HO VARD BARG Syndrome, And The Curious Case Of The Waterloo Windmill

Driving south on 41/Skokie Valley Road through Highland Park, Illinois, the cars ahead of me stop & go, like a line of dogs upchucking uncertainly in unison. During one of the lengthier stops, my truck idles just before a stone block sign at the entrance to a landscaping business. The large red letters on the sign read: HO VARD BARG. No more than 30 seconds into the future I will be moving along 41 again, picking up speed, the sign disappearing from my direct vision and reappearing in my rear view mirror, leaving me with a slowly shrinking red-lettered lesson. For now, I’m fully stopped, fully engrossed in the secret meaning of HO VARD BARG. I conjure up a trio of perfectly matched, industrious souls who combine talents to run the best damn landscaping business in Chicagoland. What must it be like for Mr/Ms Ho to work with the likes of the obviously Norwegian Vard and the very likely German Barg?! What an interesting partnership, indeed!

Driving away from the sign, my mind drifts to scent work and the puzzles we struggle with the most – the ones that envelope us in a mix of surprise and inevitability. One of my favorite instances of this comes from an early NW1 trial in the midwest – Missouri – with Ron Gaunt as the CO. Ron set two searches that were both surprising and inevitable.

The exterior search was in a field with tractors and farm implements – and a lot of open space. A German Shepherd named Mercy ran this search and spent the 3 minute time limit repeatedly dragging her handler to a dried up ear of corn in its husk, picking up the ear and carrying it to her handler. The handler spent most of her time telling the dog to “drop it”, and then, to “find it”. As time was called, the handler, having taken her dog as far away from the ear of corn as she could, was surprised to learn the corn husk was the hide, and surprised she didn’t see the inevitable.

The interior search Ron chose included an open trash can full of trash – I think in a break room/staff lounge. This same German Shepherd spent her search time working toward, around and into the trash can. The handler, perplexed by her dog’s interest in the trash, nevertheless felt compelled to call alert. To her great surprise – and relief – she heard the judge declare “Yes!” Later, she would reflect on how the trash can as source was the obvious choice all along.

Searches like Ron set were not the conjuring of a sorcerer of scent. He knew that if you simply arranged searches that allowed for the possibility of communication that was a) missing the dog’s expected indication; and b) missing the handler’s expected hide location, then you’d have an opportunity for surprise and inevitability. Place a hide on one of the bendy, leafy green shoots of a weed growing against a building wall next to a vent and you’ll observe a dog excitably nosing throughout the weed, unable to come to a clear indication, but clearly excited about the source potential of this weed. You’ll also observer a handler, certain that the dog is just stuck in the weeds, impatiently waiting for the dog to track odor back to the only logical hide location, the wall vent. Why can’t the handler accept the surprise and see the inevitable conclusion?! It’s the HO VARD BARG syndrome.

As I drove down Skokie Valley Road, away from the landscaping business, the south-facing side of the sign appeared in my rearview mirror, and its red letters read: HOWARD BARG.

When I first approached the sign, I was surprised by what I saw as three names, so I made up stories to explain what didn’t make sense. When I found out that I was just a “V” away from a pretty common first name, I could not believe how I’d seen the sign as anything but the inevitable HOWARD BARG. And so it is with our scent work handler. Instead of staying with the dog’s behavior and letting the dog lead her to the source, the handler is busy making up stories to explain the dog’s behavior. And when the dog won’t give up working the weeds, or fetching the corn husk, maybe the handler sheepishly calls alert, surprised and relieved that the dog was right… or maybe the handler runs out of time or forces a call somewhere else, only to look back on the search wondering why she couldn’t see the obvious. You can’t see what you aren’t open to seeing.

Testing For HO VARD BARG

You and your friends can test each other for HO VARD BARG syndrome (a positive test requires a minimum 5 day quarantine from scent work searches – I’m kidding). The test works best as a blind search. You can use some of the ideas below or concoct your own mix of surprise & inevitability:

• Define a search area, then place the only hide in the area on an item that belongs to you like a water bottle, or an umbrella, or a purse or bag, and set the item just inside the search area near the start – like you absentmindedly left a personal item next to you. Most handlers will be in disbelief of the communication their dogs are giving on the personal item. Yet, the dog will likely give no other clear communication anywhere else – unless the handler forces the dog to repeatedly leave the item and communicate elsewhere.

• Place a hide in shrubbery. Specifically, thread a tube hide onto a thin branch or stem of shrubbery, weeds, grasses, etc. Most handlers are highly mistrusting of their dogs’ interest in shrubbery…

• Place two hides within two feet of each other – one at ground, one directly above. Give the handler a large search area outline. Almost all handlers will misread the dog’s return to the second hide as just lazy treat mongering at a found hide.

• Choose a high (4-6ft) hide placement near a fence line or enclosure where the prevailing wind blows the odor to where the dog cannot physically go. This will produce lots of behavior from the dog, but generally no “indication”, which makes most handlers very uncomfortable. If you ask a non-nose work passerby what they think is going on, the person will most certainly tell you the dog appears to be finding something in the area where all the behavior is happening. Sometimes, a dog just wants agreement from a handler that an important area cannot be accessed and searched – agreement that the presence of odor from source is what makes the out-of-bounds area important! If the handler isn’t thinking about that, the dog will persist in that communication need.

