We highlighed a series of skills in our Part 1 installment, Do You Have a Team Mindset? Webinar. Simply put, although not always easy to execute, this mindset, or the beliefs that shape how you see and react to the world, is a big dial we can move.
In the early days of trialing, one perspective held that the hide setter or the challenge set was the opponent. We worked to beat that hide challenge, or we competed against what was set or presented as the challenge. As the sport evolves, we should adjust our mindset to what is more universal - hide placements are very standard. A hide at NW1 is often not that different from Elite, although the number or volume of searches differs. We are no longer battling the hide placements but the environment itself. A handler and dog are in competition with a dynamic environment – odor can work in one fashion at the beginning but change dynamically a few minutes later.
Trial long enough, and the environment will win in grand fashion; you will encounter a search that shakes a handler's confidence. But when you watch later, or others describe your search as amazing or magical, even in the face of not finding much, all the hides, calling false alerts, or a judge's pronouncement, or when others say you did great, this is the place to build belief in your team's ability to execute and in the dogs' ability to communicate.
Think of it less as controlling the application of a skill (including dog) and more as how the environment will test that application. How will the environment stress, pressure, or break the execution of a primary skill? Leaning into what we are good at and having confidence in our execution is even more important; it mitigates the environment from exposing our weaknesses.
Additional Description
Having covered the execution of primary skills and a few examples of container searches in Part 1, we can now explore how to lean into these skills for any search. Given the primary skills your team brings to each search, how do we enviro-test them to gain confidence in their application across a varied set of environments?
A straightforward example is approaching the containers to position yourself on the outside, where the dog can drive into any container row, arc, or grouping, giving you the best view of the engagement with odor. However, the environment has a barrier or wall that limits your movement.
Has your skill been tested for this change in search layout? Have you Enviro-tested the skill so that this environmental change is no factor in your ability to execute? Win over the environment and win the day! We often discuss airflow, which is not controlled by the team or an official, sometimes diving into how the air would move in different environments.Â
My observation of this is how accurate you are – are you able to observe the dog's reaction, read the airflow, and influence the dog efficiently to a hide? Or, the true enviro-test; can other people with experience working with odor, watching a team, actually see that you are applying this skill?
The goal is to establish a high level of consistency, with primary skills as the foundation for decision-making, that is not affected by the search environment. In hindsight, the execution of a primary skill can be observed by the handler and others to be high-confidence in any environment. If you build a mindset where the environment doesn’t dismantle your primary skills just by adding a barrier, no go-back, time pressure, wind, summit-twists, hot, cold, cluttered, etc., that is the true win – not the highest score.
