Ep. 129: That's BAD!...Or Is It?

Training Scent Work offers us a multitude of choices. What training approach, school of thought or tools will we use? Each of us has our own preferences. However, this sometimes leads us to label the options we discarded, or chose to pass by, as "BAD".

In this wide-ranging episode, we dive into why this happens and how it can be an issue. Instead, the argument is made that we should learn as much as possible, recognize the effectiveness of all the various options, when best to use them and ask essential questions such as "why, "when", "what" and "how". Essentially, shift away from an emotional response to being more thoughtful and mindful, objectively and honestly evaluating the needs of our dog, ourselves and our team and then making the best possible informed decision, whatever that may be.

Speaker:

Dianna L. Santos

TRANSCRIPT

Dianna L. Santos (00:00):
Welcome to the All About Scent Work Podcast. In this podcast we talk about all things Scent Work, that includes training tips, a behind scenes look of what your instructor or trial official is going through and much more. In this episode, I want to talk about the concept of that's bad or is it? 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, you sniffing your journey. You're just getting started, you're trying to develop some more advanced skills. You're interested in trialing or you're competing even at the upper levels, we likely have a training solution for you. So to know a little bit more about me, let's dive into the episode itself.

(00:49):
So this episode, I want to talk about this concept that we see pretty regularly in Scent Work, and just dog training overall, where a particular approach or a training decision is labeled as "That's bad" and I want to dive into, is that actually true? So I'm going to start at the outset that obviously anything that causes pain to the dog. So let's say that someone put forth, you know what? I think a great way of getting dogs to learn about Birch is that I'm going to put Birch in their face and then kick 'em in the head. I think that we would all agree that would be bad. We wouldn't be recommending anyone to do that. That's ridiculous. I'm not talking about that. That's not what I mean. What I mean instead is that there are plenty of ways to accomplish almost any goal when we're talking about dog training, but also when we're talking about Scent Work and very quickly we may latch onto something because it speaks to us.

(02:00):
It speaks to what our skillset is right now. It may make a lot of sense to us. We may be able to wrap our head around it as a handler, a dog owner, a trainer, whatever, pick your label. We may understand and conceptualize better how we're going to be able to use it with our dog. It may seem to fit what our dog needs. We may be able to better understand how doing whatever this is, is going to get us to the goal that we want. But if someone else with their own dog were to be in a similar situation, the answers to all of those questions, those observations may be entirely different. They may not have that same experience and if you were to have a column for them, a lot of check marks would be in the column where it wouldn't make any sense for them to do the very same approach that you want to do.

(02:59):
Does that make the approach bad because it's not just universal across the board? No, because nothing is and it never has been for dog training. So lemme just take this out of Scent Work real quick just to help us make a little bit more sense. If we were to teach a dog how to sit, there are lots of ways that we can do that. Just off the top of my head, we could use different training protocols such as luring or capturing or shaping as an example, and even within those, there's lots of different ways we can do all that stuff. We could get really nitty gritty as far as there are some people who may simply lure with treat placement where there are other people who will use luring and also body pressure. They'll step into the dog as an example. There's all kinds of ways that we can break this down. All of those approaches potentially could result with the dog having their bottom on the ground.

(03:57):
However, I think we all can agree that we all have preferences that there are some people who love to use pick one, it doesn't matter, and they go towards that approach as like a default and there's nothing wrong with that. They're comfortable with it. They may be very proficient in it. They are capable in doing so. They've had a lot of results doing it that way. The dogs are able to sit great and yet you can have 10 other people with 10 other dogs doing it 10 different ways and yet all those dogs are sitting. Now we can evaluate what is the quality of the sit right? If we want to have that really detailed discussion, is it fluent? What is the latency? How long does it take for me to give a cue before the dog does the behavior? How precise is it? Do I have a nice tight little sit with tight little feet or is it just kind of a sloppy puppy sit as an example?

(04:59):
Maybe the butt isn't even on the ground. Maybe it's hovering up in the air. The point being is that at its core, I think that we all can agree there's lots of different ways we could potentially teach sit. All of them potentially can get you there, but we also recognize that nothing is perfect because it was then why would we have all this variety that wouldn't make any sense, right? If there was a way of teaching sit that a hundred percent of the time you were going to get a hundred percent of a perfect result in a hundred percent of situations with a hundred percent of dogs and a hundred percent of handlers, we wouldn't have this variety. There would be no need. The word would get out real quick, do this to teach sit and it would probably put a lot of people out of work because the word would just spread like wildfire.

