Ep. 128: Honest Advocacy and Trialing

Choosing to trial with our dogs requires that we ask some questions. Would trialing be the best thing for us, our dogs and our team, right now, at this point in time? The answers will differ from team-to-team, but the act of the purposefully practicing honest advocacy is something everyone participating in Scent Work should do.

This approach allows us to better determine which paths or decisions will work best for ourselves as handlers and our team as a whole. This is a necessary process, regardless how we may describe our dog or ourselves.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of honest advocacy, how this includes being honest about who our dogs are, what they need and how this may differ greatly from the realities we will encounter at trial.

Speaker:

Dianna L. Santos

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

• Be Brave: Using Scent Work to Build Confidence Webinar
• Canine Body Behavior and Scent Work for Dog Owners Webinar
• Control Unleashed and Scent Work: Crazy Calm Start Lines Webinar
• Conquering Competition Stress Webinar
• Influence of Dog's Reactivity on their Scent Work Training and Trialing Webinar
• Intro to Control Unleashed Webinar
• Primary, Paired and Odor Hides: Choosing the Hide for the Training Challenge Webinar
• Scent Work for Reactive Dogs Webinar
• Scent Work for Sensitive Dogs Webinar
• Stranger Danger Webinar
• Trial Prep for Reactive Dogs Webinar
• Trial Prep for Sensitive Dogs Webinar
• When Dog Odor Trumps Target Odors: Dogs are Scary Webinar

ALTERNATIVE TO TRADITIONAL TRIALING

• Cyber Scent Work
• Fenzi Team

TRANSCRIPT

Dianna L. Santos (00:00):
Welcome to the All About Scent Work Podcast. In this podcast we talk about all things that Scetn Work, that includes training tips, a behind the scenes look of what your instructor or trial official is going through and much more. In this episode, I want to talk about honest advocacy for our dog more when doing Scent Work, strap in. So before we start diving into the episode itself, let me do a very quick introduction of myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I'm the Owner and Lead Instructor of Scent Work University. This is an online dog training platform where we provide online courses, seminars, webinars, and eBooks that are all centered around Scent 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 are competing even at the upper levels, we likely have a training solution for you. So I to know a little bit more about me, let's dive into the episode itself.

(00:51):
So in this episode I wanted to talk about how we can properly and honestly advocate for our dogs when we are doing Scent Work. And this is something that's been mulling over in my mind for a bit from a couple of different angles. And then things happen today on social media where I was like, "Okay, we're going to talk about this too." So let me preface this by saying what my background is for anyone who is not aware. I started off in the dog realm because I had an aggressive Doberman who wanted to kill other dogs. We're not talking reactivity, we're talking he would like to kill them quite literally, and he really wasn't all that keen on people either. Now, I had adopted this dog after not having a dog for several years as an adult, and I had researched the breed, we went to a rescue, all good things, and we had him for a very short period of time before, I think it was a matter of days, and I brought him to a Petco or PetSmart, I can't remember anymore.

(01:53):
And we were just there to buy a harness. We didn't know there were any issues. It was like, okay, we're going to buy a harness for this dog. It's going to be great. And unbeknownst to me, we had walked into the middle of a dog training class where they were doing recalls. So I'm in the aisle with my dog looking at harnesses and this woman comes running by us. I'm like, okay, what's happening? Suddenly a dog, she's calling a dog's name and suddenly a dog comes running down the aisle to do the recall. They're doing class. My dog proceeded to grab this dog by the face and do a death shake on him on the ground. Not great. The dog was not hurt. I don't know how, just by pure luck, but it was terrifying. It was absolutely not okay. Now again, I'm not a professional dog trainer at this point.

(02:40):
I'm just someone who adopted a dog, a very large powerful, he was over 90 pounds Doberman. All this to say that I then thrust myself into trying to figure out, what do I do? And from that point, I was extraordinarily fortunate to be connected with some really talented professionals who could then help me and they did. And that's when I started my actual learning for how to become a professional dog trainer and the want and the desire was to help other people who may have dogs who have any kind of array of behavioral issues where that's not what they signed up for, but sure enough, they have this issue. And I loved Zeus. He was everything to me, he was the most important thing. I love that dog to the moon and back, but he was dangerous. He was an absolute loaded gun and my husband and myself put ourselves basically on house arrest for the five years that we had him.

