Ep. 130 Wearing All the Hats

Each of us have certain "hats" we wear pertaining to Scent Work. Dog owner. Handler. Competitor. Instructor. Trial official. Trial host. Volunteer. Each "hat" brings with it unique experiences, viewpoints and biases. We can broaden our experiences, push passed blind spots and deficiencies by attempting to experience as many viewpoints as possible.

Own a super fast moving dog? Borrowing a classmate's more methodical dog for a class or two to see what that is like, what skills you are missing and further add tools for your toolbox can be an excellent learning opportunity.

Have you only competed at a trial but never volunteered? Seeing behind the curtain can give you a whole other appreciation for what it takes to put on a trial!

Perhaps you are an instructor who has been teaching in your area for a while. Schedule a road trip to work with some respected colleagues, being a CLIENT for a bit and then offer some pop-up classes and workshops. This way you can experience working with team outside of your region, flex your training chops and develop new skills.

In this episode, we discuss how broadening our experiences will help us grow as individuals, professionals, dog owners and handlers.

MENTIONED RESOURCES

Trial Volunteer Program

Officiating AKC SW Trials: Novice to Advanced Virtual Event

Officiating AKC SW Trials: Excellent to Detective Virtual Event

How Would You Train It Virtual Event

Failure is a Growth Opportunity Virtual Event

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 that Scent Work, that can include training tips, a behind scenes look of what your instructor or trial official is going through and much more. In this episode, I wanted to talk about wearing all the various hats. 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 dodge 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 competing or you're already trialing at the upper levels, we likely have a training solution to you. So now that you know a little bit more about me, let's dive into the episode itself.

(00:50):
So in this episode, I want to talk about the concept of wearing all the various hats. I have no idea what that means. When it comes to Scent Work, there's lots of different roles that we may have depending on how we are involved in the activity. So most of us, we are dog owners first and foremost. Then we are handlers to our dogs and we may be competitors if we decide to trial. So those are three different hats, right? We may make certain decisions as a dog owner, and then there's another set of decisions that we make as a handler, and there's another set of decisions that we're making as a competitor. There are also different perspectives with all those different roles where when I have my dog owner hat on, I may see things or experience things with my dogs. One way when I'm a handler inside of a group training class as an example, there's a whole other set of experiences that I have that I'm going through that I have a different perspective on.

(01:47):
And then when I'm competing at trial, that's going to be different as well. But there's more than that. We also have instructors, we have trainers, we have trial officials, we have trial hosts, we have volunteers, we have trial staff members. There's so much, there's so many different hats that are out there that are available to us to wear, but it even goes a little bit farther than that. There's someone who's maybe newer in their journey of whatever it is that they're doing. There's someone who's a little bit more experienced. There's people who may run certain types of dogs, meaning smaller dogs, larger dogs, younger dogs, older dogs, fast dogs, methodical dogs. Dogs who are reactive, dogs who are sensitive, dogs who are over aroused, dogs who are under aroused. All these things are different unique experiences that color your perception and you're developing different skillsets based upon that experience.

(02:48):
It doesn't make it good, it doesn't make it bad. It just is. It's a reality. But I think what is exceedingly helpful is if you're able to put on as many different hats as possible, or to be in a situation where you're able to experience those different perspectives, at least you can appreciate what that's like and you can then see, okay, maybe that's why that decision was made, or, Ooh, that's a really cool option that I didn't even know existed. I never had that experience before. So lemme give you an example to try to help this really wonky concept make a little bit more sense. So if you are a dog handler, you're in a group dog training class force network, and you have let's say a medium-sized dog, adult dog, and they're a lab something mix.

