E45: 스테이시 바넷(Stacy Barnett) - "퍼포먼스를 위한 최적의 각성도"

that Brava's been a little bit of a change from some of your other dogs. She's a little different. Do you want to share a little bit about that? Sure. Sure. Yeah. Brava, Brava is, she actually thinks her name is Bravada. Yeah. That's her, her attitude. Her nickname is actually Big Bad. She's really a piece of work, but I absolutely adore her. She is what, you know, what people would typically refer to as a high drive dog, but she's also a high arousal dog. With my other dogs, I can get them into drive, but they are not what I would call high arousal dogs. I would say that they are either low arousal or moderate arousal. But with her, she's a high arousal. So it's totally on the different side of the York-Stads and arousal curve. So I want to talk a little bit more about that. Do you want to kind of explain what the curve is and how it works and kind of what you mean by saying she's on one side and they're on the other? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm actually like really interested in York-Stads and law because I find that it is the number one success criteria. Like if you want to be successful in nose work and probably in a lot of other sports, but the number one key to success is managing this curve. So this is a really important concept. Basically, with the York-Stads and law, and it's a law, by the way, it's not something that you can break. So you have a, so it's a picture curve that looks like a bell curve, you know, or it's actually a normal distribution curve, but it looks like a bell curve. As your arousal increases, your performance increases. So as the dog or whatever we're talking about, but we're talking about dogs right now, as a dog's arousal continues to increase and increase and increase, the dog's performance also goes up until it gets to a point at the peak of the curve. And at the peak of the curve, this is the point which I consider the dog to be in drive. And that's the dog, that's at the point where you're going to get the highest amount of performance, the highest degree of performance out of the dog. But now what happens is as the curve, as the dog continues to increase its arousal. So your high arousal dogs tend to live on that side, on the right side of the curve. So as they continue to increase that arousal, their performance actually decreases. Okay, so as the dog gets more and more aroused, the performance gets worse and worse and worse. And it gets to the point where it becomes beyond arousal and it's actually into high anxiety. And it's that anxiety that it's kind of like there's a point of no return at that point where the dog's totally, you know, totally out to lunch.

That's basically the curve. And like I said, it's a law. So to be successful, you can kind of ride the curve a little bit. So trying to figure out, you know, so you want to take a look at what your dog is giving you, where their emotional state is, and then modify that emotional state so that you can try to get the dog back to the peak. And when you get the dog back to the peak, the dog's in drive and you're going to have the best performance. To talk about that just a little bit more, what does it look like when a dog is kind of on that right side of the curve and kind of getting to the point where they're so over aroused that, you know, it's impacting in performance? Maybe what are some of the things people can do to kind of bring that back down, right? Okay. Okay. So let's talk about the right side. So the right side is, this is the curve, part of the curve that, you know, Brava is really kind of highlighting to me. I have to say that she's just to the right. Like she's able to focus, which is really nice with a dog who is high arousal. You're going to see a number of different things. So you could see, um, let's say the dog, the dog is waiting. Waiting is really hard on these dogs. They tend to, sometimes they might be barking. So if you see a dog and they're obviously very agitated and it's, they want their turn. They want to go now. They want to go now. They want to go now. Those dogs that are barking, they're, they're in high arousal state. Or if the dog is like pulling you to the start line or they're coming off of the start line and they're exploding into the search area. These are, you know, indications that your dog's arousal is too high. It's basically kind of picture a three-year-old child on a sugar high. Okay. That is high arousal, right? They can't focus. Sort of the way people think of a dog who stresses up. Yes. Yes. And actually there, there is a direct relationship. Like if you think about, um, stressing up. So I actually like to think about this in terms of real, um, real arousal and perceived arousal. You know, we perceive, um, high arousal dogs that stress up to be high arousal dogs. Cause it's very obvious stuff. So the real arousal equals perceived arousal. Now, interestingly, there's also another kind of stress that we see that doesn't look like high arousal, but it really is. And that is when the dog stresses down. So the dog is still stressed. The dog is still having, has, has high anxiety and it's still on the right-hand side of the curve, but you see these dogs and they're shut down. And it's very easy to misinterpret this, to think that the dog needs to be kind of, you

