Impromptu post here! A few nights ago I found myself up late in the basement with a marble rye & peanut butter snack, munching with one hand, holding two furry four-legged invaders off with two feet, and surfing the streaming services for a decent exorcism movie (pairs great with peanut butter toast – hard for a scream to escape from a mouthful of nature’s ready mix concrete) with the remaining hand. After ten minutes of previewing promising titles, I couldn’t take one more pale imitation of Poltergeist – I decided to go to the light child, and put my horror hankering on hold. The first title I came across after exiting the digital occult aisle was a documentary called “Stutz”, a film by Jonah Hill about his therapist Phil Stutz and Phil’s tools for improving your life. At 11:30 at night, I was drawn in to this mostly black & white picture, of mostly two people talking about their platonic love for each other. It possessed me like so many exorcism films have failed to do. Turns out, I’d rather be possessed by the ideas of Phil Stutz, than watch Lili Taylor be possessed by a Salem-era witch named Bathsheba. One possession moves you towards self-awareness and relationship growth, one levitates you towards your own children with a murderously oversized pair of scissors in your hand and a nasty case of scleral icterus.
There was another aspect to this film that spoke to me on a personal level: Phil has Parkinson’s Disease. My father-in law has Parkinson’s and my own dad has the after-effects of a major stroke from 2015. Watching Jonah incorporate Phil’s disease into the documentary showed one of the truths that Phil teaches his patients to accept: life is pain, uncertainty, and constant work. At times, Phil is trembling, restless, struggling to keep pencil to paper. At other times, Phil looks exhausted – he even states how hard he has to work to steady his hand when drawing, and to get in and out of chairs or his bed. As the film reveals Phil’s philosophy for personal growth, it becomes clear that Phil not only shares these ideas with his patients, but he uses them for himself.
Phil has a book titled The Tools . I have not read it yet, but I just used my own link to get the kindle version – support yourself and the blog by getting your own copy through the link. My thoughts below come from the documentary, and touch on just three concepts Phil has formed. Maybe a future post will weave the film and book together. I can promise you, the next time your dog decides to drop a deuce (that’s parlance for taking a shit) during a search, you’ll smile, laugh, and move forward!
Inside Each Pearl Is A Turd
“I am the person who puts the next pearl on the string.” – Phil Stutz, instructing us all to repeat this statement
Ok, Phil’s ideas are rooted in the truth of being human, so you might recognize these ideas in different forms from different sources, but Phil uses words and imagery that could bring these ideas into your life in a transformative way.
The pearls on the string concept is basically about real life versus what Phil calls the “realm of illusion”. Phil says that the pearl is like an event that moves you forward – it could be getting out of bed, it could be quitting your job. He highlights that the pearls themselves are all of equal value. This concept is huge. We often assign value to events that have not yet taken place! We worry over the consequence of a “high value” event. We stop moving forward. Phil points out that moving forward is crucial for growth. Keep putting pearls on your string!
Remember, we are looking at the act of putting a pearl on the string as a habit that exists without prejudging the value of the event. Phil takes the worry out of making “the best” decisions or putting “perfect pearls” on the string, by assuring you that inside each pearl there will be a turd. The event will be imperfect. Any effort to avoid this is a denial of growth. So, accept the turd with the pearl and move on!
In scent work, we have two team members – dog and handler – each with their own strings and pearls. Dogs generally have no problem making decisions and adding pearls to their strings – turds and all – and moving forward. Humans are convinced that turdless pearls are the best, and should be the only thing allowed on the string. We act flabbergasted when a turd shows up in one of our pearls. We are ashamed to have anything other than perfect pearls on our string. We want the illusory perfect experience for all our life events – especially the ones we decide should matter the most.
Phil has these great pencil drawings on notecards to accompany his concepts, and the one for pearls on the string conjures up an image that deeply connects me to the concept. If you want to reach a place where you truly accept the turds with the pearls, you need to cultivate a habit of moving forward, and accepting imperfection.
This does not mean sloppily making decisions and ignoring the outcomes of your life events. It means having intent, awareness, presence, purpose, but not expecting perfection. Your scent work life events – the turds and the pearls – have so much to offer you if you welcome every experience.
If you’ve built your scent work team in the illusory realm, stepping into the real world is an event worthy of the scariest horror film. You might think you have something to lose, but that is the illusion. Why do we build an illusory scent work team in the first place? Maybe the world of dog training is obsessed with perfection and preciousness, the subliminal message being: you must have perfect timing, the perfect treats, perfect shaping… Or else! Everything will fall apart. Scent work folks often worry if a dog’s performance in practice would get a ‘yes’ from a judge at a trial. Competitors sometimes freeze in fear at the prospect of making a decision, and *gasp* making a mistake. In the illusory world, we try to live a frozen moment in time (a High In Trial performance or a really great search in practice), and we think we’re really succeeding, but we’re putting all of our energy into avoiding reality and grasping at an illusion.