(03:43):
They tend to go into the space, their happy little wiggle butt is just going along and they like to stir up the odor and then they like to go pinpoint it and they're very enthusiastic and their tail's just going the whole while and they're just happy go lucky. That's just the way they roll. But there's a classmate who has a smaller dog and they are a combination of some variety. It looks maybe there's some kind of chihuahua, maybe dachshund something or other, who knows? It's anyone's guess. But this is an older dog. They're pretty up there as far as age. They're not exactly sure how old. They're not overly fond of all these other dogs. So they love the fact that all the other dogs, when it's their turn to runner inside crates as an example, and when they come in, they're pretty methodical, right?

(04:37):
They're checking everything. They're going along. It looks drastically different than how your dog ran. Why this can be important is that even the things that we do as handlers can change depending on what our experience is, what it is that our dogs are doing, how our dogs move in the space, how our dogs react to the space, the kinds of decisions that our dogs are making, what our dogs are telling us, what it is, we can actually see what is it that we actually understand? Are we just looking at our dog or are we actually reading our dog? Do we actually understand what our dog is telling us? So if there was ever a possibility or an opportunity that even if you could just be in the space, if the dog was comfortable while their person was working with them, and you can kind of tag along and be like, huh, this is interesting, where you can feel what it's like.

(05:33):
Why are they deciding upon that distance? Why did the handler turn here? Why did the handler pause there? Why did the handler decide to reward whatever it is that they decided to reward? Maybe they provided some verbal praise because the dog decided to no longer look towards where the dog crates were, but to go back to work, these are the kinds of things that if you've never had to do it, it may not have even seemed to have been an option, but it could be a wonderful thing to have inside of our toolbox. It could also just open our eyes to what the possibilities are that maybe even that concept of, yes, I'm in the middle of a search with my dog. I want my dog to go find hides, but there's lots of other things that potentially could be going on, and even with my happy go-lucky lab, whatever they are, it was a little wiggle butt.

(06:24):
She's going lower. Maybe they're like, oh, well, you know what? I really love the teacher. Oh, I love the teacher so very much. Theyre my favorite person and they have pocket cheese and pocket cheese is all delicious. Oh, I want them. And you really would like for them to maybe find their hide. Instead, maybe when the dog goes a wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, and the instructor doesn't do anything, and the dog then decides, okay, and they go off to go find stuff. Maybe just giving a little verbal praise. That was a really good decision. Good job, little dog, nothing too crazy, but just to provide some feedback that was actually a really great choice and then rewarding them a whole lot when they find their next hide, Hey, maybe that would be a really great approach that may not have been in the forefront of your mind because you are so familiar to working with your dog at their energy level with their processing approach to what they do in that space.

(07:20):
But if you're able to put a different hat on, wear a different set of glasses, pick whatever metaphor you want pick can help you say, huh, well, what about these other things that other people do? Could that maybe work? Is this maybe a missing piece to my puzzle that can put a bunch of things together potentially like, okay, that kind of maybe makes sense, but this applies across the board so it doesn't just apply to people who are handling dogs or maybe when you're competing as an example. This applies to everybody. This applies also to instructors. All of us have biases. We're humans. We have our own personal dogs that many of us develop our skillsets with. We also have our clients and our clients are typically made up of certain dog and handler teams, and they do tend to be trends. They just are, and that's regional a lot of the time where you may have, okay, I've got seven doodles as an example, or I've got seven German shepherds, or I've got seven little dogs, or seven big dogs, or seven, it goes along the way.

(08:29):
There are some mixes, absolutely as far as mixture of composition, but there do tend to be times when there are just trends and those trends can last for a minute. You can go through multiple iterations of different classes for a long period of time where you're seeing a lot of the same type of composition of a team or classes. What is the point is that that can absolutely affect what your expectation is for how your curriculum is going to go, what tools are going to be inside your toolbox, which ones you actually going to use, go grab to go use for whatever exercise because that's what you've been doing for however long. I hope that makes sense, and that if you were to then maybe do a traveling class, actually you physically traveled somewhere else and did a pop-up that was outside of your region, you may be very pleasantly surprised.

