Pamojja, Piti & Sukha. How do You and Your Dog Experience The Joy of Scent Work?

“The proximate cause of joy is concentration.” – Chade-Meng Tan; author, Joy on Demand

Maybe two out of a thousand humans will say that their dogs do not love scent work. How do so many of us know that our dogs love scent work? Perhaps we see the concentration involved in solving a scent puzzle. Maybe we note that the dogs are not being led through a routine or ferried around a course, rather they are busy setting their own course – something many people call independent searching. Maybe we see our dogs expressing joy through energetic, purposeful movement. Or maybe we don’t see those things, but we presume our dogs love using their noses.

While most dogs almost certainly enjoy scent work, it’s quite often their humans who lack joy as partners in the search – and in life. Turns out, humans tend to make joy less accessible than a 10ft high hide. Do not despair, it’s possible to change your relationship to joy. First, you’ve got to get ed-joy-cated!

Is Joy What We Really Want?

Joy is what I really want. I know this because I have experienced joyless searching, and I didn’t like it. Back in Jan 2009 I competed in the first official NACSW NW1 Trial with my dog, Muriel. Having recently earned high marks and a special award (The Harry Award) at a practice trial a month prior, I had big expectations and high hopes coming into this competition. Only 6 teams out of 24 passed the trial, and we were not among them. A week after the trial, we watched our search videos in class and what I saw when my dog and I searched the interior spaces was the antithesis of joy. I was worried about performance and achievement, my dog was worried about me. Neither of us were able to enjoy searching or to experience success. Watching the videos was the catalyst to set me on a pursuit of joyful searching. That pursuit is still alive today, and I’m thrilled to say that I truly enjoy every dog and every search I am gifted with as a coach or as a search partner.

If joy is what you really want, I have no doubt you will experience it, and this post should give you some words to express what you’re feeling and enhance your experience of joy. If you can’t seem to access joy, except for in the aftermath of a successful search, this post is for you. If you think joy is frivolous and has no quarter in a type-a, overachiever mind, you need this post the most. If you’re a grinch and your heart is small and black with a cold weather system encircling it, you don’t need this post, you need your dog to steal your slippers, lick your face, bark you a song in the middle of the night, and barf up a toy he swallowed earlier in the day as a gift to you – you know, bring a little joy into your life!

The Three Types of Joy

Buddhist teaching identifies three types of joy: Pamojja (gladness), Piti (uplifting joy), and Sukha (bliss). I’m willing to bet that most of us westerners have trouble articulating joy with one definition, let alone deepening its meaning with three definitions!

As Chade-Meng Tan tells it:

“Pamojja is often translated to “gladness” and is described as the kind of excitement that comes from finding something that you like, something that you feel well-disposed to… In a sense, pamojja is the gladness relating to hope.

Piti is often translated to “rapture” sometimes to “uplifting joy” or “energetic joy” and it is the rapturous joy that elevates the mind.

Sukha is often translated to “happiness,” sometimes to “bliss,” “contentment,” “pleasure,” “non-energetic joy,” or “gentle joy” and it is the type of quiet, sustainable joy that leaves you content.”

With Chade’s guidance throughout his book, Joy On Demand, you will recognize that joy can be experienced through the simple act of self-care, like the feeling of a warm shower on your skin, or through serendipity, like running into an old friend as you leave the cafe, or through the excitement of sliding down a twisty slide at your local playground. Noticing these moments of joy is how Chade suggests you begin your journey towards “joy on demand”.

It is much easier to practice noticing something if you have a clear idea of what you’re looking out for. Next time you find yourself smiling, or getting a warm fuzzy feeling, or hanging your head out your car window howling into the wind, take note of the joy you are experiencing.

Sources of Joy

In Chade’s book, Joy On Demand, he explores an important nuance of joy, the Buddhist notion of “wholesome” joy, or as Chade teaches, “joy that is conducive to the well-being of self and others, in the present and in the future.” This is an important nuance because, as Chade points out, “there are different flavors of joy; there are different sources of joy, not all created equal; and the ability to remain calm, cool, and collected has a lot to do with joy, specifically joy from the right sources.”

Here is a sample of the sources of joy Chade teaches in his book:

The joy of blamelessness: this is related to things you do to “clear your mind of shame, guilt, worry and, and regret.” In scent work, experience the joy of blamelessness when you know you’ve prepared yourself and your dog for the experience of searching. Know if your dog needs to go to the bathroom before a search, ensure that you and your dog are present and connected as partners. Do not force your dog into a situation that will create regret. Anytime you are aware that you’ve acted ethically on behalf of yourself and your dog, note the occasion and let the joy of blamelessness arise in you.

The joy of pleasant experiences: hopefully, you can be a big winner with this joy. It is related to the pleasantness of the first bite of a meal. In scent work, it can be the pleasantness of your dog’s fixation on your treat pouch, or the way he leans into his harness and pulls you forward slightly. It can be the pleasantness of observing your dog in the flow state, following a trail of scent. Really notice that this is joy.

