Odor Whispers

On a recent morning I was chatting with a student after a fun and enlightening sniffing session. We began our talk by wondering about what the dog experienced during the session and how our choices to connect with the dog in the gray areas (when scent work behavior patterns fade into less recognizable expressions) using the leash, body posture, pacing, energy, presence and other subtle conversational choices affected the dog’s focus and enthusiasm, and desire to remain in partnership with her human to search for target odor. Our discussion began to expand and soon it moved to talk of scent work events at the end of summer. My student worried that a writer’s retreat she’d committed to might fall on the same weekend as a fun annual scent work event. We began to talk about the writer’s retreat and the host, a Minnesota author named Douglas Wood (see his website here).

My student described Douglas Wood as a poet, a storyteller, a songwriter, a lover of connecting with nature and a guide for other humans to find their connection with nature. I said to my student, “he sounds great!” She shared a bit more about him, about his love of the north woods and the boundary waters, about a cabin he and his wife call “The Church ‘O The Pines”. I took in every word my student was speaking, and I also began an internal dialogue that caused my reality to feel like a radio in the overlap zone, playing two stations at once – like an unharmonized mashup of classic rock and Sabado Gigante. I said to my student, “This reminds me of a book I gifted to some students a few years ago at the Sniffathlon; it’s called Paddle Whispers. I loved it so much I bought a handful of copies to give away and one to keep for myself. This guy sounds very cool.”

We kept talking about Douglas Wood and the writer’s retreat. Finally, I paused the conversation and pulled out my phone. “You know, I’ve gotta look up who the author of Paddle Whispers is.” I said as I typed the name of the book in my googler. Wouldn’t you know it was Douglas Wood. How I failed to connect Douglas Wood to this book I’d read and re-read, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the way in which he so artfully strips ego away from the experience of connecting with nature. Maybe I was meant to let his name disappear in the forest of my mind so I could come by it by some new trail and experience his writing as ever-changing, ever the same, just like nature.

Later that day I sat down with Paddle Whispers and took in each page, each illustration, with the reverence one gives to a being who has chosen to connect with life – not on his own terms, but on nature’s terms. I read each passage with an open mind and let the words and the drawings weave into my thoughts and feelings about scent work.

If you see scent work as an opportunity to connect with life – not on your terms, but on your dog’s terms – then enjoy this post and pick up a copy of Douglas Wood’s book, Paddle Whispers.

“The Rich Soil Of Failure“

“And if dreams are the seedlings of realities, it’s through the cold winds of doubt, the hard rains of disappointment, and the rich soil of failure that they grow.”

Paddle Whispers; page 133

If ever you had a dream about what your dog was capable of – what the two of you might accomplish together in scent work – you’d probably feel more closely connected to that dream if you repeatedly saw evidence of its realness. When someone experiences a search where their dog covers a huge amount of space, casting about and titling his head to the sky, animated by the odor like a kite on the wind, they almost need to see it again to believe it’s real! But, that search experience is like a seedling. To really grow into a repeat reality takes a lot of trial and tribulation in “the rich soil of failure”.

Some people do experience a lot of doubt and disappointment when they search with their dogs, making scent work more like a nightmare than a dream. The rich soil of failure does not need to be experienced as a soul-sucking quagmire. It can be a transformative and positive experience. In part, it takes the right set and setting.

“Set” is short for mindset. Failure is a rich soil when your mindset is: “My dog is the giver of information related to searching for and finding target odor and I am the receiver of information from my dog. If I am uncertain about what my dog is communicating, I may respectfully and subtly enter into conversation with him with the intent to understand him better.”

Setting is the place, the people, the vibe where you are having your experience. Failure is a rich soil when the setting is novel, interesting, challenging, but not overwhelming. When the people are supportive and invested in your experiences. When effort is recognized over performance or perfection.

Set and setting are easy to leave to chance or to outside forces, and doing so can result in lost connection and diminished confidence. Just like a diet or a strength training plan, it won’t work if you stop doing it.

Take some time to connect to your scent work dreams. Do a deep dive into the mindset and setting you want to have in scent work and come up with some habits you can start that will reliably enable you to grow from times of doubt, disappointment and failure.