(09:33):
Be like, oh, these are completely different types of teams and they're different types of skill sets. They have different histories, they have different goals. My tools and my toolbox are not going to be as applicable. Or maybe they could be, but in surprising ways. Maybe I need to have a different warmup, but I may need to do something completely different. That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing because we want to try to be as well-rounded. We possibly can, but again, we're only human. We are limited to some extent from our own learning and experience. You can't expect an instructor to be able to teach beyond what they've experienced either through learning or direct interaction with someone going to workshops, whatever else. They're not just going to come at us something out of the blue and be like, aha, brilliant. It's just not how it works.

(10:30):
But we have to remember that ourselves, that we are limited from our own experiences. So the more that we can broaden that, the better it is. And that also means getting our hands on dogs. That means potentially handling different types of dogs. That means potentially taking classes with either our dogs or other dogs, even if it's doing a session with another colleague, just one-on-one so that we can appreciate what that feels like and we can view it from those different vantage points. Because we are trying to see how can I devise a good training plan? And I have really good training plans for these five different types of dog handler teams, but I'd like another five because I'm probably going to see them at some point in my career. It would be a really good idea for me to have that information. And we may also notice that we are designing our exercises or curriculum again with those biases and patterns baked in, so we're getting a consistent output.

(11:35):
It's not that that's not successful. Those people may if they are trialing and disqualifying whatnot, but there's bound to be gaps. There's bound to be blind spots. There's bound to be things that are just not where they should be or there's too much of a heavy influence and focus on one area, but nowhere near as much in somewhere else. And this is for every single program, including my own, because we're people. But the more that we can broaden the way that we experience things ourselves, again with the infinite time that we do not have, many of my professional colleagues are already spread so thin. So what I'm suggesting here is like, are you insane? But if we were to do this in a way that maybe once a month we're really trying to stretch ourselves a little bit, it can make a really big difference because it can help you see what you're doing differently and say, okay, I've been setting up hides as an example that are all nose height for a medium sized dog.

(12:40):
Maybe I need to be playing more with planes where I'm setting hides on the ground at nose height and above nose height, and I'm adjusting that where sometimes it's taking to account little dog. Sometimes it's taking to a medium-sized dog. Sometimes it's taking to account large-sized dog, maybe I am doing a lot of searches that are really quick and easy in and out. We get a hide, we go, we got to a hide. We go, we get a hide. We go, which again, there's definitely value to that, but we may want to spend some time in some of our classes where we really are digging in deep like, okay, little dog, you are going to be in here for a hot minute and you're going to have to detail this space. Setting the expectations for the clients. We are not going to get a barrage of hides for this exercise for this week. This week is all about detailing. And their dog may come in, they may be like, all hot wheels. Woo-hoo, wait. But then they've really got to focus, right? They've really got to kind of dial it back a little bit and go like, okay, where is this thing? And we as handlers, when we're tackling this can't be all hysterical. We haven't found a hide in five seconds. Like, okay, just calm down. We're going to have to figure this out together, and it may take some time.

(14:00):
There are reasons why we fall into these patterns. Again, particularly as instructors, there're the biases. There are the things that we just find that works. We're like, great, let's keep doing what works. But there is also the time constraint and also the pressure of we want the human client to feel as though they are making progress and that this is worthwhile. This isn't the same as other types of dog training where let's say agility. I do the jump and the leap and the this and that, and I get however many goals of the course, but I feel like I'm accomplishing something. This was worthwhile, my money. Whereas sometimes with Scent Work, it can feel as though, what am I paying for? It's just not as busy. There's more downtime, but that downtime is gold. That downtime is when first of all, your dog is doing latent learning, please let them do that.

(14:50):
You as a human should also be doing latent learning, but you should be watching the other teams go and experiencing it with them, if that makes sense. This is again, how you can wear those different hats where now instead of you having the pressure of the leash in your hand or being in the space with your dog or the running off leash, you can now observe from the instructor or judge's standpoint and take in the whole of the picture. You can get a better idea of what the dog is narrating of what they are experiencing about odor, not about odor, where it is, where it's not, what else is going on in the space. You can see what the handler is doing, go like, why are they doing that? And it could be a very good reason that you never thought of. This is really, and when I say gold, I'm not overstating it.

