E71: 스테이시 바넷(Stacy Barnett) - "나의 반려견에게 맞는 노즈워크 훈련(및 모든 훈련) 맞춤화하기"

Is there a particular type of dog or particular skills or maybe a personality type that really lends itself to helping a dog become a strong nose work competitor? Okay. So there are. But at the same time, I also want to emphasize the fact that every dog can do this sport. Maybe not every dog can compete in this sport. It really depends on the dog. But every dog can do this sport. There are certain aspects of the dog's personality or what is kind of intrinsic to the dog that will help the dog to become a really strong competitor in terms of being very competitive or a dog that will really gravitate toward the sport and really, really love the sport. In my experience, all dogs do love the sport. But there are some that just seem to live and breathe for it. And the ones that seem to live and breathe for it, there are a couple of different things that contribute to that. Number one, the dog is a little bit more independent. You know, if the dog is more handler focused, like really, you know, I kind of say, you know, if the dog is really into you and really cares what you think, those dogs tend to not be as gung-ho for the sport. The dogs that are a little bit more independent, but have a nice balance between environmental and handler focus seem to do a little bit better. And above all, they have to have a natural love of scenting. Now, most dogs actually do have this natural love, but there are some dogs that just really, really love it. Those are the dogs I would say really make the strongest nose or competitors. So what other factors may influence how well a dog does when it comes to nose work? One of them has to do with how motivated they are for food or toys. Because we tend to use food and toys as primary reinforcers for nose work. It's very easy to reinforce with food, for instance, because it's very fast. This is a time sport. You have a certain amount of time to do the search. And typically, at least in the US, the fastest dog wins. If you can reward very quickly with food, you're going to be at an advantage. Toys work really well too. Dogs tend to, you know, if dogs like toys, they tend to work really, really hard for toys. You can use toys for reward. But having a motivation for either food or toys is a real advantage. Another thing is the dog's ability to think on their own and to problem solve. This goes hand in hand with dogs being independent. So if you have a more independent dog that can do some problem solving, you know, you can do really well. I look at Brava, for instance. So Brava, and I actually put a video on my Facebook page, knows how to open doors. She's a problem solver.

You know, the latch doors, the lever doors. She knows how to push down the door and pull on it and open the door, which is really kind of amusing in some respects, but kind of scary in other respects. But having that problem solving ability can really help in nose work. The third thing that is not a requirement, but is definitely helpful, is physical fitness. Physical fitness is not a requirement. You know, this is a really great sport for older dogs, for infirm dogs, that sort of thing. But having that physical fitness can give you an edge in competition. There's different sorts of physical fitness. There's also fitness related to stamina. Stamina is important from both a physical perspective and a mental perspective. If you can have that mental stamina or that physical stamina, and I'm also thinking nasal stamina, dogs that can sniff for a long period of time can help in competition. So to dig a little more into what you were saying about nose work being good for many different types of dogs, can you just talk to that a little bit more? What are some of the benefits of doing nose work? Oh, there are so many benefits of doing nose work. In fact, I think we could do a whole podcast on this. I think we really could. I'm kind of thinking of three different groups of dogs that really benefit from nose work from a therapeutic perspective. One of them is reactive dogs. So for a reactive dog, what it can do is you can actually develop a positive condition emotional response to odor. And then if you have very mild triggers while the dog is experiencing, and I'm talking extremely mild, where the dog is under threshold and the dog has a positive condition emotional response to odor, your dog's reactivity level can actually go down. With my dog, Y, for instance, used to be extremely dog reactive. And he was dog reactive out of fear. So we actually, I started to train him in nose work, and he started to really enjoy nose work. And at the same time, in doing nose work and having fun and doing nose work, he was also exposed to the smell of other dogs. Not necessarily dogs in his surroundings, but the smell of other dogs. And the end result was actually a lowering of his reactivity level, which was really fantastic. So now he can be within about eight feet of another dog, which is unbelievable. Older dogs. Older dogs are really super, it can keep their mind active. So if they can't physically do all of the things that they used to be able to do, they still have an active mind. You know, they still want to, they still want to do things.

