Handling: When Do You, When Don't You

What to listen for:

Odor detection handling mastery comes down to hitting that delicate balance between doing too much and too little for your dog–the ability to offer intimate guidance while nurturing confidence.

Our hosts Robin Greubel, Stacy Barnett, and Crystal Wing offer their best tips and strategies for using your presence as a handler to nudge your dog towards their goals without smothering their autonomy. They draw lessons from a variety of training scenarios and odors, whether essential oils or narcotics. They also touch on the difference between distraction and diversion, and the use of discriminative stimuli in a training environment.

Our hosts stress the need to identify your dog's unique personality, experience level, and skill mastery, and how to incorporate that context into your training strategy by providing challenges that encourage independent problem-solving.

The Dames of Detection unpack the concept of "dog time.” It’s a concept that our hosts have applied in Distraction Camp and Intentional Handling classes in which you’re encouraged to allow your dog to work at their own pace without excessive handler interference. They also talk handling errors typical of handlers at different levels of proficiency, and provide exercises to help remedy those errors.

Key Topics:

• Training as the Setting Up of a Problem (04:38)
• Using Your Presence to Increase Your Dog’s Understanding (11:03)
• The Right Way to Gain More Experience as a Handler (18:05)
• Two Buckets of Distraction Drills (21:50)
• Troubleshooting Your Training Strategy (29:56)
• What Makes a Good Handling Official? (39:17)
• Using Discriminative Stimuli (48:00)
• Key Takeaways (59:08)

Resources:

• Give us ideas to talk about here
• Distraction Camp/Intentional Handling 2024 Hot Wash
• Distraction Camp 2023 Download
• Distraction Camp 2022 Download
• Fenzi Webinars
• Stacy's NW101 in February
• Crystal in Kansas
• Fenzi Camp in Ohio
• Crystal in Wisconsin

We want to hear from you:

• Check out the K9 Detection Collaborative FB page and comment on the episode post!
• K9Sensus Foundation can be found on Facebook and Instagram. We have a Trainer’s Group on Facebook!
• Scentsabilities Nosework is also on Facebook.
• Crystal Wing K9 Coach can be found here at CB K9 and here at Evolution Working Dog Club.
• You can follow us for notifications of upcoming episodes, find us at k9detectioncollaborative.com