(15:34):
You being able to see that can really cement a lot of learning. But we as instructors recognize that getting to that point of appreciating that part can be hard for clients. We absolutely get it where they're like, oh my God, what am I doing here? So then to try to compensate for that, we try to make the searches busier more, hides more equals more quality equals this is worth my money, worth my time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you can fall into that pattern really easily. You're trying to keep the client's attention, yada, yada, yada. And that's missing a whole skillset of this methodical detailing as an example. So trying to have these different perspectives is really important. And as an instructor, the more we can remind ourselves of what it's like to be a client, the better that's going to serve us with what we do when we're teaching.

(16:36):
The more that we can remind ourselves of what it's like to be a competitor can also really help. I have colleagues who are competing all the time, how they have the time, I don't know, but they do. And they will be teaching their classes. They'll be doing seminars, workshops, webinars, whatever the case may be. They are training their own dogs. They go to a trial and they experience that trial and they walk away from that experience with a whole litany of new ideas of what it is that they can then share with their clients or with all these various ways that they're teaching. That's gold. That is really, really, really good because again, it's wearing all these different hats and it's being very open to take one hat off to put another hat on, and then incorporate all those different experiences together. It's not just staying in your lane, it's making certain that we are being open to all the different experiences and also recognizing how we may have blinders on sometimes.

(17:36):
And it would be a really good idea to broaden our experiences and ensure that we are taking in as much information as possible from as many different perspectives as possible. And that's why, again, anytime that anyone can volunteer or work for an actual trial, please do in whatever capacity it is. Particularly if you've only been a competitor, right? You've been a handler, maybe taking dog training classes. You have competed trials, but you've never volunteered before. Please, please, please. First of all, we need volunteers. There aren't volunteers. There will be no trials, but it is an absolutely fantastic learning experience. Yes, it is absolutely wonderful to be able to watch the dogs. It is also exceedingly helpful for you to understand the apparatus of this whole thing, including even just working in the score room, being able to see the mechanizations of all these trials, what it takes to put them on, how hard everybody is working, what their perspectives are, where you've only ever seen front end of the trial, the front facing stuff.

(18:42):
But now you get to see behind the curtain, you're like, Ooh, it's crazy back here. Everyone is running around like a chicken without a head, and there's just so much chaos, chaos that you probably, hopefully never experience as the handler when you're actually competing because that's the goal, right? And trials are chaotic. If anything can go wrong at a trial. It does. And everyone who's working at the trial is working exceedingly hard to make sure that the competitors never know that that happened. So at the very least, being able to experience that to be on that side of the curtain can give you a much greater appreciation for how much work and effort goes into putting on these events. Because it's a ton, it's such an enormous amount. I cannot convey to you by explaining it, you really do have to experience it. And that can really change your perspective when you're competing, where you can have a better idea of like, oh, there may be certain things that we have at trial as compared, oh, why do they have all these different staging areas?

(19:49):
Why they have these things placed where they are. Why did they do this? Why did they do that? Why did they do this other thing? And then when you've actually experienced behind the scenes that they may not have had a choice, that that may have actually been the best choice available to them, that they're trying to do everything in their power to make certain that the trials are efficient and most importantly safe, and they want everyone to be successful, that doesn't mean a guarantee cue. That means that you have a good time there with your dogs. So I strongly encourage everyone, if you haven't already, please make certain that you're volunteering for trials in any capacity. Obviously, lots of people are like, I want to be able to see the dogs run, which is again, wonderful learning experience. A lot of times they will rotate you through as far as what your roles are.