“Secrets And Meanings”

“But how to truly explore this land of poetry and storms and solitude, of lakes and islands more beautiful than dreams? I want to listen more deeply than ever before to its secrets and catch its meanings, and at the same time, perhaps, my own.”

Paddle Whispers; page 9

This is all I want from scent work when I search blind with a dog. It can happen at a competition, or in my own backyard as long as the search offers me an opportunity to listen deeply. I am most successful at listening deeply when I can take my time and let the dog show me all of the behavioral details and puzzle pieces that typically go unnoticed or get forgotten throughout a search. Listening deeply might involve asking questions with my voice or my body or the leash. It’s an active experience. It’s as much an exercise in listening to the dog as it is listening to myself, connecting more deeply to how I am during a search.

“Yet such things can’t be sought out or thought out, captured or even discovered. They come, if they come at all, quietly, unplanned, almost unnoticed. Like the rustling of an aspen in the wind, tracks on the beach left by small creatures in the night, or a shaft of sunlight slanting down through a vaulted cathedral of pines.”

Paddle Whispers; page 9

If you observe lots and lots of teams searching blind, what you see are humans overlooking the quiet, unplanned details of their dogs behaviors. On the one hand, our brains operate successfully by automatically filtering out irrelevant details from our surroundings and honing in on the relevant details. On the other hand, our brains don’t always get the relevant details right!

From time to time, we must purposefully and carefully reframe what we consider to be relevant behaviors from our dogs (and ourselves) when searching such that we will notice less expected or unexpected behaviors subconsciously when in a blind search. This takes a lot of practice! It is not about just passively observing everything your dog chooses to do (although that can be helpful at times). It is about respectfully and carefully changing your mind about what is and isn’t important communication from your dog.

A simple first step is to give most of your dog’s behaviors (unless absolutely unquestionably not a relevant scent work behavior) 2-5 seconds to make sense to you. You might be amazed at how often your dog is engaged in scent work problem solving.

“These will be my landmarks. And perhaps through the accumulation of them, a whole landscape will emerge.”

Paddle Whispers; page 9

Only through deep awareness of your dog, yourself and your search environment in most of your blind practice searches will you alter and enhance your way of partnering with your dog in blind searches.

I’ve mentioned speaking the behaviors of your searching dog – plainly saying what you see the dog’s body doing. This is one way to accumulate landmarks and hasten the emergence of a whole new searching landscape.

Everything there is to see or experience is available to you when you search with your dog, but you may not be able to see or experience most of it. Just as two people might watch a Jiu Jitsu match and one sees thousands of “moves” and the other sees a dozen – the thousands of moves are there for both people. One person has the awareness, the understanding to know what to look for, one person only finds relevance in a fraction of what is happening.

Your dog, yourself, and the search environment are rich with detail; do you know what is most relevant to your dog, to yourself, to the two of you as partners? If you don’t, begin by taking in more detail, rejecting fewer behaviors, letting the subtle secrets of scent drift into your awareness. You cannot whittle a block of wood into a pipe without the block, you cannot build an efficient and effective scent work partnership without first listening deeply to more behaviors and opening completely to the unexpected and undefined behaviors from your dog and yourself. You need a “block” of behavior, communication and environmental detail to whittle into a scent work partnership.

“Thickets of Questions”

“The Map I have spread on the tent floor has, in itself, no real value, and no meaning. Like any map, it is of value insofar as it enables me to experience the real world.”

Paddle Whispers; page 25

What are the maps of scent work? Well, the rules of a trial and the search area parameters are very much like maps. However, they do not always enable a team to experience the real world. They sometimes mislead, confuse and derail humans who believe these “maps” point the way to a successful search. The best maps you have in scent work are your and dog and yourself. The better you learn to read these maps, the more you will experience the searches as they really are.

“It is this experience I am after on this solitary quest, this adventure of the spirit. But now, alone in the night, gazing at the map and the lakes, rivers, and portages to come, I feel a pang of doubt, and I wonder… Am I ready? For the aloneness, the decisions, the occasional dangers of storm and wind and rapids?”

Paddle Whispers; page 25

Each search with your dog – competition or not – has the potential to get out of hand, to go south, to blow up in your face. It can happen in myriad ways. It is unavoidable, and you are – in many ways – lucky that it doesn’t happen more frequently. There is no map to prepare you for the experience of the search. There is no safety in knowing how many perfect searches you and your dog have searched before. There is always the question, “Are we ready?”

