Ep. 148: Rubber Bands and Scent Work

Our dogs regularly encounter and experience stressors, be it in their daily lives or when they are training or trialing in Scent Work. The number and type of stressor the dog must contend with at any one time will inform whether they can rise to the occasion or crumble under the pressure. 

Visualize a watermelon and wrapping a single rubber band around it. A stressor has been applied, but the watermelon is no worse for wear. However, if we then wrap hundreds or even thousands of rubber bands around that very same watermelon, the pressure has exponentially increased. There is a high possibility that the watermelon will dramatically explode due to the pressure being applied. 

In this episode, we dive deeper into this analogy and highlight the importance of identifying the unique rubber bands that exist for their individual dog. How can we accomplish this? By truly viewing our training and trialing scenarios from the dog's perspective. 

After listening to this episode, make a list of your dog's rubber bands and create a training plan to address each. We want our dogs to experience a stressor and then recover, not succumb to it!

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 which can include training tips, a behind scenes look at what your instructor or trial official is going through a much more. In this episode, I want to talk about rubber bands. So before I start diving into this episode, 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. We provide online courses, webinars, seminars, virtual events and eBooks, video reviews, Zoom consultations, and instructor mentorship program, free live streams, and our newly launched Scent Work U Community where we provide a monthly challenge where there are new themes every month with a new challenge every week and also our member hub area where we offer exclusive member-only events with some really outstanding speakers. So there is a lot going on.

(00:51):
Scent Work University, we have a very giant library of offerings. So regardless of where you are on your sniffing journey, you're just getting started, you're looking to develop some more advanced skills, you're competing or you're interested in trialing even at the upper levels, you likely have a trained solution for you. Such know a little bit more about me, let's dive into the episode itself.

(01:13):
So in this episode, I want to talk about rubber bands. What on earth are you talking about? This was inspired by the member only live stream that Michael McManus did for us, where he was talking about ways that we can train resilient dogs in Nose Work. And during that discussion, I was reminded of a video that I saw posted on social media through the Veterinary Behavior Specialties of Minnesota. And in this video, there are two young men who are basically wrapping a watermelon in seemingly hundreds, if not thousands of rubber bands. And this was a trend on TikTok at whatever point in time. And it just sounds preposterous. Okay, of course a rubber band is not going to make anything happen to the watermelon. Watermelons are huge. Rubber bands are small, but when you have so many of them, what you see in the video is eventually, luckily they only make us watch the last little part.

(02:09):
The watermelon has lots and lots and lots of rubber bands all wrapped around it and they're about to put another one on. They're like, "I think this might be the one to do it. " So they're kind of all hesitant. They add the last rubber band and sure enough, the watermelon explodes very dramatically. They fall back in their chairs. It's a very humorous video.

(02:29):
The reason why this popped into my head during this discussion with Michael McManus is it reminded me just how many potential stressors our dogs are coping with at any given point in time, just in day-to-day life, not to mention when we're training, not to mention when we're trialing. And we as the dogs, owners, handlers, and trainers, may not fully appreciate what all those individual rubber bands are. So we could potentially be placing our dog into a situation where again, figuratively speaking, they are the watermelon and we have bombarded them and wrapped them in a whole bunch of rubber bands. So another thing that we're asking them to do is now the rubber band that caused the watermelon to explode. I'm butchering this metaphor, but the image was just so powerful to me during the conversation and then it keyed off in my mind. Part of the problem I think is that not that people can't grasp that concept of stress stacking and trigger stacking.

(03:41):
That's what the original video is really all about is trying to help people visualize what we talk about when we're talking about behavior modification and things like this of, well, we have to be aware that some dogs will stress stack and that that's an issue and we have to try to deal with these things and yada, yada, yada, which is all very true. I think that people can grasp that concept. I think that makes sense. Where I think there's a gap particularly when we're talking about Scent Work, but maybe just dog training and just living with our dogs generally speaking, is the stressors that our dogs experience are entirely different than the stressors that you and I experience. And the reason being is that they're a dog and they're a dog that's living inside a human world. So when we are doing, let's say Scent Work, even just practicing, training at our home, training at a field trip location, going to class, there are scores of things that our dogs are experiencing that to you and I don't even register at all.

(04:44):
Things like automatic opening doors or stairs or slippery floors or loud noises or even the banging of pipes in a wall, construction noise outside. I mean, the list is just so incredibly long. There is stimuli that you and I are perceiving as white noise that if we were to somehow refactory reset ourselves and then put us back into our lives, our brains would probably explode. It's just so much stuff that is happening that you and I as people, we just completely discount. It's not even a thing. It's part of normal life, but that's not part of normal life for our dogs. And that can also be magnified when we are taking our dogs potentially when they have a certain routine where let's say that you are living more in the country or you're living in a really quiet suburban area as an example and the training center is pretty quiet if you do do that or maybe you don't even go to a training center for classes.

