All About Scent Work Podcast

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos

The question is rather simple: should there be an observable difference between a team playing Scent Work simply for "fun" and a team solely interested in competing? My gut tells me the answer should be "No". Let's discuss.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos, Bill Gaskins

In this episode, we speak with Bill Gaskins of Integrity Nose Worx to have a better understanding of his background and how he has taken on the role of someone on social media who shares his expertise, openly asks questions and prompts important discussions in an open and humble way.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos

At some point when training in Scent Work, you will set a hide that turns out to be more difficult than you were anticipating. What do you do? We discuss the three general options and how you may go about choosing the right one for any given situation.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos

In this episode, we delve into the difference between properly preparing training in Scent Work and overtraining, highlighting why we should avoid doing the latter. We also discuss why this not only important when building our dog's skills, but our own handler skills as well.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos

In this episode, we work to bust this myth and explain the reasoning behind why instructors may ask for handlers to be quiet as the dog is actively searching early in their career, but the major issues of trying to bake in absolute silence into your training and how this can come back to bite you later.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

In this episode, we discuss the importance of making smart equipment choices, how they may shift and change over time and the reasons why we should introduce certain types of equipment outside the context of Scent Work first.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

When we are trialing with our dogs in Scent Work, there is no reason you should abandon the very same principles you have come to rely upon on in training simply because your trialing! Yet, time and time again, you will see competitors doing this very thing! We discuss who to avoid this in this podcast episode.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos, Michael McManus

In this episode, we discuss the topics of supporting, crowding and hindering with Michael McManus, in an attempt to better nail down what these concepts truly mean and how we can all be better handlers and teammates to our dogs.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos

Recorded during the COVID pandemic, this episode stresses how now is the time for introspection. For self-improvement. To sit with this discomfort, to learn from it and try to propel our species forward in the right direction.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos, Michael McManus

What is failure? This is the question we explore with Michael McManus. This episode will get everyone thinking about what their perceptions of "failure" may be, whether they need to be adjusted or not and how it is important to be mindful of our approaches with long-term consequences in-mind.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos, Michael McManus

We discuss how dog actually hunt with Michael McManus in hopes of dispelling common misconceptions, how we may need to adjust our expectations and how we train in response to these realities.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos, Michael McManus

In this episode, we discuss the differences between ethology and interpretation with Michael McManus, delving into the advantages of using ethology to help in developing better training plans and approaches in Scent Work.

Speakers: Dianna L. Santos, Michael McManus

Recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the purpose of this discussion with Michael McManus CAPE, CATT, CNWI is to delve into why people compete in the first place, how those people will cope with trials being cancelled nationwide while also highlighting ways handlers can use this time to further improve their skills during an otherwise unsettling and uncertain time.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos, Michael McManus

We sit down with Michael McManus, CAPE, CATT, CNWI in this podcast episode to discuss this topic, how training approaches may affect a dog's ability to work through a pooling odor problem, how inaccessible hides may worsen the issue and much more!

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

We direct this episode to our fellow professional instructors and trainers, urging them to remember that they do NOT need to be perfect, that doing so distances them from their clients, and to reject any attempts of idolization since this can cause serious harm to the human and canine client.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

Scent Work is an incredibly inclusive activity which quite literally every dog should participate in one way or another. In this episode, we discuss why this is and how we as a community need to do better to ensure we are not turning this into an exclusive "members-only" club.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

With the explosion of the popularity of Scent Work, it is important that we all understand what Scent Work actually IS, the difference between the competition element and the activity as well as some key rules for playing the game, especially when you are using target odors.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

Humility. Something everyone from instructors, trainers, trial officials and dog owners should be practicing. Otherwise, you're limiting your own potential! If you close yourself off from learning, you will stifle your own development that will eventually backfire on both yourself and your dog.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

We discuss how an overabundance of trialing opportunities are opening up the possibility for more and more dog and handlers teams to rush to trial and a quick test you can do at home to tell whether your dog indeed knows how to hunt or not.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

A disheartening trend is dogs and handlers not enjoying themselves while they are training or trialing in Scent Work. Instead, their sessions are riddled with stress, angst, frustration, confusion and even anger. We discuss this and ways to combat it in this episode.

Speaker: Dianna L. Santos

Nose Work. Scent Work. Detection. SAR. Tracking. Trialing. ... What the heck do all of these terms mean?! It is enough to cause someone to rip their hair out! We explain them all in this episode.