In the real world, we keep on collecting turdy pearls, knowing that growth happens by moving forward. I see this when coaching scent work teams. If we’re working on a dog’s agreement to search and his reliability to communicate the presence of odor, locate the source, and indicate the hide, we can’t expect every search to be perfect. But, we can adapt and move forward, learning from each event. If I’m working with a high performance team, the only thing left to do is to push into uncomfortable and challenging territory. We have to battle an enormous amount of bias from past performances (all the HITs and ribbons and accolades from the community), and make peace with the fact that hard things are hard (mostly applies to the handler, not the dog).
The Shadow Handler
Phil has a simple drawing to show the concept of your shadow self, it’s a part of you that you are ashamed of, angry with, embarrassed by, a part of you that you work hard to keep hidden. Phil suggests that you define your shadow self and talk to it. Ask your shadow self how he feels about the way you view him and treat him. Ask your shadow self what he wants. Once you are able to make friends with your shadow self, you can stop suffering the pain of not loving yourself, and start feeling the joy of loving others.
As a scent work handler, what is your shadow self? Are you ashamed of your inability to read your dog? Are you angry that you can’t physically keep up with your dog? Are you ashamed of the way you panic and blow it in competition searches?
I often see self-degradation in the faces of handlers after a failed search. That’s the shadow handler. When you can have a look of self-affection after a failed search, your dog will know you’re ready to spread the love.
We all have a shadow self. Especially those of us in the scent work community who coach or officiate. Often, the shadow self is that part of you that says you’re not what everyone thinks you are (or it says you are the worst of what others think you are). I notice some of my friends and colleagues have a pressure on themselves at competitions because the community can link trial performance to your worth as a coach or official. The community can also link trial outcomes to a CO or judge’s worth. People like to be part of a community, so if they have a reason to think the community will abandon them, the shadow self grows and grows. It’s helpful to be kind to each other and try not to blame others if our needs don’t get met. You might just help shine some sunlight on someone’s shadow self.
The Maze
Phil describes the maze as a place you get stuck in when you are angered by someone (or some entity) and you want justice or fairness or even revenge for what you’ve experienced. If you’ve ever failed a competition search and pointed your finger at the CO or judge as the responsible party for your suffering, you’ve entered the maze. Hopefully, you got out of the maze – you’d know if you did. Phil suggests a process called Active Love (very much like loving kindness meditation) to release you from your feelings of rage, anger, and the need to be treated fairly, releasing you from the maze.
I’d like to play with the concept of the maze a bit beyond what Phil intended. I believe many scent work handlers enter a version of the maze with their dogs. I’ve seen teams where the person becomes very frustrated with the dog’s marking behavior, or the dog’s interest in food or toys or other distractions. I’ve even seen a person become upset by their dog’s non-response to odor. I’m not saying the people are in a rage – no; I do think people get mad enough to get stuck in the maze and shift from being a partner in problem-solving with their dog to an injured plaintiff who is throwing their hands up at the mounting evidence that their dog won’t perform while they spend all this time, money and effort on him. The truth is, some dogs won’t perform. They don’t need food, toys or affection bad enough to work with an angry mazer (or they’re too scared). Truth also is, the dog’s handler doesn’t want to be trapped in the maze – nobody actually likes the maze. I’ve seen a pathway out of the maze: pass the dog to another handler. When the dog gets to experience a neutral energy, and the dog’s handler can feel like someone else has taken over the role of injured plaintiff, we can exit the maze pretty quickly. And, like a fairytale, the handler awakens from tortured state, the dog eagerly begins to trade work for rewards, and trust is restored.
In this version of the maze, it seems that what gets us into trouble is a feeling that the dog isn’t a reliable performer. This feeling snowballs as we waffle between trying to remedy the problem and trying to let the dog prove there is no problem. Pretty much every interaction we have becomes a confirmation of the problem. In the case of the dog who marks when searching, when we pass the dog to another handler, it’s not that the marking magically goes away, it’s that the surrogate handler doesn’t send signals that predict negative juju. This then makes the marking a bit easier to prevent, it also makes the reinforcing of the dog in odor a much more positive event. This can be witnessed with person to person interactions, too. Just put a child with a neutral adult and watch that child exhibit almost none of the undesired behaviors and respond very positively to reinforcement of desired behaviors.
Once the dog (or child or adult) has enough positive history built up to have a healthy expectation of searching and solving odor puzzles, the dog’s handler can return to his role behind the leash and try to be a neutral presence, so that the dog can engage the odor with confidence and increase his love of the game.
The movie, “Stutz” is on Netflix. Phil’s book can be purchased with this link The Tools (you’ll be supporting the blog), and you can get a lot of info about Phil’s tools at his website: thetoolsbook.com
By now, you can see that this blog is not heavy on the mechanics of training a scent work dog. Why? Because you can find great info on that stuff all over the internet and from in-person instructors. Also, because I’m not convinced that training designed to “teach” the dog how to solve the problems of competition searches is actually very effective, other than when we are able to very confidently expect trial searches to be just like our training. Go to some high level competitions and you will see that almost all competitors are missing something in their partnership. If that something were concrete and teachable to the dog, there are plenty of whiz-bang wonderful dog trainers that would jump right on that well before reaching Elite. The something that is missing has to do with the people. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I have my thoughts…
Happy Sniffing!
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