(05:52):
Everyone who had a dog ever, even if they've never done dog training in their life would learn about, there's this magical way that you can teach sit, and you're going to do this a handful of times. The dog is going to do it perfectly in every single situation and it's going to be proofed, automatic, whatever. Pick your poison of how you're going to evaluate the quality of this sit and yet that's not the reality and sits been around for a minute. We've had sit around for a long time with dogs, so if we don't have a universal way to teach sit, why on earth do we think there's going to be a universal way of doing anything including Scent Work? But it gets even more complicated, which is really the crux of what I want to talk about in this podcast episode is that there can be validity in all the various ways that we can do training where if you were to make up a dog and you were to make up a handler, all of those paths can lead to what you're trying to do and this example teaches it, and yet when you have real dogs and real people, suddenly your options can start falling away for any variety of reasons.

(07:12):
There can be physical limitations on behalf of the dog of the handler. There could be behavioral limitations on the dog of the handler. There could be experiential limitations for the dog of the handler. There could be a history of maybe they had done this before and the actual technique was so poisoned, so many bad things happened, negative consequences, whatever, that now there's so much ick associated with what we're trying to do. I'm making a lot more work for myself trying to do it this way when I can just shift and go into a different lane and use a different approach that doesn't howl, that ick associated with it. What I'm trying to express is that yes, there are all these different ways we can do things. Yes, they probably do get to the end result, but we're not dealing with homogenous dogs and homogenous people with homogenous histories, homogenous behavior, homogenous experience or skills, and we're also not working with homogenous lifestyles or realities of life or environments.

(08:25):
Why do we think that everything's going to be the same? This doesn't make any sense. Just if we take a giant step backwards, we should be marveling at the fact that the majority of group dog training classes work at all truly doesn't matter what we're training. You have a class of six to eight to 10 dogs inside that class. The fact that any of them are making any progress is really impressive. It really is, and that's a testament to what the instructors are doing to the effort put in by the dogs and the handlers, but I think that there is a quiet, almost assumed reality that we seemingly forget when we start really getting obsessive about that way is bad or this way is good, which again are not helpful conversations is that in those group dog training classes that are successful, there's a lot of modifications happening, there's a lot of flexibility happening.

(09:28):
We may not even think about it. We may not even put it in those terms, but if we just stay with sit, there are plenty of times in a basic manners class where there are going to be some dogs and handlers that are able to do sit. Maybe they already been practicing it at home and now they're just trying to it in a new place and there are others who maybe have never done it before or they've never gotten the dog to be able to do a sit and now they're trying to figure out, well, how do I do this? There are others who are trying and the dog is trying, but it's just not making sense. In that moment is when the instructor or the class assistant who's helping the instructor, they are evaluating in real time, what am I seeing this dog do?

(10:16):
What am I seeing the handler do? What are their skill sets? What's their relationship? How is the environment causing and affecting them? If they're trying luring as an example and they're not getting anywhere, you immediately start asking yourself some questions. Are we luring with a Charlie bear treat or a piece of cheerio? Maybe if we brought out the roast beef that the dog actually wanted in this higher steak environment, maybe luring can still work, but if not, it is like, Nope, I can't do it here with that, well now we have a bunch of other options available to us. Do I need to maybe design a condo with different visual barriers around this dog so they can feel a little bit more comfortable with our person? As an example? Could I maybe space them out more? There's all kinds of things I can do and then maybe I come to find out that the dog likes to feel a little bit more secure by being elevated, by being up on a platform, a Cato board, a Klimb, and then maybe I can capture them doing a sit.

(11:24):
Great doesn't mean that we have just proven scientifically that luring doesn't work, only capturing works. Of course not. That would be ludicrous. You have this class of nine other dogs that maybe all are using luring and they're all sitting and they're sitting happily. This one dog in this one situation needed something different. If you are noticing that they need something different, you want to have those tools available to you to give them the different so they can be successful. And then maybe here's the other thing that can blow people's minds. That doesn't mean that you're now riding off luring even for this dog, when the dog is more comfortable in the space. Maybe we can use luring. Maybe we can use luring for a down, as an example. Oh, luring to get into heel positions. There's all kinds of things. If we can use luring as a treat magnet to get them from their platform spot back to the spot where they were sitting with our person while maybe the instructor is instructing and lecturing, what does this have to do with Scent Work?