• If you’re outside, working out of your cars, define a search area very broadly as “over that way” while standing at the handlers vehicle. Sneakily place a hide at the front of the handler’s vehicle as you go to place other hides. Many handlers will not be open to the surprise of the dog wanting to work his own vehicle – and many handlers will make a story in their heads as to what “over there” means.

• Indoors you can place a hide under a floor mat and most handlers will end up standing on it while they watch the dog work the odor that creeps away towards the nearest walls or objects.

• Submerging hides or burying hides out of context (natural-like, not a “buried” container search) – find a plant with a cupped leaf filled with water and submerge a hide; bury a hide in the sand at a playground; cover a hide with a 5-gallon bucket; cover a hide behind a wall poster. These hides all work to create surprise and inevitability. The dog’s description of the scent picture is incompatible with the handler’s expectations of how the dog typically works.

Treatment of HO VARD BARG

HO VARD BARG Syndrome responds well to oxy-patience, and presence-a-quil, with a dose of over-the-counter acceptance. Patience, presence and acceptance result in a healthy relationship with surprise. With time and practice, a handler can learn to read what’s going on around her in the moment (my dog searched her way over to this corn husk), relax into surprise (oh, she’s picking up the husk), and accept the inevitable (my searching dog took me to this corn husk and is telling me it’s important; I should call alert).

As a handler, try not to ask too many questions of the humans around you. Get your answers from your dog! The very best way to get comfortable with reading your dog is to practice reading your dog. Do this with blind searches. If you truly rely on reading your dog to know the location of the hide, you will get better at it quickly.

Don’t forget that balance is key. You don’t need to have a HO VARD BARG moment every time you search. A natural rhythm of searching will include some very obvious, simple communications from your dog, with that lovely indication you so hope for; some less obvious, even ambiguous communication that brings more possibilities than certainties; and, some very obvious, simple communications from your dog that you will only see clearly if you’re not too busy telling stories about your dog’s behaviors – if you’re patient, present, and at peace with surprise.

The Curious Case of the Waterloo Windmill

During a recent trip to the Finger Lakes region our family stayed in Seneca Falls, NY. One of our routes out to the lakes took us through the town of Waterloo. Known as the birthplace of Memorial Day (at least that’s how the town recalls it), and sharing the name of a village in Belgium synonymous with Napoleon’s greatest military failure, Waterloo is a shrine to sacrifice, defeat, hope and endurance. It’s also a modern US town with a coin laundry, a Dunkin’ Donuts, and a charming diner that serves New York style cheesecake Belgian waffles. We all see what we want to see.

What we saw in Waterloo was a dutch windmill. Blue & white, with a raised deck attached to the front. The first time we drove by the windmill we all focused on the windmill itself, and its odd placement in the parking lot of a small strip mall – the mall with the Dunkin’ Donuts. The second time we passed this windmill we noticed a sign on the deck railing no bigger than a street sign. The message was cryptic. It read: “STOP DUMPING ON OUR FAMILY”.

Maybe some people just drive through towns and focus on the cars ahead of them, focus on their GPS navigation, focus on their own lives and their own problems. Maybe some people even glance at cryptic signs and just move on. We are not those people. This windmill and it’s public, private message became our drive-time obsession.

“Stop dumping on our family”. Is this a literal dumping or a “dumping” of slanderous gossip garbage from one family’s mouths onto another family’s reputation? Is the family being dumped on also low on resources, and couldn’t spring for a bigger sign? Why hang the sign from a windmill? Is there a feud between Dutch and Italian families (think Tony Soprano and the waste management business) going back to the founding of the village?

Each time we drive through town, we look for more signs like the one on the windmill, but all we accomplish is a local’s knowledge of emergency snow routes and street sweeping schedules. Beyond more signs, we aren’t sure what to look for, so we try to notice everything. The fire department owned Firehouse Subs food truck. The old house turned law office. The brand new touch-less car wash. The mail carrier with the knee-high socks and the plastic safari hat. We see everything and nothing. One little sign festering on the face of the town like a barely noticeable about to burst boil – it doesn’t make sense.

Days into our unofficial investigation we take a new route into town. Winding along on River Road, we’re still technically in Seneca Falls when we curve around a grove of trees and see big red letters on a sand colored building: Dutch Bakery. It’s the first clear connection to the windmill! The bakery is part of a grocery store, Sauder’s Store, a newer building with metal roofing and fancy log framing over the entrance. A little further down the road, the landscape changes to fields of corn and beans. The kids spot a row of houses, each with a miniature windmill displayed in the front yard. If the Sauder family has any connection to our mystery, it seems they’d have the resources to fight back against the dumpers – unless it’s a case of double-dutch family feud. Could be a Sauder family civil war. Maybe one of the group opened the Dunkin’ Donuts franchise, and the rest of the Sauder’s weren’t too sweet on the idea. It’s starting to feel like we’ll never uncover all of the layers of this Danish dumping drama.