“Are there answers waiting in the wilderness, or will I merely wander into new thickets of questions?”

Paddle Whispers; page 25

In scent work, you can do all the repetition you want, have all the fast, direct, confident searches you want, practice all of the “skills” you want, but when you cross the line to search blind it is possible that none of your practice will be relevant and you will find yourself in a thicket of questions.

It is also possible that in the wildness of the blind search, you will find answers. You will find a state of being that is magical and a partnership with your dog that feels alive. You will find a new understanding of behavior and communication from your dog. You will find a new level of confidence in your abilities as a partner to your dog. All of this is also possible.

You go do the search with your dog, not to go get the experience you want, but to go meet the experience that is out there waiting for you. You go into the wilderness of the blind search, always wondering if you are ready, always uncertain if there will be answers or questions waiting for you.

Painters Of The Scent Picture

“There is no fairer subject for a picture than a pine. But the pine is the better artist; it paints pictures of the wind.

Paddle Whispers; page 101

Subject or artist? Which is your dog? Which are you? Which is odor and the search?

If your dog is the artist and odor, the search and you are the subjects, do you submit to the vision of the artist?

Might you sometimes be the patron of the artist, maybe commissioning a specific piece of artwork?

It is thoroughly engaging to regard the dog as the artist of the search. Some dogs paint like Jackson Pollock, some like Rembrandt, others are like Dali, others yet like Rothko. If you allow yourself to be part of the dog’s/artist’s subject material, you can just let the artist paint.

It is also deeply rewarding to commission a work of art from your dog. One example is partnering together under the constraints of a blind, competitive search. You still somewhat have to take into account who your dog is as an artist (you may not be able to get much out of Rockwell by demanding a Cezanne) and thoughtfully play his strengths to the chosen subject.

If I’m arranging searches for an event like the Turner Trials in California or The Sniffathlon in Minnesota I might provide wildly varied subject matter (arrangements of odor, environment and human expectations) for the search artists, which might result in sublime works of art or serious suffering (from the human’s perspective).

Whether you set your search artist loose with a palette of odor and a canvas of search area or commission your artist to produce a work of search art to meet your vision probably depends on how deeply you align with the kind of search artist your dog is versus the kind of search art you find most pleasing. The most challenging partnerships are when the human prefers the art from Home Goods and the dog is at home making art that belongs in The Broad.

Great search art can come from unexpected pairings. If you let your dog change you a bit, and you respectfully offer your dog a chance to change, truly wonderful searches can emerge out of these acts of giving and receiving.

Douglas Wood’s book, Paddle Whispers, is more than collection of passages and illustrations, it is reflection of nature onto him and a reflection of him back onto nature. The book reminds us that living is changing and changing is destruction and creation. To participate in life is to embrace the destruction and creation, to welcome the change. Going out into nature – at least the way Douglas Wood does it – is not always comfortable or relaxing, it is not an escape from something. Going out into nature is necessary, because it is on the lake, on the trail, in the storm, under the pines that you will find your answers and your questions. It is in nature that you learn to listen for what wants to speak and to accept what is spoken. As Doug says:

“I know only that it is my journey to make, that ultimately I alone am responsible – for pulling the paddle, for feeling the moist duff or hard granite under my feet, for seeing the sparkle of the water and watching the sun rise over a dark hill, and for walking, silent and alert, down some gently calling forest trail. And I know that if I look and listen closely enough, what I find will be what is there.”

Paddle Whispers; page 25

And so it is for you as a partner to your scent work dog. You are fortunate in that you can get a trainer or a coach, read books, watch webinars and youtube videos to help you, but you still need to navigate the most important part of your journey: looking and listening closely enough to discover who your dog is as a search artist, who you are as a subject or as a patron of your dog; and who you and your dog are as partners. When you begin to learn what it means to observe your dog and yourself closely, a whole new landscape will reveal itself. When you begin to accept that growth happens in the rich soil of failure, you will meet the cycle of destruction and creation with hope. The hope of blue skies after a storm, the hope of green growth after a forest fire, the hope of connection and partnership after struggling through a search.

Please get yourself a copy of Douglas Wood’s book here: Paddle Whispers and support the blog.

Happy Sniffing!