(05:58):
Maybe you're working with an instructor virtually. So you're going to your very consistent, "This is what it looks like. The decibel level is this much. The amount of activity is this much. These are the kinds of things that we see and we experience." And then you go to a trial that let's say is more closer to an urban area or in an industrial park or is just drastically different just from the decibel level of how much noise and how loud is it. That's a stressor. And it's what I loved with the conversation with Michael is not that all stressors are bad, they're not. And our goal should be to try to develop our dogs so they're able to encounter these things and have the resilience to get to the other side, but that's not possible if the watermelon is exploding. If the watermelon already is dealing with hundreds of rubber bands around it and we're like, "Okay, I'm going to ad 15 more." Be like, "It doesn't sound like such a great idea.

(06:56):
Could we maybe remove some of those rubber bands and deal with them in another way so our dog can better cope?" But I don't think it's possible for us to do that until we actually take the lens off from a human perspective and try to put on our imaginary dog glasses to see life from truly our dog's perspective. And that can literally mean crouching down and seeing this is my dog's eye level. This is the way they're seeing this space. This is how they have to move through this space. This is what they're experiencing. And whereas from my vantage point, I may be able to see down a whole block as an example, but my dog quite literally cannot because they are so much further down closer to the ground than I am. They may hear things and smell things, but they can't see it.

(07:58):
So just imagine how distressing that could potentially be or potentially exciting or unnerving or whatever, doesn't matter. It's a stressor and it could be grabbing our dog's attention or it could be adding on another layer of the stress stacking that then can hinder our dog's ability to think, to focus, to potentially perform, particularly when we're talking at trial. This is all an issue. This is a problem. So what I want to talk about this episode is some ways that we may be able to better appreciate what our dogs are actually experiencing and how maybe just taking a pause and thinking through, "Okay, I've been training Scent Work for however long. My dog in certain situations seemingly understands the task. They understand odor, meaning that they have value in birch as an example. They're able to recognize it. They're able to find a hide and we have a good reward sequence and they seem really game to play.

(09:08):
This is amazing. Pat yourself in the back. Kudos. But then in other situations that seemingly seems to fall apart a little bit or the dog seems to struggle or the dog seems to be in conflict. I want to get the hide. I want to get my cookie, but ... And then whatever it is that we're trying to fill in the blanks to anthropomorphize, what is it that my dog is saying? When we have this disconnect where it appears as though the dog actually does have the skills to search, they recognize odor, they understand the game, they understand this odor puzzle. They can actually do the task in certain situations, but in other situations, they seemingly cannot. Does that mean that we need to do more searches? The answer may very well be no. The answer could be, well, what is different about those two situations?

(10:05):
And it's not just what we are observing as a person what the differences are. What's the difference to your dog? What is the experience that the dog has when they're being successful as opposed to when they're not? Quite literally, what is the routine like? So let me give you an example to try to help this make a little bit more sense. Let's say that you've been training on your own, you're training at home and occasionally you will do training around your property, which is let's say on the larger side, and you'll also do some searches like on your block in different areas, you take your dog for a walk. Your dog is rocking it. They are just incredible. They're finding all the things you can set really super sexy hides and they are just knocking it out of the park and everyone's like, " Oh, your dog is just so amazing.

(10:57):
"You're like, " I know they're awesome. Feather in my cap, this is great. "And you are interested in trialing. Fantastic. What a wonderful thing and you've taken to heart the advice we should do field trip searches. So you're trying to make sure that you're broadening the aperture, that you are showing your dog all kinds of different pictures. Again, so far so good. And you're even taking some of the advice you've heard from Santos Lady. "I'm going to provide a level of familiarity to my dog. I'm going to bring some boxes with us. I'm going to assess if my dog can do the search by doing a simple five row of boxes set up and if my dog can do that, great. Then we're going to go on to set up another hide and we'll go from there." And yet when you try to set up your five boxes row of containers for your dog to tackle, you are not getting what you were hoping for.

(11:53):
It's as if your dog has been possessed by some other type of creature. Boxes who? Boxes what? Now a common response is to kind of panic, which is understandable. Maybe put the dog up and be like, "Okay, maybe I need to offer fewer boxes and I'll make sure the boxes are open and I'll make sure the hide is paired." Okay. And maybe you do that, you've let your dog kind of relax for a couple of minutes and you've let your blood pressure come down. You now only have three boxes out and there's a single hide and it's paired and it's with the best, best of stuff ever. You bring your dog out and they do indeed find it, but it's not super solid. Your dog is not looking the same exact way that they would even when you've been doing those searches where you take your walks.

