E83: 스테이시 바넷(Stacy Barnett) - "카나인 센트워크 심층 분석"

Wolves, if you think about it, they have to travel long distances in order to find their prey. They've got to go over miles and miles and miles and miles to find that large prey. And to do that, they really have to use their noses. And they have to be able to track and they have to be able to hunt. Well, our dogs have inherited that ability. And if you look at them from a biological perspective, they all have that ability. 12.5% of their brain is dedicated to olfaction. So the olfactory love is 12.5% is one eighth of their brain. The other part of it is the nose itself. They actually have the ability to scent directionally. So where you and I, we can hear directionally. So if I'm standing in front of you, you know, I'm standing in front of you because we actually have space between our ears. And the space is actually what allows us to hear in stereo. So dogs can actually smell in stereo because they actually have space between their nostrils. And it has to do with what they call aerodynamic reach. The difference between the space in their nostrils and the aerodynamic reach is kind of technical. But it's one of the reasons why they can scent directionally. And every breed can do this. Every breed from a chihuahua up to a Great Dane. It doesn't matter how big or small their nose is. They still have that space between their nostrils. So there's that. And then there's also, they have ability when they sniff in and they blow out, they actually blow out between, they have these slits in the side of their nose. So the air actually blows out of the side of their nose and it doesn't disturb the scent that's being pulled in in the next sniff. It's fascinating. Yeah, that is pretty neat. I mean, especially like thinking about the directional piece of it, right? Like I'd imagine that's such a big, that plays such a big role when you're doing something like scent work. Oh, totally, totally. So obviously our nose can't even come close. So when we're kind of teaching a dog nose work, once the team's really past the basics, what factors influence the difficulty of that search? Oh, there's so many factors. Airflow is a big part of it. And from an airflow perspective, airflow can be caused by, it's actually caused by air pressure differentials, which means that there's differences in air pressure. So air will actually move from a high pressure area to a low pressure area. So that actually causes air to flow. Air also moves because of temperature differentials, right? So we all know hot air rises and cool air falls. So if you get an area that's more in the sun, the air is going to rise, right?

And it's going to fall in a shady area. So there's that. You also have the aspect of how long the hides have actually been in the area. We call that aging. That is basically because of the process of diffusion, the longer the hide is aged, the larger the scent cone is going to be. What you're going to find is that it also depends on how many hides you have and what proximity those hides are to each other. And if you have high hides, if you have low hides and how the hides interact, because it becomes exponentially more difficult when you have more than one hideout. The other thing is if you have a change in slope. So if you're scenting and you're on a slope, that can make a big difference. Standing water, moisture, rain, really the possibilities are endless. And it's actually one of the coolest things about the sport because every time you go to do a search, it's different. You can never duplicate the same search. It's always different. It's always cool. It's always fresh. It's always fun, you know? So I want to talk about some of that terminology for a minute. Can you just kind of talk us through that? I know you mentioned airflow and aging and scent cones. Can you just define what some of those things are? People are new to this. Sure. Yeah. Think about like, so a scent cone. We call the scent cone. People often think in their head, they think of an ice cream cone, but it's really not that accurate. Yeah. So, you know, the scent cone is the plume of odor that we can't see, but it's out there. It's because the odor has diffused or the odor has, the molecules have left the source and it becomes like a plume in the air that the dog is following. A scent cone, it looks like if you look at like a smokestack and with a smokestack, you can kind of see the plume and it goes in the direction that the air is flowing. So if the wind is going from north to south, your plume is going to go from north to south. That's going to be more what a scent cone actually looks like. And if you think about it, when you have less airflow or like lower, you know, it's not quite as windy, your scent cone is going to be a little bit wider. And then when you get a windier condition, you get a narrow scent cone, which is more like if you had a water hose and you were to put it on high pressure, right? So that scent cone is going to go farther and it's going to be narrower. So where the dog intersects is going to be different. Their scent cone aging has to do with, we call it aging and it's essentially, how long the hide has actually been out and sitting out because it changes how the dog has to work, has to work the hide.