(12:32):
There is an emotional attachment that people have placed onto how we train dogs, and there's an understandable reason why working with dogs is an emotional exercise and it's not for the reasons that people may think, at least in my opinion. I think that we get so emotionally wrapped up in this because we know in our bones that our dogs are trying so hard and it's marveling to us when something works that our weird humanoid messiness somehow got through to the brilliant four-legged creature that wants so badly to make everything go well, and when it clicks, it feels like magic because it kind of is. There's no reason for us to be able to communicate to each other as well as we do, and again, I still think that 90% of that is because our dogs are amazing. We are so slow on the uptake on this, but that connection is so powerful and so reinforcing to us that we then latch onto whatever that was when that happened, and we can then in ourselves develop this really nasty superstitious behavior because I want that feeling again, right? I want to be able to replicate that feeling of us being so connected and awesome, and then if I'm potentially a professional, I want other people to feel that feeling, or even if I'm not, I'd want my classmates to feel that feeling as an example. But then there's the juxtapositioning of that where we probably have done something in some part of our journey where the connection was pretty crap.

(14:31):
We were on different wavelengths from our dog. There was frustration, maybe even anger on our part. Like, ah, I'm trying so hard. Why won't you just do the thing and then we feel bad because we know our dogs are trying, so that in our head is attached to that's bad. I never want to feel that way again, which makes sense. So then when we start evaluating this as far as those are bad approaches or those are good approaches, it's the emotional context behind it that I think gets everything so muddy that let's say as an example, there was a conversation going about how to start dogs in doing Scent Work. Let's say specifically puppies, right? Because they're the most vulnerable of us. Puppies are senior dogs, the most vulnerable little populations that we have. Emotions can run really high with this in every direction, and I don't think it's an overly helpful exercise instead of just being very honest and saying, I have a personal preference of doing things a certain way.

(15:47):
There are lots of different ways to get to the end result, but I like this one for these reasons, and more likely than not, it's because we have experience in doing that. More likely than not, we've had positive experiences doing that and there probably was a positive emotional response in doing those things, but it very well is possible that even in our preferred method or approach, whatever it is, it may not work in certain situations or with certain dogs or certain people or in certain locations orations with a certain set of circumstances that happened where the puppy or the senior dog and the person, they're just stress cases. Maybe this is not such a great idea. Maybe the puppy is in the middle of a fear period. You may have to make drastic changes. Then maybe you're not even going to do this thing at all.

(16:48):
Maybe you're going to do a pause and do something entirely differently. Those are the kinds of questions in my opinion, we should be asking instead of just writing things off completely hook, line and sink, or I'm never going to do blah, blah, blah because of I don't like it or whatever. To me, that's silly. We should have as many tools in our toolbox as possible because we need as many tools as possible because we need that flexibility. Again, that's why I use a sit example. We can be amazing at learning, but I promise you if you haven't already, you're going to find a dog or a situation where luring isn't going to cut it, but if you only know how to lure and you've got to do something right now, what are you going to do? You want to have an answer to that. Now, admittedly, and this is a part that I think a lot of people miss, you can just say, oh, I don't have the tools for this.

(17:51):
We're just going to go back into the car or the crate or we're just going to call it for the day. I think that's a great plan and then just try to sit there and figure out what can I do? Why were we so ill prepared for this? What happened? There are answers to all these questions. It's not some big mystery and a lot of it has to do with the environment or a lot of it has to do with the fact that there's a chasm of missing skills on the dog's part or ours, and those things need to be addressed. It may not have anything to do with the method or the tool we're trying to use. It could just be all this other stuff that we may have to work on completely outside of what we were initially trying to do. The same exact thing applies to Scent Work, so as an example, if you were, let's say, trying to start a puppy or a senior dog on Scent Work, right?

(18:54):
They're just introducing them to the game and you have all these different schools of thought of how to do that. I am no different than anyone else. I have plenty of opinions when it comes to training. I have preferences. Personally, I prefer to use the K9 Nose Work training method put together by NACSW. I am a Certified Nose Work Instructor. I like that one and I like that one for a variety of different reasons. I want to focus on building the dogs' hunt. First. I want to use primary hides food or toys. I want to get a bunch of skills developed for the dog and the handler, and then I want to add in target odor because target odor isn't important to me. I want to build these other things first, but you can make the argument that, no, we could do it the other way around.