(12:39):
So now you're second guessing yourself being like, "Am I still supposed to put the hide where I was going to put it? " The dog found it, right? They found the thing. I fed them for the thing. We had a little celebration. Is this a good enough way for me to progress? You go, oh, maybe I'm just being too timid, too timid. I'm going to do it. I'm going to put the hide where I was planning on putting it. And sure enough, you do that and the dog does not find it. Dog is just kind of wandering around. Every now and again, they just kind of stop and stare off into the distance. Or the other complete opposite extreme, the dog is like, woo-hoo. They're like running out to the end of their line. Maybe they're even grabbing their little leash and they're trying to tug to tug with you.

(13:19):
Maybe they're bouncing and barking at you. Who knows? They're doing all the things other than searching. So now you're ripping your hair out like, "I did what Santo said. I did the boxes, the dog did the boxes and now we're trying to do this and it's not working." Okay. So this is my make believe scenario. What can we glean from this? Well, again, with what I've described, we have a history of a dog who is absolutely able to do the task at hand. They can go into a space, they can recognize odor. They have value in odor, they have odor recognition and they even have odor obedience where they're able to discount the other things may be going on in that space to go and work the hide to source and then you're able to do your reward sequence and they're very happy about that.

(14:09):
These are facts. We have that. Great. We have searching skills. You are trying to set up a similar search just in a different place and yet now everything is seemingly falling apart. Does this mean we need to do more searches? Maybe not. If we were to think about this just from a training perspective, something has changed. What has changed? The biggest variable that's changed is the environment, but what about the environment is basically the extra rubber band that is causing our watermelon to explode or is it like 15 rubber bands? Maybe that's what the issue is. Maybe all of a sudden we've added 15, 30, 75 different things that again, to you and I were not there. We did not perceive them because we're people, but to our dog, they came out of their car crate and went, "Whoa, what is this? " And then there's a hide out there apparently.

(15:06):
They're like, "I don't understand." So what can we do since we are not dogs, we are people and we have things that we're very used to. How is it that we can put on these imaginary dog view glasses so we can kind of see it from their perspective? Like I mentioned before, quite literally when you're setting up a space in order to do a search, particularly for field trip, but really for anything, just take a moment. Think about where am I setting up my start line and where are my hide or hides? And quite literally squat down. Squat down or kneel down, however you can do it and try to be at your dog's level and quite literally just at that point, just look around and look around and listen. Do you hear anything? Do you hear anything different? Do you feel anything? Do you feel any kind of vibrations now that you're closer to the ground?

(16:01):
Let's say that you're trying to do this field trip location and actually there's a highway entrance that's fairly nearby. When those big trucks come by, the ground will literally shake and rumble. For some dogs that they've never experienced, they're like, "What is happening?" And it may not be like a fear response. It could just be like, "What is this? " It's taking their attention, but it's also adding a rubber band. That is adding a rubber band. It may take it right off again, but it's still being added to the stack. So crouching down at your dog's level, looking around, listening, even smelling if you can like, "Oh wow, I can really smell whatever it is. Wow, that fertilizer they put down, that's really strong down here. Okay, well that's an important thing to know. " And then really view what pathways do you feel are open for this space again from your dog's perspective where from our perspective we can, again, we're kind of seeing like an overview look, we have an idea really of where to go.

(17:09):
But let's say that you're doing this field trip location at a park that has a lot of overgrown grass and your dog has never seen that before. You know that there are these 15 paths that go this way that go directly to the hide, but there's a bunch of overgrown grass that you can barely see through. Your dog would be like, "I'm sorry, you wanted me to go in there to do that? How come?" And then actually go through those things. I'm not saying you have to crouch through the tall grass, but at least walk through it and feel what that feels like. Has your dog ever done that before? Have they ever pushed through something to feel things on their sides? If not, how can we completely outside the context of scent work introduce some of these concepts at home in a nice, safe way, break it down to little tiny pieces to where this isn't a rubber band or it's a very temporary one, it's on and then it comes right off.

(18:13):
I hope I'm making sense here that if we take the time to try to understand that not everything that we see when there's a deficiency in a search is actually related to the search at all. A lot of times it has nothing to do with it. Once your dog understands the game, once your dog has those skills, they've developed their odor library, there are probably a litany of other things that are now counting against their ability to do that and it could very well have a lot to do with the environment and their resiliency in dealing with the environment and how we then address that may not be done within Scent Work at all, at least initially, but then we may progress to something that Bob Deeds was talking about in his releasing the inner dog webinar that he did for us is we can then use the environment quite literally to create puzzles that the dog then has to problem solve to work through in order to get to their hides.