(03:34):
It was not safe for me to take him out, and if I did take him anywhere, more often than not, it would be to the training center and it would be very, very controlled. We're talking multiple x-pens, coordinating with people, it was a thing. He improved by leaps and bounds with lots of training, lots of hard work, working with very experienced people, but also one of the things that helped him immensely was to provide a wonderful outlet for his life was Scent Work. And that's when I really grew to become so passionate about this activity was because this gave him an ability to be a dog. We couldn't even be in our front yard even on leash because people would walk their dogs or they would walk by and it was just a stressful thing, so we would be in our tiny little backyard that wasn't fenced at the time, so he was always on leash, but if he could do a search, oh, he felt so good and if he could do a search inside, oh, he just absolutely adored it.

(04:33):
But it's through my experience with him that I can empathize tremendously with people who do have dogs who have reactivity or sensitivities or maybe they're even aggressive because I've done all these things. I've tried the, "Oh, well, I'm going to be really super safe and I'm going to try to practice somewhere and it's going to be fine." Did anything happen? No, but that was pure luck. It really was pure luck and I never should have put my dog myself or anyone else in that position. I tried competing. I thought, "Oh, well this is going to be good!" So I did an ORT with him and he was great as far as anyone looking outside would say, he was fantastic. He passed his ORT. He didn't care, seemingly to someone who didn't know what they were looking at. He didn't care about the people, didn't care about the dogs, and yet his reactivity, I would say took a back step by probably a year, as far as a progress goes, and that lasted for a long time. That's where I decided, okay, this is not going to work for us.

(05:32):
Even though he didn't have a explosion at the trial, it didn't do anything for us. It set us back in our progress. What does this have to do with anything? What I've been saying for a very long time, and the reason why my background is important is that being an owner of a dog like that, it makes you think a certain way. You are on edge all of the time. You desperately just want something to be normal and you love your dog, you adore your dog and you want everyone else to know the good things about them. You don't want it to just be about the episodes, whatever they may be. It could be on one extreme where it's barking and lunging and spitting or whatever else or the other extreme where they're shut down and they're running away or they're hiding or whatever. You just want everyone else to see the wonderful dog that you know when they're comfortable with you, you want them to see that dog and, depending on your situation, no one else may have been able to see that up until this point.

(06:37):
This matters for this discussion. My background is that I know what it's like to be that person. I also know what it's like to be an instructor trying to help people with those dogs and navigating the seemingly impossible path of conflicting desires where they are doing Scent Work because they're trying to get the same benefits that I had with Zeus. Their dog's lives may be extraordinarily limited and they're trying to broaden their horizons, so they're taking a class or they're doing private lessons, as an example,because their dog may not be able to do class, and sure enough, you see this dog just blossom. It can take however long it does, it doesn't matter, but it's also deepening the relationship between the dog and the handler. They can understand each other better. There's so many benefits. Scent Work is amazing as an activity. Then without fail, there's always a point where they then want to prove to the world that they are good, and then my job as an instructor is to say, but why?

(07:42):
What is that ribbon or that title really displaying to everyone else that you don't already know? Your dog is incredible. Your dog has come leaps and bounds. You are incredible. You are so dedicated to them, so devoted to them. You have spent countless hours, lots of money. A lot of the time you have cried yourself to sleep. You have gone through the gauntlet. I get it and I see it and I applaud you for doing all this for your dog and also to improve yourself as a dog owner and also as a dog trainer. You don't need to prove anything to anyone else because trying to take that test, let's say going to a trial, if it's not appropriate for your dog, first of all, you very well may not pass the test, so then everyone's going to think, "Oh my God, what are you doing here?"

(08:33):
But also, none of those people are going home with you. Their opinion doesn't matter. But even worse, still after all that hard work, all those deposits you put in that bank to show your dog, "I'm going to keep you safe. Everything is good. We don't need to have any kind of explosive reaction or we don't need to shut down," you just basically reneged on that. You told them, "Well, except in this situation. I'm totally going to put you into a situation that we can't handle and go find a hide," and they're like, "But I can't deal with this environment," as an example. There are scary people, as an example. That's not fair, and as an instructor, it's my job, it's my responsibility when I'm working with a client to have those conversations and to try to say, "Look, ultimately this is your dog. You are the one who has to make the decisions.

