Ep. 144: Pressure - Avoid or Lean In?

Pressure exists in all our searches, both when we are training and trialing. The question is, what do we do with this pressure? How do we react to it? Should we avoid a pressure point or lean into it? The answer is not quite as clear as you may think. The approach one team takes may be completely inappropriate for another. Also, what a team does will likely change from search-to-search.

The choices made are entirely dependent on your individual dog, yourself, your team and the situation at hand.

In this episode, we discuss the challenge of giving blanket advice, how nuance matters and ways we can better assess what the pressure points are for our individual dogs, ourselves and our teams while determining which approach will work best.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

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TRANSCRIPT

Dianna L. Santos (00:01):
Welcome to the All About Scent Work Podcast. In this podcast, we talk about all things Scent Work that can include training tips, a behind scenes look at what your instructor or trial official is going through and much more. In this episode, I want to talk about pressure. Are we supposed to be avoiding it or are we supposed to be leaning into 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 you provide online courses, webinars, seminars, virtual events, ebooks, a regular updated blog, the All About Scent Work Podcasts, video reviews, Zoom consultations, free training tips, free live streams, and so much more, all focused on 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, if you're interested in competing, or you're already trialing at the upper levels, we likely have a training solution for you.

(00:57):
So now that you know a little bit more about me, let's dive into the episode itself.

(01:05):
So in this episode, I want to talk about pressure. What are we supposed to be doing about it? Because there's lots of different things that we can hear. I know I've said different things at different times that can make this all feel very confusing. So when I'm training or trialing in Scent Work and there are pressures about what am I supposed to be doing about those things? Am I supposed to be recognizing those pressures and shying away from them? Am I supposed to be kind of bubble wrapping my team from those pressures? Am I supposed to be leaning into the pressures? What am I supposed to do? And the answer isn't really that clear cut. It's kind of complicated. And here's the reason why. It is very true that no matter what we're doing in Scent Work, whether we're doing training or trialing, there are going to be pressures that are naturally baked into the activity.

(02:04):
And all of that is dependent upon the dog, the handler, and the team. So one team may have a completely different set of lists of pressures than another. So already we're complicated to try to say, "Hey, team A, this is what you should do. And team B, you should do the same thing." That may not be true. The other thing is that the potency of those pressures or how they're perceived, how strong they are, how influential they are, that's also going to depend. And it's not just going to depend on the individuals, the dog, the handler, or the team as a unit, but also on everything else. Meaning if you just had one pressure point that was present in a given situation, that's one thing. Maybe it's not that big of a deal, or maybe it's a really big deal. Again, it depends. But what happens if you had 15 different pressure points?

(03:02):
Altogether, those may be completely overwhelming for the dog, the handler, or the team. Right at the jump, we're already recognizing that this is a complicated topic. So when we're trying to talk about these things, when we're as instructors or trainers, we're trying to help our clients or we're trying to give general ideas of what people can do, it can get kind of messy because again, everyone's going to have to individualize this information and it's more so you have to take it in and then kind of think about it and really soberly assess, "Well, what are the pressure points for my dog, myself, and my team?" And that could be an exercise all within itself. So what are some of the ways that you can do that first part? How can you identify what is actually a pressure point? Well, you want to break this down bit by bit and start with the dog.

(03:55):
That's usually the easiest way to start because we typically have a very hard time being introspective.

(04:03):
So thinking about your dog, completely outside the context of Scent Work, are there things that get their interest in either side of a spectrum? Are there things you're like, "Oh my God, what was that? That's so exciting. I cannot pay attention to anything else that has all of my attention right now. I must investigate whatever that is." Or is it the other side of that spetch? I'm like, "Oh my God, what is that? Oh, it's so scary. I just want to crawl into my own skin." Both of those things you need to know about because that is absolutely a pressure point. It's pulling your dog's attention either because it is just so enthralling, so novel, so exciting, pick a word, or it's eliciting a fear response. It's, "This is dangerous. Maybe this thing can kill me." Who knows? We can't get inside the dog's head, but those things are pressure points and we can call them different words.

(04:59):
Sometimes people call them triggers, but they are putting a level of pressure on the dog to send their attention here and then to do something with that attention, whether it be, I must engage in whatever that thing is or I want to completely avoid that thing. And again, those are two opposite polar extremes on the same spectrum. Your dog can land anywhere in between. So when you're thinking about, when my dog is just out and about, I'm taking them for a walk, they're just inside the house, whatever, what are some of the things that elicit those kinds of responses? So you may say, "Well, when the mailman comes and delivers the mail, or UPS, or the Amazon delivery person, when those things happen, oh, my dog's attention is a hello." And it could very well be a very excited, like, "Oh my goodness, it's the person who brings the biscuit." Or it could be like, "Oh, intruder." Whatever.