Then we have things like pooling odor. Pooling odor is essentially, if you think about like a pool of water, that's exactly what happens. That odor pools in an area and it collects in an area. That's a lot of fun too. Since we can't really see scent and obviously we don't smell it, you know, how do we really know all this about the way that scents travel? How do we kind of know what we do? Well, we call it scent theory and we call it scent theory for a reason, right? Because it's theory. So yeah, yeah. My own background is I'm actually, I have a chemical engineering degree. I have, I pull from my understanding of fluid flow dynamics in order to really understand odor. Air is just another, another fluid. I mean, it's a gas, but gas is a type, is just a fluid in a, in a different, in a different state. It all follows fluid flow mechanics. But I think the easiest way to think about it is to think about water. If you think about like how water flows, how it hits like a water in a stream, you can understand turbulence. There's eddies, like all these things happen with air. You get turbulence, you get eddies, you get, you know, cause when water hits, hits a rock in the stream, you get the turbulence before and after the rock. The same thing happens with air. So if we can understand how air flows, we know how the odor is carried on that air. And I mean, again, it's, it's theory, but I think we have a pretty good, good grasp of it. I like to really think about that or think about like a smokestack or something like that to give a visual, because if we can understand a visual, we can start to figure out what is it actually doing? We can't smell it the way that the dogs can smell it, but if we can have a visual, I think it helps us. Thinking through that for a minute, if there are multiple hides in a room and you get multiple scent cones on some of those, maybe even overlap, how do you begin to teach the dog this idea that there are multiple hides and they need to, you know, okay, they found one, they need to go find another one. Right. So I feel like that's a complex concept and maybe they even have to, you know, return to where they started in order to kind of trace it to source. So, so that is all about converging odor. And that's what we call it, where you have different scent cones and the scent cones overlap. It's very complicated for the dog to actually find it, but they're, they're absolutely capable of doing this. What I usually do is I start with the hides fairly far apart, and then I start to set situations up where the scent cones start to overlap.

But what's hard is that the dog has to, oh, and when they go from one hide and to help them move to another, you can actually help move with your body. And I cue them with a, with a word. I say, find another. So find another actually means, okay, that hide is done. It's finished. Let's go find another hide. And the body motion helps to move, um, helps to move the dog into a new area because they're going to follow your body motion. So that really helps. You have to also start realizing, you know, the dog is, dogs are hardwired for a bird and the hand is worth two in a bush, right? So they're going to be hardwired to ignore another hide for the hide that they're already at. So you have to start to figure out your reward schedules and, you know, whether or not you're going to refeed at that hide if they come back to it. Um, what's easy in the beginning is to work the dog on leash so that you can actually use the leash to help them stay, um, to not return to the original hide. From a refeeding perspective, I do always refeed the hide if the dog has confidence or motivation issues or if the dog's very green. Once I know the dog is confident and motivated and the dog is, um, is not as green, I start not refeeding the hide because I want them to know that that hide is finished and that they have to find the next one. So I think it's kind of an interesting process, right? Where you, you don't want to erode your confidence. So, you know, sometimes you do want to re reward kind of refinding it, but it definitely depends on the dog and the experience level. That makes sense. And sometimes the dog actually has to go back to that hide in order to find the next hide because of the way that the scent cones overlap. They can get information at that hide and we call it anchoring. So they can actually go back to that hide and they can say, oh, wow, there's another scent cone. And they can go from that hide to the next hide by getting the information for the second hide at the first hide. When there is something pulling odor or the scent cones intersect, how are you building those things gradually? I know you mentioned like you usually start with two hides kind of far apart and you move them closer together. What are some of the other things maybe that you do to build those skills gradually and kind of set the dog up for success? So it's all about hide placement because, you know, if you have two hides and you have two difficult hides, you know, that's going to be a lot harder than if you have two easy hides. So I like to do things systematically, especially when I teach converging odor and pooling odor.

