Nosework competitions require the ability to focus and work independently in new and novel locations — so Julie joined me for a conversation on how to build the necessary levels of environmental resilience.  

 Transcription

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 environmental resilience for nosework. Hi, Julie. Welcome back to the podcast.

Julie Symons: Hi, thanks for having me again.

Melissa Breau: Absolutely. Do you want to start us off and just kind of remind us a little bit about you, your dogs, and maybe what you're working on with them?

Julie Symons: Yeah. As you all know, I'm a faculty member for FDSA. I also own my own business, Savvy Dog sports. I have a training facility pretty popular with nose work classes, agility and some puppy classes. And I have some other people teach for me, so that keeps me pretty busy.

I currently have three dogs. They're all Belgians. My youngest is nine months old and my oldest is nine years old. And sandwiched in between that is Moxie, who is six, and Drac is the oldest, who's nine. And my new puppy is Katniss Harperdine. I can't believe she's nine months old already. They all do agility and nose work and tracking. Even the puppy has started all three of those.

And foundation obedience. I'm hoping to get her into the obedience ring. My new puppy, she's already doing some obedience training. My other two older ones did herding, but they're currently on a break from that right now. So as we always talk about it, I do lots of things with lots of dogs and it's always fun, you know, to learn about a new dog because you know, what concerns they're going to have and you know, are they going to be outgoing or more reserved.

And my, my older dogs, one of them developed some noise sensitivities later on and another one has some minor flooring issues. And right now Katniss can be a little bit reserved around new people. That's a really common Belgian trait. But otherwise she's super outgoing in new environments. So right now I'm making sure that I don't, you know, push her when she's not ready and been employing some processes like look at that from then controlled and leash material and just, you know, take, trying to try to take it slow with her because it's so exciting to have a new dog and so easy to, or accidentally, you know, to push them before they're ready for stuff.

So yeah, but I'm able to do so much at home with her and all those things I listed, I've mostly just been trained here at home. So, yeah, they're. I'm back to being busy again with my dogs. Not that I wasn't busy. Not that I wasn't busy before, but, yeah, fair enough. So, you know, in all sports, we kind of think about teaching behaviors that we want to compete with, at least that we want to hold up in competition to fluency, kind of regardless of location.

Melissa Breau: Right. We want to generalize things a whole bunch. But it seems like nose work maybe comes with some unique challenges in that area. Do you want to talk about it a little bit?

Julie Symons: Yeah. And first, you know, nose work is often the sport that teams will gravitate toward to build confidence if they have some sensitivities. And it's often a sport that the dogs will enjoy because it's less structured.

It's not very obediencey or obedience to the handler. And you can feed them in the ring, even at their trials. You never have to wean off of food in the earlier stages. The dogs really thrive on this. Being able to use their nose and participate in natural abilities and hunting and sniffing. And then once you start to have to go to novel places, because that's kind of the name of the game for trialing.

You do have to build fluencies and fluency to new environments with their skills. And the dogs may struggle with environmental distractions, people and unfamiliar spaces. And sometimes the people, it's not just being worried about them, but they could be overly social and distracted by them. Pressures from the environment, tight spaces, new surfaces. There's so many surfaces they have to work on for nose work, Slippery floors, wood floors, rough surfaces, gravel and things like that.

Noise sensitivity and dog reactivity. Those are some of the ones that are some of the harder ones to manage and improve the comfortness of the dogs. For those types of sensitivities with noise and reactivity. The search areas, as I said, already, can have some infinite possibilities. We may have to search on grass and dirt and gravel and all different types of tile and flooring, from ceramic to linoleum.

Linoleum is usually pretty easy for the dogs. Wood floors, decks, gym, lacquered floors. I remember my previous dog, Savvy, one of her early, early trials, she did not want to walk on this gym floor, and the search area was way at the back, and she, like, crawled on her belly, you know, and in hindsight, you know, should I even, like, asked her to keep working? We actually did get our first full hundred scores work through that day, and she was a trooper, but that was just from my thinking, resilience.

Right. We could talk about. She was resilient because, you know, to work through that situation. But you know, there's going to be, you know, we are searching and often training because to get to new places, you're in public areas, areas that are used by the public every day. So you have, you know, treat, you know, food left in the pavil and you can have critters and people showing up and dogs showing up out of your control.