(05:54):
That's a good thing to note, right? Okay. When your dog is presented with this series of stimuli, this is the response that they have and it's pretty much guaranteed, but there is a level of pressure that's being put on the dog. Now, if you were to think about that very same thing, let's use the Amazon delivery as an example. And let's say that your dog typically will run to the front of the house and they will announce, "Oh, there's a delivery." What happens if you try to call them back? What happens if you maybe had a treat container and you shook it, shook it, shook it, or you were like, "Come back over here," or whatever, whatever response is going to be. What does your dog do? Does your dog slide to a stop and then go, "Oh, but I do want the treats," or, "Oh, they told me to go to bed," or whatever you were doing.

(06:46):
Do you see your dog get kind of conflicted where they really want to run to the door? But now this other piece of information has hit them and now they're kind of conflicted. They're kind of stuck in between two different things that they want to do. That's the kind of thing that we're trying to avoid in our searches is we could have different pressure points that are calling to our dogs and then on top of that, we have the expectation of what we want them to do. So it could very well be the same type of scenario. You're tackling an interior search, your dog is happily working along, and all of a sudden, maybe it sounds like someone knocked at the door, right? Maybe you're at a trial as an example, or you can even be at a training center and someone is trying to get into another room, but you can hear the knocking from where you are and it elicits that automatic, "Oh my goodness, there's someone at the door." And now you, at the very same time, are trying to cue them to go back to searching.

(07:49):
These are pressure points. These are conflicting pieces of stimuli that the dog is now conflicted with. So what are we supposed to do, Santos? "I need my dog to search, particularly for talking about trialing." What I'm trying to describe here is that even with these really simple examples, again, starting off completely outside the context of Scent Work, that those pressure things can be something that we really have to have to deal with. We have to wrap our arms around and figure out, okay, how much of a pressure point is this? If someone were to come to my door, the Amazon delivery person, is my dog trying to bust through the door or is my dog just kind of jogging down and trotting down the hallway? Be like, "Oh, look, there's a delivery here." Those are two completely different responses. We need to figure that part out first before we can try to put together some kind of plan on how we should be addressing that pressure point like, "Oh, you're talking in circles." What do you mean?

(08:56):
Well, the reason I gave the example of you're trying to interrupt the dog, right? So you hear the person is coming to your door, your dog heads off, they go rushing towards the door and you grab a treat container, you go jiggle, jiggle, joke. I'm like, "Puppy, puppy, puppy, puppy," because you're trying to get them back.

(09:15):
The amount of stuff that you're doing to try to interrupt their behavior is probably going to increase the less that they respond to you. And that may not be overly effective. You could actually just be getting into a big argument with your dog. And again, this isn't in the middle of a search. It's definitely not in the middle of a trial. It's just someone's trying to deliver your package. So wouldn't it be better for us to determine, okay, I want to actually train this. I want to have a reliable cue that when someone comes to bring me my deliveries, I can let my dog know, "Hey, here's this queue, whatever it's going to be. I want you to instead go target your bed," as an example. And the way that we would work on that is that we would start building a really reliable go to bed queue without any delivery things going on.

(10:08):
And then incrementally, we would be increasing the pressure. We'd be increasing and injecting these little tiny things that seem similar to a delivery until we can get to the point over time where a delivery is actually happening and now the dog is like, "Oh yeah, I totally get it. You want me to go to the bed?" Sure, no problem. That's what we would need to do again over a period of time. What that period of time is, is going to change from dog to dog. It's going to change from situation to situation and also your history matters. If your dog has been trying to barge down the door for five years, I don't think you're going to be able to fix this in 10 seconds flat. Could someone prove me wrong? Sure. But typically speaking, you're going to have to spend some time to undo that in order to have the dog learn how to do something else.

