Trapping A Mind In 64 (Squares) Soccer Dots

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In a recent interview on the Andrew Huberman podcast, author (and master) of “The Art of Learning” Josh Waitzkin spoke these words: “trapping a mind in 64 squares.” He was referencing the squares of a chess board, and how chess players can learn chess in a way that traps their mind and limits their growth, or they can learn about life through the game of chess, and experience growth in all that they do. Josh went on to describe a chess player with a “static” mindset, highlighting how this type of player will unconsciously begin to protect his ego, to avoid challenge or failure, and to hold up his victories as proof of his skill. A player with a “dynamic” mindset is actively seeking the edge of his abilities, he is looking to face strong opponents, he is living “on the other side of pain”, and he is growing as a person. Nose work can be a “mind-trapping” experience, but it can also be a powerful mind-freeing experience. The choice is yours. Are you being intentional about your practice of nose work?

Among the ways I see nose work trap a mind, perhaps boundary markers are the most pervasive and perplexing. I can control a person’s behavior and decisions in a search just by the placement of some cones, soccer dots, or tape – or by verbally marking something “out of play”. When you have a static mindset, you learn the what but not the why. A person might learn what to do when their dog is at or near the boundary markers (stop my dog, or let my dog go past them), but not why they are doing it. The person may not understand the relevant principle of nose work (what is my dog’s body language telling me should happen here), so whatever choice they make will have a random influence on the progression of the search. If a person has a dynamic mindset, they are learning the principles and themes of nose work – they are learning the why, which then allows them to intentionally choose the best what. The dynamic mindset is what leads you beyond your current game – chess or nose work – and provides you with the skills to tackle anything in life. Josh calls this “thematic interconnectedness”.

When “thematic interconnectedness” becomes the focus, you seek out opportunities to be pushed to your edge and beyond. You also tend to the quality of your practice. In chess, tending to the quality of your practice might look like spending time on endgame scenarios to learn principles and themes with just a few pieces on the board. In nose work it could be working on single hide searches to improve your understanding of the dog-human-odor-environment relationship (or feedback loop). Pushing to your edge in chess is all about finding strong opponents. Since nose work is not a battle, it’s more of a conversation, pushing to the edge is all about dog and human working outside of their shared language. Facing a strong opponent on the chess board, or trying to communicate without shared language in a nose work search can be scary, painful experiences. Josh suggests you make friends with your fear and learn to love pain, as the only way to get to the other side is to go through the pain. I have witnessed countless humans struggle at the doorway to growth, afraid of feeling lost, afraid of failure, afraid of a bruise to the ego. I have been there, too. I have listened to even more humans cry out in fear for their dogs, projecting this image of crushing stress and irreparable damage onto their dogs when operating outside of shared language. This is what Josh calls “a fear of fear”. If you shed this fear of fear, you can explore the space beyond shared language with your dog, and cultivate growth. Most importantly, as you practice learning principles and themes, and cultivating quality in nose work, you will begin to see clearly how thematic interconnectedness can make your time spent doing nose work into time spent improving your life.

The game of nose work is not confined to a specific surface area with a specific composition, the game is played on an infinitely varying stage, composed of different surfaces, objects, elements, and impediments. Unlike chess, the “game pieces” of nose work – the dog, human, and the odor – do not have narrowly defined abilities. Sometimes there is no odor, sometimes a dog has to crawl under something, or climb over something, or deal with distressing noise or distracting visuals to advance through the environment, sometimes odor is placed in such a way that sourcing becomes highly complex, sometimes the human is faced with unexpected decisions. If chess is played on a board that never changes, with pieces that are well-defined in their abilities, and it is still very important not to let a mind be trapped within the boundaries of that board, then it is absolutely essential that a person – or a dog – not allow their mind to be trapped within a simplified presentation of nose work.

One could always count on Nose Work co-founder Ron Gaunt to present an opportunity (sometimes a torture) for learning from and about one’s dog and one’s self when he set a search. I believe Ron had the utmost faith in dogs to be all in for the experience – I believe he had faith in us people, too, if for no other reason than the fact that we were willing to show up and stay at it. Whether it be a high hide in a stack of plastic lawn chairs stored in a brick alley on a windy day, or a hide in a swim ladder dunked several feet below the water’s surface at the end of a wooden dock, Ron seemed to be stretching the fabric of the find thin enough to examine the fibers that bind dog to human. To Ron, nose work truly was life, it needed no boundaries, it needed no special rules. If you had a dog and a place to search, you were bound to learn something important about communication. Josh Waitzkin, advocates for the kind of experiences Ron provided, encouraging people to avoid or break free from the static learning processes that trap so many minds in a single frame. When you adopt a dynamical approach to learning, you create and recreate yourself, developing a deeper understanding of your essence. You free yourself from the constraints of the game. You grow in life. Let your dog help you into the realm outside of shared language – they are not afraid to live there. Your dog waits for you there, ready to create wholly new shared language. As Ron often said, “it’s all about communication”.

Happy Sniffing!