Trying to decide if Nosework is worth a try? In this episode Julie and I talk about the benefits of nosework and how to adapt your handling to improve your nosework dog's performance.
Transcript
Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I have Julie Symons here with me to talk about the benefits of nose work getting started in the sport, and talk a bit about the handler's role in the scent work game. Hi, Julie, welcome back to the podcast.
Julie Symons: Hi, Melissa, thanks for having me again.
Melissa Breau: Absolutely. To start us out, do you want to just remind listeners a little bit kind of about you and about your dog group?
Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah, my dog group. I have been teaching full time at FDSA for 12 years. I can kind of do the math because of the age of my dog Savvy, who recently passed away.
She was almost 17 and she started nose work at around 5. And that was through the Fenzi program. So that is, you know, taking us to like 12 years if I do the math right. And then I actually own my own training building my own training company and I have a building Savvy Dog Sports named after Savvy. And that keeps me pretty busy. Something that people might not know about me, they never talk about anymore, right? I used to work at Xerox.
I worked at Xerox for 30 years as a software engineer and I left that completely about six years ago. So I'm definitely full time, been full time dog training for six years. And then the dogs I have, so I just snatched. I lost my old girl, Savvy, but I gained a new puppy a few months ago, Katniss Harperdine, back in August. So between her and, you know, taking care of my old girl and training other dogs, it's been a lot.
So things are kind of settling a little bit now in the hassle. I also have Drac, who's nine years old. He has actually lost a little bit of his hearing, so that's a new thing for me. And then Moxie is 6 years old. So I actually kind of got them spaced out pretty well. Nine, six and not even one.
Melissa Breau: And I think our last podcast you said to me, Julie, you're due for another dog or something. You said to me, did I jinx you? Is that what you're telling me?
Julie Symons: Yes, you did. You did. You made the stars align or something.
Melissa Breau: Hey, I'll take credit for that. So as somebody who tends to train multiple sports with your dogs. Cause you do, you do lots of different things with your dogs. Are there specific reasons or benefits that you've seen from including nose work in that mix?
Julie Symons: So yeah, so when I first started nose work, Savvy was the one who got me started in it and she had a minor toe injury. So we were sidelined from agility and that's how we got started. There happened to be this class going on and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. And that's usually what I find from people who start it from coming in for other sports.
I had already definitely enjoyed teaching scent articles because I had done some tracking beforehand. But what I liked about it was that it was kind of different from anything else I had done. It allowed the dog to do kind of more of the work and it was less handler driven. And I found that it was a sport where you weren't able to do that with like, if you're doing like agility and obedience, it was, you know, a lot of, a lot of cue based movements and stuff like that.
I also like it because there are times when your dogs can't do those other sports. They're sidelined from agility, but they can do nose work or, or whatever. There's always things you can do with nose work and on a small scale that you can do if your dog isn't able to compete in other sports. And I really like that aspect of it. It's just a variety, but, but mainly it's just that the dogs and myself like teaching different things. And I feel like that cross training is always very important so they don't either get bored with one thing or they just kind of learn more skills that strengthen all the other ones.
Melissa Breau: Can you talk about that just a little bit more? Kind of what crossover, what carryover it has for your other sports? What do you see kind of come out of training nosework?
Julie Symons: They build a lot of autonomy in their work, some confidence and independence. You know, we all know the benefits of, you know, sniffy sports is something that really, you know, motivates them and makes them feel better and confident in new places. They learn how to kind of use their nose to explore the world and, and like feel safe, you know, in novel locations. And it's been the most easiest sport to take to novel locations. So I remember debuting in an obedience trial or something and it was always hard in a very novel space or a new agility venue or whatever.
But nose work, you can kind of train in the type of novel locations you're going to search in. So I found that that just gave them a lot more confidence Like, I. My dog started just going to any building and just like, pulling me to go into a do. Like, they love to go through doors. And I just had somebody, a student of mine, trialing this weekend. They said, I don't know why, but my dog just loves to pull to this door. And they were doing an outside search. But I think we've just built this value for going in to new places and using their nose. So I think that transfers a lot to the other sports.
Melissa Breau: Can you talk specifically maybe about the benefits of nose work for dogs who, for lack of a better term, maybe struggle a little bit in other sports, like those dealing with reactivity or fear or shyness or just kind of that general lack of confidence?
