Jocko Willink dedicated podcast (Jocko podcast) episodes 251-256 to an obscure training text written by a general from the WWII and Korean War era, Bruce C. Clarke. The book, Guidelines For The Leader And The Commander, is at once comfortingly familiar and surprisingly demanding. You might imagine an army training manual to be all about clean boots, short haircuts and foul-mouthed drill sergeants – not general Clarke’s book! Jocko clearly selected this book to highlight the dichotomy of leadership, a concept present in all of his material and messages. General Clarke’s words from over half a century ago feel radical in the context of the army hierarchy. Clarke invites would be leaders to familiarize themselves with the art of followership or be doomed to fail as a leader. Who leads the team in a scent work search? No matter the answer, every handler should build the skills of both leading and following.
Jocko knows it, General Clarke knew it: A great leader establishes decentralized command. Let’s take a look at some of General Clarke’s concepts on leading and following and how we might adapt them to scent work.
“Men Will Do In Combat What They Have Been In The Habit Of Doing In Training” – Gen. Bruce Clarke
I appreciate a scent work session where we really practice awareness and connection throughout the whole session. That means attentiveness to the dog and the dog’s needs (water, toys, food, touch, praise, pottying, time to scan environment, time to meet friends), focus on what the dog wants to tell you before, during and after searches, practice of your process when searching.
“An Organization Does Well, Only Those Things The Boss Checks” – Gen. Bruce Clarke
Are you keeping an eye on your dog’s motivation and connection. Are you reevaluating your rewards, your routines, your praise and interactions with your dog? Who are you putting in charge of your team? Is it your coach? Your instructor? Your friends? Or are you putting yourself in charge of checking the things you want to do well at? Keeping track of the timing of your reward, the quality of your reward, the duration of delivery, your enthusiasm, your consistent communication that it’s time to look for more can be in someone else’s hands or it can be in your hands. In this sense, be the boss of your team.
Channels of Suggestion, not Channels of Command
I could do a whole blog on this one line. If you want to have a successful scent work partnership with your dog when it really matters – in complexity – you need a well-developed practice of using suggestions, not commands. Suggestions are meant to assess if your dog can continue to effectively communicate with you to search for and find hides. Commands are meant to yield a result from your dog, and often lead to action without connection to the task of searching for and finding hides. Channels of suggestion can be opened with respect to start lines, boundaries, returning to found hides, area coverage, atypical or unexpected behaviors, and more. Commands are only successful in scent work to the degree that the dog would have completed the task with or without the command – it is irrelevant to the dog. Commands are almost always negative when the dog could not have otherwise completed the task (we can see this even in non-blind searches). Suggestions are almost always positive as they either result in resolve to do the task and advancement towards a solution to an odor puzzle, or they clearly reveal the dog’s inability to advance towards a solution and/or the person’s inability to understand the dog’s chosen problem-solving path.
Ceiling Formation
As we gain experience and evaluate that experience, we may form barriers to our continued ascent up the pyramid of life (or scent work). What are those common barriers?
The most common barrier to continued ascent in scent work comes from ego/image issues. A person begins to see her dog as a certain type of searcher (fast, confident, never false alerts) and rejects any experiences that don’t reinforce that image.
Another common barrier is fear-based: the worry that any search experience the dog has that does not produce high energy, focused behaviors is negative for the dog. This leads to curating search experiences and artificially ending searches in order to avoid “unwanted behaviors”.
Growth requires the careful balance of success and struggle. Naturally, as your team becomes more experienced, growth is more challenging and struggle feels more consequential. Both dog and handler need to continually stoke the fires of resolve to keep their joy even when they feel like they’ve gone backwards.
The Five Cycles Of Training
General Clarke details 5 cycles of training that need to be emphasized on a regular basis to avoid “peaks and valleys of proficiency”.
What are the cycles of scent work training? If we’re trying to avoid peaks and valleys of proficiency by regularly introducing things into our training, some of those things might be:
High inaccessible, deep inaccessible, ground, suspended, close together cluster, single COB sourcing, multi-COB sourcing, blank area, leash work, odor strength…
I would add to that, shifting roles and sometimes playing the hide-setter, the third-party observer, the partner to someone else’s dog, etc.