(19:14):
But we want to be mindful about how it is that we're setting that up. Again, thinking about the dog's perspective, what are they going to be experiencing and what are they learning? What are they taking away from any experience that we're offering to the dog? And is there a way that this can go in a direction that I wasn't hoping for? And if that's the case, do I have contingency plans or do I know what to look for to say, "Okay, we took a complete left turn. I didn't want to go that direction. Let's get us back on track. How can I best do that? " So again, I hope this is making sense for everybody that you're like, you are so abstract today But the conversation with Michael during his train resilient dogs and nosework remember event that he did for us was that this resilience is really important, but the thing that kept coming in my mind is that I think this rubber band analogy, the visualization of it makes a lot of sense and we may not appreciate what the rubber bands are and we may put too much weight in certain things being a rubber band where there could be lots of them, there could be lots of opportunities for rubber bands and something doesn't have to be a rubber band forever or it could be a temporary one.

(20:28):
It was on and then we took it off, like no big deal. Basically the dog experienced the stressor and then they recovered from it. Great. Dog was like, "Oh, I got startled by a noise, but I'm okay. I'm fine." As opposed to, "Ooh, I got startled by a noise and I'm still my adrenaline is really high and my eyes are really wide and my mouth is closed and I'm staring where that noise came from and oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, that's entirely different. Those are not the same thing. That rubber band has stayed on there and it is still applying pressure. So what I'm going to challenge everyone to do, and I've done this in a couple places in social media and not our community, but I want to do it here too, is I want to challenge everybody to take a moment to make a list.

(21:08):
What do you think your dog's potential rubber bands are? You can use a different analogy if you don't like this one.

(21:16):
What are their stressors and how much of a stressor is it? Is it a consistent stressor in every situation no matter what? Or does it only show up sometimes? And then I want you to evaluate, maybe film a couple of searches or just look at some older video that you have because again, you are being good little grasshoppers and you're videoing all of your searches. Good job, click and feed. I have to give you a virtual cookie. So when you're reviewing those videos, try to look at them from your dog's perspective as best as you can. See how they're tackling the space and what it is they have to contend with in order to do that search. Where do they have to put their feet? How does their body have to move? What is potentially touching them? Where do they have to go? What do they see?

(22:08):
What can they see? Are there things that they could be hearing? Can they see the things that they're hearing? How many things are happening at any given point? Are there people in the space? Where are those people? The list quite literally goes on and on. But I think if we take the time to evaluate this stuff, it can give us a better appreciation for just how many rubber bands are being applied to our dog and we can start creatively thinking about how we could potentially help our dog better cope and develop skills to be able to cope with all those different things. So maybe there are still a few rubber bands that our dogs are contending with, but if we do encounter another stressor is a temporary one. The dog has it, then they recover and they're moving on with life. That would be ideal.

(23:03):
I hope this at least gets you guys thinking. And this is what I really enjoy about these member-only events is that they're very thought provoking. I find them very inspirational. I really, really enjoy them and we have a lot of discussion about them afterwards. If you aren't already a Scent Work U Member, I highly recommend that you become one. There's so many perks in becoming a member. Not only do you get access to all of these events and it's included in your membership, you also get access to our monthly challenge where every single month we choose a theme and for the month of June of 2026, the theme is problem solving searches. And we just launched a new challenge this week where we're talking about suspended highs and crack hides. So it's a really good thing. Also get access to the entire community, which is very nice where you can post any kind of questions that you have.

(23:54):
We can have discussions, all kinds of good stuff. And the other nice thing about being a member is if all that weren't good enough is you get discounts for everything that you offer throug Scent Work University, including our online courses, webinars, seminars, virtual events, and eBooks. And additionally, again, it's just not enough. We will do occasional additional promotions for members where the discount amount that they have on their purchases is even higher. So we actually just had one of those. We may have some more soon. So the point is you want to be a member. It's a really wonderful thing. It's an annual membership. So I'll make sure there's a link where we post this podcast episode so you can learn a litle bit more about it. I highly recommend it. And for anyone who is a member, first of all, thank you. You're amazing. Thank you so very much.

(24:41):
And if there's additional things that you want us to schedule or to talk about for our member-only events, by all means, please let me know. I want to make sure that we're offering what you guys are interested in. Let me know what you guys think about this whole rubber band thing. I want to know if you're like, ah, this episode is a litle bit too abstract for me. I hurt my head a bit. Not a problem. We are going to be bringing in some other outside speakers like, yay, not just Santos. So make sure that you stay tuned for that. If there are certain topics that you guys are interested in us covering in the podcast or in anything that we're offering through Scent Work University, by all means, please let me know. I want to make certain that we're offering what you guys need and are interested in.

(25:23):
But please give a cookie to your puppies for me. Thank you so very much for all of your support. Happy training. We look forward to seeing you soon.