Julie Symons: Yeah, absolutely. I see this more and more, and it's not just for the extreme cases of reactivity or shyness, but just the act of sniffing just engages certain parts of their brain that releases a dopamine effect and makes them feel better. I looked this up a while ago how the dog's brain is dedicated to the olfactory system. They estimate that 33% of the brain is devoted to processing smells.
That's a huge chunk of their processing. And that's why it's so therapeutic and valuable for dogs, or just it helps them, you know, understand the world around them. So it can calm them, it can soothe them, it affects their neural pathways, and it makes them feel good. It uses what they term the seeking system in the brain, which is responsible for motivation and desire. And the really cool part about that function is it makes them look forward to doing something good.
It's not just the end result of getting the reward, but the anticipation, anticipation of it. And so that motivates them to go find the things. And you could really see that in the dogs. We've always said there's a therapeutic role. You can see dogs come out of their shell who are shy. Even dogs who are reactive can learn to work in trial like environments with some management, with more management.
Not with more management, but with some management. And also, older dogs really have a dramatic cognitive benefit from using their nose, because, like I said, they're using their nose. It goes through a big part of the brain. So they're keeping themselves, you know, active. I think of, like, you know, older people, they want you to do crossword puzzles, right? And those kind of games to keep your mind sharp.
And it does the same thing. Does the same thing for the dogs. For those who haven't trained nosework before, I think sometimes it can feel, I guess complex is the Word I'm looking for. Right. Like, a lot of people think they need to worry about, you know, managing odor, making sure they don't contaminate the wrong things. They're unclear maybe on how to teach a dog a skill that dogs are kind of born knowing more than we do.
Melissa Breau: Right. They know how to use their nose. So can you talk a little bit about kind of those points and maybe any other holdups that you find people sometimes have when deciding whether to train this.
Julie Symons: Yeah, we definitely realize, the three of us that teach the intro class, that sometimes the equipment list or the initial lectures can seem a little overwhelming. We've definitely scaled that back on. So the equipment list is short.
And actually of any sport I can think of, you really don't have a lot of equipment for nose work. But starting out, we use a lot of props and stuff to help them learn it, but they're usually things you can just find around your house. And I do get that question about contamination a lot, and I would not even give it a second to worry about. We're more likely to have issues later on when, you know, you're doing other searches and people leave old and old hideout, or you're actually dealing with multiple sleeves and tin vessels that you're carrying around and you may drop some, or the Q tips might fall out.
But when you're working with just one dog and one odor vessel and usually just one odor, there's really not much you can do wrong as long as you're not super sloppy and you wear gloves when you are maybe making more odor or, you know, just wash your hands after you put more Q tips or new Q tips in your tin, you're going to be just fine. Once the Q tips are in my tin, I just hold it in my hand.
I don't always wear gloves. You know, we say you should wear gloves, but honestly, that just gets old pretty quickly because you're also. Well, you're just adding a lot of gloves to the landfill, you know, the trash. So you just don't really need to do that, to be quite honest. Yeah, you don't want to drop an open jar of oil like that. I've had people have said that that's happened.
They've spilled it on the carpet or whatever. And that's bad. But that's a pretty rare incident, and it could happen to really anybody. So I had just never known a dog to have issues on contamination early in this stage. So I would just not even be concerned about that, not worry about it. Yeah, I know that you know, in your nose work class and kind of the approach that Fenzi takes, you kind of start dogs on odor on day one.
Melissa Breau: Can you talk a little bit about that approach and maybe why it's the one that you use with students?
Julie Symons: Yeah, I could talk a lot about this.
Melissa Breau: Go for it. Good.
Julie Symons: So first, I find that a majority of dogs do really well starting on odor, and especially for dogs that come from other training backgrounds. Most dogs these days have a lot of operant conditioning experience, and they know, you know, the cause and effect and what leads to reinforcement.
So I find that those dogs just pick up on the type of, you know, training that we do easily. But even for new dog trainers, you know, pet dog owners, it can totally be taught. I personally am not motivated to have my dogs hunt for food. And, you know, maybe my technique is wrong. Although I don't mind doing a few weeks of some, you know, treat scatters and having my dog, a young dog or a new dog, get practice, you know, finding treats to get comfortable in a new environment or to get comfortable going through tight spaces.
So I'll do. I'll use food for things that I want to test their bravery, you know, make sure that they're okay with these kind of things. Um, and I actually did try to start with some food, searching with my new puppy, and I just didn't see the excitement in her. I didn't see. I. You know, it wasn't doing anything for her. And then once I added odor to the picture, the light bulb just went on.
