E222: 줄리 시몬스(Julie Symons) - "노즈워크 입문하기"

Actually, both her and Drac just got their first herding title this weekend, which is a big new thing for me. I first have gotten like, yeah, I've gotten like herding test titles on them. But this is my very first started title on a ducks. Really exciting. Moxie, of course, is also now at the nose work three level and nose work. So she's caught up with her big brother. And, you know, as it always is, I think she's my best trained nose work dog. You know, you get better with each dog you get. And I've done some really, you know, a few different things with her. And it's just fun to run her. So the two dogs now are keeping me busy. But that's pretty much what I'm doing. All those things. Fair enough. That's pretty much it is if that wasn't a good enough list, huh? Well, yeah. I'm like, don't even ask me to do barn hunt. I haven't done even. I just can't do anymore. I'm done. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been a while since we talked about nose work 101 kind of here on the podcast. So I thought we could start out just by kind of reviewing it a little bit. So I'd love to chat about how the FDSA nose work team kind of approaches nose work. Can you talk a little bit about just an overview of kind of the training method that is used in class? Yeah, we all still basically start the same way where we start. We all start on odor. Some methods start with a lot of food hunting. We still start with odor, which is what we call back chaining. So if you start with food, you're actually doing the hunting first, which has value. But we start like at the end, you know, as if you just found the odor and we reward a lot at odor. And then what I do is I I'll get into more details later, but I then go to discriminate, discriminate odor against something else, just something cold or food later on. And then I add the hunting. So it's just again, we kind of just back train those skills and then all the skills and games build from there. Once in my mind and our mind, our dogs understand odor equals reinforcement. That's just the foundation. That's the basic thing that you want. And we all wholeheartedly believe that we can start dogs in odor and they can have value for odor. And so and that met that approach really has not changed. And that fundamental approach with all of us has not changed. So for those who are new to the sport, who maybe haven't done much with nose work before, how do you kind of handle head prep and avoid kind of contaminating, you know, everything in the house or in your car? With the very extent you're trying to teach your dog has value and you want them to alert on. Yeah.

You know, and that also hasn't changed much from how we, you know, describe, you know, odor prep and making sure that stuff is not contaminating anything. What's nice is when people start out, they usually get a small pit and so they don't have a lot of odor in their house. I was just talking to somebody today who lives in an apartment and she has a hard time sometimes. Where do you store that odor? Or even where do you store all the equipment once you start building, getting into it? But it's very simple. It's almost like COVID, you know, I didn't bring that up, but like you got to wash your hands. And if you touch it, you got to go wash your hands. And you don't want to touch other things after you've touched oil. I mean, it seems more easily contaminated now than maybe at the start. I'm not really sure why. I think because of AKC, our odor is much stronger and that I can just hold a tin that probably got a little bit of oil maybe on the outside when I go touch something. And now I've contaminated it. Where in the early days, I just like never felt like I contaminated anything. So I think there's just maybe where it gotten a little bit more sloppy. Maybe we have a lot of old containers that we use, like the Q-tip holders that just need to be tossed. And I know I don't like to put the latex gloves on and toss them into the landfill, you know, the trash can. So I try to use other ways, like just some cotton gloves that I can wash. But you just got to really be careful. And another thing that I'm doing is I always I'm putting like a piece of cardboard between my hide and the surface. So like if I'm putting a hide under like a plastic handle, I'll buffer that with another layer just because plastic is just going to hold odor. But just in general, when you're traveling in the car, there's so many kits that are like airtight kits. I go to a sporting store in the fishing department and I buy these like watertight, you know, containers that they'll bring on the boat that shouldn't get too wet if it goes underwater. And I and you can just travel with, you know, a kit in your car. And it's OK if the dogs are going to be around odor a little bit on the road. I don't worry about that at all. I travel with odor in my car all the time. But you just don't want it to be sitting out. You don't want it to be sitting out where the dogs have access to it when you're around your house. So just always store it away and have it in something airtight in your car. So that hasn't changed. And we do get some questions about it.