(10:58):
I don't care. What does this have to do? What's that work? What I'm trying to describe here is that something as simple as you're getting a delivery, that is your pressure point, your dog is reacting a certain way and you're trying to figure out how to get them to do something else. That requires that we appreciate the level of pressure that stimuli is for the dog, breaking that down into little tiny pieces, not avoiding it, but implementing different factors or flavors of that pressure point in ways that the dog can deal with incrementally progressing over time until they can deal with the full pressure of a delivery and they're doing the thing that we ask them to do. In theory, it's the same exact thing we're talking about, our searches, where things get complicated and why I started at the very beginning of this podcast like, well, blanket things may not be such a good idea for us to put out there, is that every single dog and every single person, every single team are going to encounter different levels of pressure inside of their searches and many of those pressure points may be compounded where there are lots of little pressure points, or there could be lots of big pressure points depending.

(12:21):
So trying to say, "Okay, well, I'm just going to lean into that pressure." As a blanket statement, may not be such a great idea because you may not get the response that you're hoping for. That may not be building resilience that could just be teaching your dog learned helplessness because they're like, "Wow, I couldn't deal with this before, but now you're really pushing me into this situation and I really can't deal with it, so I'm just going to give up." We don't want that. That's very bad. So what do we do, Santos? Again, I think the very first thing we have to do is take a very sober look at what are the potential pressure points when we're talking about stent work. So first of all, let's think about our environment. Where are you searching and what are the things that you think are potential pressure points that necessarily, again, don't have to elicit an icky response from your dog.

(13:18):
It could be a, "Oh my goodness, Disneyland." It could be a really happy response, but it's still pressure. What are those situations? What are those things that you can think of off the top of your head? So as an example, let's say that you have a dog who adores, I mean, their thing in life is to chase squirrels. So I think we can all agree that if you were to do an exterior search and there was a bunch of squirrels and they're right there end up in the tree, making their little chitter chatter with flagging their tails and just basically harassing your dog from the sky, that would be a very significant pressure point. Okay. Now let's say that on top of that, not only do you have squirrels, but you also have chipmunks because we're going to assume that if your dog really likes squirrels, they're probably also going to like chipmunks.

(14:11):
And at the very same times you got the squirrels up in the trees, you got the chipmunks down the ground and they're all like running around and doing things. On top of that, you got birds going to assume that if your dog is really interested in the squirrels, they're probably really interested in chipmunks and the birds dive bombing them and things is probably going to be a thing too. Great. So you have these three massive pressure points in your search and you asked your dog to find this really boring Birch tin. The environment is for all intents and purposes looming over your dog, enveloping them in this pressure and the chances that they're going to be successful in that search are pretty darn low. Now, if at the very same time that, again, the odds are stacked against them, you have a leaf that blows through your search area and blows just beyond your dog's reach as they were maybe quasi going back and forth between, "I really am trying to find my hide, but oh, I want to go get the squirrels, whatever." How many of us think that the dog is going to go chase that leaf?

(15:17):
It's a pretty high, it's more than 50%. This is where the pressure of the environment has won. Many people would say, "Well, this just means that I need to do more searches with more squirrels, more chipmunks, more birds, more leaves." And it's not necessarily that that advice is wrong, but I think that it's not appreciating the nuance of, well, should we be doing that all at the same time? Aren't there different levels of squirrels, chipmunks, birds, and leaves? What type of picture are we looking for? For my purposes when I'm doing scent work, I want my dog to always be making choices, recognizing that they are always making choices. I can't force them to do anything, but I want that choice to be a clear one. I don't want them to be standing in the fork of the room going, "I really want those squirrels, but she really wants me to find that hide." But the squirrels though, I don't want that.

(16:20):
I don't want there to be 10, 20, 30 seconds, a minute of them being like, "Oh, which one am I going to pick?" I want it to be pretty instantaneous of, of course I'm going to find my hide. But that doesn't happen by accident. That happens by being very thoughtful with how we train, being very thoughtful with how we're designing our training exercises and appreciating the power of those various choices, which are influenced by pressure. Because if the pressure of the squirrels is so high, the dog is going to give into that pressure and that very well in that situation can mean the squirrels are going to win as the choice option. The hide is just going to kind of fade away and the only option is going to be investment in the squirrels. So when we give as instructors and trainers these blanket things of you should be leaning into pressure, I think that we need to be a little, myself included, be a little bit more careful to be like, "Well, maybe that's true." I don't want people thinking, "Well, my dog really likes squirrels.