Well, actually, once she started actually hunting for the odor, it. It was amazing. It was. It was just. It made so much sense to her. And, of course, when we're teaching our dogs the odor. So how we teach the dog the new odor, we condition it by pairing it, in a sense, but the odor is out, and the dog checks it out. And then while they're checking it out, we drop treats in where?
Like in a bowl or a colander or even a pie dish. I don't care if you're, like, holding it in your hand. They're getting reinforced for being near that odor. And that does click with them. And it does make, you know, it does make an impression on them. And they definitely learned that, you know, good things are occurring around this new, funny odor. And I also find that.
Well, I don't find. Is that our target odor is very salient, like birch or anise or clove. We usually start with birch or. A lot of us are doing a cocktail now, so you put all the Scents together. It's very salient. Whereas I just actually, it was mentioned to me recently and I didn't even realize this. I was trying to do the food searching with my puppy and I was using like string cheese.
And string cheese just doesn't disperse that far into the air. There's not a big odor plume with string cheese. And it just made a lot of sense to me that maybe that was just. It wasn't as interesting for her. But once I started using this essential oil that really dispersed into the air and she understood the value of it, it kind of, um, clicked for her. A question that I often get a lot I'm getting right now in my nosework.
One on one class is they're doing their conditioning homework in week one. And they're like, I, how do I know that they're learning this? How do I know they're just not eating food out of the bowl? I think you'd have the same question if you were searching for. If you were searching for food first and then pairing your hides and they're searching for paired, you know, odor, it's the same question, you know, you'd have the same uncertainty.
How do they know that it's finding the odor, not the food that's paired with it, or they're only going to the right ball because we dropped treats in it. So it definitely is a question. You don't know until you get to week two of the next steps of some hunting games where you're hiding the odor a little bit the big bowl somewhere or you're doing some discrimination and then you're going to really know if your dog is understanding that the odor pays.
And you know, I have thought a lot about, you know, why starting an odor works for me or why I think it makes more sense to people. And I just recently put together a couple bullets for my handling class, which is all about kind of odor driven, you know, having dogs be odor driven so the handler will do would do their following and respond to their dog. But if the dogs are casting out, they were hap.
Some teams are having trouble with this. So when my dog is used to me stepping out with them or taking them places so they actually can't practice these handling moves. So I, you know, put out a series of exercises to work on this. And one of the suggestions was, you know, I said, you know, put a lot more essential oil out there. Cause you just make it a, you know, make it a odor bomb.
You could use the wind or a fan to boost it. And again, that talks earlier to where I said, I think the odor is so salient the dogs can't miss it. And then I mentioned about food pairing and I do use it sometimes for some dogs and I thought, well, why am I not liking that method? And I just find it kind of becomes a lure and it creates a neutral response in the dog, whether versus a motivated response.
Because as I mentioned earlier, when a dog is doing some operant conditioning and are making choices, there's a dopamine effect and that triggers their motivation. And so if it's just if they're really only searching for the food part of the pairing, are they really motivated as motivated if they're actually kind of goal oriented to find this, to find this thing that they've learned to do. Right. Because again, it's not about the consumption, but it's about the anticipating, getting a reward for finding it.
And I also find that if you pair hides or using just food, you're not helping a dog learn to work. Odor threads in the air. Like that's how when you get to the higher levels of training and that's what we're working on in my handling class is we need to teach these dogs not to be object focused, not to be hammer focused and hammer led, but to learn to find odor in the air to source those hives.
And I just find starting from odor at the very, very beginning just sets the stage for everything that I want to teach in my so that they don't have these problems later on. And we're already starting from the salient picture, working odor in the air and having this cause and effect of I can find this thing and then I get reinforced for it. So it works for me.
And like I said, I tried a little bit of other ways and just decided that this is what works for me and I'm sticking with it.
Melissa Breau: Makes sense since nose work is a dog focused sport. I think a lot of the times you're talking about handling in there, I think a lot of the times people don't consider that impact. Right. They don't consider their role in the dog's competition success or even just an individual search's success.
Can you talk a little more about the handling factors that impact a dog's search?
Julie Symons: Yeah. And I mentioned earlier that the reason I kind of liked it when I got started was it was less handler driven. It was just that the dog does all the work. But we definitely learned on the way that it's a team like any sport that we do with our dogs and there is handling involved and we do want them to work independently of us.