The joy of not being in pain: this is easiest to experience when you have actually suffered pain before. Chade uses the example of a tooth pain. It can get so intense you can’t even think a thought. Well, the joy of not being in pain can be accessed every moment that you are toothache free. In scent work, you can note the joy of not having to yank your dog away from a decomposing rabbit carcass, or the joy of not having a nearby dog lose its shit on you and your dog as you’re searching, or the joy of not biffing it on an icy sidewalk as you try to keep up with your dog in hot pursuit of odor, or the joy of a search without your long line getting stuck under a car tire. You have so much to celebrate in every search!

gratefulness: while Chade does not label this as “the joy of gratefulness”, learning to be grateful for the things that happen – or don’t happen – to you is certain to bring you more joy. If you’re in a car accident and your airbag goes off and protects you from serious injury, you’re likely to feel grateful for the people who made your vehicle and took care to ensure it would work properly to keep you safe. If you’re at the gas station with an empty tank and you realize you forgot your wallet, you’ll be grateful for the stranger who pays for you to put a couple gallons in your tank to get home. In scent work, you can be grateful for your dog every time you step to the line. Grateful that your dog wants to communicate with you through the activity of searching for a target odor. Grateful that you and your dog are about to share each other’s undivided attention. Grateful that your dog will search with you over and over, even as you struggle to learn his language and be a better partner.

Suffering, In Life and In Scent Work

Whoa! Joy joy joy BOOM suffering.

Yep. We had to address suffering at some point. The word, “suffering”, sounds like being slowly buried beneath a pile of baby chicks releasing mushroom farts.

Chade quotes Thich Naht Hanh (known as Thay; pronounced ‘tie’) to eloquently explain suffering: “wilting flowers do not cause suffering; it is the unrealistic desire that flowers not wilt that causes suffering.”

I have an unrealistic desire that hot sauce not torture my bowels, therefore, I suffer a bit each time I eat hot sauce. Someone might have an unrealistic desire to live in a world where basic human necessities are guaranteed, therefore, when they pay for water, electric, gas, food, and healthcare, they suffer to some degree. Suffering is the desire for something to be other than it is.

Knowing what suffering is and what joy is, why can’t we just choose not to suffer? Because humans. We humans are emotional creatures of habit in a highly dynamic world full of problems. We can’t be joy machines, but what we can do is improve our relationship to suffering and reduce the intensity and duration of our suffering. Chade shares an analogy that elegantly highlights how we can either suffer the effects of suffering, or use suffering to grow and enrich our lives:

“The other analogy is the story of a man stepping in a big pile of dog poop on his way home. The soles of his shoes are now full of dog poop, and he can either walk into the house with those shoes and dirty his carpet with dog poop, or he can wash his shoes in his backyard, thereby using the dog poop to fertilize the soil. The dog poop represents the suffering (the bad shit) in our lives. When bad things happen to us, we can choose to either let our suffering permanently stink up our lives, like the man who tracks dog poop through his house, or let it promote our spiritual growth, like the man who turns the dog poop into lawn fertilizer.”

In scent work, suffering is often the product of time multiplied by distance. The more time spent searching and the further away from source your dog searches, the more you suffer. Like Thay says, “suffering is the unrealistic desire that…” The unrealistic desire that your dog not ever need to take the scenic route to source. Suffering has its source in desire.

Thay has another quote about suffering and desire: “If you suffer and make your loved ones suffer, there is nothing that can justify your desire.”

Does your dog suffer in the context of a nose work search? Sometimes. Generally, he suffers momentarily and moves on. If suffering visits a nose work search and takes up residence, it is almost always the suffering of the human. This type of suffering is heavy and thick and swallows the search like Kudzu vines. The human can’t suffer and move on. The human gets stuck desiring the search to be more like a perfect search from the past, or desiring the search to have a sudden and perfect change in the near future. Anything the human does in moments like these will likely visit suffering upon the dog – even if it appears to be a positive gesture, like happily ending the search. Just imagine if you were concentrating on a puzzle, enjoying yourself, and your friend – who knows nothing about this type of puzzle – decided to reach under your nose and take the puzzle away because she perceived the experience as suffering. Don’t be that friend.

Are we to rid ourselves of desire, and become aimless, accepting every experience (like Oliver Twist with a porridge bowl: please sir, I want some more suffering) in order to be free from suffering? Not exactly. We should hold desire and goals lightly, and use acceptance to stay present to what is really happening so we may take effective action.

Thay says, “People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.” Sounds easy enough…

On a warm, windy fall day I set up a blank search for a human and her labrador to run blind in a fenced in area with 4 tennis courts. The lab began the search by quickly moving in large circles throughout 3/4 of the area, before pausing and staring at her human. The human cued her to keep searching. This pattern repeated several times. As the minutes ticked by, it became obvious that the human had views: there must be a hide, and her dog just isn’t finding it. At one point, the dog went to several of the gates for entering and exiting the tennis courts, attempting to leave the area. When I checked in with the human, she made no mention of the possibility that there could be no hides. As I walked her through the reality of her dog’s behavior, we determined it was time to end the search. Up until the moment that I revealed the search to be blank, the human, and consequently her dog, was suffering. How do I know this? Because the human displayed immense relief upon finding out that her dog was communicating the truth: no hides to be found.