We spend the rest of our time in the Finger Lakes being good little tourists, drinking wine, gazing at waterfalls, and indulging in pasta & ice cream. We let the trail go cold on the Waterloo windmill mystery, but we keep the details warming in our minds like a hobo casserole in a dutch oven.

The day after we get home from our trip out east, we’re entertaining friends, sharing the story of the Waterloo windmill (turns out it pairs well with a nice bottle of Gewurtztraminer from Boundary Breaks Winery on the shores of Seneca Lake). One of our friends, a bookseller, receives our story like a glass of wine, breathing in the opening notes, sipping the plot, aerating the details for twists and turns, savoring the finish. As we close with an “I guess we’ll never know…”, our friend does a quick google search and comes up with an article from earlier in the year describing the town of Waterloo fighting against a county proposal to expand a landfill outside of town. So the sign is really just saying don’t dump trash where my family lives. End of story. Or is it? I guess we’ll never know…

The Scenting Sleuth

Complex scent work searches are a lot like our Waterloo Windmill mystery: they stretch out across time and space, with twists & turns, exciting discoveries, and trails gone cold. If the searcher can communicate the important clues to an understanding friend – or handler – there might just be a revelation, and a mystery solved.

In a scent work search, the phase of searching that most excites a dog is the “locating” phase; the dog is clearly working scent linked directly to source, confidently narrowing the search, refining the approach, honing in on the source. This behavior is energetic! It’s observable even to someone who knows nothing about scent work – or dogs. The changes a dog exhibits in the “locating” phase are highly correlated to the presence of a hide.

Our family was in the locating phase from the moment we began searching for more clues to understand the “stop dumping…” sign. Our excitement peaked when we encountered the Dutch bakery and the mini windmills… Yet, we hadn’t solved our mystery – we hadn’t sourced. When we energetically communicated our findings to a friend, she clearly understood the importance of the clues we’d gathered, and together, we solved the mystery.

If your scent work dog shows behavior patterns you can link to locating a hide – especially if the behaviors are energetically communicated – it’s possible to clearly understand the importance of the odor clues your dog has gathered, and to solve the mystery together. The behaviors will point to where the odor collects, where it swirls, where it hangs in the air, where it concentrates into trails: where it’s coming from. The dog will demand your attention until you join him in mutual understanding of the location of source.

If you are not able to see your scent work dog’s locating behaviors, and any energetic communication is brief and confusing – often fizzling out and turning into handler-focused behaviors or a decision to leave the area of interest like a mourner walking away from a funeral – you need to consider a few options:

• Have a friend handle your dog and see what your friend notices in the behaviors. You might find out that your dog’s communication is clear and you’re just not learning the patterns of behavior, or you’ll find out that your dog is as enigmatic as ancient Greek is to a four year old. Either way, the more time you spend learning your dogs patterns of behavior, the more you will improve your partnership.

• Use some games and training tools to promote persistent communication in the locating phase of the search. One of my favorites is to find a room corner and place a hide in a box or paint can – paired or not – and put just one object (like a chair or big box) straight out from the corner, maybe 6ft away from the hide. Start the dog straight out from the object – note which path (left, right, over, under, through) past the object the dog takes to get to odor. On the next run, add an object or two in the path the dog chose. Repeat the search. You’ll find that as you keep running this, the dog will pick the path that optimizes for least environmentally problematic and most likely to lead to source. Sometimes, the dog will choose to momentarily abandon the most likely path to source in order to find a less problematic way through the barrier. Eventually, the dog’s choices will reveal which path is their most problematic. Maybe it’s crawling under a pile of chairs or knocking down a teetering wall of boxes. Whatever it is, you will have a chance to observe the dog in energetic locating behaviors, and non-odor behaviors that are focused on overcoming an environmental problem (the rubble pile). Some dogs will thrive just by having this exposure opportunity. Some dogs will thrive by getting some feedback or reinforcement when showing energetic locating behaviors, but not showing signs of overcoming the physical barrier of the rubble pile. For some dogs, they need to know we agree they are pursuing the right clues, and we need to offer them reasons to push that pursuit closer to source.

• You can also use the wind and a hide placement that the dog can only get within a foot or two of, but can’t physically put his nose on. Pick your placement so that the wind gives the dog a very clearly defined odor cone (wind is natural, so not always consistent – best to choose a day with steady, straight winds). When the dog works through the locating phase and into the sourcing phase, he’ll either fixate and indicate the source or he’ll show very energetic, persistent behavior in a tight bracket. Reward as usual, but don’t move the dog on – let him show you if he thinks he can do more. You’ll see the difference between a dog who is satisfied the job is done and a dog who believes more clues can be gathered and the mystery can be better solved. The latter deserves more reward for effort to refine his behavior and get closer to source. This is more helpful in the long run than repeatedly reinforcing a physical nose touch to a hide that’s already been sourced.

If you focus some of your attention on building a persistent private investigator of pertinent odor puzzle pieces, the result will be a dog who energetically follows important odor information to it’s conclusion. To it’s source. You just need to believe in your partner and trust the behavior.

Happy Sniffing!