(17:25):
Oh, we're never going to do searches outside with squirrels ever again." That's shying away from pressure. I don't think that's a good thing, but I think we need to appreciate what that pressure really entails. What does it mean and how can I use that as an opportunity to break it up into the tiniest of little pieces so it's not so much of a pressure point anymore, but appreciating what it represents now and also appreciating that while I may be able to lessen that pressure, I may never be able to have it go away. That's another important piece. So let's stick with the squirrel example. Let's say that your dog isn't just interested in squirrels. They're not just excited by squirrels. They are obsessive about squirrels. You know in day-to-day life, if there is a chitter-chatter of a squirrel, your dog is just gone. There's no getting them back.

(18:20):
It's just like, "Oh, dear Lord." It's just a thing. The idea that we're going to go from that level of just complete focus, one-mindedness, obsession to, "Oh yeah, I could totally do my searches." In a very short period of time is probably not realistic. It's also probably not realistic to think that that pressure that the squirrels represent is ever going to go away completely. Instead, that's going to be a baseline level of pressure that we're helping to get down to a manageable amount, but we always have to appreciate. So let me try to give you an example. Let's say that this is indeed your dog. They hear squirrel and that's it. Their eyes kind of glaze over and they're like, "Oh, where is it? " It doesn't matter. You could put flame and young in front of their face. You could give them their favorite toy.

(19:15):
You could have a fake squirrel. It doesn't matter. They want actual squirrel. Over a period of time, ideally, you would be working on reducing this obsession a bit. And there's lots of different ways you can do that. Distance is always your friend, making sure all the other pressure points are lower, yada, yada, yada. But we're going to say that you've done that and you've done that for a period of time in training. You've worked with an instructor, you've worked with friends, you've done some generalizing, you've made sure that you have taken to account the amount of squirdom in your searches when you may have been doing your exterior searches, and you have a lot of successful repetitions that you've been building up, a history of success. My dog has been able to come into areas where maybe there are squirrels way off in the distance and my dog can easily come in, they can find their hide, we do a big reward, we get the heck out of town.

(20:13):
Great. You've done that for a bit. Let's say that you're now going to do a field trip search, maybe with your instructor or your group of friends, and you all know that there could be scrolls about, but no big deal. But again, this is a novel place. You're going with a group of friends. Maybe this is only like the second or third field trip you've done together as a group. You're all kind of nervous, but it's an exciting kind of nervous like, "Ooh, we're going to set hides for each other." So exciting. And sure enough, there are indeed squirrels, but they're in the trees far away. No big deal, right? Maybe we're going to start up with searches in the parking lot. You're trying to be all good and you bring your dog out and instead of them presenting the way that you had expected, or maybe you're going to do container searches in order to do a warmup, you've been listening to me for years, you're like, "I'm going to do what the Santas lady says." And instead of your dog focusing on those containers, they're scanning the skyline looking at the trees and now you're ripping your hair out saying, "I did all the things.

(21:17):
What gives?" And what gives is that I outlined in my fake scenario multiple pressure points. So you still have this baseline, your dog is elevated above all other dogs, maybe in this little practice group, where the squirrels have ... If you were to think about this as a giant tub of water or something. And most teams have a little bit of water at the bottom. Your dog is already half full just with their level of squirrel interest and you only have the tiny little half on top to work your way up before you overflow and everything falls apart. So your baseline is half full, but now we're adding on new place that adds a whole bunch. Working with these group of dogs, that adds a whole bunch. The fact that you and all your friends are a little nervous, that adds a whole bunch. You now have a tiny little sliver of water left at the top of your tub before it overflows.

(22:16):
This is what I mean is that can be extraordinarily frustrating for people because they think that they've done all the things and the advice is that you got to get out there. You got to make sure that you're generalizing. You got to make sure you do this, that, and the other thing. And it's not that those pieces of advice are wrong, they're not, but I think they're missing a little bit of nuance that we have to appreciate what our baseline is. Where are we right now in just dealing with the pressures that we know about? Because if I'm going into a situation and my bucket of pressure is already half full, if I encounter any other pieces of pressure, I'm going to overflow and it's just not going to go well. You're like, "Well, now I don't know what to do.

(23:09):
" So I'm going to try to help this make a little bit more sense. This podcast is more so to get you to think a little bit more as far as the decisions that you're making and how you're thinking about some of these pieces of advice that, again, myself and everyone else will give. I think that the advice is solid. You have to take in the advice and think about, well, how do I use it? And what are the things in between the lines that I may have missed or just may not have been very clearly said? So if we go back to the original premise of the episode, what do I do about pressure? Do I shy away from it or do I lean into it? I don't think that either of those things in and of themselves are really true. I think there are elements of both that we could potentially take to heart, but we have to be careful about how we do so.

