know if she used the same area. And the dog just trusted that there would be odor out there. Didn't question it, was willing to go out there with no information that, you know, he could pick up at the start line. And once he got past the odor, then he got into odor. And it was a really great progression if she set up her dog to be successful, which would be really hard if you just went out there and said, I'm going to purposely do this upwind drill. Or you weren't even paying attention to the wind direction and you're starting your dog and the odor is blowing away. And then your dog's at the start line, newer, novice dog, doesn't know what to do. And her area was kind of an objectless area. It was like a pasture, not pasture, but like a cow arena or something. So there wasn't much there. But that was set up perfectly for that dog because of the progression steps. So you build upon the last setup that you did to get to that point. So another example might be, I love to work blank areas early on. So run a blank area search and you have the complete power, authority to call finish whenever you want. You can finish it in 10 seconds. Usually I have people wait 20 or 30 seconds. You call finish, you give your dog cookies for clearing the area. You go right to another area with odor. It's so easy to work that challenge. The dog is fine, right? So you're exposing your dog to scenarios that they're going to encounter and it's all positive and they get rewarded for it. So what about, you know, kind of that other end of the leash? Are there common handling habits that maybe unintentionally can hold a team back during more advanced drills? Are there ways the handlers can kind of check themselves to make sure that they're not falling into those habits? Yeah. And it's not just advanced drills either, right? So this could apply to any time. I would say video, video, video. Then you can go back and look at what you're doing as a handler. And what I find that hold handlers back the most is them being unaware of what they're doing. So if we didn't video and I try to get as many in-person, you know, people to hand me their cameras, but not they don't. They all don't, but more are.

And they don't really remember what I said they did or sometimes they don't believe me. But often their handling is noisy. They're moving too much that distracts their dog. They're making suggestions on known hide locations. That's the biggest. I find that when you are, say, working the more advanced stuff and then you want to help them so you face the hide, you take them to the hide, you move in that direction. And that just is not going to carry through to trialing. And I think that's actually where a lot of teams struggle is running, you know, knowing where hides are, which is how I think we should train a lot actually because you can observe your dog. But running known hides where you make suggestions toward the next hide. And it just makes us feel good as human. Like we feel like it's innocent enough and it makes us feel good that the dog can solve stuff. But we are helping them with our body language. And dogs are so experts at reading our body language. So I would suggest that teams run known hides so they can learn what their dog is moving away or toward a hide or when they catch odor and why that would make sense. They would catch odor or why they might be getting stuck somewhere based on wind direction and where the odor may be blowing. But you can't help them find known hides. I'm not saying you can't make suggestions in general. I'm not saying you shouldn't get your dog out of an area that they're stuck. But what happens is when there's known hides, you know where they are. And you either intentionally or unintentionally help them. And again, people don't even know they do it. They don't even because our brains are like split attention. We have one side of our brain like I want my dog. You're trying to will your dog to go over to the hide. So your body follows your brain thoughts, you know. So my point is rarely do I ever see anybody on a known hide search. So you find a hide, you know the other hides to your right. I never, ever, ever, ever see somebody turn their dog to their left. Like never. Like that never happens. They're going to turn their dog toward the hide. And again, it seems innocent enough. But when it's blind, then you're either guessing or the dog's expecting you to help them, especially when they're novice. Um, so I would say video because that's the only way you're going to know that you're doing that. And I see it because I see people's videos, right? When you teach online, people submit videos. I see it all the time. Um, it more on my online classes because they're submitting their own stuff.

In my in-person classes, I'm running more blinds for people because that's a value of coming to a class. Uh, so I think that just, just realize what you're doing with your handling and, um, really, really try to, uh, be as neutral as possible when you're working known hides. And then use that as information, like, like let hides go that they don't find, which is really hard to do. Um, it's like, you know, there's a hide over on the left and your dog's just not getting over there. Um, again, in a trial situation, that's all different strategic. You know, you might, you're going to probably make sure your dog covers the area if you know there's one hide and your dog's not finding anything. But in, in a training situation, I think that seems innocent enough that it gets you into trouble if you, if you're helping, um, with your body posture and where you face. And, and, and, and what a lot of people do too, is they, um, verbally cue their dog to search when they're not finding anything. So it's almost like the dog learns, oh, okay, I must, I must not be doing something right. Correct right now. So I think that, and usually people will say that when, when I'm, I'm watching this beautiful, you know, piece of work by this dog who's really, really like kind of puzzling and clearing blank areas. And then the handler just gets impatient and then they start to like kind of nag them with cues and stuff. And I'm like, Hey, your dog is searching. Your dog is searching. They just haven't found the hide yet. So let them, you know, let them, let them work that out. And, and then I think, think on the, um, opposite of that, because I'm saying, let some of the hides go. Sometimes they might not find that hide and we just have to be okay with that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, if somebody is watching back their own videos, you mentioned a couple of pieces in there. You mentioned the, like, not immediately the dog found one hide, turning your body to orient to the next hide. You mentioned, um, the idea of like repeating your search cue when you think your dog hasn't, isn't going in the right direction. Right. Are there other like things that they can specifically look for in their own video? If they're reviewing their video to catch ways that they're hinting to their dog? Um, yeah. A lot of times, um, leash, how you're holding your leash. Like I've seen a lot of people, like, I can't show this on a podcast, but they almost steer the, the leash with their hands. So like, if you want, they want the dog to go right, their right hand is pulling.