know, lifted up, you know, in its arousal state. So sometimes you see people trying to jolly the dog or, you know, Hey, let's go, let's go, let's go. Maybe use some toy play. And all they're doing is actually increasing the arousal even more and increasing the dog's arousal even more. And the dog actually can't get out of that anxiety state. That's kind of where the perceived arousal is very different than the, than the real arousal. You kind of started to touch on it there. The, the other side of that curve, the left side of that curve, by contrast, what does that look like? Or, you know, kind of how does that work and, and what should people be looking at? So, so the left-hand side of the curve is our lower, lower arousal from a, now if a dog is really low arousal, um, he's basically asleep. Uh, you know, so you have, you have the really low arousal that might be a little, you know, kind of very laid back, very, you know, like, Hey, you know, I'm here. They might be a little bored. They might seem bored. Um, they might be a little slow. They might be a little over methodical, um, like beyond methodical. Um, those are the dogs where you're just like, you just want them to give you just a little bit more. Those are the dogs that are on the lower, lower side. And as long as they're not too low on the, on the arousal curve, it's actually pretty easy to get them up the curve. And I actually find that the, the ideal state is slightly to the left as a natural state because a dog has a natural, a natural arousal state. And then they have the state that they're currently in. So their natural arousal state is their natural arousal state is slightly to the left. Just the fact of being at a trial will actually just put them at the top of the curve. Um, I'm actually very lucky. Judd's one of those. So he's slightly to the left as his natural arousal state. I take him to a trial. He loves trialing. It puts him right at the peak arousal and he's in drive. We all want that dog, right? Yeah. Everybody wants Judd. Everybody loves Judd. You know, we talked, we talked before this and we've talked a little bit about this just, you know, kind of outside of this context. But, um, I know another big thing for you is really adapting your handling and training to the dog you have. And not just in terms of arousal levels, you also kind of talk about the importance of adapting your training and handling based on how secure your dog is or how confident they are and whether they're more handler focused or environmentally focused. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about that.

Can you share what some of that looks like and how people can adapt accordingly? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I just want to give a little bit of a plug for Denise's book, Train the Dog in Front of You. Now, again, this is, I'm focusing on nose work, but I think every competitor, if you do dog sports, buy the book. And no, she's not giving me a kickback on that. Just wanted to let you know. Basically, because the most important thing that you can do from a dog training perspective is to know what kind of dog are you dealing with? And I don't mean, are you dealing with a Border Collie, a Labrador, or a Shih Tzu, right? It's, you know, the dog, the personality type, the very specific, you know, what makes your dog tick. And what's really cool is that Denise has actually broken down the dog's personality into dimensions. These dimensions, if you can understand where your dog falls, it can give you insight into what's the best way to train your dog, which is really cool. So, for instance, what I like to focus on specifically, especially for a lot of nose work stuff, is there's two particular dimensions that I think are really important. One of them is, is your dog secure or is your dog cautious, right? So, the dog who is secure, that's ideal. We want that secure dog. The dog who's cautious might be a little bit more timid. So, actually, Judd, as an example, is a cautious dog. But, so you have a cautious dog, but then you compare that to Brava, who is very secure. And the difference, you see the difference in their, in their searching style. And so, I did a, I did a search just the other day in my back room, and, you know, there was a tight space. And Brava was really pushing into that tight space where Judd was like, ooh, I don't know, it kind of makes me nervous. So, you have secure versus cautious. Secure versus cautious. Then you have another dimension, which is also really important, which is either handler focused or environmentally focused. So, a lot of other sports, we do like to have the dog fairly handler focused. However, in scent sports specifically, we need to have a dog that's a little bit more on the environmental side, but not so environmental that they are prioritizing their environment over-target owner or over-working with us as a team. Because, again, this is actually a team sport with you and your dog, and you have to work together as a partner. It's a partnership. So, the, ideally, you actually have a dog who is kind of somewhere in between handler focused and environmentally focused. But if you can kind of understand which, which side your dog is, that can give you insight

into how to train your dog. So, what it seems to me is like what you're talking about really is balance. Kind of this idea that you want to hit like this perfect in-between on a couple of things, right? Kind of working to balance out our dog's natural tendencies, whatever they may be. So, I wanted to ask about, I guess, one more skill or balance is kind of important. How do you achieve kind of that right balance that you're talking about in teamwork between teamwork and independence, especially, you know, during a search? So, there are some handling things that you can do. There is, so, for instance, one of these things, I actually call it proximity of influence. It's just a term that I coined that the closer you are to your dog, the more influence you're going to exert on your dog. Okay. So, there's actually a sweet spot. And every dog is slightly different in terms of where their sweet spot is. So, you don't want to be so close to your dog that you're influencing your dog too much. Because at that point, you're providing a little bit too much input into the search. And let's face it, we don't have a nose. I mean, we have a nose, but it doesn't work very well. But you also don't want to be so far away that you're not a partner with your dog. So, by understanding a little bit about is your dog environmentally or handler-focused, it can tell you how sensitive they're going to be to your proximity. I know, like, for instance, with Judd, Judd is actually quite independent. He's pretty, from an environmentally-focused perspective, he's more on the environmental side versus handler-focused. And he will actually tolerate a lot of handler interference because he just tells me to get in the backseat anyway. Whereas, if you have a dog like Joey, with standard poodle, who is actually very handler-focused, he's very open to suggestion. And I actually did a search this morning where I had a hide. And it was in the proximity of an area where there's probably a little bit of residual odor from a few days ago. And Joey kind of paused for a second and he looked at me. I made the mistake of saying, Joey, go search. Because as soon as I did that, I actually prompted him, especially because of my proximity and where I was, it, in effect, prompted him to alert on residual odor because he was like, oh, okay, you think this is where the hide is? Absolutely, I think it is too. So, he alerted. So, these are, like, the types of things that, now, had I been a little farther away from him or not talked to him, I think he would not have alerted there. So, this is just kind of an example.