So they may not be able to do agility or heavy duty obedience or, you know, IPO or, you know, whatever, dock diving. I don't know, whatever you're doing. You know, even barn hunt. Barn hunt requires a certain amount of physical ability because they have to jump up and down hay bales. These are all dogs that, you know, when they get older, they still want to work. They still want to do stuff. So if you do nose work, it exercises the mind and it keeps them busy because olfaction, the olfactory lobe is one eighth of the dog's brain. So you're really, really using the dog's brain and they can stay engaged. And I've actually seen it do incredible things for dogs with cognitive dysfunction who have gotten older. We've seen some amazing, amazing things with the older dogs. And then you have the young dogs. So young dogs, you know, their joints are young. You know, you don't want to stress out their joints. You don't want to overexercise them. But yet you still have these energetic young animals who need an outlet. And it tires them out, which is really super because it does use so much of their brain. In AKC, for instance, you can even trial your dog as young as six months old. And, you know, for a lot of dogs that may be too early based upon their emotional maturity, you can do this when they're young and it's not going to tax their bodies. So you can protect their bodies, but you can still get them tired, which is a really, really great thing. Trust me. Yep. Especially when you've got to drive a young dog. I do. I do. She's about 15 months old right now. And, you know, I have to tell you, nose work has been amazing for my community and for her sanity. It's been absolutely amazing. Yeah. I mean, I know I think most people probably start out teaching nose work kind of following a class or, you know, using somebody else's training plan. But at some point, all the different types of dogs, handlers need to kind of tailor that training. So how can even maybe a beginner handler tailor their training based on their dog's stage of learning and their temperament? So you have to be in tune with your dog's emotions. So whether or not you're a beginner or not, it really, you can still read your dog. You know, you can still tell if your dog is confident, if they're feeling motivation for an activity. You know, you have to be able to read that confidence and that motivation because that's really the core. Those are sacred. Confidence and motivation are sacred in my book. And once those are in place, you can start to build on skills.

But you have to always think about having like a little meter on the back of your dog. You know, like like a little meter that says how confident they are, how motivated they are. But you can, based upon that confidence or that motivation, you can tailor what you do with your dog. Because maybe you want to build the confidence or, you know, your dog is having some confidence issues. And I don't just mean confidence in the environment, by the way. There are three different kinds of confidence that I talk about. There's confidence in skills, which is basically does the dog believe in themselves? There's confidence in the environment. That's, you know, is the dog comfortable in the environment? Is the dog comfortable in new places? And then there's confidence in the handler. And this is something that I think a lot of people kind of don't think about. That's basically, does your dog trust you? Does your dog trust that they're always going to get their reward for the work that they do? And so basically, you need to evaluate all of these things and always check for that confidence and that motivation. And if you have that, then you can work on the skills. You know, because the skills should be secondary to the confidence and motivation. So I know you're a fan of Denise's book, Train the Dog in Front of You. Can you share a little bit about how that concept applies to nose work? Yes. I love that book. I love, love, love, love, love that book. And I'm not just saying that because she's my boss. No, I really do. And I tell everybody, no, it's not a nose work book, but that doesn't matter. It is such a good dog training book. And especially chapters two and three. Notice I even know the chapters. So chapters two and three are especially applicable to nose work. And those are the chapters that relate to whether or not the dog is cautious or secure. And whether or not the dog is environmental versus handler focused. Because those are two really core things to that affect the dog's ability to do nose work. So if the dog is cautious, for instance, you might want to work in a known environment. If the dog is more secure, maybe you want to work in more novel environments. So same thing goes with environmental versus handler to handler focus. And you can kind of think of these things as spectrums. You know, the dog kind of it's not an either or. It's not whether the dog is handler or environmental focused. It's on the spectrum. So if the dog is more environmentally focused, you know, you might have a slightly different way of handling the dog where you might be thinking more about distractions and how are

you going to work with distractions. Or if the dog is more handler focused, you might want to be thinking how to build independence so that your dog, because you actually, there's three different kinds of focus, although this is not in the book. This is more my interpretation. There's environmental, there's handler, and there's search. So it's how, but if you can understand where your dog falls on these spectrums that Denise talks about in terms of environmental and handler focus, you can figure out how do you then reorient your dog onto the search focus. Denise kind of opens the book by asking handlers if they're handling their dog in a manner that builds on his strengths while also improving his weaknesses. And I was hoping we'd get into that a little bit. Can you share some examples of how a dog's personality or strengths might influence their nose work training? For example, if a dog is super confident or less confident, how would that impact training? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I always talk about my pyramid. I have a pyramid of training. And that pyramid of training, there's confidence on the bottom. Then there's motivation is the next layer, then skills and then stamina. And basically, if you have a confident and a motivated dog, you can work on harder skills. Because confidence and motivation is, again, it's sacred. But you can also work on their personality strengths. If your dog is confident and motivated kind of more naturally, maybe you can work on harder skills or maybe you can work in new environments. The other thing is that it's also important to really evaluate the dog's resilience. From a resilience perspective, that will help you to identify whether or not your search is too challenging or not challenging enough. So you need to kind of think about the dog's natural drive levels, the dog's resilience. And that can help you to understand how challenging of a search that you can make for your dog in order to keep the dog from because you don't want anxiety and you don't want boredom. So you can actually find a sweet spot based upon the dog's resilience and the dog's drive levels. But again, that's about the basis, of course, is confidence and motivation. Funny enough, I was debating whether or not to announce it in here. So I guess I will. We started a new Facebook group specifically for the podcast. And we're going to encourage people to listen and then ask some questions. So maybe if anybody has a question, I'll have to tag you. That sounds great. That sounds great. Yeah. Come dish on it a little more. Yeah. I know you enjoy talking about this stuff. I love this stuff.