So not actually necessarily putting, yeah, they are putting a little tension on their dog. They're literally like steering their dog. Or if they want their dog to go forward, they're pushing their leash forward. Like, it's almost like they're like their leash is a steering wheel. And I see that sometimes, and they don't even know they're doing it. Because like I said, I think in our brains, our brains are just, we're human. We're human. And this is all human stuff, right? We want to succeed or want our dogs to succeed. Um, so we do things that kind of unconsciously of like kind of trying to suggest. And, you know, another that's really interesting is, um, even like another person in the room, like the person that set the hides will give clues to the dog. Like where they face, where they stand, the camera person. Um, I noticed that sometimes I am as the instructor in a local class, I'm like starting to like meander toward the hide area. I don't know. Like I don't even, if I'm intentionally doing it, of course I'm not. But I, I sometimes will do that. Um, and so there's one of the drills, um, in a class I have coming up is a double blind is where you set a hide and you tell people to go in there and run it with nobody in the room. So you have to run it and trust your dog. So there's nobody's going to tell you if you're right or wrong. So that's really a test of, um, you know, nobody is giving any clue to the dog. And can the dog work without these little clues that they're getting along the way? Yeah. Yeah. So as you mentioned the class, so we're talking about this because you've got your ambitious drills for analyzing skills class in the schedule for the December term, which opens for registration on the 22nd. Do you want to talk a little more about the class? Maybe what you cover who might want to sign up? Yeah, I really love this class. I love all my drills classes. Um, one thing I like about them, um, is that they're not an intense, they're not an intense class, meaning there's, um, three, three setups a week. So you're not going to get overwhelmed. You know, it's easy with our online classes. We like to share a lot of our information and, and sometimes it can be, it could be overwhelming to get to everything. And what I really like about this class is it's, it's, um, the drills are, uh, are kind of short described, you know, not a lot of, not a lot of video or verbiage on describing the setups. Um, three a week, um, easy to pick what you want. You don't have to do them all. And they're a nice resource to go back to. Right. So later on you can go back.

Oh, I want to, I haven't, I can't think of anything to train. Let me go look at this drills class. So that's one thing that's nice about it. Um, and we do cover some of the tougher setups. Um, things that you will never see in a trial. That's hard for me actually. Like I tend to be very like, I'm just going to set what I'm going to find or think I'm going to find. Um, but I've been a little bit more like, let's see what our dogs can do. Uh, like one example is, um, stack tides. Like we'll have a hide, um, like under like the, say, say there's a chair on the carpet and they'll have a hide under the carpet. And then I'll have a hide under the chair seat. Or I'll have a hot box under the, under the chair and then a hide higher up on the chair. So there's two hides like stacked. And, um, I haven't ever seen that quite in a trial. That's, that's pretty challenging, but it's so cool to see the dogs work that. Um, but there's a lot of things that I cover that I got from trialing, like things that I've seen when I've been trialing. I'm trialing up at the summit level now. So I get to see and search some really cool stuff. Um, but you know, there's still not, um, things that we wouldn't have been, or shouldn't, we should have already been training for like transition hides, hides coming in and out of areas, indoors, outdoors. Um, dogs generally miss hides when they're going through a transition area, like going over a ramp, down the stairs, up the stairs, through a door. And those are just so fun to set up, um, at any level, actually. I mean, you know, my baby, my novice dogs should be training, you know, transition hides in a very typical transition hide that I'm seeing a lot right now. I was just looking at some debriefs is on the hinge in the door. So if you're in a room in an area with like multiple rooms, they have the doors open into the other rooms. And there's, there's almost not always, it was kind of a new thing when they, we first started finding, seeing them at trials, they were like, wow, you know, they seemed hard for the dog to find, but, um, just have a hide on the hinge. Um, you know, with the doors, you know, it's closed up to the, to the wall. And those are real fun hides, um, mirrored image, mirrored hides, like a hide on each side of a door. Maybe you have a hide on the hinge on the left side, then you have a hide on something right inside the room. And those are likely the hides that you're going to, you're going to miss in a trial. So what I try to do is find scenarios that the setups generally make it hard to find all the hides.