That's why it's important that we know what our body language is doing. So it's more about what is our body language saying. And what happens is a lot of times people will have one handling thing mean two different things. Like, if you talk about agility, I don't know if that's probably a really good example. The dog will know a D cell means they should maybe be collecting, but you can't desell if you want them to drive out further.
You can't have it mean two things. So our dogs in agility learn very well what our body cues are telling. So in nose work, two examples I can think of is people like to stay in one spot to get their dog independence. But really anchoring in one spot is a way that we can say, oh, I don't want you to go any further. You're going out of bounds.
So I'm going to hold you here and you can keep working, but you can't go any further. So I can't mean I want to hold you in the spots. Which is what an anchoring or a decel would normally mean to a dog. And of course, some dogs are like, don't even care what their hand is doing. That is true. So a lot of those teams don't have to worry about the ins and outs of some of the details of handling.
But I. You can't. But again, it's just the messages. You can't use the same thing to mean two different things. So another example would be if you outpace your dog. Sometimes we outpace our dogs. So, meaning our dog is starting to slow down, but you're like, in a hurry. You're impatient. They're not finding anything. So you're kind of like pasting your dog. And what you're going to do is you're going to take your dog right off of working a potential hide.
I mean, you don't know in a trial, but there might be other times where we say I really do need to get my dog over to this whole other room we haven't been to. So I'm going to take over and outpace my dog, which means I'm just going to go past their shoulder line to take them somewhere else. So it can't mean I'm. I want you to keep working while I outpace you.
And then, no, I really mean for you to come with me because I want to take you somewhere else. And that's kind of right. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. And I'm just, you know, I'm really just trying to simplify it because I don't want this to be this whole like handling system thing or anything because it's so dynamic. Like every search, every day with your.
Every different dog is different. Right. You know, the odor picture is different. How you're feeling, how the dog's feeling is all different. So we're having to make a lot of decisions in those few minutes that we have. And we're not trying to be perfect, but we are just trying not to interrupt the dog. Right. Because that's what happens the most is people aren't observing what the dog's doing.
And they're in their head about whatever happened yesterday or where they want to take their dog, or they're worried about something and they're not observing their dog. The dog is actually working a hive in the hand that pulls them off. I see it all the time. I see it like every week in my in person classes. And so what I'm trying to help people is to learn to be present, to be patient, to learn how to observe.
And yeah, you can, you can take over, you can make suggestions, you can handle with intent, but just know what you're doing when you're not doing that. And be very careful when you are taking over that you're not, you're not, you know, gonna pull them off a height or make a mistake because of that. So that's kind of what I'm trying to teach. And I thought of another example.
Proofing. I used to do this. I have videos, I'm sharing it in my class where I didn't trust my dog. So I start walking back and forth, proofing, circling like I'm the scavenger bird, like circling a prey or something. And so now I taught my dog, oh, if I walk past you and circle you, I want you to stay, but if I walk past you, I sometimes want you to leave.
You know, so we're just, we're just adding in all these complicated things for our dogs to figure out what we're trying to do. Like, we're making it hard for our dogs to like read our cues, to like use us to their bandits. Like, yeah, okay, I need to go with you. I'm going to come with you now. But we could just make it so confusing and that they don't know what to do.
And then what they do is they become very handler reliant because we are not teach, we're not giving them the autonomy, and we're not efficiently, you know, taking over it. They're right times. And it's just a progression, you know, it's a journey, I guess, of improving. And it's taken me years to really understand, you know, how I want to handle my dogs. And actually, it's a really funny story.
I was doing my tribute for, sadly, when she passed away and I was putting in a nose work clip. I couldn't find one that I didn't look horrible as my handler. Like, I'm like, oh, my God, I can't use that look. I was doing all this weird handling stuff, you know, but that, but that just shows, you know, evolution. And back then I thought I was like, you know, that cats meow of nose or handling.
Right. And I probably was pretty good in the day. But we just learn a lot more about our dog's abilities and how we can train them. And, and that's just what I'm trying to get across, of how wide handling is important. And we're not a dope on the rope. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a teamwork. It definitely is teamwork. Once you've kind of built those patterns, though, I mean, if you're in a pattern of doing XYZ when your dog does this, then it can be incredibly hard to look at your own video, recognize what's going on, and actually change it.
Melissa Breau: Do you have tips for either looking at your own handling and analyzing it in a helpful way instead of maybe just a critical way, or actually enacting that change, retraining yourself?