But whenever there's a, oh, I don't know if I contaminated that, you just assume you did. Obviously, you've been through this with multiple dogs. Can you talk a little bit about learning to read a particular dog, kind of learning to see those changes of behavior at source during a search and kind of what that process is like and what's involved? Yeah, that's a big one. And so it's kind of cliche is you have to learn to read your dog. And you hear that a lot for teens that have a trained indication. I actually did teach a trained indication on my third dog, my young dog, Waxie, because I wanted to do something different, right? With each dog, it's fun to train something different. And she has a nose freeze. And so some people think that because you have a nose freeze, you don't know how to read your dog in odor. That's not true. But I do believe there's something to where people do say that. I have people who want a trained indication because they don't know how to read their dog. And I believe part of the problem is we do a lot of known hide placements on our own. And we just can't wait to feed our dogs. It's kind of a phenomenon. I don't know. Like, it's like people just can't wait. They're already reaching in their pocket. They just can't wait to reward their dog. That all you're doing is waiting to reward your dog. You didn't even watch anything. You didn't like look at anything that the dog was doing. So every dog is different. And all I can tell for people is, number one, if you build value for odor, and I like to have build up kind of like a monstrous response to odor, like something that a dog is just like, yeah, get me at it. You build that value for that. Then you're not going to have any problems really reading that. But what happens is people, dogs who paw, that's the only thing they can read. So there's times when the dog gets to a source, but they don't paw it because maybe it's a little high. And then the person doesn't call it because they're not pawing it. And I'm like, you know, you can't just rely on that one thing. They did everything else. They head snapped. They stopped. They looked at you. They went back. They didn't want to paw that day. You know, so you have to learn that. But I do think people rely too much on a very specific physical behavior, and that makes them question it. What I tell everybody, and this has been a really good advice, is you have the best seat in the house. Picture yourself on the front row seat, and you get to watch your dog. It's the best seat in the house. So just really observe your dog. Don't worry about it. You're going to feed them. That's fine.

But watch what happens, you know, right before they get to a source and you know where it is. Because that's what's good about placing known hides. You know where it is. So you can kind of be ready to really watch that. Watch what they did right before they get to it. Watch what they did when they got to it. What do they do after they find it? You know, some dogs stay there. Some dogs look at you. What do they do after they find source? But you have to observe. And it sounds so simple, right? Like Melissa, just go observe your dog. But there's something in the moment. People just, they maybe feel rushed in class, or they just want to feed. I swear, it's weird. They just want to feed their dogs. But they're not observing. And once I've told students that really embrace that, they were like, oh, I just didn't, like their stress kind of went away at a trial because they just observed their dog. They just pictured them being in the front seat of a concert. And it was really, really neat. So that's really what it is. They're, you know, being an instructor, I see so many dogs in odor. Or I'm a judge too. I don't judge that much. But it is kind of a benefit that I see so many dogs running the same hides that I do become a little bit more experienced. But you can do that on your own dog. Or I like to set up situations in class where students can watch the other teams. So they're not always blind hides for everybody. We all get to watch these hides being run. And they can watch those dogs snap their head. There's change in a dog's cadence. There's footfall changes. They slow down. They circle. You know, but some dogs are subtle. And you're going to hear that many from teams that have a subtle dog. And I feel bad for those people when people say, you should have seen what your dog did. Your dog turned their head when they walked by it. You know what? That's not enough. And I think for dogs that are very subtle, you need to maybe go back to some foundation gap because there's some underlying problem that we haven't taught them to be monstrous. I really value that odor. They should find that odor like it's prey and they don't want it to get away and they need to stay with it. Some dogs are going to have that, you know, intenseness, but we can build some of that into that. So, but it's a very classic question. And, you know, I hope with time in the sport now, that's gotten a little bit better. I'd imagine that, you know, videoing your dog is really helpful when it comes to that too, being able to like replay it, right?