(20:36):
They do know people want to watch dogs run, but honestly, any role that you can have would be really, really, really good. And as a reminder with at university, we do have our trial volunteer where if you submit a form that you can get off of our website, you basically bring that piece of paper with you to the trial. You have the trial chairperson or whomever of the same type of title, fill that out. They basically just say, yep, this person was here. This was the role. They sign it, email me a photo of that form, and then I give you a 15% off gift certificate off of anything that we provide or offer through Scent Work University. And there's no limit to that. Meaning that if you were to go to a three day trial and you volunteered all three days, you print out three little forms, you take pictures of those three little forms and you send those to me and I give you three gift certificates.

(21:28):
It's pretty simple. Really, really, really encourage everyone to volunteer. The other thing I encourage everyone to do is, this may take a little bit more finagling, but seeing whether or not you can be an assistant or if you can shadow officials, again, you have to ask permission. Get to ask permission of the trial host to see whether or not they can accommodate that, and also ask the actual trial official. Again, we don't want to slow anyone down. They may already, I already have five people following me around. I can't take on anyone else. That's okay. But the more that you can learn from these people, and again, appreciate the decision making that they're doing, being there to be more hands on deck, make certain that you are ready to learn and that you're ready to take direction. This is not a back and forth conversation of, oh, well, wouldn't you want to go do it over there?

(22:19):
Maybe don't do that. But more so ask how you can help and take in as much information as you can. Maybe after the trial, you could even schedule a Zoom consultation with that person to talk through a little bit more how it is that they were making those decisions, what it is that they were experiencing, what it is that they thought, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And yes, we'd want to pay them for their time, but what I'm trying to explain here is that we can learn a whole lot by simply taking off the hat that we wear all the time and trying to put on some of these other hats. The same thing with instructors. I know that when I was still teaching in person, a vast majority of the time of me teaching group dog training classes for Scent Work, it was by myself.

(23:10):
And Scent Work classes are a lot. There's a lot of setup. There's a lot of putting things out. There's a lot of changing. And having an assistant can be exceedingly helpful. It can be really helpful just for efficiency sake. It can help your back, which of course is a thing for me. If you have either you're working with an instructor right now or you have a training facility or instructors in your area, contact them and say, Hey, I would really love to shadow or assist you if I could. What do you think about that? I'm trying to learn more. I want to understand what the thought process is, how it is that you're putting together different curriculums or exercises, the different kinds of modifications that you're making. I'm trying to wear this different hat. I'm trying to have this different perspective and have that apply for my own learning and for my own growth.

(24:03):
That could be really, really helpful. So to wrap this up, what I'm trying to encourage everyone to do is a few things. One, to recognize that our experiences are indeed just by default. In reality, they are limited. There are going to be blind spots. There's going to be different biases just based upon what we've experienced so far. That's not necessarily bad. It's not necessarily good, but it could be broadened out, and that's going to take effort, right? That's going to take time and actual focus from us to do those things. It doesn't just happen automatically. And it can be as simple as I prefer to own a certain type of dog. It could be a certain breed as an example, or a certain size, a certain personality type, whatever the case may be. There's nothing wrong with that. That's great. It's good that these things, but recognizing that component, that kind of consistent factor is going to be shaping your experience with Scent Work and someone else who has a completely different type of dog, completely different type of personality size, the way they approach the search, everything else, they may have an entirely different perspective, and they develop different skills and different tools that works for their team.

(25:27):
And that's great. We want everyone to customize their own approaches. What team A does may be drastically different than team B, but I think that one of the things that we're missing is that team A can still learn from team B and team B can learn from team A. Even if it's, I understand why you're doing that, I don't think that would work for us, but that's still a really cool thing that you're doing. I'm going to keep that in my back pocket maybe for this team later on or maybe for a different situation. That's the point is that, yes, we do want to be proficient with what we have, with what it is that we're going to be doing all the time. Absolutely. But I don't think that we should be limiting ourselves. The more that we can appreciate just what it is that we do and why we do it and recognize it's not going to be complete.