(24:01):
So let me try to help that make a little bit more sense. In most cases, when there are identified pressures like our squirrels, we can all appreciate that we want our dogs to have an experience where they are not quite so over the top obsessive about squirrels. It would improve their quality of life, not to mention our quality of lives of living with this dog, that that wasn't their reaction, right? That they were able to deal with, there are going to be squirrels in our lives and you can be interested in the squirrels. I'm not asking you to even ignore the squirrels per se, but I need you to bring it down like 10 notches, that whole thing.

(24:46):
But the idea that we're just going to make sure that we never see or encounter any squirrels ever, that's probably not going to work. Trying to shy away from that pressure point is not really realistic. I can't control the squirrels. I'm not going to put forth a piece of legislation that eradicates all the squirrels. These things are not going to happen, right? So I'm not going to be able to lean into the pressure per se and be like, "I'm going to stick you out there for hours on end until you finally give up on the squirrels because depending on just how obsessive your dog is, that could be very bad. They could make some really bad decisions in that situation and I'm not going to try to pretend that I can get rid of all the squirrels or I can black out all my windows or who knows what.

(25:31):
" Either extreme is just not realistic. However, I can appreciate what the advice is trying to convey that I don't want to put my dog into the deep end of the pool by saying, "Hey, I know I'm going to put out a deep inaccessible hide that is really super challenging in the middle of a courtyard that's surrounded by trees of nesting squirrels." That sounds like we're really leaning into the pressure. That doesn't sound like it's going to go very well. At the same point, I don't want to be ... I'm only ever going to do searches in my basement where there are no windows and there's no possibility of my dog ever coming across a squirrel. Both of those extremes are just silly, but I could do things where I'm appreciating the pressure that the squirrel represents and I'm applying that knowledge to what I'm doing in training and also at trial.

(26:33):
So as an example, let's say that you do indeed, like myself, have neighborhood squirrels who love nothing more than torment your dog and maybe they will torment your dog even from outside when your dog is inside, where they will go down on the yard and see me do a little dance like, "Ha ha, you can't get me like this. " They're awful. If you had this kind of dog, there's lots of things that we can do from inside shaping, counterconditioning, whatever, completely outside the context of scent work where the dog can see the squirrel and not completely lose their mind, and then we can go, "That was really awesome. We can run down the hallway away from that window and we can give them all kinds of reward." So that is not necessarily shying away from the pressure, that's appreciating what the pressure is and trying to use that pressure point as a learning opportunity.

(27:26):
That's showing the dog you can see the squirrel through the sliding glass door as an example, and we don't have to try to go through the door. Please don't, no death.

(27:37):
At the same point, you could then over a period of time, if you happen to have the same type of suicidal squirrel that I have, you could then maybe do searches in that room where they can still see through signed glass door and really super simple, straightforward searches after you've done those other exercises for a while. To me, that's what quote unquote leaning into the pressure means. It's not becoming afraid or timid or avoiding of whatever the pressure is. It's appreciating what the pressure truly represents, how challenging it is, how it challenges the dog, and then designing things to say, "Okay, can we develop skillsets that can better deal with that pressure?" All of this is more challenging than I could possibly cover inside of a podcast episode. And that's kind of my point is we want to ... How can I put this? I want to make certain that people, if you catch yourself saying things such as, "Oh, I see that this trial is going to be held at, let's say, a working farm," as an example, "There's no way my dog is going to be able to search there, so we're just not going to be able to go.

(28:59):
" Okay. My immediate response is, "Well, why?" Because that sounds like, well, maybe there are things that we could work on in training so that your dog could actually search there. To me, that's an example of avoiding pressure, shying away from pressure, where instead we should be viewing the potential pressure points as training opportunities, as ways of broadening the dog skillsets, broadening the skillsets of myself as a handler and us as a team. That doesn't mean that if you are recognizing that trying to search where maybe there's horse cookies everywhere and your dog is like, "Oh, delicious." And you're like, "Oh, so disgusting." That's not to say that I'm suggesting that today you should go out and find a working farm that's filled with horse cookies and put your hides right next to those horse cookies and hope for the best.That's literally not what I mean.