You know, I have some friends who just don't ever want to buy their trail videos because they don't like to watch themselves. And, you know, we know this with everything in all the sports here at Fensi especially. We impress upon videoing. And even in training today, I taught a class and I said, you guys, let's make sure everybody videos. Give me your camera because now we can touch things more when for the last year when we wanted to touch anybody's camera. And that really did affect us actually because we didn't want to touch it, touch things or put gloves on. I tell people that when I video my sessions, I just saved three more training sessions. I'm three training sessions ahead, right? Because you are going to take three more times to go, oh, I finally see what I'm doing. So absolutely. And that, yeah, so if you video, you can go back. And something I listened on on a webinar recently, sometimes watching your dog and it's not only slow-mo, but fast motion, you know, speed forward. Just kind of watch your dog and video slow-mo and fast mode. And just to read all that that's going on, you can learn a lot. Yeah. I know before hopping on the call, we kind of chatted a little bit. And you mentioned that you've restructured your one-on-one class a bit over the last few terms. So I'd love to have you talk about that a little more. Just what changes have you made? What led you to update things? It's really exciting. I actually like it so much that I have not had a local nose work one-on-one class or intro class in my own training building because I think my online class is so much better. And I can cover so much more, right? You know, I get people every day versus once a week. And I'm not even able to have necessarily all my classes meet once a week. And so now I just send everybody to my online class. I know not everybody. I know I lose some people because I don't want to go online. But it's just such a great program. And because I've changed it and I've evolved. So I call it that I've evolved. You know, I stay with the same way for a long time. And sometimes I fought it. Like I fought. Well, it's always worked for me. I don't want to change this. Oh, if I change this, then that makes I have to change the other thing that now doesn't make sense, right? It kind of, yeah, like it kind of like affects the next thing. But eventually I did start changing things. I'll share some of them because I'm pretty excited about them. I used to do It's Your Choice, which was very classic. You would have like food in one hand and the odor on the other hand. They're very classic. And that worked well.

It worked well for operant dogs. But what I found was some dogs just get really confused with any kind of discrimination. Now I just have the odor out there. I use a colander or we might use a pie tin. I just put odor. They just have odor out and we just feed odor added. I even, I've done this for a while because I was dragged as a puppy. So it would have been at least five years ago. I just, when the first, when I wanted to start nose work, I just fed them. Actually, I used a pie dish because it was nice and big. I put my birch tin in the middle of the bowl and just put all his kibble around it. So it was actually classic condition. I'm just paired, paired odor. I wasn't even training. Just when you ate your meals for a week, you had birch there. So I just started conditioning. Good things happen when birch is around. I just did that for a week to play around with it. And I thought that was just kind of a fun way to introduce the scent. I also have a lot of non-odor games. What happened last year, actually this time, Melissa, with COVID, people, the mail was slow. People weren't getting their kits. People weren't getting their kits for two weeks into the class. So I added things. About like working on the flat with no odor. Like how do you handle like leash handling and changing sides? Because it's just kind of like other sports. You have to go down one row and turn into your dog and go down the other row. So that was a fun thing. I also did a lot of really neat things with handling box acclimation. So many dogs. I'm sure this isn't a surprise to you. You've heard the titles of classes called Box Smashers Anonymous or, you know, whatever. So what I decided to do was introduce containers so that it becomes so ho-hum. So what I did was I would put containers down around. I actually put food. It's like the first time I would probably use food. But it reminded me of obedience articles back in the day. Well, we still do it. I think when your dogs are really aroused, you put a piece of food in the pile of scent articles. They eat that food. They calm down. And then they can actually find the scent. So I applied that to Noseberg. And so we do a couple drills of them just walking along boxes and eating food. And then I have them maybe do recalls through boxes. For dogs that are super aroused with boxes, if we were kind of like fixing it after the fact, I would tell them to live with boxes, just to put boxes all over their living room. And it was hilarious. Of course, it's always the goldens, you know, the golden retrievers that may have that issue.