(09:23):
No one can make that decision for you, but I can absolutely educate you and share with you what the realities on the ground are. All these modifications that we're making in class or during my private session with you, that does not exist at trial and it can never exist at trial." It's not because of trial and competition. Organizations are evil or they don't like your dog or they don't care about your dog or they're trying to set up for failure. That's not what this is. It's quite literally a logistical impossibility for them to run a trial. To set your dog up for success, we need to have people in and around those search areas. If you're dog has stranger danger, particularly if they would like to use their teeth in response to stranger danger, they have no place at trial. End of story, and I know people don't like that answer, but that's the truth.

(10:13):
That's just the way it goes. Also, in case you don't care, if you think, "Well, they're putting on a trial, they should still have to accommodate me for whatever reason." Fine, I think that that's completely incorrect, but let's go with that premise. Let's say that the whole community said, "Yeah, you know what? We're going to say that we're going to take on that mantle. We're going to say you have to be put at risk because you are putting on a trial and great, you're just have to deal with it." What about all the volunteers? You need volunteers for trials to absolutely happen. Those volunteers can range as far as their expertise in dog-dom as far as what they understand the dogs to be saying and predicting what that dog is going to do, if you can even predict it, because again, if you're adding a whole lot of stressors, then suddenly that behavior becomes very unpredictable.

(11:06):
That's a really long-winded way of saying you could very well have volunteers who have no idea what's going on as far as what your dog is saying and what your dog needs, and if your dog bites one of those people or even tries to, what are we doing here? This is not acceptable, and for anyone to say, "No, I have a right and I should be able to bring my dog into any space for a trial, as an example and everyone should just accommodate me," that's not true. Safety is absolutely paramount. Every single dog on the planet can bite. It's just not reactive dogs. It's not just aggressive dogs or sensitive dogs. Every single dog alive has the opportunity to bite and they all have a mouthful of very powerful teeth with very powerful jaws. It can do a lot of damage and we have to remember that point.

(11:57):
Honest advocacy is preventing our dogs being put into situations where they can then do that and being honest about who our dog is and what is the point of what we're doing. If you had spent, for me, if you had worked with me as an instructor, let's say over the course of two and a half years, three years, we worked on behavioral modification. This is all back when I was still training in person, did a long involved behavioral modification program and we did all these other types of skills and training. We also incorporated Scent Work over a three year period to the point where now your dog has not had an explosion or an event, let's say for three whole months. Everything has been great at home, their routine is solid. They're actually looking pretty darn relaxed. You are feeling great, everything is doing well and you're also doing searches.

(12:48):
Maybe we do happen to have some spaces that we can go to. Maybe we were able to get you into a class where your dog was comfortable. Maybe in that class, there are some classmates that have properties that we are able to practice at every now and again, and those people in those situations understand we're going to do X, Y, or Z to set all the dogs up for success and everything is going swimmingly. Why on earth would we blow all that up to go to a trial where none of those protections are in place, where now your dog very well may be put into a situation where they feel they have to bite someone? We do not have a right as dog owners to put other people at risk. We don't have the right as dog owners to put other dogs at risk because now I'm on the other end of this equation.

(13:36):
I now have a tiny little terrier who is not reactive and I've had a non-reactive dog before him. He loves everybody. He's okay with other dogs. He doesn't care. If I were to attend a trial with him as a competitor and someone else was there with an inappropriate dog who then hurt him, it's going to be really, really, really bad for you. But this is what I'm trying to say is that even if your dog never came in contact with my dog, them trying to could absolutely ruin him. He could then become afraid that all dogs are going to try to kill him. Do we understand this point? This is what honest advocacy is. It's not conflating training with trialing. They're not the same. It's not saying that trialing is the only thing that's available to us. If I'm going to be doing Scent Work, I have to trial, that is not true.