So that's what makes it a little difficult and challenging once you get to that level of training and trialing. So dogs with sensitivities and who lack the focus to stay on task can just clock out and they're going to be on their own time because they are, you know, we can call them distractors or motivators, but they are more motivated by the environment, not necessarily worried about it.

So it's like twofold. They're either overly aroused and distracted by the environment because they're interested in it. Meaning in a good way, they want to chase the critter or eat bird poop or deer poop or whatever, or they are just worried about it. So it's two sides of the pendulum on what can take a dog off task. So that's the stuff that we have to work through with these types of dogs.

Yeah. So I know, you know, as positive trainers, typically the kind of the rule of thumb when teaching a new behavior is to begin in a well known non distracting environment. I don't do nosework, but I assume the same is kind of true for nose work. Right. So what, what kinds of behaviors, you know, can pop up in nose work training if we start introducing some of those harder environments too soon?

Yeah, yeah, correct. We definitely apply all those same approaches with nose work. That's why learning at home is so ideal and why I love the online classes. So you can start at home. And I always say it's of all the sports to train, although I think many you can effectively train at home. But nose work is one of the easiest because for the first few weeks you're not doing a whole lot.

You're just conditioning your dog to odor and developing some hunt skills. But it's so ideal for the more sensitive dogs or even the high arousal dogs that have a lot of energy, that look like they're able to conquer the world. But those extreme arousal dogs are also displaying concern about the environment and able to work in it. And if we move too fast, then with difficult setups Our dogs are going to lose that focus.

They're going to be over aroused, they're going to be over worried. All the things I just listed above. Sometimes a class environment just doesn't work for some dogs. Recently we had an offline field trip to a local school to search. We were able to get indoors and a very high aroused dog that struggles in the class environment because we do, you know, crate them in an area or there's more people around did phenomenal in this off site area just was, you know, you know, one person and the dog, you know, me and the dog and the handler searching.

And often those are classes will have nearby dogs that might just get them aroused. And hopefully we don't have. People don't have classes with dogs and the handler standing out and watching the dog. If the dogs are all social and fine and can work with that, that's fine. But a lot of times people can't go to those type of classes because there's just too much pressure. Not even the dog reactivity or anything like that.

But I remember one time my moxie, who I think my best nose work dog, honestly, and she's the one that has the noise sensitivities. I was at a seminar and I kept her in an unproductive area for too long because I know she'll cast out and move out and she wasn't going to this other area. It didn't even realize to me that it was the literal. Probably 20 people that were in the seminar, working teams and auditors were all cluttered, clumped in one area.

And I just didn't even see it because I don't Normally train with 20 people watching us. And she just did not like that pressure of the people. And so I had to remember that. So those things are going to be concerning or overstimulating for them. So those are things we have to work with. So we just have to apply the same approaches with these sensitive dogs to let them acclimate and pick the areas more judiciously. Judiciously, yeah. Judicially to search in.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, yeah. So how do you decide kind of when to bridge that gap? Right. How do you decide when you've got a new dog that you're working through skills that it's time to take them to some new environments. And what are you looking at when you pick that new environment for the first time? Do you go like from one room of your home to another room of your home? Do you take it like outside? Like how do you, how do you think through that?

Julie Symons: Absolutely. I, you know, I think, you know, we started one room and then it's funny because by the time I get to the lecture that says, okay, now use another room in your house. Everybody's already done that already, you know, or they've even like done full house searches, you know, so, and that's all fine.

Sometimes I think people jump a little bit ahead. They definitely going to, you know, you're going to work in other places in your house, like the garage or the backyard. I've had some people say that their dog is not allowed in like a certain room, you know, upstairs. And they did it when, you know, so and so wasn't home that doesn't want dogs up there. So they would.

So the dogs did have like novel areas actually inside their house. The front yard can be very hard for dogs. A lot of more, you know, dogs are going to be protective of their house, the property. And I find that dogs will actually do better away from home if you're going to be working outside in a familiar, low distracting place versus in your front yard. So I also recommend like going to a family member's house if your dog, you know, frequently goes to your mom's or your, your brother's house or even a familiar training building or places that you could work.

And you always want to go back a few steps, you know, work on the skills they already know. Don't start something new, you know, in a new environment. And you know, we always want to focus on creating these positive, you know, low pressure experiences, gradually introducing the new challenges and celebrating the small victories. So dog feels secure and capable. Just like you would do any training, any training that you're going to take, you know, your weave poles out on the road or your obedience, you know, heeling out on the road, the same things apply.