Julie Symons: Sure. Video, video, video. Of course you want to video yourself. And everybody should know that. Everybody should be nodding their head when they're listening to this, because I still have people on my classes that don't bring me the camera to video and people who don't want to buy the trial video.
So that's number one. You should definitely video, because otherwise you won't know. Right. And those people who don't video do tend to make the same. The same handling errors. But a really good tip is to speed up the video because you're going to see those fast movements. So if you're doing some wonky handling, it's going to be really exaggerated. And it's actually kind of like. It's kind of hilarious.
Like, you just see, you know, us like, dancing our feet or like, circling the dog or, you know, just backing up 10 paces, you know, behind our dog. And so that's one tip, is to review the video and speed it up and just look, just, just look how, how that looks. And then, and then of course, you have to evaluate, you know, is something hindering your dog or not making a difference at all.
And my class right now we're saying, you know what this is, I wouldn't have done that. But to be honest, it didn't impact your dog at all. Right. So we're going to also decide, yeah, like for certain dogs, you know, that's something that you need to worry about. And so how you would try to retrain that is pick one thing. And this is so cool because somebody just posted today and they said, okay, here's a search I did today.
And all I did was practice not backing up. And that's what they did, you know, or another person said, I'm going to make sure my leash isn't slacked. I'm going to make sure my leash is a little bit tight and. Or I'm going to make sure I don't crowd my dogs, don't walk in too close, so I'll stop. And another thing is people like a goal is they fail to follow the anchor.
So they're anchoring too much and they're letting their dog. And I'm like. And they catch this up, oh, I'm going to just not. I'm going to match my dog's pace. I'm going to follow them when they move and they're practicing that one thing. And so it's actually really fun because it's a different class for me because the first couple of weeks are on just reflection and reviewing their old or in current videos and then having like a plan how to, you know, either build the odor driving your dogs or to work on your handling.
And one of the homework was to just on a walk with your dog, just walk with your dog and orient and follow them like you would in a search. Like, it can be a little bit more relaxed. You don't have to be perfect. And most everybody did it and they said this was kind of interesting and it's letting the dog sniff a little longer because normally we're pulling them along, not letting them sniff and because we're in a hurry to get somewhere.
And that was a real fun exercise for everybody to just put that practice outside of nose work. And so that's some of the fun stuff that we're working on. I imagine that when you're thinking about that, like you're thinking about, okay, I'm not going to back up this time. I'm not going to back up this time over and over Again, to retrain yourself, you're also, because you're slightly distracted because now suddenly you're thinking about something other than just kind of the dog's behavior.
That creates a much more trial like scenario for your dog, I would think. Right, That's a really good point.
Melissa Breau: Yeah, yeah. And you know, just like if people work out in the public, you. You're nervous with people looking at work or something. Yeah. So anything, yeah, anything that you can do that kind of almost takes your mind off to practice. Like a real like nerves of a trial.
Julie Symons: That's a really good point. I don't think I've really highlighted that in the material, but.
Melissa Breau: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It kind of. You're talking about it and I was like, that seems really realistic for trials. So we've mentioned both the intro class and the nose work handling class that you're offering this term. Do you want to just talk a little more about kind of what's in each class, maybe who should consider them?
Julie Symons: Yeah. So of course, the intro to nose work is pretty straightforward and it's introducing your dog to the sport. And we're going to introduce odor on day one. We also have some non odor drills just to work on some handling it on the flat away from odor. And we're. We basically focus on, you know, hunt skills and staying at source skills. And I do introduce handling to them as well.
I want to get them when they're young, get these new noser people, you know, learning about their handling. This is one of you to a homework assignment today. And they were practicing, they're doing some mini searches already. And they were already practicing where they would have normally just stood in one place and they caught themselves because there's not really. Their dogs aren't really moving a whole lot. But some of these spaces are getting a little bigger now and they're realizing that.
And in this one case, this handler was, was forgot, forgot to follow her dog. And the dog was, it was going toward where the hide was and it turned around and came back to her, the handler. Because the dog was like, already just naturally, they, they're masses at reading our body language. They're like, oh, you must want me to come back to you, because you didn't follow, you know, you didn't support me and the doctor was blind.
So that's really exciting to bring that into my nose. I've always had it there. But I was able to update the lecture last this week, actually, because I'm doing the Hammond class and I've, you know, kind of improved the talk track on that and was able to just, you know, you know, copy some of that information over. It's amazing how much creating a new class really makes you kind of think critically about a new topic.