(14:36):
It's just not, and I know there are people who say, "Oh, reactivity, it's just too big of a term. It encompasses too many dogs and then you're trying to basically make these dogs bad and yada, yada, yada." That's also not true. Your dog doesn't have to be reactive in order for you to determine that trials are not appropriate for them. You may have a dog who's not reactive in any way, shape or form, but the pressure of the trial, the pressure that you're putting on yourself in trial, the pressure it's putting on your relationship, they may not do well at trial. They may do great when you're training, but suddenly when you're in a test environment, everything falls apart. Why would you keep doing that to yourself and your dog? That's one of the reasons I'm personally not trialing at the moment is that trialing is not appropriate for me.

(15:28):
I don't do well personally in that testing environment. I just don't like it. So until I can basically get my head wrapped around it where it's not such a big deal to me, I'm not going to put my team into that position. I'm not going to put myself and my dog in that situation where I'm basically setting us up for failure and for what? That title and ribbon does not do anything. It's not going to overcome the fact that I put my team in a position where we're almost guaranteed to fail at some point in some part of it that wasn't necessary. That's what I'm trying to put forth with this episode that again, I was one of these dog owners who had a very aggressive dog, truly aggressive, he wanted to kill other dogs. I'm not parsing words here. I get it. I understand.

(16:22):
I really, really do. I know what it's like to be just stressed to the ends of the earth and just trying to figure out, what do you do? I understand and I empathize. I've worked with so many clients over my career and I am in awe about the amount of dedication that they have for themselves and their dogs and their teams, but again, those are the very same teams that we would say, "You know what? We probably don't want you to be in the middle of Time Square in New York." It's for the same reason. We wouldn't want to, let's say we're going to drop your dog in the middle of a child daycare and hope for the best. We wouldn't do those things. We wouldn't make those decisions. It would be a really bad idea. It's the same thing with trialing. It doesn't mean that there is some black mark against you and your dog.

(17:16):
It's just the opposite. It means that you are being an honest advocate for your dog and for yourself, that you do not need the approval of anyone else to show how wonderful of a team you are, that you are secure enough in what you have achieved and more likely than not, you've achieved amazing things that go far beyond what any test with a competition organization could ever kind of score. The fact that your dog woke up today, they experienced life and nothing bad happened. That's amazing. You should celebrate that every single time that happens. You should keep a log. Then when you start noticing that your log, there are less and less icky things that happen, but when you started it, it may have been every couple of minutes something icky was happening. That's an improvement that you can celebrate, but you don't need to celebrate that with a title and that there are absolutely alternatives.

(18:14):
I understand the allure is not just titles and ribbons, it's also the community aspect. Again, if you're working with an instructor and you're able to actually be a part of a group class that's appropriate for you and your dog, that can be your biggest support group ever. That's a wonderful thing about Scent Work, is that it's not just within the trial sense. Those classes, they have stayed together. Some classes have stayed together for over 10 years at this point and they're so supportive of each other. They've seen each other through multiple dogs and they keep up with each other ,really friends that could be wonderful. If you do want to quote unquote test your skills with Scent Work, that's why there are organizations like the one I co-founded with my co-founder, Sean McMurray, Cyber Scent Work. There's also Fenzi TEAMS and there's all kinds of different virtual options as well that you can do this. Again, in a safe way where you're not going to a formal trial to a novel location that's a pressure cooker of stress where there's a ton of people, a ton of dogs that neither you nor your dog know and there's just so many opportunities for things to go wrong. This is what I mean by honest advocacy.

(19:28):
It's recognizing how we can be the best teammate for our dog and our team, how we can be the best handler, trainer and dog owner. We could possibly be the advocates for both of us without making it seem as though, "Well, I want to be able to do all the things even though all the things may not actually be in my best interest. "That's silly. That's not advocating for yourself. It's trying to put a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't work for a reason. It doesn't mean that you or your dog are lesser than or that we should all shun anyone who has dogs who quote unquote aren't perfect because here's a little tidbit. No dog is perfect. There are dogs who are high arousal, they're not aggressive, they're not shutting down, but they are like, woo-hoo, and you may determine, you know what?