(19:39):
I can teach the dog, I can imprint the dog on odor without doing hunt at all, and then I can build hunt later. Okay, that works. We know that works. The key part is asking why. What is the benefit of doing whatever you're doing? Because if you don't understand the why, you're not going to be able to make good decisions in evaluating which choice is going to match the situation you find yourself in. What do I mean? Well, let's say that you're working with a puppy who is from a puppy mill, you adopted from a shelter, they have not had any socialization. They have a questionable breeding lineage to say the least. They're sensitive at home, all this stuff, right? They have a long laundry list as far as things they're going to have to be worked through to help this puppy really flourish.

(20:44):
In my opinion, that means that I am working behind an eight ball in a bunch of things. I need to ask myself, do I even think that Scent Work is the thing I want to focus on with this puppy right now? The answer can be no, right? It doesn't matter what approach I pick. The other thing is, okay, let's say that I think it could potentially be beneficial. Where are we doing this? Am I going to be bringing this puppy to a class where now not only do they have to figure out the game, they got to figure out the game in the middle of this room with a bunch of other puppies and people in an environment that could be completely overwhelming to them. I don't care what method you're using that may not work out well. I may instead want to get a good solid foundation at home first in a nice familiar location focusing on building the puppy's confidence and also deepening the relationship with their person where people may not have been that great as far as his puppy was concerned.

(21:45):
This is what I mean is that these are the kinds of questions that we should be asking, and yes, there are certain approaches or methods or tools that may fit in better, but then we can also adjust or maybe after I've been building up a foundation a certain way, focusing on confidence, building up the relationship, or not even really working on hunt or just trying to do these other things, maybe then I determine, you know what? I think this puppy is going to find markers to be extraordinarily clear and feeding away from them is going to be helpful because maybe they don't like body pressure, so maybe I'm going to be doing targets. I could be doing any kind of creative thing. Maybe I'm going to use a treat and train so that the puppy finds the hide or whatever it is, and then they're rewarded away from me.

(22:46):
Is that my go-to that I do now in my program? No, but you may evaluate that there are different things that need to happen at different points in time to help this dog in this situation at this point in time, but if we discount things whole cloth as just those are bad, and not only are they bad, but the people who do them are bad or the trainers who talk about that stuff as bad. Again, we're not talking about abuse. We're talking about different preferences as far as what order we do things in because the juxtapositioning of that is since that stuff is bad, the stuff I do is good, and again, when I go back to my sit example, if there existed a universal 100% guaranteed result in every situation as far as set was concerned, there would be no set university, there would be no set trainers.

(23:45):
Quite honestly, there probably wouldn't be any stunt work competition organizations because what would be the point? Everyone would be in first place? It would just be boring. That's not the reality because all of our dogs are individuals. We are all individuals. Every single search is different. Every single hide is different. All this stuff, all these variables matter, and also our dogs are not living in some kind of static state. They're constantly in flux. They're changing all the time constantly, not only with how they're developing puppies. My God, puppies and senior dogs, again are very similar in this regard from minute to minute, it just seems to change. For puppies, it's like, you were fine with this two seconds ago. Like what happened? Or, oh, you're just so cute and cuddly. Oh my goodness, you're an adolescent just crazy down and they're growing and developing so fast, and then for our senior dogs, okay, great, we're doing awesome.

(24:48):
Do you have dementia? It's like, when did that happen? Constantly in flux, so we need to be on the balls of our feet in order to respond to those things, but if we only latch onto this is a good thing and those things are bad, but what happens if that good thing no longer is the best way to support our dog in the situation we find ourselves in? What if we need to make an adjustment? Do we know how do we know why? Do we know the ways that we could? That's my point, and if we lambast whatever approaches it is that at the core of it, it's just because they don't fit what we are comfortable with what we are, and again, I don't mean comfort because of abuse. I mean comfort because we may not feel proficient in doing the thing or better still, we don't understand the underlying why.

(25:49):
Why are you doing that? What's the purpose of doing that? We don't fully grasp something, then we wouldn't be able to customize it or modify it when we need to. And effective dog training is all about being flexible. It's all about being modification, about doing modifications, having customizations, and that runs completely counter to how we act as humans. We want so clear black and white, and that's just not real life, and to me, that's what makes dog training and Scent Work so exciting is that as an instructor, you can set up a search for a class with an objective and you're trying your best, and I can almost guarantee you all those dogs going to tackle it a little bit differently. There's going to be little changes. Yes, odor is dynamic, all that is, but all those dogs are individuals. All those people are individuals that matters.

