The dynamics of places and spaces in your search strategy; places to wait, sides of every room, transitions, corners, designed for movement, and navigating people spaces.
After 100s of trials, the dynamics of spaces can confound our search for a win in repetitive places we search: fairgrounds, schools, ballparks, warehouses, event centers, businesses, breweries/wineries, universities, camps, etc. Often, the architectural patterns are the same, with small rooms, cafeterias, bunkrooms, halls, and kitchens. So, is the concept of odor movement in novel locations the priority, or are the dynamics of architecture and our movement in those spaces the priority, with a focus on developing a keen understanding of our dogs’ perception?
Does your dog run under the table, over it, around the half wall, or stand to wave their nose as high as possible? Will they push into the bush or table skirt? Concepts like: the dog enters a space because of odor availability at the door, or seeks out doors in a search area to find an edge created by odor escaping and being contained in the search.
How many times have you seen your dog or another team chase far into the space in search of the win, avoiding the threshold first only to return later? Taking a bee-line to an out-of-the-way hide? Choosing a crack hide and chasing it down relentlessly? In spaces where we seek to understand architectural patterns, we are in search of concepts to help the dog understand and execute search strategies.
If you have found yourself confused and concerned about how to work your dog into challenging spaces or into illogical, oddly shaped adventures of the trial, this webinar is a dive into accepting the dynamic nature of the architecture and using a few “simple” rubrics to help us perceive a space and use the experiences we have in trials, training, and play to guide an understanding of how our dog works to solve problems. The foreseers of odor movements, when the focus is on fans, HVAC, wind, and temperature-type evaluations, are no less valuable; however, with more trial experience comes a more variable search within an ever-growing catalog of odor behavior, and our value as a team is built on the versatile craft of working.
Using a “Dial” of sorts, we turn down the focus on how odor behaves and turn up the “Dial” on the dog giving guidance. It’s about understanding a place and architectural patterns. It’s not all one and none of the other. We allow our perceptions into spaces that should trust in the dog to use their extraordinary abilities to find the unseen odor, and we develop our craft by understanding the dog! Have you ever worked a space where 90% of the room is out of play, and all the dog wants to do is go search outside the expressed search area? Or, as a judge said to me, “Do they know the odor is on a car?” because the teams' behavior was described as wanting to search away from vehicles and toward clearing, bushes, building edges, pavement, curbs, etc. These are the concepts we can use to turn search architecture into a way to give the dog as much ability as possible to learn, develop our understanding of space, voids, edges, and directions, and gift exploration.
The ballparks/amphitheaters are fun, but can we develop a concept and strategy for searching the rows? Places we see as repetitive can trick us into believing they will be routine, only to run into an open door and add real dynamic experience. We are looking for ideas to tackle those challenging spaces and figure out how to execute a strategy that gets us to hear “Yes”! Let's get working!