(20:22):
Trialing is not a good idea for us maybe right now because we need to work on this. Them being able to think otherwise, I'm just making donations to the club and I'm also, we're accruing false alerts. I'm chipping away the confidence I have in my training and in my team. I'm injecting a whole lot of stress and strife for what? That's my point is that yes, my main focus when I'm talking about these things is always on the behavioral side of stuff. My foundation. That's why bringing up my background is important that my skin does crawl, the hair goes up on the back of my neck when I hear about people who have dogs that on a behavioral profile standpoint, they should not be trialing, but they are. That really irks me because I know at some point someone or a dog is going to get hurt, if they haven't already, and even if they don't, the likelihood or the threat of harm is enough to just make me want to scream into the ether.

(21:25):
It shouldn't be happening. It's also causing those teams that are making those choices, it's causing them harm. You're setting you're training back. Your dog shouldn't be in a position where they feel like, "Okay, I'm suffering from stranger danger as an example, and here I am. I'm at a trial site where there are hundreds of strangers and I'm being asked to walk through a gauntlet of a parking lot filled with strangers, and now they want me to go stand in the staging area where there's more strangers ,and now I have to go into this room where there are a slew of strangers in this really tight space." Of course your dog is not going to do well and again, not doing well can be, they just don't search. It could be they don't want to go into the space. It could be they shut down. It could be they hide behind you.

(22:10):
It could be they do displacement behaviors. It could be the other extreme where they're at the end of their leash barking and lunging, spitting and trying to bite at anything and everything that moves. Both are inappropriate. Both should not be happening. Both are not advocating for your dog. It doesn't make you a bad person, it doesn't make you a bad dog owner, but it means you made a bad decision in that moment and we as a community need to help people understand how to make better choices. Every single dog on the planet should be playing the activity of Scent Work. That trials absolutely are open to reactive dogs with a huge asterisk. Your dog must be able to be comfortable around people. There are too many people at a trial. We cannot be putting people at risk because your dog thinks that they want to bite them.

(23:04):
That's not okay. Your dog cannot be aggressive towards dogs. If your dog is trialing, your dog cannot be so environmentally sensitive that they are panicking when they're outside of the home, those dogs should not be trialing. This is not controversial. This is not saying that people are bad. These are just truths. These are realities. Scent Work is not just trialing. Trialing is this tiny little sliver of this amazing activity that all dogs should be doing, but not every single dog should be trialing. We have to be honest advocates and if we're not, here's the real reality. If enough incidents happen, because again, this is a problem with every single in-person competition organization, all you need are enough people or dogs to be hurt and the lawsuits are going to start to fly and if a trial host gets sued, or even better still the property owner that that trial was held, they get sued, forget it. All those trialing opportunities, all those trials you see popping up all over the place with all those competition organizations, that's all going to go away real quick because we're not being honest about what our dogs need.

(24:25):
Again, I created, I co-founded Cyber Scent Work because of this, because I wanted to provide teams proper outlets where they could still safely test. That's all competitions are, testing the skills of them and their dogs, but they can do it safely. They could do it at home. They could work with their instructor. Again, those examples I gave before, maybe you're working with a family member or a friend. There are some safe places that you can then make all kinds of adjustments in order to still take a test. Great, do that. You literally can earn titles. I'll happily send you ribbons and we will happily celebrate your accomplishments, but that's not the same as going to AKC, UKC, NACSW, USCSS, PSD, SDAAA. I could list them off all day long. There's so many different options. Now, those organizations cannot make those same kind of accommodations. It's not feasible.

(25:22):
It's literally not possible because trialing is not the same as training. You may say, but my instructor can. It doesn't matter. Your instructor is doing training. They're trying to help you and your dog learn. Of course, they're going to make all kinds of accommodations and they want to keep everybody safe. We can't make those same kind of requirements at a trial because it's a test and the test requires people and the test has a lot of other dogs in handler teams that are there to play, and again, I'll just reiterate this, if I'm there trying to take a test with my tiny terrier now and some other dog is there that shouldn't be and tries to go after me or my dog, I'm going to make a real loud stink about it and that's putting it lightly. I would be beyond. If I was there to take a test with my dog and then I came out of that experience with my dog now ruined potentially for the entirety of his life, even just behaviorally, I would be insufferable, truly, and I mean that sincerely.