If you add pooling odor with converging odor, that's really challenging. So I try to avoid the pooling odor aspect when I'm introducing converging odor. And when I'm doing converging odor, I try to be very systematic so that the dog understands how to solve these problems. You know, I want to maybe keep it simple in the beginning and not make it terribly complex. So, you know, I make sure that the dog understands and learns how to source different permutations of accessible hides, inaccessible hides, elevated hides, low hides, two hides, three hides. You know, I try to get very systematic about it. I know confidence is a really big kind of piece of what you do and what you train for. So I'd love to talk about that and trialing a little bit. So when trialing and you have a dog who maybe isn't always super confident, how can you tell when it's just that they're working something that's more complex versus when they're struggling because of stress or because of a lack of confidence? Yeah. Yeah. You really need to pay attention to your dog. You have to look for the dog's enthusiasm level and you have to really look for the stress, like stress signals that they're giving you. You know, if you look at the enthusiasm level, if the enthusiasm stays up, then, you know, they're not stressed out. They can continue to work. But if you start seeing waning enthusiasm or the dog is starting to check out or the dog starts getting distracted or the dog starts sniffing the ground or the dog scratches or shakes off, these can be different indications that maybe the dog is a little frustrated or a little confused. And both frustration and confusion can help to, you know, to lower confidence, which is not what we want. So we want to try to work the dog in a state where they're not confused and they're not frustrated so that they can build up their own self-confidence and their own skill set. And ultimately, you know, they'll be more successful and you'll be able to keep their focus a little bit more. If, you know, you have a dog that maybe isn't super confident and you're actually in that competition environment, what can you do to make sure you're supporting them or helping them and kind of set them up for success, even at a trial or in that kind of a situation? Yeah. So I think you also need to know your dog. So, you know, nose work really is a confidence building skill. However, it's confidence building activity. It doesn't mean that trialing is confidence building. So in preparation for that trial, you really need to get the dog into, put the dog into a situation so that they're prepared going into it.

It's just like any other sport. We certainly wouldn't want to take a dog who has just learned how to heal and all of a sudden take them into an obedience trial or a dog that has never run a course before and take them into an agility trial. You know, training is really necessary in the sport. And I think sometimes we forget that because the dog has an innate ability to sniff. So generalization is really the key. But if you're in the moment and your dog is starting to stress a little bit, I actually, you know, you have to, you have to figure out, is it, is it salvageable? Is it a little bit of light stress or is it heavy stress? If it's just a little bit of light stress and the dog's a little, a little distracted, maybe I actually give the dog a cookie. I give it, I call it a confidence cookie. And what that does is it lowers the arousal of the dog. And then that way the dogs, the lowered arousal state actually allows them to relax a little bit and then they can, they can usually be successful. And you can feed really at any time during your search. The other thing though, if this, if the stress gets to be too high, you know, call it quits. There's no point in going for the cue. I've been in this situation before with Y, my mini Aussie. He's a very, very stressy dog. I had a trial just a couple of months ago where, you know, I thought he was just too stressed. And I said to the judge, I said, I'm really sorry, but I'm going to excuse myself. And she completely agreed with, with my, my thoughts on that, you know, cause it's, you want to look at the long-term game, right? It's not, it's not just a short-term cue. So that's, that's the biggest advice I can give on that. So you mentioned innate skills in there. And I'm curious, you know, when it comes to something like covering an entire search area and doing it efficiently and quickly, you know, how much of that is innate? How much of that is training? How much of that is handling? Can you, can you talk us through that piece? It's probably balanced in between innate skills, training and handling. I think all three are really important. If you're talking a really large search area, there is a degree of talent that comes into play and that has to do with the dog's natural hunt drive. If you have a dog with a, with a certain degree of hunt drive, they're going to want to go out there and find that odor. If you have a dog that doesn't have a strong of a hunt drive, you have to, you have to try to build that a little bit and you can build that through different activities and different,