I'll do things like in a new environment like that, I'll do like a ten toss with odor in it because that will stimulate the dog's like prey drive. And that's a great, great one to start. Start with. I start that a lot earlier now in the yard. I get dogs out on grass earlier. And you can do that at a park and have a long line and the dog is visually seeing it, so there's a visual component to it and that's fun for them.

I'll use airflow to boost the odor, you know, outside you could hopefully have some wind. If not, you could bring, bring a fan and then even like simple container searches that are so contextual to the dogs. And I like to use these switch boxes These metal electrical switch boxes, because they're heavy, they're not going to be, you know, the dogs are going to have antics with them. There's an opening that the dog likes to put their nose in.

They do. Dogs love to stick their nose and stuff and the odor is very accessible and that's an easy way to do that. And actually my current 120 class that's wrapping up, that's a lot of what people are doing off site right now. They're just bringing their six electrical boxes and setting it up in a parking lot, in a very quiet parking lot. And because that's going to give the dog an error free experience, you know, also start routines.

Having a dog understand, like with the cones out and your routine from the car to the search area, you know, I'm taking a controlled unleashed class right now with Brona for agility specifically. But you know, again, the same things applies. I'm really enjoying that class because I never really did unleash stuff. I mean, I've read about it, I've played around with it. But you know, there's all that stuff from you know, crate to ring or card, whatever, to building and, and that's just all the stuff that you want to, you know, have your dog understand.

They love predictability. So dogs love predictability. And these are these kind of games, these pattern games, these routines, these start routines are all going to help these sensitive dogs.

Melissa Breau: So you talked a whole bunch kind of there about choosing a new location. Do you want to go back and just talk a little bit about how we know kind of when the dog is ready for that additional challenge?

Julie Symons: I definitely will start them, you know, a little early so that you don't have them get too comfortable working in one place at one time. So that's why I'm talking about you. Just so take that, take an earlier show that they know and start that early. How would you know they're ready is, you know, you have to test them. You know, you have to pick a time to test their ability.

And like I said, I like to try to get them, you know, within the first month or six week course. Right. We're trying to get to some novel areas. You know, you could definitely stay indoors for a while. For dogs that are super distracted outside or if there's reactivity, you need to be in places with no dogs and things like that. But I think what dogs learn first, they learn best and we need to always progress their skills.

If you, if you stay in like a comfort area, then it's just harder to progress and know that your dog's capable of stuff. So I guess it's more of a timetable for me. Of course you have to look at the dog in front of you, but it's more of those things where I do push some of those advanced skills a little earlier, like getting outside, getting to new places.

But I think you have to go when you have some other processes in place, you know that you can. That you. That you could help your dog if there's, if there's a problem, you know, that you. Yeah, that you have to be able to know what to do. Because I think a lot of times what happens is we get paralyzed. We don't know what to do. We don't know what to do if a dog shows up or people show up.

So you have. So to me, it's more like not as a dog ready, but are you as a team ready to handle situations? And I think you have to test it. And I say that would be within, you know, the first six weeks of learning.

Melissa Breau: For dogs that really struggle with new and novel locations, are there, you know, approaches or options or techniques or what have you that kind of help build that resilience into the nose work dog? Can you talk us through kind of how you approach that work?

Julie Symons: And it takes some planning. You know, we need to first let them acclimate and do some non nose work behaviors first. Just like with any training, we might have a ready to work protocol or even able to work protocol. Right. Can your dog respond to simple known cues? Hand touches, sit, spin, will they take food, will they take a toy, Whatever they're most likely to want.

All the great training approaches that we know and learn about, generalizing and acclimating and being aware of our dog's emotional state with a start button or ready to work step protocols, they all apply to Noser too. That's what you find with teams that come in that already have that knowledge or have worked through it before with another sport or have just even done other sports, kind of come a little bit more prepared for that type of situation.

Because when it comes down to it, to help these dogs, we want to provide clear and consistent expectations. It's important for our dogs to understand what's required without adding stress and giving them the autonomy to work through tasks at their own pace. That will foster their confidence and reduce any pressure they may feel. You know, things that can affect the dog negatively is over handling. You know, I see that a lot.

That adds pressure, nagging the dog to work constantly trying to get them to work by pointing and leading them. All that's going to do is, you know, shut them down and they're going to disengage. You know, it's never our proximity ourselves that I think cause that pressure. It's our. With the pressure to work. Right. And I think it's more about putting pressure on them to work when they can't.