I love this stuff. I eat, sleep and breathe. What about natural arousal states? How am I to handle or kind of tailor their training based on those? So arousal is one of those things that you don't fear arousal, right? If your dog is high arousal, don't fear it. Embrace it. Arousal is actually the key to really successful nose work trialing. And what's interesting is that dogs have a natural arousal state. So dogs either have what I call an arousal excess or an arousal gap. And if you think about what your dog does when they're at rest, where that arousal state is compared to their arousal state when they're in drive, that will tell you whether or not you have an arousal excess or you have an arousal gap. The size of that gap is going to indicate actually how much work you actually have to do because some dogs are a little bit closer to the ideal than other dogs. But what you want to do is when you actually train them and you're actually working them, you always want to make sure that your dog is in drive. In drive approaching the start line and in drive while they're actually searching. And you can actually condition this arousal because arousal is actually a habit. And, you know, if you can always work your dog in the right arousal state, you're going to find that your dog is going to come more naturally to the start line and in the right arousal state. And the right arousal state is when the dog is in drive. And that's at the peak arousal. So if we go, if we think about like the Yerkes-Dodson law, like the curve, it looks like a bell-shaped curve. For dogs who have an arousal gap, we want to increase the arousal to the point that they're in drive. For dogs who have an arousal excess, we want to decrease the arousal to get the dog into drive. Because just because they're, you know, you're peeling the dog off the ceiling doesn't mean that they're in drive. Right? And that's not what we want, right? We don't want the dog that we have to peel off the ceiling. For those dogs, we have to lower the arousal so that they can focus and they can really think. And working in drive, it really becomes a habit. So you always want to work the dog in drive and always want to work the dog at the right arousal state. Of course, if handlers are doing this well, as training progresses, their dog will improve. But I think it's kind of common for trainers in all sports to find they're training the dog they used to have instead of the one that's kind of in front of them right now. How can handlers evaluate their dogs as they go along? Maybe kind of avoid that misstep? So that's actually really interesting.

And I refer to something called typecasting. So if you're familiar with typecasting and you think about the movies, right? There are a couple of movie stars that I can think of off the top of my head that definitely get typecasted. So typecasting is something where you have an actor who might be casted in a very similar role, regardless of the movie that they're in. And two of the major typecasted actors that I can think of, actually, are Christopher Walken and Jim Carrey. Christopher Walken, he's always kind of that creepy, funny dude. He's always kind of creepy. He's kind of funny. He's always in those creepy roles. He's always kind of, you know, just kind of this weird role. And then Jim Carrey is always in kind of the role of he's very kind of a slapstick, silly, funny, not very serious role. And so for typecasted actors, it's actually very difficult for those actors to break out into another type of role. So it's very possible that you have typecasted your own dog. Um, so if you think about like Judd, he used to have a nickname. I used to call him Fragile Little Flower. And he was my fragile little flower. And he was very, he had a hard time in obedience and rally and agility. He'd be the dog stuck at the top of the A-frame and, you know, and that kind of thing. And just, you know, very nervous, very shut down. Um, he is no longer that dog. So I had to divorce that typecast of his. And now he is, I am Judd, hear me roar. He's this really great search dog. And so I had to break that typecast because if you have a preconceived notion about your dog, you can train to that preconceived notion and you can actually impose restrictions on your dog. So think about whether or not you can break that typecast. The other thing is have a framework. So I suggest my pyramid and I mentioned my pyramid before, um, you know, earlier where you have confidence, motivation, skills, and stamina. So always reevaluate your, your dog in every search session. So every time you do a search, is your dog confident? Is your dog motivated? Um, you know, that sort of thing, especially confidence and motivation. What is the dog's right arousal state? And sometimes recognize that your dog is going to have an off day. So reevaluate your dog with every search. But also if you have an off day and all of a sudden your dog doesn't seem very motivated, there could be something else that's going on. You know, maybe say, all right, today is just not our day. And tomorrow is a different day. So, um, so those are the things that I would do to make sure that you're handled that from a handling perspective,

