Sniffing Around Scent Work

Yeti would like a word with you…he’s heard you talking about the searches

Sept. 11, 2023

Without a doubt, the most difficult part of competing in scentwork/nosework is not imprinting the dog on essential oils, and it’s not training the indication. It’s not learning to read your dog or trusting your dog or even learning about how odor moves. It is NOT TALKING ABOUT THE SEARCH after you have run.

We spend a lot of time training and planning and taking classes and thinking about the competitions. A lot of energy and adrenaline goes into that short time that we are in the search area. It is a mini-adventure and mystery drama, all packed into few minutes.

And when we come out of the search, all we want to do is talk about it. We need to brag or complain or grieve our losses. We are positively bursting with the need to debrief. We want to go over every second. We need to share the experience.  And yet ….we all know the strict rules about not talking about the searches. We have been admonished by the judges, we have been warned by our instructors. And we would never want to cheat by giving someone else the answers to where the hides are. No, we have more integrity than that.

BUT!!!….just saying one or two vague things….that wouldn’t tell our friends anything about the hide itself, so that wouldn’t be wrong.

Ah, grasshopper. You are so, so mistaken!

The ethics around competitors not discussing the searches until the class is over is not entirely about cheating.

I mean, obviously, if you talk about where the hide is to your friend who is also running the class, or you post your video on social media, you have given away the answers to the test, and THAT is undeniably wrong and not fair to anyone (and from my point of view, WHY? This is not the Olympics. No one is winning a gold medal or a million dollars in these competitions. This is a game we are playing for fun, and some bragging rights.)

It is about suggestibility and human nature.

The fact is, anything you say about the search you have just run has the probability of ruining the search for someone else. Any little thing you say is going to be misinterpreted and misconstrued by the other person, and anyone else who might overhear.

Once upon a time, I was a beginner nosework junkie, and so were my friends. And we all thought such comments were harmless. After all, we weren’t cheating. We were just chatting.

Until I lost some Qs because I got something stuck in my head because of something someone said to me before I went into the search.

Here is an example:

“Wow, we got the q, but it was close. He spent a long time bracketing up and down this area.”

Now my friend didn’t mean any harm by this statement. But when I went into the search area, there was an exterior wall with a big water faucet sticking out about three feet up. When my dog showed some interest along the wall, I immediately thought of the bracketing comment (for those of you know don’t know: bracketing is when the dog moves back and forth between the edges of the scent cone, and often occurs along a wall, and I couldn’t get it out of my head that there was a hide there. When my dog tried to leave the area, I kept bringing him back to it, until I forced him to false on it. We lost the Q because my friend had talked about the search.

A friend of mine once happened to overhear someone saying “We didn’t get the second hide” as they were coming out of a Master’s level search area (in Master’s, you don’t know how many hides there are). She couldn’t unhear that statement, and even when her dog CLEARLY told her there was only one hide in the search area, she had her keep searching. She lost the Q, because she had overheard somebody talking about the search.

Even something as innocuous as “wow, we really struggled with that” or “wow, she found everything super fast!” or “boy, you should have seen that head snap!” will put thoughts into people’s heads that will affect the search. You will either assume that it is a really hard search (and therefore not believe your dog when he/she finds hides quickly) or that the hides are close to the start line or in some very obvious place…like maybe that chair that is just standing alone in the middle of the room.

And just about EVERYTHING we assume has the potential to sabotage the search. As humans, even under the best of circumstances, we just have a lot of trouble trusting our dog. And under the pressure of a trial…..well, it becomes exponentially more difficult. After all, the ribbon means a lot more to us than it does to them.

I am sure that I have made my fair share of damaging comments after searches. Like I said, in the early days of trialing, I didn’t realize how dangerous these were. But even after I realized how dangerous post search blurting is, and I stopped talking,  I still got stuck in the middle of these conversations because I didn’t know how to stop them. Someone would come out of a search, and before I knew it, that person had charged over to me and was talking a mile a minute about to me about what had just happened. I had no polite way of stopping them. And I didn’t want to be rude, so I would just stand there, stuck, until I could find an excuse to leave.  

And then I realized that in self-defense I sometimes had no choice….so I have developed some coping skills:

1. I try not to linger anywhere around the exit of a search area. Sometimes if you are innocently standing in the right spot, even people you don’t know very well will come out of a search and start talking to you, or someone next to you. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, because you are “on deck” waiting your turn, but if you can avoid it, please do.

2. If someone does start talking, I get a little rude. I hold up my hand and interrupt them immediately (don’t wait for a pause) and say “sorry but I haven’t run that search yet” or “please no talking about it till the class is over!” After losing a few classes because of “loose lips,” I have pretty much decided that I would rather be rude than lose my entry fee.

3. I recently bought some wireless noise-cancelling headphones, and these really work miracles! Not only do they get me soothing music to help me with my pre-run nerves, but they also signal to people that you are NOT available for conversation.

4. After I leave a particularly exciting search, I sometimes go to my car and make some notes in a notebook. This helps me to debrief without damaging anyone else’s experience. Also, if you have a pillow handy, you can do some discreet screaming into it, if you feel the need to vent some frustration….um, not that I have ever done that.

So, fellow sniffing sports enthusiasts, I urge you, I beg you, I cajole you to develop some self discipline and post-search coping skills and keep quiet after your search. After all, “loose lips sink ships.”

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