So we have to be able to see that they're not able to cope. They are way over threshold of what's going to trigger them or too concerned. Then we need to abort. And that's some of the stuff that I'll talk about in my new class is embracing aborting a search, letting the dog opt out and things like that. But we rush the dogs. We want them to find all the hides, and it just affects their ability to learn.

And so that's. So it's what we do as a handler, which is so important to support our dogs and to not put them in situations where they're going to want to, you know, they're gonna opt out. I'm not saying we're gonna put them in. We can't avoid ever putting them in a position where they might need to opt out. And that's why we have to test that. And sometimes we just don't know what's going to cause them to be worried.

You know, we just, you know, we wish we could talk to them, you know, so we always are having to observe that. But that's how I would. So the initial. Initial of what I would, you know, what can cause a dog to be concerned and how we can build the resilience. I know we're throwing around kind of the word resilience, but can you just take a moment and kind of explain what a really resilient dog does look like in nosework?

Kind of. What's our end goal here? Yeah, when I use these words that are just like a regular word in our English language, I look it up in the dictionary, you know, because it's a great word to use, like endurance or whatever. And, you know, resilience means the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties, the ability to adapt and recover from. From life experiences and the ability to bounce back from challenges.

I like the kind of just saying that defin out there, but it's having a dog that has a strong emotional response to the. To the start routine that they know we're doing nose work and they're pulling us into the search area, being able to regulate their emotions, knowing what's a Threat and what's not a threat? Being able to focus on what they can control. Right. You know, there's going to be always something that our dog is like, I can't control that.

I can't handle it. But most things they can go, yeah, I can handle that. Having strong problem skills and being able to respond to the challenges and then having a partnership with us to know that we will support them. I think that's a huge thing, too, especially for sensitive dogs. They need to know we have their back. We're not going to push them. We're going to let them opt out of any situation that they can't handle.

We can help them thrive in these environments by having a plan and being prepared when things don't go as expected, are there. I know we talked quite a bit about kind of different environmental challenges that they might face, but are there specific pieces in there that you intentionally kind of look for and make sure you've incorporated into your training plan before you get to the point where your dog is trialing to ensure that your dog's going to be able to be confident in a trial?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, we have to definitely understand the balance between the support and pressure, because that's so important for effective training. Because there's always going to be a little bit of pressure. Right. I mean, especially for us when we compete, too. So, of course, a little distracting at first. We need to keep the dog on the threshold of any triggers that may happen. Be ready to abort, start over.

A lot of times we just start over. The dogs aren't focused, they're distracted. Let's take a break. Maybe you take them on a little short walk. Something that I do, and I fought it for a while. This is one of the things that I've changed, you know, I might be due to another blog on things that I don't do anymore. Because I think that's so interesting. Right.

Because I think we all are like, no, I had a really good idea. I don't want to admit that idea wasn't good anymore. But is letting the dog acclimate in your search area first, not doing nosework, letting them walk around, hopefully they don't pee or anything. Let them acclimate in the search area first until they're bored. Denise Fenzi, I still remember her videos, her videos in her class on forget the name of the class.

But she would just sit there and tell the dogs were finally so bored that they would go engage. Right. Engagement. I think it was an engagement class. Engagement class. Yeah. So you kind of wait, get your dog so bored with this area that they're ready to do something and then you put them away, you set a hide and you come out there and you do the search. And that's been a process I've used with some teams.

People and dogs just show up. So you're going to have to realize to abort. And I'm really liking that more and more. But I also do that with sensitive or distracted, not on task. If they're not on task because they're more interested in critters or whatever, then I'm more willing to have a consequence for the dog. I stop the search. I'm not going to chain in these behaviors of just sniffing the carpet trying to get the critter or just looking around.

But you have to be really aware of if that's displacement and concern versus just a dog who's, you know, fine in the environment. They just would rather go do something else. So. But I'm finding that. But in any case though, you just have. You might have to be. You should be neutral in either case. But I find even dogs that are maybe displacing behavior if you just say, oh, sorry, we're done, we're going to take a little break and then you start them again.

They are like on fire, you know, so it really works in both cases. So I'll often go to like on Sundays. I usually, when I'm really taking a new dog, I'll go out on Sundays when stores are closed, you know, work in some storefronts or just, you know, some areas that there's not going to be people. And then once you're getting ready to try all, you of course have to expand your areas to different types of locations.