you're always reevaluating your dog and you're always training the dog in front of you. I'm not sure who said it, but, uh, somebody at one point mentioned, yeah, if the dog doesn't do something, you're pretty sure they've been trained to do, you know, let it go. Happened once. Don't worry about it. If it happens two or three times, then it's time to start thinking about how you can change your training. Absolutely. Absolutely. Whoever said that is a genius. Are there any kind of dead giveaways or even something maybe a little more subtle that indicate it's time to kind of go through that process in your own head and reevaluate the dog that you have and maybe your training plan a little bit? Absolutely. Absolutely. Things like if your dog is bored or if your dog is anxious, these are the things where perhaps you're, you know, you're not evaluating your dog's resilience level or your dog's drive level well enough. Um, you know, because depending upon the dog's drive level and the dog's resilience level, you could very easily put your dog into, um, an, an, an anxious, um, an anxious situation or, or, or if the dog is bored, then you need to reevaluate and say, maybe you're making your searches a little bit too hard, or maybe you're making them a little bit too easy. Um, you know, maybe the challenge level isn't right compared to the dog's skill level. The other thing is look for changes in the dog's attitude and whether or not they're positive or negative and, um, and then modify your approach based upon that. Cause you really always want the dog to come thinking this is the most fun part of my day. And, you know, and if your dog isn't having fun, you need to reevaluate what you're doing. Um, and, and maybe you need to reevaluate, you know, what your dog needs. So maybe your dog needs something different from you. To round things out. I want to kind of give you a little bit of time to talk about some of the exciting things on the calendar. So I know you've got a webinar next week. On setting meaningful scent puzzles for your dog. Can you share a little bit about it? Kind of what the premise is? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I can't wait for that one. Um, the, you know, the, the keyword is meaningful because it's not just about setting puzzles. We can all set scent puzzles. So scent puzzles are basically our way of creating, um, problems for our dogs to solve so that they can learn and build skills. And it's all about skill building. However, um, it's really, really important that we, we think about the word meaningful and meaningful really refers to the resilience and the drive of the dog.

Because for instance, um, I'm not a big fan of, you know, sometimes you see this in seminars and actually kind of bothers me where, where a clinician may set out a really, really hard hide and have green dogs work the hard hide. And what you end up with is a dog that might, um, might lose their confidence or lose their motivation. Right? So it's really important that you set the right challenge and the right challenge level for your dog based upon the dog's resilience and natural drive levels. So that's really what, um, what I want to talk about is based upon the dog's natural drive levels and resilience. How do you know you're setting a meaningful scent puzzle that's going to build the skills at the same time as, um, caring for the dog's confidence and their motivation? You know, so it's, so it's not just about building the skills, but rather it's about how you build the skills so that you can preserve that. What about, uh, for August? What classes do you have coming up? Anything you want to mention? Oh, I have three classes coming up. Um, I'm teaching one-on-one. So if you, if you want to get into nose work and you haven't started nose work, um, join me and, and NW one-on-one that's introduction to nose work. I'm also teaching, um, NW two 30, which is, uh, polishing skills for NW two and NW three. And the one that I want to mention today and to talk a little bit about is nose work challenges. So that's NW two 40. That's a series that I haven't taught in a while and I'm going to bring that series back. So NW two 40, um, is nose work challenges. It's a lot of fun. It's going to be focused on skills, but at the same time, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add in, um, elements of this, um, discussion around resilience and drive so that we can make sure that we're, we're doing the puzzles in the right way. One last question for you. That's kind of my new question, my new ending question for people when they come on, what's a question you've learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? You have to actually train. Which sounds really kind of funny. Right. But nose work, it can seem so natural, right? So it can, it can be like, well, the dog is just scenting. They know how to find the hide. They, they have value for the odor. So they go out and they find the target odor. Well, that sounds great and all, but you really actually have to train. Um, because it's, it's actually, it's very possible now with nose work being a lot more, um, popular than it used to be. You know, now with the addition of AKC out there and some other venues, there's a lot of trialing opportunities.

And it's very possible to actually get into a situation where you're trialing more than you're training. Um, if that's the case, that's going to have a negative impact on your, on your trialing. Um, you're going to find that, um, you know, that having that, that, that competitive mindset instead of the evaluative context, um, is actually going to be a detriment to your training. So it's really important to work your dog while you're in about your, your evaluative versus competitive. If that makes sense. Absolutely. That's great. I like that a lot. So thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Stacey. I really appreciate it. I've had so much fun with this. This is the, this is a really great topic, a really, really great topic. And, um, and, and I've really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for having me on. Absolutely. And I hope some folks come join you for the webinar. So thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. And we'll be back next week. This time we'll be back with Deb Jones to talk about becoming a better teacher for the human half of the dog handler team. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast and 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 Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.