(29:59):
And that's the part where I think people, they get confused and then they get really super frustrated because it blows up in their face. Instead, I don't know if I'm being effective in any way, shape or form, but I'm trying to highlight that I don't want people to shy away from that kind of situation. I don't want them to have this immediate visceral reaction of, oh, I can't do that because it's going to be challenging for me and my dog, particularly something that's environmental such as that of, well, my dog is going to be really super distracted. My dog is going to want to eat the horse cookies or whatever. And this is where I'm going to assume that many of my colleagues, they land on the same place where they're like, "No, no, no, no, no, that's totally wrong." You want to lean into that opportunity.

(30:46):
You want to train for that. This is a golden opportunity for you. You've recognized this is hard. Well, now we should train for this. And I agree with an asterisk. It's again, if you have a dog who's just like, "Oh, look, horse cookies, how delicious." But you have another dog who is, oh my God, horse cookies. And they're just trying to eat. They're not just doing a little sampling, a little nibbling here and there. They're like consuming as much as they possibly can. They're even kind of getting kind of possessive over it. They're resource guarding over it. And again, the eyes are glazed over. It's just a whole thing. That's a completely different situation. And trying to encourage someone to just, again, go to a farm that you can find and hope for the best, not the best piece of advice. Santos, you're making my head hurt.

(31:39):
What is it that I'm supposed to do? Okay. What I would want to encourage everyone to try is to think about, break it up between the three different parts. Break it up between your dog, yourself, and your team. Try to identify at least five individual pressure points for your dog, yourself, and your team as a unit. Like, oh, I don't even know how to do this. Think about what gets your dog really super excited. Maybe what gets them a little bit worried or concerned. Think about environment stuff. Think about situational stuff. Think about movement, noises, novelty, whatever. Do the same thing for yourself. If you were to find out that you were going to do training and there was going to be a guest instructor who was going to be watching you all, but you found out that guest instructor was someone that you know was really like some big wig in the community and you're like, "Oh no, they're going to see me and I'm not perfect.

(32:45):
I hope this isn't a thing, but maybe it is. " Or maybe you're having family is visiting from out of town and they're going to watch you search. And your instructor says, "Okay, all your hides are going to be blind today and it's an unknown number and we could have any number of hides and they could be really super hard, really super easy and go. " And you're like, "Oh no." Whatever the case may be. Or it could be that you're really super excited about something. Try to really stop and think, what are five of my pressure points personally as an individual, as a person? And then think about for your team, when you and your dog are doing things together, what are the pressure points? What are the places where you think that there are times when you're just not in sync, when there's maybe bits of confusion, things are kind of disjointed, where it's just not gelling as much.

(33:41):
If you can figure out five for your dog, five for yourself and five for your team, I think you're going to identify that there may be some overlap, but lots of opportunities for things that you could potentially break down into smaller pieces. And you could also recognize, "You know what? I thought about this. I made Santos' stupid list in my five pressure points. It took forever. I hated it. " But then I actually thought about it and some of those are pretty major. If those happen, it's a thing. Okay, that's good to know. Then you want to think about what do I do about that? And think about what your visceral reaction if you were presented with that pressure point. Let's say that for you, let's say one of your pressure points, it's time. Is that if someone were to give you a short amount of time in order to complete a search, your blood pressure goes up because then you're like, "Oh, I don't know how to do anything." Suddenly you alert, what's alert?

(34:47):
You don't know how to hold your leash. It's just a whole thing. So what if someone didn't just give you a short amount of time? They gave you a ridiculously short amount of time. They didn't give you a minute to tackle this search. They gave you 25 seconds. What is going to happen? What is the emotional reaction that you're going to have? And what are you thinking that you're going to do? I would argue that there's lots of people that if that were a thing, that they just wouldn't do it. It would be so significant, an amount of pressure. They'd be like, "Yeah, I type out. I'm not doing that. That's ridiculous." And I'm not saying that that's necessarily the wrong reaction, but I think it's highlighting that, okay, yeah, that's way ... We jumped way into the deep end of the pool. Is there a way though that we can work our way up to where we could potentially work for a search where we only have 25 seconds to find however many hides we can find?

(35:47):
And it's not just a mad dash. We're not just dragging our dog around the search area. We're actually still searching as a unit. So what I'm asking everyone to think about is when you're thinking about your searches, training or trialing, what are some of these pressure points, again, for your dog, for yourself, and for your team? And when you're gathering this information, try to categorize them. What is a big pressure point and what's maybe not so much? And what could those pressure points altogether, how could they raise the amount of pressure inside of our bucket of pressure? How close are you to overflowing? And what are some of the ways that you could potentially design your training so that you're not just simply putting blinders on and be like, "Oh no, I don't want to think about those pressures. We're just going to pretend they're not there." That's not good.