The trouble is we just can't always control public areas and it's tricky to find the right places. So never go to pet stores. That's a big no. No. I've used a lot of like our. We have farm stores like Country Max and Tractor Supply. And even in the outside areas, you know, those are a little bit more secluded. You can work outside on their like parts for sale and.

Or a quiet time in the store to go in there because they allow dogs in there. And I actually did one of my controlled unleash homework in there a couple weeks ago and. But you know, some of the Home Depot stores, you know, I always check with them, let them know I'm bringing a dog in and those are some good places. But they're going to be scary if your dog is afraid of noise and flooring and stuff.

But sometimes I just go in there to like, walk them around. But that's, you know, that's the whole, like prior to, you know, getting ready for a nose or trial, you've already taken them into places without doing nosework. Right. When I got the puppy, where did she go? To me, she went to my Home Depot trips and stuff. Right. So you have to pick the locations based on your dog's ability to handle.

But you're going to have to test that, right? And you have to test it smartly. You have to have. Have be willing to let it go and walk away and go home, you know, and it's not going to work that day. I remember one team, and it was. It had probably been almost 10 years ago or nine years ago, they were on a trip and they would stop at rest stops along the way and they would just pop out on the rest stop and they just do this.

It's your choice game that we do. You put the odor in one hand, flew in the other game, and that's all they did. I mean, maybe they did more, but that's what they showed. It was like, you don't have time. You're just dropping off to go to the bathroom or whatever. But I'm going to get my dog out. And you're conditioning your dog to odor. You're making a good emotional response to the game and they're working in a very busy place.

But all you're doing is this very simple game that you start in the first few weeks of nose or so that's stuff like that that is great to be doing along the way. So, yeah, but you do have to gradually get into these spaces, but you just have to do it with some intelligence. And I would never say don't acclimate first. Yeah, you say no, no, no. You have to have them test another location.

But there's nothing wrong with letting a dog walk around an area first. And then at Vindid, you're going to have to test that where they don't always get to acclimate. And I think that naturally occurs with classes and stuff like that. Sometimes that naturally does occur where you might go to matches and things like that. So you are offering a class on all this stuff. Rise above resilience in scent work environments.

In the April term, do you want to talk a little more about what the class will be focused on and who might want to join you? Excited about this class, but it's also a difficult topic to cover because building you know, confidence and motivation and resilience is, it's not always easy. You know, even for some dogs who have a high food value, they don't always have the motivation to find the thing to earn the reward.

And I've thought about this a lot. You know, I'm like, I've taught, you know, thousands of teens. I just kind of count that out. It definitely is thousands versus hundreds. And we follow, you know, we follow the same steps and we follow the same approaches and the dogs are able, are enjoying this. You know, they love to sniff, they're getting treats. We can, we have motivators on us, reinforcement on us for them.

Melissa Breau: So why do some dogs seem less motivated even though they clearly value their reward?

Julie Syons: Right. So, you know, of course it comes down to like genetics, you know, breed predisposition and environmental factors that have shaped their behavior over their months and years in the world. So what I've been doing is I've been looking into the role of dopamine, which is a lot of people are talking about now, which plays a key role in voluntary movement, memory and reward seeking behaviors.

It's so interesting about that because something that I read, there's so much on there, it's such a simple Google search. But they actually said that this dopamine actually transfers value to an activity, transfers a value of the reward to the activity. And that's exactly what I've been like, why do some dogs not transfer that? So I was. So I'm going to cover that. I'm also going to cover building stronger cognitive development problem solving skills.

I was thinking how my dog understands concepts and a lot of other dogs do, right? But I think about how I've trained my dogs and other dogs I've worked with that are more resilient. Perhaps we have reward procedures that they understand, you know, reward specific markers. They know how to wait their turn. I've taught calmness, you know, the mat behavior. They have impulse control, they have duration skills.

And a lot of these were learned through some shaping stuff, right? So that's their critical thinking and problem solving. They understand cause and effect, they understand the cause and effect of offering behaviors and they can problem solve. And as teammates, we need to establish a process to handle situations and help them cope, like pattern games and redirection and things to that they understand before something happens. I'm doing something kind of exciting and a little bit in preparation for this class, I've set up some.

We did a first workshop and I had some friends help me on these movement puzzles and doing so I took these, some nose where dogs were doing some movement puzzles, which is using patterns, predictable patterns and some shaping stuff. And you know, a lot of these people have never shaped their dog to do a front foot target, you know, which all of us would do if we're teaching, you know, just any other sport.