And the really cool thing is I got it on video, which I love video. I love video so I can share it with people. So, it's, like, different kinds of things like that. So, you can really work that balance based upon the position of your body with the dog and your voice. So, I think when we talked about this before, you were talking about there's a certain, like, kind of angle that you like to see, right, between you and the dog? Uh-huh. Yeah. Oh, the 45-degree angle, is that? Mm-hmm. Yeah, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Sure, sure. And this is something, actually, I talked a little bit about in my handling class. But it's also going to be in my wind-by-nose class. We'll talk about it there also. But I think, personally, there's a perfect position from, you know, in relation to the dog when the dog is searching for the handler to be. And that position is actually 45 degrees behind the dog, but out, like, out away from the dog. It's, you're not parallel to the dog. Let's say the dog is searching a vehicle. You're not parallel to that dog. You're actually behind the dog and at an angle of about 45 degrees. Now, what this does is it puts you into a neutral position. So that neutral position is something that helps to offset that suggestion that we have. Dogs are very suggestible, and some dogs are more suggestible than others. And understanding how suggestible your dog is actually is really good information to know. The interesting thing that, this is my theory, is that our dogs don't understand that we have really bad sense of smell. Right? So our dogs don't know that because our dogs just assume that whatever they're smelling, they're smelling bird janus or club, that we can smell it too. And a highly suggestible dog is going to be like, well, I think it's here. Do you think it's there? Yeah, I think it's there. Do you think it's there? And then they throw an alert at you. Having a 45-degree angle can help to negate that and kind of offset that. It's cool stuff. Yeah. So I know that nose work isn't the only sport you've done. It's kind of where you're focused and where your career is now. But you started out in obedience. You've done a little bit of agility. So I was curious. Is there anything that you've learned from those other sports that's carried over into nose work for you? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think a lot of times with nose work, I think sometimes people forget that it's just another dog sport. Granted, the dog is out there. They're doing something that they are very adept at doing because they have this great sense of smell.

And because it's a dog sport, it has a lot of corollaries to other dog sports. And those corollaries, things like the dog has to be able to acclimate, that sort of thing, and being able to... There's a lot of behavioral corollaries. There's also, from the perspective of... So I'm going to use an example, movement. If you do agility, you'd learn that your body position and the way you move affects your dog, right? It tells your dog where to go. Now, interestingly, the same thing happens in nose work. But in nose work, we're sometimes very oblivious to that. Because we start off with the dog doing most of the work. And we do like to have kind of an 80-20. We want the dog really driving the search. But it's very easy to forget that our body movement and our body motion and our acceleration or deceleration, how we're standing in relationships with the dog, that all that is communicating to the dog. So if we look at, say, agility and all the motion cues and the body position cues and all these cues that you give your dog, you can actually look at that and say, hey, you know, those are natural cues. And those type of cues also apply to nose work. So I know that your life has changed quite a bit since we last talked, not just the new puppy, but you've been working with AKC, right, on their new Scentwork program. So I wanted to ask you what being an AKC contractor is about. What are you doing? Do you want to just share a little bit about what you're doing for them? What's involved there? Sure, sure. Yeah, I'm one of the contractors. There's a small handful of us. And we're basically consulting. So we're helping AKC with, we're just bringing some thoughts and some ideas to making sure that, you know, and really helping to support the program so that we end up with a really, really excellent sport coming out of it, because it is a new sport for the AKC. So we're helping to consult. We're also supporting some of the trials, like maybe if there's a new Scentwork club or something like that, to make sure that they have the support that they need for trials and to answer questions and that sort of thing. And we're working at doing some judges education. So we're helping to define, you know, what do we need to do to help make sure that we have the very best judges out there? Last question. I know you've got your win by a nose class coming up on the schedule for February. Do you want to just share a little bit about how much of all of this is incorporated into that class and maybe a little bit about what else you cover? So, yeah. So that's great. A lot of this will be incorporated.

But the win by a nose class is all about successful trialing and training strategies. So it's how do you get from the point that you're going to be, you know, good to great? What is it going to take to help to become a really great competitor? And, you know, we're going to get into there's probably going to be a little bit of mental management in there. There's going to be, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. You know, some different trialing strategies, different cue strategies. You know, we'll be talking about arousal. We'll definitely be talking about, you know, a little bit of handling, a little bit of, you know, what's the best way to kind of, you know, set your training strategies up so that you can get yourself ready for a trial. And it's all this type of stuff that kind of comes together to get to the point where you are really ready to go out there and hit a home run. Awesome. It sounds like a good class. I think I think it's going to be fun. I think it's going to be good. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Stacey, and for sticking through the technology fails. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week, this time with Lori Stevens to talk about how you can help your dog reach optimal fitness in about five minutes at a time. 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 Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lynn. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.