And it really had transferred over to the time we put odor in the box. They're like, oh, it's odor in a box. I don't care about the box. And that was really fun. So I had enough stuff to keep people doing something when they were waiting for their odor kits. But even now that they can maybe have their odor kits, it's such a great compliment. It's almost kind of like a pre-things before you was starting nose work. So that was another change. And then the two other changes I made were I'm actually a big marker person. Like I would just be like, yep, right away my dog's at odor. But what I found was, you know, people aren't consistent with their marker words. They mix praise in it. Their marker word becomes a whole long, I love you. You're such a good dog, you know, marker word. So what I started doing is suggest that people don't use any marker for the first couple weeks. And then you could do a little bit of delaying. If the dog pulls up their nose, wait, their nose goes back and reward. So you don't mess mix in the marker being said and everything. So that's worked really, really well. And then the other thing I've been doing is it's similar to it's your choice, but it's reverse luring. So I applied the concept of reverse luring to the it's your choice where I make it more like a focal point. So I hold the food up high while they're sourcing low. And so they're keeping their nose on source, but they're looking at, you know, the reinforcement up here. And that's really built a lot of duration. So really kind of is a build on it's your choice. But we just do it a little bit later. And it's funny when you almost reframe it as like that bucket game, right? The bucket game or confirmation baiting. When you bait a dog in confirmation, it's the same thing. They have that focal point. And so they stand. They stand in confirmation. I want them to be nose at first. So I use reverse luring. So those are those are the main changes. And it's really held over. Some of them were like maybe even years ago, but some of them were recent. And it's just really, I think, strengthened the program. So in addition to the one on one class this term, you're also teaching developing sensational skills for competition class. Right. I know. I know. So to start, like, is it is it basically a competition prep class? Do you want to talk a little bit about what's in it? It basically is a trial prep class, but it's more because I kind of took a lot of nuggets from different, you know, classes or sources that I felt overall were important to have early on in trialing.

But to also get ready for later on that kind of like it puts it all together. So whether you're trialing or not, people, I think, really, really got a lot out of it even if they weren't trialing right away. But I knew exactly what I wanted to create when I created it. It's like I knew exactly what I want. Like, this is what I wish somebody told me, like, oh, the judge may ask you where when you say alert. Like, I know that, but I forget to tell my classes. So we cover things like what you might expect at a trial, what to do when your dog is distracted. Here's what you're allowed to do. You can restart. You can pet your dog. You can feed your dog. You can start playing with them. You could do a ton of stuff. They don't know that. Right. I forget that people don't realize you can touch your dog and nose work because in all the other sports, you can't touch your dog. You can feed them anytime you want. Oh, I didn't know that. So it goes over a lot of things to do and like, oh, this situation just happened. So I have one lecture that says what to expect. And I have, I just came up with like 20 things like this just happened. What, what, what can you do? And it's, it's kind of really neat to think of it in that way. So I think it's a little bit different than a trial prep. It kind of gets into what we didn't. Dang, what I forgot to tell you. Okay. I want to tell you now, you know, I just, I'm not going to forget to tell you this now. You know, things like even like you have to say finish at certain levels. So just a reminder, you know, to do that. But, but I also cover like search strategies. These, the importance of handling, handling is very important. We cover the first week. Handling is what falls apart. We're nervous. We start crowding our dogs. We start talking fast. We start, I don't know. We do all these weird things. So really, really, really, I mean, I, I even, I'm very actually quiet, believe it or not, when I'm trialing. But I do, my nerves get in the way. Just because it means so much. I travel so far. We all want to get, you know, these passes. And I trail in the NACSW level where you really can't make that many mistakes. So it's kind of like it or nothing. And so you really have a lot of pressure on you. But we cover a lot of that. And then one thing that I just looked at before we talked to remind myself all these lectures, because I counted, there was 37 lectures. There's almost six a week. Now, some of them are a little bit like introductory. Like they're not all like homework. I mean, physical homework. But waiting and staging. I said, you know what?