Right. Or you know, going through a tunnel if they never did agility or things like that. And it was really well received. We're doing a follow up, I think before or during the beginning of the class. So that's, that's giving me more information, working with some other dogs on that. So I'm pretty excited about that. But that's some of the stuff that I'm going to be covering. And my goal is that those are dogs who might be their only sport.

And I think that that's usually what I see. It's a dog that doesn't do any other sports. And so they aren't cross trained in some of these other learning opportunities. So they don't have these concepts, they don't have these training concepts. And that's the thing, actually, I didn't honestly, I just know that my dogs understand concepts and there's a thing called concept training and they don't actually have the ability to respond and recover and they don't have the established communication structures that we might have with someone who's training.

I want them to know that they can opt out of training and that's just something that it's more the handler having to respect that and accept that and they'll learn that. We all learn that, right, that if the dog can opt out, they're more likely to opt in. That's kind of a cool way to think of that. And just having the communication due to the routines that we develop and nurture from start line and things like that are just things that I think not all, you know, teams have a history with.

And so that's, I want to bring like, I'm like, you know, a day in the life of Julie or a year in the life of Julie training a new dog, you know, like, of course, you know, my dogs I know are more predisposed for this sport hunting. You know, I pick dogs from parents that have, you know, tested ability and performance. So. But I just am excited about exposing some of these teams and seeing if this really can happen.

I know I always share the story. Back when Dracula, my Malinois, was young, I went to a Kamal Fernandez seminar and I didn't really realize at the time all the importance of it, but we determined I was struggling that I had trained Dracula and helplessness. He really couldn't problem solve that something was or wasn't a threat. And most things are not a threat. Things weren't a threat to him.

And Kamal gave me some things to do and it was mainly just shaping, teaching him to put feet in a box, four feet on two different platforms. And I really worked hard on that and I sent him my little homework and he was really impressed and I really worked on that and I realized that was just helping him out. Whenever he was struggling, I would throw a cookie and helping him out.

And then a year later I saw him and some other people there at the seminar and they were like he was a completely different dog. He never took his eyes off of me. He was able to work with four of the dogs on the floor. And I just kind of realized more recently that that is what made him improve and progress and build stronger, real resilience. I didn't even put that word to it back then, so that was kind of exciting about that.

But I think I was in that newer stage of throwing cookies all the time, learning all these new ways of training and I just didn't even realize I wasn't letting the dog figure stuff out. So that's what I'm hoping to see. That you know, not just looking at a dopamine effect or you know, just aborting searches, but just. So the class that's kind of excited about. I'm still working on the syllabus.

I do have the description up, but I'm going to. We're not going to do like every week is like maybe one nose work thing but you know, two non nose work things or something like that. Right. About working on tasks to build their problem solving ability, you know, and things like that that they could transfer to nose work. It's just this to give them those, those skills and those coping mechanisms.

I'm pretty excited about it. I'm going to be very busy this month getting all that ready. And so I was thinking about. A lot of people have noticed, you know, ask me about the class and I, I really. It's an, it's a very specific audience, I think. I think people can audit it and they'd get a lot out of it if they didn't have definitely a sensitive dog.

But we all have dogs who are distracted by something in the environment. Right. So that's pretty a common thing that we're going to work on across the board. But this class would be really good for teams who struggle during A search, like if the dog just keeps shifting focus to the handler. I get that a lot. The dog just keeps checking in with the handler. Now, that's probably in turn to some handling issues that we're going to talk about too.

Handling can be a big part of. Like I said earlier about we're putting pressure on our dogs. We're helping them. We're helping them too much. Dogs who are appeasing their handler, they're jumping on them and fawning on them. That's the dog who's not comfortable. Dogs that are reluctant to enter spaces, you know, a dog who's maybe searching, fine, but I'm not going down that dark hallway. Dogs who freeze, obviously, is a very, you know, dogs who maybe just freeze or disengage from tasks and then displacement behaviors, you know, the scratching, the grooming, the barking.

I've had dogs that do all that and still search really, really well. So, you know, some of those behaviors could just have been chained in from past history and not necessarily affecting, you know, your nose work experience and trialing. But those are some of the things that you can see. I. Somebody said fake sneezing. I'm not sure if I've seen that as much, but somebody mentioned fake sneezing.