you know, motivation, you know, motivation games and that sort of thing. So there is definitely an aspect of training. The other thing is training actually helps the dog to become efficient. It really helps them to connect the dots. Although I always try to say, you know, our dogs do come to us with a Harvard education and olfaction, but with training, they become rocket scientists. You know, they, they learn how to connect those dots. So the other thing that I kind of also kind of think about it in terms of, you know, when you learn how to read and you had to sound out your words, you know, like you had to sound them out and it was challenging. I mean, your brain is hardwired to be able to, to read language, but you still had to learn how to do it. And now when you read, you don't even actually look at the whole word. The brain doesn't look at the whole word. The brain may look at the beginning and the end and actually connects the dots and you know exactly what you're reading. So it's kind of the same thing with sniffing. So all these different things really come into play. Handling is a, is a big piece of it because, you know, you can help her hinder. You can also help your dog get through a search area. This really becomes super important, especially when your search areas get really big at like the elite and the summit level. Handling is huge there. So training, talent, handling, it's, it's all, it's all part of the puzzle. The other piece that I wanted to, to talk about a little bit with start line routines. I know that that's something again, that, that you talk about a lot, but what are some of the different types of routines or some of the options that people have? And how can a handler begin to kind of parse those things and decide which routine, you know, they need for their dog? You know, the key to this is arousal. Arousal is actually kind of like the secret sauce to nose work. If you can have a good start line, it's going to predict how good your search is. And if you have the right arousal state, that will predict how good your start line is. So you need to have the right arousal state coming in. And some dogs tend to be on the low arousal side of it. And some dogs tend to be on the high arousal. So with Judd, who was slightly to the left of the curve, we were talking the Yerkes-Dodson law, he's not always in drive. He comes in a slightly low arousal, or at least he used to when I conditioned it. But with a slightly lower arousal, I might use a little opposition reflex on the harness and might rev him up a little bit like a ready, ready, ready, ready.

You know, I might do something like that to help him get into a higher state of arousal. If you have a dog that is a little on the anxious side, or just, you know, your high arousal dog, you know, like Brava, she comes into a search area on her hind legs. You know, those dogs, she really does. It's really kind of funny. She sashays. It's cute. And she's still effective, which is amazing. So if you have a high arousal dog, you need to lower that arousal. Things like food actually lowers arousal. So with dogs like that, if you feed on the start line, if they're not really handler-focused, it can just get them right where they need to be. So there's different tips and techniques that you can do, but it all comes down to arousal states. So whatever you can do to either, you know, to modify that arousal state to get the dog in drive, that is going to be the key to the success of your search. So I know a lot of this is covered in a lot more detail by some of the nose work classes that are on the schedule after you say this term. Do you just want to kind of share what you have on the October calendar and kind of what's covered in which class? Sure, sure. I'm teaching three classes. I have NW120, which is Introduction to Nosework Elements. That is a class where it's a follow-on from our Introduction to Odor. And we actually teach the dogs how to do, how to search interiors, exteriors, vehicles, you know, containers. Although we start those in, you know, we start containers and interiors in NW101. And we also introduce Buried, which is an AKC element. So we introduce that. Then I'm teaching NW241, which is Nosework Challenges Series 2. That is actually a whole class soup to nuts on converging odor. So we take converging odor and we start with the preliminary skills. Then we systematically help the dog learn how to work through converging odor puzzles so that they start, they get from the very, very beginning of converging odor to being, or at least the elements that are necessary to them to be able to be really effective at solving converging odor. And then the last class, which is NW250, which is NW3 prep. I've actually folded the Path to Elite class, which is, I was going to teach that in December. I actually took all that information and I pulled that into NW250. So NW250 covers both NW3 and Elite. And it's all about how do you prepare for these class? How do you prepare for these levels? And how do you be successful at them? So there, it's basically covered a whole, you know, I'm covering a whole lot this term. I'm really, really excited about it. Lots of different levels, lots of different students.

Yeah. All right. So my last question, what's a lesson you've learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? Trust. And I wrote a blog on this actually recently. And I think one of the instructor quotes that came out, my instructor quote was, yes, but does your dog trust you? We always talk about trust your dog and nose work. And I like the term, but in a lot of ways I don't because it's so one-sided. It's so important for the dog to trust the handler. Trust is mutual. And the dog has to be able to trust the handler in order to be able to be self-confident in what they're doing and in order to have teamwork. Teamwork happens when you have trust between the dog. When it's not just you trusting the dog, there's the dog trusting you. I think that's a great note to kind of round things out on. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Stacey. Oh, I'm thrilled to be here. This was a lot of fun. This is a lot of fun. And I'm going to try to still figure out what time it is. I'm having a hard time with that. But no, this is a blast. Thank you so much, Melissa. I really enjoyed it. Absolutely. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Nancy Gilardi Little to talk about the other two big topics in the dog sports world, agility and obedience. If you haven't already, subscribe 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 Fensi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fensi 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. Thank you.