(26:28):
Being someone who was on the other side of that equation, I understand fully the responsibility of owning a loaded gun. Having Zeus, anytime I took him out of my house that was on me. I could quite literally be the cause that someone got very severely hurt. I could have been the reason why a dog was severely hurt. The only reason it didn't really was luck. Anytime I took him out, even though I was trying to be very, very careful, it doesn't matter. It was still luck. Are the majority of dogs who are reactive or sensitive, are they that dangerous? Probably not, but it doesn't matter. It's still possible and again, you could have a completely behaviorally sound dog who doesn't fit into any of these categories who is perfectly fine. You put them in certain situations, they can still use their teeth. We just need to, again, practice honest advocacy and not try to say, "No.

(27:28):
Everyone must trial." That is incorrect. Also, honest advocacy is whether or not trialing is helping you or your team. That was the big piece that was mulling around in my head before the social media stuff this weekend. You may not be ready to trial right now or maybe trialing is not going to help you and your team at this juncture for whatever reason. It could just be the pressure that's put on. It could be the fact that you both need some time to build your confidence. It could be that you're both exhausted. Maybe you're just doing too much. Adding trialing on too is not going to help matters. Being an honest advocate is recognizing what works and what doesn't and making good decisions and not allowing any kind of social pressure. Well, I need to show how good I am by getting this title.

(28:11):
Who cares? The titles not going anywhere. I'm not trying to say the earning titles is bad. It's not. I'm not trying to take away from achievements from people who've earned titles. It's impressive, but it's not the end all and be all either. This is what I mean by honest advocacy and we can't get to honest advocacy if we immediately put our backs up. "Oh no, everyone should be allowed to trial and how dare..." no, stop full. That's just not true. It is objectively not a true statement. If someone just started training Scent Work yesterday, we should not be advocating for that person to trial tomorrow. That's not good advocacy, that's not a good idea. They need skills. They need to practice. They need to figure out why they're trialing in the first place. What's the point, and again, everyone's answer can be different, but you should evaluate that answer.

(29:04):
If the only reason you're trialing is because you're trying to prove to everyone else how good you are, are you really getting anything out of it? Is that a good reason to be doing this? My opinion would be no, you should have some more fulfilling reason that you want to trial. I like the response that you are indeed testing your training. You're trying to determine where things are good, what else you need to work on. It could be a social aspect. If you get the title, great. If you don't, it's information, right. Let me wrap up with this. My personal contention with all of this is that Scent Work, the activity is everything. I am extraordinarily passionate about the activity of Scent Work. I truly do believe that every single dog living should be doing Scent Work in some capacity or another. I am also very strongly in the camp that trialing is not the same as the activity.

(29:56):
It is a subset of it. Some dogs, some handlers, some teams would be appropriate to trial and some of them may enjoy it, which means that you could have a whole number of dogs and handlers and teams that may be appropriate to trial, but they actually wouldn't enjoy it at all and those teams should be permitted to make that decision. You know what? Trialing is just not for me, and that's okay, but they should still be promoted to do the activity on their own. We do not need to be conflating that Scent Work is only trialing, because it's not. So to wrap this up, if there is anyone out there who's still listening and who got through all this and is sitting there going, "Okay, I have big feelings about this. I wonder if my dog falls into one of these various categories of things. They're sensitive, they're environmentally sensitive, stranger danger and reactive, whatever, or my dog doesn't fit into any of those categories, but I don't know, should we be trialing or not?"

(30:58):
Just ask yourself a couple of questions. The big ones are this, if you were to bring your dog into a novel location and there were people in that space, is your dog going to be comfortable with just the people being in there? If the answer is no, you've got some very serious questions to ask yourself because there are going to be people at trial and those people are not going to be changing where they're located or what they're doing because your dog is uncomfortable. It's not fair to put your dog into that situation when you know that modifications cannot be made. That's what happens at trial. If you know that you bring your dog to a novel location and there are dogs within the space, maybe they can hear a dog barking. Maybe they see a dog walking a fair distance away. Can your dog deal with that or are they losing their mind?

(31:46):
If they're losing their mind, then trialing is not going to be okay for you and your dog. It's just not. Instead, work with a reputable instructor, but ideally in person at least for a little bit and give your dog the skills so they can cope with that. Not so that you can trial, but so your dog has life skills to help them feel more comfortable in day-to-day life for you. Can you go into a novel location with your dog and have people stand there watching you and judging you because that's what trialing is, and if the answer is like me and you don't find that very comfortable with that, trialing may not be for you, and that's okay. Don't put yourself in that situation. Even if you're an instructor, you don't have to. Trust me, I'm an instructor. I own Scent Work University. I own a competition organization. I co-founded it.