(26:48):
The environment is absolutely a huge variable, but those individual variables matter. When they're running in the run order, how long they've been in the class, how much gas do they have left in their tank? All that stuff matters, right? So I know this is very rambling in my, I apologize. I'm trying to get some of these concepts to make sense because these are not new conversations that people have been having. These aren't big feelings. These aren't new in the big feeling department, and I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't have preferences. It's actually just the opposite. I think that we all just need to be a little bit more honest about where the feelings are coming from, but that we should be comfortable and honest enough to appreciate I'm comfortable doing whatever it is. I feel proficient in it or it's worked out for me so far, but maybe I need to do a little bit more learning about other ways of doing things.

(27:55):
I may never use them, but understanding them can demystify it, and then maybe at some point you'll be in that situation where you're like, huh, you know what? I think that that tool, that approach, whatever it is that could actually be kind of useful right now, let me give that a whirl. You're probably not going to break your dog. You're probably not going to break you if you think about what it is that you're doing. Our dogs are so incredibly forgiving, they're so kind, they're so patient with all of our bumbling, it'll probably be okay, but I promote everyone to learn about all these various things. Do not accept anything, hook, line, and sinker. Absolutely. Think about something, read about it, think about it some more. Then experiment a little bit with it before you just, I'm going to blow up everything that I do to do this new thing. Maybe don't do that. What you were doing before may be fine. There may be elements about it that you really like and the others that you're like, I used to do a certain something two years, five years, 10 years ago, and I kept about 50% of it, but the other 50%, I don't really use it that much anymore. That's fine. That's called growth. There's nothing wrong with it, but those skills are still there and they may be helpful. So I'm going to end with this.

(29:25):
I encourage everyone to continue learning, and this is not just because I have a learning platform. It's not what this is. I encourage everyone to continue going to classes, particularly my professional colleagues. Please, please, please, if you aren't already, continue learning from your fellow colleagues with a dog present. This is on my to-do list once I have a moment, but I do think it's very helpful for us. It can ensure that we have a better appreciation for what our clients are dealing with when we're trying to teach them. It's very different being on the other end of that leash trying to multitask and learn all at the same time, and we will also, because we are professionals, there'll be the added stress of, oh God, everyone's looking at me. I should be perfect at this normal, not true, but normal. You'll work through that, but also make certain that you are taking in as much information as possible to evaluate, not to just let it wash over you or to take it in hook, line and sinker.

(30:32):
This applies to anyone who's dog owners, professionals, as a matter, you should not expect to agree with anyone no matter who they are, myself included, a hundred percent about anything. You probably don't agree with yourself a hundred percent about everything, the self that you were a year ago, five years ago, 20 years ago, however, you probably like. What was I thinking? I've completely changed my opinion on a few things. There's no reason why we need to either idolize or demonize anyone. This is something I say in all my presentations right before I get into the meat and potatoes of it. Say, please apply the art of dog training to this presentation. What does that mean? It means look for the things you think are going to be helpful for your dog. They are in line with how you train. You think maybe it's something that's interesting.

(31:23):
Maybe it's framing a certain concept a way that you haven't heard before. Use that stuff and use it. Maybe not like right out of the gate, we're just going to go play with this. Think about it, evaluate, ask the why's, but there may very well be other stuff. I don't think it's going to fit into what I'm doing for training that doesn't really line up with my goals. I think it's going to work for my dog. Or you may just not like it may hear and be like, that just doesn't jive with me. Okay, that's great. Not a problem. Set that stuff to the side and you shouldn't even try to buy anything hook, line and sinker, but at the same point, it shouldn't be is all or nothing. Instead, look for those little kernels of brilliance and then make those your own. Figure out how you can customize and modify them and when you may be able to use them and maybe you're never going to use them or you're not going to use them in the near future, but if you got it in your toolbox and a situation were to arise like, huh, that thing I learned about however long ago, I think that this may work here and give it a try and maybe it will.