First Things First: What Absolutely Needs To Be Tended To?
General Clarke suggests that if a commander wants to optimize training for combat readiness he needs to have a realistic understanding of what percentage of his resources are needed for indirect and non-related, nevertheless necessary activities. He very wisely suggests that even if you allocate 50% of your training schedule to combat readiness, only 25% of your men may attend, resulting in a serious imbalance in training.
Scent work is not combat (although some people might feel like they are at war with odor in some of their competition searches), but it is training. How are you allocating your time to activities that directly enhance your scent work team’s performance? Over the years I have seen the number one factor in a team’s success is the bond between dog and human – specifically related to focus, engagement, trust, and time spent together.
Does your dog spend all day with you? If not, is he spending his day with another human or a dog? Can you hike, bike or walk with your dog off leash and be highly confident he will keep his focus on you? Can you count on your dog to want to engage with you at any time regardless of if you have food, toys or nothing but your praise?
Scent work is a fun activity, and it can be more fun if you optimize your training related to the bond between you and your dog.
Disorderly and Confusing Situations Occur on The Battlefield
General Clarke takes issue with commanders who are “unduly oriented to automation techniques and “the systems approach” to combat command and control… they seek and prescribe logical process leading to quantified solutions. These are fine until the disorderly and confusing conditions that occur so often on the battlefield materialize.”
His solution to the challenges of battle?: The commander should be forward as much as possible. That means the commander should be able to see for himself what his soldiers are experiencing on the battlefield.
In scent work, so much time is spent doing practice searches, drills, attending classes, webinars, etc. Most of these experiences are controlled and logical and contain far fewer instances of disorder or confusion that a blind competition search. You’ve got to get your butt to the front lines and search blind with your dog. You’ve got to minimize surprise by staying in the know. The more you experience blind searches with disorder and confusion the more successful you’ll become at using judgement and experience to solve problems.
The “Little Pluses” method
Avoid swinging the pendulum with violent corrections. add value little by little.
So many scent work teams are good. A decent number are great. The good teams often need very small changes to become great and the great teams need nearly imperceptible changes to become legendary. Progress towards legendary partnership starts be realizing that you are mere steps away.
So You Want To Be Your Dog’s Scent Work Partner?
General Clarke used posters to effectively communicate with soldiers. He called them the “soldier” poster and the “why” poster, among others. Having a clear and simple constant reminder of who you want to be and why can help you orient to your role for your dog’s benefit.
Here are some of the things that might be on the Scent Work Partner Poster:
Are you willing to devote all hours of the day and night, seven days a week, to your team? Are you willing to learn, teach, and stress the fundamentals necessary to make your dog and yourself great? Do you like to be with your dog, with his energy, point of view and problems he creates? Are you willing to carry the responsibilities for the failures of your dog? Can you manage a complex job? Can you follow orders as well as give them? Do you have the courage to make and stand by tough decisions? Are you willing to have your team’s actions closely observed? Are you still enthusiastic and cheerful when confronted with impossible tasks to perform with inadequate means? Are you willing to take a chance on failing to achieve results? Do you really want to be your dog’s scent work partner?
Why are you your dog’s scent work partner?: to facilitate your dog’s readiness to search for odor, to read and understand your dog, to keep a consistent and calm presence, to adjust your role if necessary.
Soldier Complaints or Search Dog Yelp Reviews
General Clarke states that the first object of a commander should be to “gain the love of his men by treating them with every possible kindness and humanity, inquiring into their complaints, and when well founded, seeing them redressed.”
Inquire into the complaints of your dog, and when well founded, see them redressed – don’t assume your dog should always be a good little soldier of scent. Treat your dog with every possible kindness and humanity. You need a willing partner to enjoy the challenges of searching for odor.
This does not mean you view everything your dog does as permissible. This means careful attentiveness to what your dog is communicating, and effective responses to their needs when deemed well founded.
If you think your dog is never well-founded in his off-task behaviors, you are already a failed leader in General Clarke’s eyes. Find a way to see your dog as a valued member of your team. A scent work partner should serve his dog, and know his dog intimately.