Nobody covers the time you have to wait and stage. They will line you up a couple of dogs before you go. So you're sitting there maybe in the heat. You have to wait. Your dog, you want to keep their nose wet. You want them to be sniffing for 20 minutes. Or it's usually not that long. But I have this great just lecture of, I want you to go and show me a video of you sitting with your dog for three minutes. That's what I want to see. And it's really helped. I've had that in some other classes like Handler's Choice. And it's really helped some dogs that would get so overaroused. You know what I used? I used Susan Clothier's really relaxation protocol. I mean, I referenced it from what I saw and gave him the link to her stuff and said that we had that webinar here at FENZ. But it's just as simple as you have to practice waiting. You literally have to practice waiting. And if your dog knows when you're sitting on the couch, my old dogs right now are all laying down sleeping because I'm in a position that's somewhat resting, although I'm talking. But at a trial, you can't just be like this and all uptight. You have to show relaxation and your dogs will relax. And so that's helped a lot of teams. This is something you were so worried on skills. Can your dog find odor? But what about right before you go in the ring? So that's some of the fun stuff that we cover in that class. Awesome. I know one of the things that I see pop up all the time is a question about nose work in the various Facebook groups is just where you can actually go to train and practice away from home. And I think people stress about this a lot, maybe more than they need to. Do you have any tips for those listening? Where do you go to practice away from home? Well, and it was definitely hard a year ago. But parks are a big one for me. I'm kind of running out of parks that are nearby. And I ventured out not too far, but 25 minutes away, met with some friends. And it was just a different park. And it had a different type of pavilion and a different, maybe like I had like a little fireplace, stone sitting area outside a lodge. But parks are big. Parks are distracting. Dogs go there. There's duck poop or geese poop. So that's a great, great place. You know, you really want to get interiors because actually outside areas are really easy to get to parks. I go to office buildings on Sundays because when they're closed, I'll just work in some, you know, a big open area like a strip mall or I don't know, just some office buildings. Tractor supply, Home Depot are great ones. But your dog needs to be really able to handle those environments.

So sometimes I don't even go inside. You know, I do talk to them. I've talked to, I go in there and talk to the manager. I tell them what I'm doing. And they're generally always okay with it. You know, I actually, one of my classes, which might be close to being self-study is I had people make a little passport and it had a picture of the dog and it had maybe a picture of the tins or the Q-tips and you can show it to them and say, this is what it is. So the people know what you're talking about. So that was really fun. And I had people really get out of their comfort level and they made these little passports things and they would go show them. And some people would just say no. And, but some people said, yeah, so that's generally what I do. You know, people kind of forget you can go use your, um, you know, parents house. If you live near them or friends house, I had somebody who said, oh my gosh, my neighbors are gone for the whole winter. And they have me looking after their house. They like, they never even thought, you know, they asked, of course, can they go into this person's house? And, and they did. And it was great. Um, so there, there are places out there. What I am starting to do with interiors is if your dog isn't weird with bathrooms is there's a lot of park bathrooms are opening now. And if the park bathrooms are too gross, I've been, you know, I use park bathrooms. Um, so yeah, you've got to be a little creative, but you can find the places. That's where I go. Fair enough. So if listeners have been training nose work for a little while, they've been working with their dog on it and they're starting to think about competition, do you have any tips for how to tell when their dog is really ready? Yeah, I do find that a lot of teams aren't ready or maybe it's a little bit of a mixed bag. Like I'm surprised that some people wouldn't be a nervous wreck when they enter so early. Like I want to be feeling prepared. But for nose work, you know, you basically want to say, can your dog work in a novel environment? Can they work in that park that you just took them to? Can you work in that attractor supply, even in a quiet corner of the building inside? Um, if your dog can't do that, you're not going to be able to go to a trial. Um, the same is when you enter novice, which is what everybody would be starting in is the novice test is, can your dog find a simple target odor hide in a novel location? So your dog has to be able to work with strangers around a few strangers around. It's not mobbed. There's just a couple of people in the search areas.