I moved the human and the labrador to a smaller fenced area with just two tennis courts and had the team, once again search blind with an unknown number of hides. And, again the labrador ran around the tennis courts, circling, but not showing changes of behavior in odor. Again, the person clung to views that ensured her suffering – and her dog’s suffering. Except, this time the dog decided to change the view and leave her human behind. The lab managed to force open a gate and run away to a flock of geese on a nearby golf course fairway. This might have reduced the dog’s suffering, but it dramatically increased the human’s suffering.

These searches are prime examples of suffering because we are caught in our views. The suffering can even extend post-search. Sometimes people will wonder if the dog should have searched differently – harder or longer or somehow been more “clear”. This is a dangerous path to go down, as the dog is likely influenced by the human’s views all throughout the search. Remember, even the search that ends with a labrador at large, begins in the mind of the human.

Is there a silver lining to suffering? Chade offers wisdom learned from Matthieu Ricard, the “happiest man in the world”:

“it is impossible to be joyful all the time, because difficulties in life are inevitable and there is so much suffering everywhere. Therefore, as we train ourselves in the art of joy, it is equally important to also learn suffering. The meditator who learns joy without suffering is like the fighter who learns to attack without learning to defend – her training is grossly incomplete.”

If you’ve ever heard someone say, “my dog never false alerts” or “my dog has never peed in a search” or “we’ve never missed a hide” or “my dog has never run away from a search to chase geese”, think about Matthieu’s words!

The Art Of Joy In Scent Work

A scent work search can last seconds or minutes, so what separates a joyful search from an artfully joyful search? I think an artfully joyful search involves the team facing a challenge, getting a little metaphorical poop on their shoes, and artfully washing the poop off, fertilizing their environment and turning adversity into joy and success.

Recently, I was coaching a human and her dachshund indoors at a CrossFit gym searching for 6 food hides in the 10×20 lobby, really cruising through the area, eating one hide after another, when a man entered the lobby from the main gym. This man started engaging me and the dog’s human in conversation. “what’s the name of this dog breed? I know it, I just can’t think of the name?” He said to two human faces that were clearly not looking at him. The doxie’s human answered him politely, but curtly. He kind of noticed we weren’t being too engaging, so he walked over to the dog as she was working to find her fourth hide and he hunched over her like a Scooby-Doo villain and started petting her. How many scent work folks would give in to the desire to tell the guy the dog is working and to ask him to give her space? Well, we just let go of that desire. This little doxie took one look over her shoulder at Buck Masters and went right back to work, sourcing and eating the hide before he finished petting her. As the guy left the gym, the doxie zoomed across the lobby to the fifth hide and nom nom nom, she sharked it down her tiny throat. Then, she scooted right by the 6th hide and right on out of the lobby into the main gym. The doxie’s human briefly checked with me as we left the lobby. “Should we let her go out here?” For a moment, both of us might have felt the desire to see that last hide found just as amazingly fast and beautifully as the other five (remember, we were experiencing time multiplied by distance, a recipe for suffering). In that moment, we breathed out and continued following the doxie. She took us about halfway across the gym, then began a soft and wide turn back towards the lobby, gaining in speed with every step. It seemed we’d been fertilizing our environment throughout this search by letting go of suffering and now we were experiencing the growth of joy. This mighty doxie doubled her efforts throughout the room and searched with so much gusto, catching odor collecting on the seat of a plastic chair, along the lower cross bar of a metal coat rack, at the threshold to the main gym. This doxie bobbed and weaved and soared with joy – ignoring another, less intrusive male visitor/Scooby villain – until she pushed into a small triangle of space between an opened bag of driveway salt and a stool. Her head turned so fast in odor, it cracked the air like lightning. Her long hairs whipped to and fro like the fringes on a cha-cha dancer’s pants as she flitted under and around the stool. This doxie had locked in on the final hide. The Piti was palpable, the room alive with energetic joy. As we relaxed into a state of Sukha, we all smiled, grateful for the pleasure – and the pain – of a complete search.

Joy On Demand is a light-hearted, easy read, but it also contains actionable wisdom and formal practices. With this book you are guaranteed to increase your happiness in life and in scent work. Chade points out that “peace and joy are the default states of mind. They don’t have to be created – they just need to be accessed.” In scent work, your dog’s scenting skills don’t need to be created, they just need to be accessed. You are often the main road block to your dog accessing his skills. A book like Joy On Demand teaches you how to access your peaceful and joyful states of mind – even in the midst of pain and suffering. Learning how to “ease the mind into joy, attend to joy as it arises, and uplift the mind”, will translate directly into learning how to ease you and your dog into a search, to attend to the flow state as it arises, and to uplift your team so you can face challenges and use suffering and adversity to enrich your environment and grow your scent work joy.

If this blog brings you joy, you can send a little joy back to me by clicking on the links in the post and making a purchase of this book or any other product on Amazon. Or, you can donate directly to the blog on the donations and other support page. As always, I’m grateful for everyone who reads these blog posts.

Happy Sniffing!