And you're like, oh, let me actually introduce that a little earlier in the students learning journey. Oh, absolutely. It absolutely does. It's educated a lot. I'm still writing, I'm still writing lots of lectures for this last. Yeah, and I think I already mentioned the first couple of weeks of the handling class is about reflect, reflection and also just knowing what makes sense to you. Not to say that my way is right.
Of course I'm going to influence people, but I don't have all the answers. But I want teams to really determine what makes sense for them. And so far everybody is listening and open to ideas and we're having a really good time in both classes. And sometimes I forget which, to be honest, sometimes I forget which class I'm in. I mean they're, they're very different. But then I'm in a sense working on some of the foundation stuff in the handling class if the teams need that.
And then in the intro to nose work, I'm working on handling and I actually have somebody in both of them. The same team is in both of them because. Because the one team did the last item recovery. So she's already searching, you know, humans m cents. So she's taking the handler class for that. I mean, and then she's taking this. She's never done nose rep oil so she's taking nose rep one for oil.
So it's just kind of neat. I never. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. That's a whole different approach there, huh? I know, it just. I mean the odds of having somebody just needing both of them at the same time was kind of ironic.
Melissa Breau: Yeah, absolutely. Any final thoughts or maybe key points that you want to leave folks with?
Julie Symons: Yeah, I think that I would just say I think we need to be open minded and listen to what people have to offer with ideas because stuff I've done today I didn't do before.
I know there'll be things I do in the future that I would never have thought I would do today. We don't have to criticize other methods and instead we can focus on what's going to make sense to us. That's actually been a constant message in my handling class is whatever method you use has got to make sense because if it doesn't make sense to you, then you're not going to implement it correctly.
And maybe that's why my food searching didn't work for me and Katniss because I just, I just, it just didn't make sense to me. Right. There's nothing wrong with the method. It just like I couldn't relate to it. And I also think, you know, people should be resourceful. You should work with other instructors. I don't, I don't want to be somebody's only voice point. I guess other instructors have different strengths and areas that we're going to focus on and they're going to see something different that I don't see.
But I always, but I'm cautioning people because this is a, this is a problem. There's a lot of, you know, no people out there teaching. A lot of great, great instructors and experts and we have different opinions and it could be black and white and people can get very confused. They don't know what to do. And I think that can be confusing for your dog if you keep changing.
You know, it could be as simple as, do you cue your dog to find another. Do you be quiet? You know, we have reasons, you know, for that. And I have a lecture that, a short lecture that covers this in my handling class. But my advice for people is be open minded. If you're paying somebody for their advice, you have to listen to them. Right? You gotta respect that and listen to them.
You toss out what doesn't make sense to you. Try out some things that sound interesting, different but interesting. Try them out. We're not gonna hurt. We're not gonna ruin our dogs. Our dogs are very resilient. And then keep what makes sense to you. And that's the advice I've been giving people. But you want to be careful not to get 10 people's input because you're just going to get yourself tied up in a whatever.
So just kind of find those few people that you really resonate with. They have different strengths in different areas. And I think we need to kind of be well or we need to ask questions. I get a lot of people who said, well, so, and so is said when you do this. I said, oh, well, why? And they didn't know. And that happens to me. I've been at seminars on the working spot and I'm so overwhelmed that I don't even.
I just, I hear what they tell me and I have no idea why they tell me that. Like I didn't even know enough to know what to ask. Like, you know, right. That happens to all of us. So I'm not even criticizing anybody, but I'm reminding people that you have to, you know, if you're not. Even if you thought you knew what it meant and it's not to be defensive, that just say, can you tell me why you suggest that?
And then when you find out why, you're like, oh, I. I don't really. That doesn't make sense to me. Or, oh, my gosh, that makes total sense. I'm really. I'm good. I'm sold. I'm sold on this method, you know, so that's kind of my takeaway because it's been hard teaching or it been hard creating this new class, because I know there's different thoughts on this. And I. I'm.
I'm not trying to say this is the only way. I'm trying to, you know, you know, find the key points that I think will be helpful but not controversial, you know, so it's been fun. It's been really, really fun. And. And I'm happy to see the students in both classes really embracing the knowledge and trying it out, you know, Trying it out.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much, Julie, for coming on the podcast.
Julie Symons: Well, thank you very much.
Melissa Breau: You're welcome very much. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. 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 Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.
Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided by Bensound.com the track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.
Credits
Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi 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!