(32:37):
Great learning. Good. So I'm hoping that people can at least think about this, that basically there is no prescriptive. Everyone must do whatever it is and anyone who doesn't do whatever it is is wrong. Or the flip side of that, if everyone does this, they're all right, and anyone who doesn't isn't correct. That's just not true, and we can find countless examples where there are individuals and individual dogs who may have done a certain approach. They may have had certain tools applied with how the training was done, the decisions that were made that worked out really, really, really well in this situation at that period in time, and then it wasn't the best option anymore, and you may have had a shift. I applaud you for recognizing that and giving your dog the grace and the understanding to say, yeah, we can pivot. I don't need to be married to whatever it is.

(33:42):
I just want you to be successful. Also, recognizing that that can be a painful process where making that shift may require that we, the handlers, the trainers, the owners, whomever, we may not have the skillset to be proficient enough to help our dogs. That's good to admit, and I'll be the first to admit it. My mechanical skills are trash. They're just not good, and synapse is from my brain to my limbs are just haywire. So when there are mechanical skills needed for something, I have to take considerable time to practice that stuff on my own, and if I need to address something immediately for safety purposes, there would be something else that I do, but then I need to make sure that I spend time to work on my skills so I can best help my dog, or I may need to spend some more time to, again, really evaluate something to get into the weeds of whatever it is that on a periphery view be like, oh, that's really interesting.

(34:48):
That sounds like fun. Oh, I can't wait to get into it. But then once you start delving into the details and asking some questions again of the why and the when and the how, I may not have the answers that I feel comfortable with. I may have big black holes if certain things, and I'm like, I'm not sure what I would do, and I don't want to be in the middle of a training session and then just have a blue screen be like, ah, error. I don't know what to do right now. I would like to be prepared as best as I can. So to me, my challenge to everyone is to mull these things over that if we are in the middle of a conversation or if we are reading something, we're watching something, we're listening to something, whatever, and immediately our gut reaction, oh, that's bad.

(35:34):
Is it? If there's not involved, is it bad? Can we make distinctions between bad and maybe not the best option, but then why isn't it the best option? And that should be individualized for that dog, that handler at that period of time, and then we should look inward because we can only control ourselves. What are our tools that we have available to us right now? What are we proficient in? What are our preferences? Why do we have those preferences? What have we been using? Why have we been using it? What situations have those things worked? What situations haven't they worked out so well? Why didn't they work out so well? There's a litany of questions that we can really be asking ourselves that again, just walks us back off the ledge from, oh, I am righteous warrior, who will just say out to the world I'm doing the right thing and people who don't are bad.

(36:32):
It's not necessary, and I do think that it comes from a place of people, again, having that emotional attachment to what they're doing, but it's not helpful as far as promoting this wonderful sniffy game or just again, dog training in general, and this is not new. This has been conversations been going on forever, but I think if we just have a different approach that could potentially help. So to wrap this very long rambly thing up, my challenge to everyone is to really sit down and think when it comes to Scent Work, regardless of how long you've been doing Scent Work, you could have started two seconds ago. You could have been doing this since the dawn of it, starting. Ask yourself some questions. Who is my dog? Truly? Who is my dog? Get into the nitty gritty of it. How old are they? What is their gender?

(37:28):
What is their breed or their breed makeup? What is their personality? What is their background? What is their history? How would I describe their personality? Does their personality change depending on the situation that they're in? What kind of places have they gone to? Do they enjoy being around other dogs? Do they enjoy being around other people? What kind of experiences have they had? You're like, why does this matter for Scent Work? This is everything in Scent Work, because we may make drastically different decisions based upon those answers. Then you want to ask about yourself. Who are you? What is your personality? What is your experience? What is your expertise? What is your comfort level? When we're talking about dog training, dog behavior, Scent Work, why are you doing this? Are you doing this for enrichment? Are you doing this because maybe you're interested in competition.

(38:23):
Maybe you have been competing. Maybe you're competing in the upper levels. There are no right or wrong answers, but you need to evaluate what you're doing. You need to evaluate who you are, evaluate your history. Have you been involved in dog training? How long have you been involved in dog training? What kind of dog training have you done? What kind of skills can you actually jot down? Can you explain to someone else what it is that you're doing, how it is that you're doing it, and when you would do those things and why you're doing those things. Many of us, we were just like, well, I just do it, but why? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? Well, my instructor told me to. If that happened with one of my students, that's a failure on my part. My job is to explain the why, because I want them to go forth into the world and to be able to take their training beyond class and be able to apply it elsewhere.