(36:45):
But how can we also make sure that we're not just saying, "Let's dive into the deep into the pool and just flood ourselves with pressure." That's also not a good idea. So how can you design something for your team that is pushing the envelope just enough so that you're getting right to that edge, you're getting a little outside of your comfort zone for your dog, yourself and your team, but you have success, then you back off, you do some light in learning, you think about it for a little bit, you do some other searches that you guys know that you can do, and then you push the envelope a little bit more. How would you be able to put that all together? Because I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if we're really super honest about this, everyone's approach is going to be a little bit different.

(37:35):
And that's really what I wanted to get across with this podcast episode that took almost 40 minutes is as a general rule of thumb, I think that the advice of you shouldn't avoid your pressures, you should lean into them. I understand where it comes from. I've even said the very same thing, but if we stop to think about it, it's too simplistic. And I don't want anyone to take that advice and run with it and say, "Okay, with our squirrel example, I'm going to go find the center of squirrels and I'm going to set up a search there and I'm also going to make that search really super hard." That's not what we mean. And I also don't want people to think for the squirrel example, my dog can never do searches with squirrels because that's not true. They may very well need to have different types of searches.

(38:30):
They may very well ... You may have to come to that situation with a different set of skills and expectations and cues and routines in order to support your dog to recognize what this pressure truly represents. That again, your bucket is already half full where everyone else is starting off this search and their bucket is practically empty. They have a lot more room to work with than you do. That's not a problem as long as we recognize that part. I'll just wrap this up here and you're like, "Oh, please, my poor ears." The reason why I wanted to put this out is it hurts my heart when I see people say things like, "Oh, my dog can't do whatever it is. " And my immediate response is, "Are you sure?" But at the same point, it also hurts my heart when I see people putting their dogs themselves and their teams into situations where I'm like, "Yeah, you cannot do that in that iteration right now.

(39:32):
It's just not a good idea. This is not going to go well." So both things are very like, "Oh, it's so painful." So I don't want anyone to just brush off, be like, "Oh, whatever it is, that's it. We can't do that. We can't search where there are doors are going to close inside of our interior because the noise." You could probably work through that. Does that mean that I want you to put your dog inside of a big booming room and just slam doors incessantly until they give up? Of course not. Please don't do that. But that's what I mean is I don't want anyone to take either of those extreme stances. I want instead for us to better appreciate what those pressure points are and come up with a real customized, realistic plan on how to deal with them so that we can be the best team that we can be.

(40:26):
And it's not in comparison to anyone else. It's recognizing the level of difficulty that this pressure represents. And it could very well be that let's say for a really super obsessive squirrel dog who was maybe for our scenario, if you put them next to a sliding glass door when they were inside and squirrels are outside, they were trying to go through the door. Oh my God, that's very bad. I think we could all agree that's not good. If you got to a point where the dog could see the squirrels from inside when the squirrels are outside and they're not trying to bash down the door, that's a win. Does it mean that your dog is going to be able to do a search? Maybe not. Maybe that is too much for right now. Maybe it's going to be too much ever. Who knows? Depends again on the level of pressure.

(41:18):
But that's my point is I wouldn't want to make a blanket statement of, no, that dog must be able to search where there's a squirrel like six feet away from them. Maybe not. Maybe that's the entirely wrong thing to suggest for that team. And I care more about their day-to-day success. I love Scent Work. I'm passionate about it. I want every single dog to play, but I never want Scent Work to be used as an excuse to introduce more stress and strife into someone's life, whether it be that now they're retreating from things because they don't want to have those experiences because maybe it'll mess up my searches, or that they are overdoing it in the other direction and it's making things worse. I don't want anyone to make any of these incorrect assumptions. I don't want people to retreat unnecessarily. I don't want them throwing their dogs in the deep end of the pools.

(42:15):
Instead, I want everyone to appreciate what the pressure points are. Every single team has pressure points. Every single dog does, every single person does, every single team does. If you know what those pressure points are and how it is that you can work on them, you can make it so they're not overtaking your life and they aren't overtaking your searches, but that's going to look different for everyone. And your success should be something that you define, not that someone else defines. And if you have multiple dogs, the success you have with dog A may look entirely different than what you have with dog B, and that's entirely fine. And those success points can change over time. Where let's say for our obsessive dog with the squirrels, maybe you start off like, "I just want them to be in this room and not try to go through the sign glass door." I think that's a really good goal, but maybe you work on that for a while and now your dog can do a search inside that room and they are like, "Yeah, no, the squirrels are out there, no big deal." Maybe then over more time, you can have that door open and you can have part of your search inside that room and part of your search on the porch.