And then you also have dogs who just false, like completely out of nowhere are just falsing because they're either unclear their task, but most likely they just want to get out of there because they've learned, oh, if I just do what they want, they must want me to do this, so I'm just going to false. And then they'll get cookies and then they'll get the hell out of there.

And so that's, you know, it's truly meant for teams that are struggling in novel locations. But I know that, you know, the larger audience would benefit from the material, you know, in an auditing or silver capacity.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Any final thoughts or maybe key points you kind of want to leave folks with?

Julie Symons: Yeah, you do get that experience and this practice and this, you know, adding more resilience. And we try to do all the right things.

Right. It's so rewarding to see these dogs or your own dog thrive in a novel location. There's this one team who lacks some confidence in class, but if we go to a novel place, the dog is so excited, he does much better. Like in a novel place.

Melissa Breau: Interesting.

Julie Symons: Yeah. And it's also when a new dog joins the class, like somebody's subbing in. The dog is like, he is like.

We noticed this kind of more recently like he gets like really kind of a little over aroused barking and stuff. But then he actually searches with a little bit more intensity. But they, they, but it just, he just really, he likes the exploring new areas. You know, I definitely see dogs who like get a little bored with doing the same thing. So I think that's an example of that.

Another team has been learning from so many other experts on their dog's reactivity. They've helped me a lot to learn and they have had so many positives in their recent trials that they're just, they're just thrilled, right? They're just, they're on, they know they're on the right path. They're just so excited about. But they've done, I mean all the work, you know, they've done the work with other instructors and a little bit with me and then another student that is probably the poster child, poster dog for this cause.

You know, a dog who's really reactive. None of their litter mates, you know, survived this life. But this handler is excellent and did nose work and it increased the quality of the dog's life. I would have never known it was as reactive as, as she says because you know, I'm not seeing all that part of its life. But when it's doing nose work, it was so happy and it enriched his life so fully and he's still doing well.

And she didn't trial a whole lot, but she did. His life was so enriched and that improved his well being. And it's just such a, such a great story there. And just one, that one of the, one of the most talented dogs I know. Even though, even though you don't have the trial, you know, credentials on that, but you just see how powerful nose work and using the dog's nose and giving them autonomy and it just, you know, there's so much research about the therapeutical, therapeutic benefits of nose work.

But it's, it's a, we know if we can and sometimes some of these dogs might not be able to trial. You know, I'm going to say that right now, like some dogs may just, just get the enrichment more out of it, which is, gosh, you know, wouldn't we all love that regardless, right? They don't need a trial. And then when we have online programs, we are at Fenzi and, and there's so many avenues and some dogs who thought they would never trial are trialing, you know, so that's just the, you know, potential, you know, result of all of this.

And two more things, something that when I, when this class came about from a webinar we did for the Nosework conference and we were thinking about topics and somebody mentioned sensitivity and it still gave me like great heartache, heartburn or whatever to like, it's tough topic. It's such a tough topic because I'm not trying to work on the severe cases, but my TA for the course. Sarah Rider reframed the view on sensitive dogs in that it's not a limitation.

Don't think of sensitivity as a limitation. We should view our dog sensitivity as an asset. It highlights the need for thoughtful training and creates opportunities to strengthen our partnership with them through these trust building exercises. And I just loved her reframing of it, right? That we should, we should embrace it, we should value it. They just need more thoughtful training. And I think we, that's the opposite of us just trying to maybe push too fast with something.

And I know many teams feel frustration and I get it, we get it, right? They do feel really frustrated. But it is truly train the dog in front of us and it is making us all a better, all better trainers, you know, to come up with solutions and improvements to, you know, make them feel better. So, and then, and then there was no way that I could ever cover this topic without my students learning from them, learning from their handlers that do exceptional work with them because they're the ones living with them every day and colleagues of mine, you know, that I work with and learn from.

Like I said earlier, besides some light onset sensitivity with one of my dogs and some floor issues with another, my dogs do, are predisposed to, you know, do well in this type of a sport. So I'm continuing to learn and help and I want to help my students and to equip them with better tools and processes for building resilience. And this is why I'm like, I do these weekly classes.

Those are classes. But there's more I could be doing. There's more I could be doing. Always, always. And I'm just like, you know what? They don't need me to set heights for them today. They need me to. We all need to. Let's have them problem solve something different, something new. Let's build resilience in other ways that will then transfer to nosework.

Melissa Breau: I like it. Julie, good stuff. Good, good.

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast 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 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.

 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!