(39:19):
So if you don't have the answers to these questions, reach out to your instructor and be like, I think I got some black holes in my knowledge. Can you help me? And they'd probably be delighted to do that. Then start evaluating where are the kinds of places that I've been training or that I want to train? Does that line up with my dog myself, our expertise, our background? And if it doesn't, what am I going to do? How am I going to do it, and why am I doing that thing to help them be best set up for success? And the key thing with all of this, I know it doesn't, this doesn't sound sexy, it doesn't sound very snazzy. It doesn't sound very quick. It's providing you with essential information, and it can help you if particularly let's say that you have multiple dogs, that you may have drastically different answers for all of those dogs, and there you would need drastically different approaches.

(40:16):
It doesn't mean that those approaches or choices or tools, some are good and some are bad. They're just probably better fits. There may some things that you want on your list that either your dog or yourself just don't have the skills for yet. Maybe we can't do this thing that I really want to try. We got to work up to it. Maybe I wouldn't be able to best support my dog. I don't know how to do this. Well, that's okay. Wonderful that you're cognize that. I hope this makes sense that a lot of the conversations that happen, it's in dog training, just generally speaking, but also in Scent Work. I think we're missing the mark where you can have dogs that are trying to do, there are people are trying to do the very same thing. They want to get to the same end goal, but they're drastically different dogs handlers and situations, and therefore, they may need drastically different approaches.

(41:16):
There may be ways that they're on a parallel path or they even intersect. They may even swap, and suddenly person A was using tool 1, 2 3, and person B was using tool C, D, F, and then they swapped. That's, that's fine. I hope this is making sense that, I promise I'll end with this. This is one of the reasons why I started Scent Work University. It would've been very easy for me to just say, okay, I'm going to put together all the training myself. Again, I am a professional trainer. It is my career, and I'll have clients and they'll learn from me and from the jump, I was like, I don't think that I have all the answers. I know I don't have all the answers. I would rather that my clients have well-rounded learning and they learn from as many different people as possible, but that doesn't mean that I want them to just be blindly adherent to anything.

(42:19):
I want them to evaluate the information they receive and ask questions and then figure out how they can customize and modify things. So this is the last thing I promise us. I received a piece of feedback recently for one of my courses, and this was one of the best pieces of feedback that I've received in a while, and it wasn't because, oh, this is the best course ever or anything, had nothing to do with that. This person was going through a course and they had, it was challenging for them and their dog because their dog was sensitive, but here's a part that just made my little heart go flutter. Flutter. They found the way that the course was described and the different handouts and resources that were provided gave them inspiration to modify and customize what was put in the course as far as exercises and approaches to best help their dog to succeed. That is all I'm trying to achieve as an instructor and a trainer made my day.

(43:23):
So basically, if we can get away from trying to be prescriptive and instead get more into evaluating what is going on and then having a list of things that we can potentially pull upon and prioritize them and make it honest list, that also includes our skillset. How good are we going to be able to do whatever it is? That's key. And I know that can be painful because well, then I'm admitting I don't have all the skills. But if you don't, and again, that's true for me. If there's something out there, they're like, oh, I think that'd be really cool. Well, you need to have tip top mechanical skills. Like I don't, or your mental management just has to be Chef's kiss. Well, that's off the table right now. My mental management is trash. That's what I mean. So I hope this was somewhat helpful or at least got people thinking, because again, these conversations are not new as far as that's bad or that's good.

(44:29):
It's like, can we just talk about this a little bit differently, maybe a little bit more effective We do. But as always, I would love to hear from all of you, what are your thoughts? Was this thought provoking? Was this helpful where you're like, yeah, I know this is a giant waste of time. Thank you. Maybe you're driving to a trial. It made the time fly by. Listen to you just ramble on about this. Well, you're welcome. We'll be posting this up on our website as well as our social media. Yes, the podcast is officially back. It'll be posted every week. My apologies for, again, another interruption. Life and technology has been so much fun, but expect more episodes. We do have interviews that we are finalizing, so you'll hear from others other than just me. We are also going to be continuing our spotlight series. This is where we talk to individuals or businesses that are giving back to the Scent Work community. So if you know of someone or business that you would like for us to spotlight, please let me know. I want to talk to them. The more positivity that we can share, the better. But I thank you so very much for all of your patience for this big one. Please give a cookie to your puppies for us. Happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.