Sniffing Around Scent Work

It’s now getting towards the hot season in Texas, and I am taking a break from trialing.

Just in time. In the last month or so, I have found myself getting very impatient with Yeti, casting a critical eye over his containers work—why doesn’t he actually WORK them? He runs around sourcing odor from five feet away…I will never be able to tell when he is “done” at the Masters level in AKC… and wondering why it takes him so long to move to source in exteriors. The critical voices are loud, and demand action. I have spent some time plotting to try and improve my search times, hatching elaborate plans to make him sniff the containers more systematically, and trying to mark his behavior on exterior hides before he starts serious sourcing, in an effort to improve his searches.

And then yesterday, I caught sight of a sticky note on my refrigerator: “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

I don’t know who said this, I don’t even remember when I wrote it down and stuck it on there, but it suddenly really struck home.

I realized that my frustration with Yeti was caused not by his incompetence in searching, but by too much trialing. Too much comparing him to older more experienced dogs. Too much wondering about placements. Why didn’t he place, or why didn’t he place higher. Too much expectation. Too much pressure. Too much wondering about what other people might be thinking. Too much wondering if I was doing the right thing in training. Too much.

I have gotten off balance, I have forgotten why I got into this sport. Recently,  I have been sucked into the race for ribbons and titles, spent too much time on Facebook looking at other people’s braggy posts.

You might think that the whole purpose of trialing is comparison. Isn’t that what placements are all about? Isn’t a first place ribbon proof that you are better than all of the other competitors?

Well yes and no.

I enjoy my placements, I revel in them, even, but I am also very aware that placements are largely a matter of luck. Unlike most other sports, where the playing field is the same for every competitor, it is next to impossible to set hides in scentwork and have the conditions be the same for all the dogs. There are just too many variables in scent work: weather changes, room temperature changes, AC or heat come on and off, creating air movement. Did the dog in front of you find that hide? Then your dog’s chances of finding it are higher. If the dog in front of you just falsed, your challenge just became harder. The list of variables  goes on and on.

I consider a qualification more important than a placement and that Q is validation of my training techniques. It tells me that I am on the right path, and I am communicating clearly with my partner.

But when I start obsessing over the placements….that is the warning signal that tells me that I have done too much trialing.

It is time to recapture the joy.

Time to go to an empty field, toss some hides out randomly, let Yeti off leash, and watch him dance with the wind, use the incredible gift of his nose to work out the locations of the source. Watch him revel in the joy of running and sniffing and running, using the power of his body to do what it was meant to do. Just watch.

Recapture the primal nature of the human-canine hunting partnership. Remember what it is to be alive and  working and communicating with a being who is not of your species. Just be.

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