Like those are, those are the hides that we're missing in trials. So we want to set them up so that we can present that puzzle to the dogs and so that they can, they can learn to work it out. Um, I also go over like time pressure. Um, sometimes there's like games or levels that you don't have a lot of time, you know, to either find a lot of hides or to, or to solve a tougher challenge. Um, definitely getting into more, more hides, like just putting out a lot more hides and also odor threshold. How strong or weak is your odor, you know, to weak, to work that weak amount of odor as well as, you know, um, the higher amount of odor, which generally for my dogs, it's easier. But for some dogs that could be overwhelming because you get a lot more odor everywhere. Um, so yeah, so that's kind of just a quick description of, um, just things I've picked that would be either like things I thought I would never try with my dogs or things I've seen at trials. So I know it's kind of the part three, but did they have to have taken the previous parts or like what skills should they need to come into that class? Um, no, it doesn't have to be done in sequence. And, um, they've kind of gotten a little out of, you know, I used to teach them one, two, three, one, two, three, whatever. Um, as long as the dogs are, I kind of forget what my class prereq says, actually. I don't know if I can pull that up quick enough. Yeah, go for it. Let me see if I can pull that up. Um, but I would say that, um, I don't have it there. Um, just. It looks like, it looks like you wrote the target audience. This class or teams trialing or training at the nose work three elite detective levels and who are looking to set more challenging. Oh, there you go. Thank you. Yeah, I was looking at those. Yeah. So I would say, um, I would probably even lower that to like nose work three levels and above. So dogs that are in those are free that need to get prepared for those challenges. Um, I, I find that with the, um, strong foundation skills that we have usually with our FDSA student base, um, the way we can set these, um, drills up, um, is, you know, be on the three odors, be, I say trialing, you know, at the nose work three level or above, um, would definitely be, would be appropriate. Excellent. Excellent. Um, any final thoughts or key points you kind of want to leave folks with? Um, I just say keep learning and keep videoing and, uh, be as open to other people's ideas, but also do what makes sense to you. Um, um, be willing to try something and not expect your dog to be perfect at it.

And, you know, all our dogs need is our, that magic word of finish. And anytime you can say finish and I reward my finish call. And at the early levels, the dogs don't really, we don't need finish at the novice level. We don't have to say finish this off the clock, but after that you do. And then the dogs still don't really know what finish means. Um, but I reward my finish call. So when my dogs are at the advanced levels, they're almost always ending on not finding a hide. So when you get to the higher levels, you have a no number of hides, big areas. And so you're going to keep your dog in longer because hides, I always say hides beat time. Like the more hides you find will be whether you're going to try to have a quicker time in a search area. Not always true, but, um, so your dogs are almost always ending, not ending on a hide, which is so different from my novice dog. Like Katniss, she has always ended on a hide right now. So I probably got to start working on her finding a hide, running for, you know, searching for a little bit more and then me calling finish. So she's, she's due for that training right now. Um, but I'll tell you, when I say finish, my dogs just whip, my advanced dogs, like Drack and Moxie, they just whip around. And so that's just like a powerful cue, reward cue that you can give to your dog. So if something's a little harder, you just say finish. So to the dog, it could be like a blank area or to the dog, they only found the one hide. They didn't find the harder one or something. And that's how you can keep that in check also. And I, and I know some people worry about, we were, we used to worry about back in the day. Do you, do you reward a finish call? Cause the finish call used to be really important in blank areas. So you'd have to go in and call an area blank. And well, what if you rewarded the blank fine? Then the dog would just go in there and say, well, I'm just going to pretend like there's nothing here. And, and, and tell them I don't find anything, but I don't think, I mean, we don't want our, if we've trained our dogs to do that, then we've done something wrong. Right. I have never seen it be an issue where saying finish and rewarding when the dog's not on a hide or if the dog's clearing of like room that's had any ill effect to the dog's, you know, future and, and searching. Uh, it's just a great tool that we could always get out of a situation that that's, that's gotten too hard. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about all of this, Julie. You're welcome. I can't believe it's almost the December term again.

I know, right? This year flew by. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in 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 Fendi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fendi 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.