(32:33):
I run it. I don't compete right now and there's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. I just don't enjoy it. I don't like being judged. It's not the height of my day. Be honest with yourself. Honest advocacy is also about asking yourself, okay, none of those things apply. Great. Where are you as far as your skillset? Read over those rules. Have you actually obtained the skills that you and your dog and your team need to take this test and to do it well? If the answer is, well, maybe, don't do that trial. Maybe spend some more time training, that's okay. Training is where you're building and deepening the relationship with your dog. It's where you're learning. You're building skills, it's good things. You should be doing so much more training than trialing so much more, but maybe you think, Nope, everything's fine.

(33:24):
In that regard. Okay. Then ask yourself, why are you trialing and everyone's answer is going to be different and determine whether or not that answer is really a good idea for you and your team. For myself, in my opinion, I don't want anyone else's ideas about quantifying who I am, the quality of trainer I am, how good my dog is. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything by trialing. If you have that as one of your answers, you're trying to prove to the world, we are good, you may want to reassess why you're trialing and if that's the only reason why you're trialing, then maybe you don't want the trial, right? You don't have anything to prove to anyone. If you do happen to have some kind of log that you've been keeping, again, even if your dog doesn't have any behavioral issues whatsoever, just for training, Scent Work, just for doing stuff, and you can refer back to that and you can see you've improved over whichever metrics you want to pick.

(34:25):
That's all the proof that you need for yourself that maybe before you did Scent Work, your dog was bouncing off the walls, they were getting into the garbage, they were stealing your shoes, they were doing all kinds of stuff. They were bored because they were this smart, intelligent, inquisitive, emotional little creature and their needs weren't being met and you just didn't know what to do. But now you've been doing Scent Work for six months or a year and now all those things have gone away. You can actually understand your dog better. You can feel that the relationship is far improved leaps and bounds. You don't need anyone else's approval. You notice that, you live it. Things are better because you were an honest advocate for your dog. You recognized things weren't working and you tried this wonderful activity that is Scent Work and it helped you. That's all you need. So I know that we have not had the podcast up for a little bit now.

(35:17):
Again, life happened. Technology happened. It's been fun, and I wasn't planning on putting out an episode until next month, but there have been these conversations and things and I was like, no, we need to talk about this! I'm going to encourage everyone to just ask yourself these questions and be kind to each other. Every single dog and handler team are different. Everyone has to make decisions that are appropriate for them and their dogs. For my fellow colleagues, I hope that we can continue to guide our clients and just the community as a whole with honest dialogue about what the realities of trial are, that we really should be emphasizing everyone have a better understanding about dog behavior, that we call a spade, a spade, that we explain what dogs are actually doing. Maybe we can change the conversation a little bit where biting is not excused away. It's not normal. It's not okay. We should not be saying that it is.

(36:16):
These are all the different things that we can be doing to making this better, and to please, please, please make sure that we recognize that for those of us who are in the sport world of Scent Work, we are a tiny little fraction of a percentage of the people who own dogs and more people who own dogs are learning about Scent Work, which is great, which is wonderful, which is fabulous, but not all of those people, A, can afford doing trialing because trialing is expensive. B, have any interest or C, maybe they shouldn't be trialing because maybe it's not a good fit for them and their dogs. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be playing the sniffing game. There's a big difference between the two. But as always, would love to hear from you. Please let me know your thoughts. We'll be posting this episode up on our website as well as our social media. Look forward to additional episodes. Yes, we're coming back. Again, my apologies. Life and technology has been so much fun. But if you do have any topic requests, always feel free to let us know. We'll be continuing our Spotlight Series as well so we can highlight some positive things are going inside the Set Work community because that is important.

(37:27):
As always, please make certain that you are playing the sniffy game with your puppies. Tell them how amazing they are. If you're playing this sniffy game, lots and lots and lots of treats and toys and lots of praise because they are incredible. Thank you so much as always for listening, happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.