Loyalty
We often think dogs to be loyal to us. We should endeavor to be loyal to them, too. When challenges occur, do not throw your dog under the bus. Do not sacrifice yourself. Remain loyal to your team. It does neither of you any good to take or place blame. Refer back to your preparation and training, things are meant to wrong in a blind, competitive search, and you’re meant to meet the challenge with calm and effective decision-making.
Recognition Of Outstanding Work
Praise your dog and pay your dog for outstanding work. Sometimes that might be work that does not end in a perfect search with all hides found. You have many ways of communicating with your dog, only one of which is to time your reinforcement with their recognition of source.
Praise yourself and others. Recognize when you handle the leash well or show your commitment to your dog’s behavior pattern for a difficult inaccessible hide. Take to heart the recognition that comes from others – especially “Pronounced” searches and judge’s comments.
A team with high morale is ready to tackle challenges. High morale is created and maintained through deliberate effort and habits.
Be Ready For A Daybreak Incursion
General Clarke warns against a well-trained unit becoming lax and letting its guard down. He notes that WWII and the Korean War were started by surprise attacks on Sunday mornings.
As your dog’s scent work partner you need to be dressed, alert and in position (ready for a daybreak incursion) – you should be on the ready at all times for what the dog might tell you about the search environment. Humans get the most lax about this at staging areas and at start lines. Sometimes your dog’s most important behaviors will happen when you least expect them, and, because you weren’t paying attention, they will disappear and so will your dog’s motivation to act on them to efficiently solve odor problems.
Be A Good Inspector Of Your Team
As General Clarke says, “don’t just have a general “look-see”, notice what needs correcting.” You are the best source of information when something isn’t going well with your scent work team. You know details about your dogs and your own daily lives, as well as specific details relating to your scent work training.
If you can’t define your team’s problem, you can’t solve it. Conversely, if you are good at defining problems, you’ll be good at recognizing “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” situations.
A scent work team with a history of solid performance doesn’t just break down for no reason. Add team inspections to your practice so you are ready if you need to identify a problem.
Leadership vs Commandership vs Generalship
Leadership is a “follow me” mentality, commandership is projecting desire and will down through a chain of command, generalship is a more complex version of commandership.
Ultimately, leadership will not work well in the search team partnership, since neither dog nor handler can just “follow” the other. It is necessary to understand the chain of responsibility and to know what is wanted of each other – to know what should be accomplished. This brings us back to channels of suggestion vs channels of command… command only when wanting to discipline.
It is so important to know how you are being with your dog. Much of dog training is “follow me” style interactions between the human and the dog. These interactions can be utilized in scent work, but when and how should be carefully thought out. Essentially, anything you can think of in scent work that you could call a command should be carefully studied for it’s meaning and purpose as related to the dog searching for hides and communicating with you.
Followership
Being a brief section of the manual, followership is a concept that works well for a scent work team. A good follower is one who can “absorb ideas, instruction and concepts, and use discernment, acceptance, and elimination to store away certain characteristics, ideas, and procedures and discard others… the goal being to have a balanced character, able to handle concurrently all of the tasks of being” a dog’s scent work partner. At least, that’s the dry version of a good follower!
When I see a human being a good follower, I see respectful consideration of why the dog’s head has dropped to the grass, I see careful use of the leash at boundaries, I see relaxed neutral body language after rewarding a hide, and I see subtle collaboration in response to unexpected behaviors from the dog.
General Clarke suggest that to lead you have to have developed good followership. If you do feel like the leader – ever – when you search with your dog, it shouldn’t be obvious to your dog or to observers that you are leading. The results of your leadership should be a dog with high morale, healthy autonomy, clear understanding of the task, and confidence in your ability to partner with him even when things get complicated.
General Clarke notes that the best organizations in the Army “may not be superior in any one thing, but they are good or better in everything.” Once again, don’t aim for perfection, set your dog and yourself up for good training, good habits, good leadership and follwership, and then take the small steps to make all of it better.
If you’re interested in General Clarke’s book you can find it here: Guidelines For The Leader And The Commander and support the blog.
Happy Sniffing!
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