Um, can they, uh, can they, can they deal with that? But you as a handler, can you read, read their indication? We talked about that earlier. Can you read your dog's alert? So you have to make sure you've practiced enough blind hides that you're pretty comfortable reading your dog's indication. Um, and I think you should go to a couple of run throughs, um, help a lot or volunteer at trials. You know, I would, I would say months ago or a year ago, I was more frustrated about people trialing early, but now that I think about it, I think maybe with the downtime that we've had over the year, people have had more time to train. I think teams are very much ready now that I'm seeing, but it is, you have to just know what the skills you need and can your dog do it? Can you read a blind? So, yeah, those, those are, that's it. I really like the, um, the tip about volunteering too, not just because obviously we need volunteers to make trials happen regardless of the sport, but because a lot of times I think nerves come from not knowing what's going to happen. And, and one of the two of you do need to kind of know what's going to happen and volunteering gets you, you know, front seat. Yeah, I had a, I judged a local AKC trial. When was it April? One of my students came and watched Barry. They watched the whole Barry and they saw, um, what worked and what didn't, what the handlers that they couldn't believe the handlers that weren't calling the hides. And so they learned so much because we would talk a little bit about sometimes when you're volunteering, the judge will talk to you between dogs and you'll learn a little bit. And so this, this, um, student entered Barry at the next local trial and did really, really well because she actually learned like what was good and what was bad handling and, and, and, and was determined to train. She's like, I can do this. Her dog did. Her dog knew how to do it. She just was like, Oh, you know, and that was really helpful. And it was nice. It was local. It was like 10 minutes from our house. Um, it's a little harder, you know, you're to be, to have to travel at a town, you know, hotel, but, um, yeah, that, that's great. Yeah. And then there's more opportunities now. There's so many, there's almost, I think almost too many, to be honest, too many AKC trials or every weekend sites are being over. No, but it's seriously sites are actually being overused. There's a lot of concern with, um, oat lingering odor. They're using sites every weekend, different venues or different organizations. And it is causing a problem because we're, you know, we've got to be really respectful

of odor. Um, and ACSW would wait, I think every six months before we're using a site. Um, and that's really, I think it's being really fair to the dogs. Anything else you kind of want to talk about or share about either class? Um, no, that's about it. I did want to just put a plug for my air sensing, um, workshop. That's going to be ending end of this, um, month. I don't know how long it'll be up into June, but it just wrapped up and it's just really was, you know, it just really was a great workshop. And it's all about using, um, air, um, wind to have your dog work odor in the air. And it builds a lot of independence and motivation. And it's the second time I offered it. And, um, it just reminds me how much I love those skills. And what's nice is for even young dogs, you can start out with them. If they're already on odor, it can be only a couple of months and you can start working on these drills. And that's what I did with Moxie and, you know, she'll find high heights better than any of my dogs. And I never trained high heights. She just was able to work air and odor and find a tesour. So I think that was just, I wanted to plug that. Yeah, absolutely. To kind of round out our chat, if we were to drill down our conversation into, you know, one key piece of information you really want nose work handlers to understand, what would that be? What would kind of your takeaway message be? You know, I thought, oh my gosh, I'm talking about like two different classes, but to be honest, it boils down to you have to train. Nose work is not the hardest sport, but it does require training. I think people are entering buried with never training it. People are entering handler discrimination, AKC set work, which is your sense of the box without even training it. People are not training distractors that are often in containers after the first level. You got to train that. This sport requires that you have a strong foundation and that you maintain your skills. This isn't something you can just let go for six months and then just show up to a trial. And I have seen people doing that. It just doesn't work that way. So just again, we've all kind of sometimes skip steps, cut corners, but you can't do that long-term. It truly is a skill that I, with my dogs, if I'm going into a trial that there could be distractors in containers, I'm training distractors in containers that week. Um, you just have to. And I think that's either like a, just, uh, they don't think they have to, but it just goes back down to it's, it's, it's nothing that, of course we all, all of our dogs remember

our skills we train, but like with any, any sport, I'm working with full inches before my reef, both my agility trial. You know, I'm working on hailing on the flat before my hurting trial. Um, you know, of course you're going to like back off right before the trial, but foundation and prepping and being prepared. You have to maintain the skills that you have. They, they will, they will weaken and go away. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Julie. You're very welcome. It was fun. Yeah, it was. Um, and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fendi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fendi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music. Music.