(43:27):
And maybe even with more time, you're able to have searches on certain parts of your yard while the squirrels are doing their squirrel thing and your dog is really super happy and focused doing their search. But you know that if you do these searches in other parts of the yard, the pressure is too high. Then we don't have to do the searches in those parts of the yard, maybe ever, but I hope that makes sense that ... Think about for that situation, right? I swear I'm almost done. Is you had a dog who for day-to-day life purposes, people are ripping their hair out like, "Stop trying to go through the door." Oh my God. But then through training, not just in Scent Work, but just generally speaking, they were able to help the pressure lesson enough. So the dog now do all these things. Can they do everything?

(44:19):
No. Do they have to? No. So I hope this makes sense that if we appreciate how all this should be customized is so important. Being honest about where we are right now, what our baseline is, how much is our bucket of pressure filled, and where is that going to be for the foreseeable future? If I'm dealing with a tiny little drop of pressure in my bucket and I have a whole big bucket to fill up, okay, my approach is going to be entirely different than if my bucket is three quarters full and I've got this tiny little sliver on top to play with, well, no, different choices. So I hope this somewhat kind of maybe helped. I don't know. I don't even know what my name is anymore. I hope that's not the case. But this is going to be something I'm going to be talking about with my fellow colleagues for a little bit with our different podcasts and live streams and stuff like that because I do think that what I want to make certain that we're doing, I want to make certain that I'm doing is be clear because I am concerned with how advice is received and what people are hearing when they hear advice.

(45:34):
And again, it's not necessarily the advice is wrong.

(45:39):
Super generally, it could be great, but then when you start getting to the nitty-gritty of it, like, okay, well, how is this going to apply for your team? What are the things that you're going to do? And if you do have multiple dogs, you may have to really personalize that stuff. So expect to hear more things about that. As always, feel free to let us know if you have any questions or comments about this episode. I always want to hear what you guys are thinking. So you can comment on our social media as well as our website where we're posting this episode. Also, very exciting if you made it to this part of the podcast episode. We are launching a new community site, very exciting stuff. So this is going to be a place because social media is not the best. This is going to be a place where we can all connect and talk about set work and you don't have to be bombarded with a bunch of other stuff.

(46:28):
You can just focus on the things that you actually care about. So this will be formally launched very soon. We're starting to let in clients who have signed up for our online courses and our instructors. We're going to be making more announcements soon, so definitely stay tuned for that. I'll put in like a little secret link where we're posting this podcast episode in case you wanted to join, but we're also going to be launching a membership, which we're very excited about. So stay tuned for that. That's going to be happening in April of 2026. Very exciting stuff. Also, for anyone who has been interested in enrolling in one of our online courses as a student, the student enrollment has a new format. So now we are offering the same prerecorded content that we were doing before, which is a ton. It's a ton of information, all of our courses, that you can go through at any point, and you have immediate access once you enroll in the course.

(47:22):
Additionally, you will, again, have access to this community. We'd be able to connect with fellow classmates and also your instructor, and that's where you can post videos of you and your dog tackling the exercises from the course for the instructor to review and provide feedback on. Here's the new piece. The new piece is that weekly, you're also going to have a live Zoom class with the instructor, so they'll be able to answer any additional questions that you have. Maybe they'll pull out a particular video or series of videos from the submissions to talk about what they saw, maybe to give you guys some feedback and things to think about when you're practicing for the following for the next week. And then people go, "Oh, well, I wouldn't be able to make the Zoom class. This is not a problem." Not a problem at all because that will be recorded and that will be posted to the course player as well as the community.

(48:12):
So we are really super excited about this new format. It's going to allow for more interaction and more back and forth between the instructors and the class members. So we're very, very excited about that. We have a really nice lineup for you, so I'll make certain that there are links for which courses are available for this upcoming session where we're posting this podcast episode. But I want to thank you guys very much for listening. I know this was a big one. As always, if you guys have any topic requests, always feel free to let me know. I'm always happy to talk about whatever you guys are interested in. But thank you so very much for listening. As you can hear my tiny terrier is like, "Lady, let's go do some searches." Please give a cookie to your puppy for us. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.