(26:20):
No one is going to be complete. There's always going to be missing pieces and things that are stronger or weaker or again, those blind spots, things we just didn't even consider. But we can learn from others who have a different experience. And sometimes the way that I like to describe it is that wearing of different hats from different roles, different perspectives of dog owner, handler, competitor, instructor, trial, official trial host, volunteer trial staff, all of that is entirely different and unique. We can learn from all of those. So it's just a little challenge for everyone. Like, Ugh, I don't have time for this. But really just take a second. If you do happen to video, let's say some of your searches, look at them with the vantage point of what is unique about my team? What's the size of my dog? What type of dog is it?

(27:15):
What is their personality? How do they actually tackle the search? What are they narrating about the search? What am I doing? What are my reactions in the search? What are the different types of things that I do or don't do? And then again, if you happen to be working with an instructor, let's say at a group dog training class you're taking with classmates and friends, watch the rest of the class and just say like, huh, okay. So there's a team that's about as opposite from us as possible. What do they do? What are the ways that that dog tackles a search? What is that dog saying? What is that team doing? And then look to see what it is that the different searches are designed like and how you may want to design different practice searches for that different dog or for that different team, or if you're trying to work on different things.

(28:04):
I hope that makes sense of trying to broaden our outlook a little bit more from just focusing so much on our team. Sometimes broadening out can then provide some real great inspiration for what can better help our team. This is a more conceptual kind of thing. I hope it at least get you guys thinking. I also do just want to very quickly mention, we've been incredibly fortunate to host several different round tables. As of late, we set with University two events. One was focusing on AKC Scent Work, officiating for novice and advanced. And then one we just wrapped up was for excellent masters of detective. Very, very, very good, great conversations. So definitely encourage everyone to check those out. They were very thought provoking and I greatly appreciate all my colleagues who were able to participate. Chef's Kiss. We are also going to be hosting several additional virtual events from now until the end of the year.

(29:02):
So two coming up in the next few months. The next one is how would you train it? Virtual event. We have a lot of wonderful speakers for this. We have Holly Bushard, Kayla Dever, Tony Gravley, Michael McManus, Natalie McManus, and Nancy Reyes. And again, as scheduled for July 18th. And what we're doing inside this virtual event is we're going to propose our panelists three different common issues that people may encounter during Scent Work. And we're going to be discussing with them what they would do individually as far as how they would work on that. And I'm going to be throwing them different curve balls in between each of those. Be like, okay, well great. So you did this, but now this happened. Now what? So again, we can talk through the thought process of here's a thing, how can we diagnose the thing and how do we work on the thing?

(29:48):
So I'm really super excited about that to be able to again, pull some really great insights and suggestions from this wonderful, wonderful panel. The following virtual event is Failure is a growth opportunity that is scheduled for August 15th. And again, we have a fantastic panel. We have Holly Bushard, Tony Gravley, cevi, Michael McManus, Nancy Reyes, and Aleks Woodroffe. So this event is trying to talk about the fact that failure is indeed a natural part of us learning and growing, and that applies to both the dog and the handler. When we're talking about Scent Work. A lot of us take failure extraordinarily personally, and there's not the growth factor. We're just so down on the whole thing that we're not actually embracing what failure actually is, that it's information that we can then use and utilize to further grow both ourselves and our dog and our team.

(30:46):
So we're going to be talking with the panelists on ways that we can better utilize failure to our benefit instead of it being like, oh, I'm the worst. And again, I speak from experience. I am not very good in this regard, so I'm thoroughly looking forward to this so I can improve myself. So we'll make certain that there are links inside of the show notes for this episode on high Be to check out those different events. But as always, thank you also very much for listening to the podcast. We really do appreciate it. Stay tuned. We are going to be continuing our spotlight series. We talk to individuals or businesses that are getting back to set work, and we're also be having interviews with outside speakers, I promise. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. Happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.