Two Wheels, One Blurt Alert and A Rogue Cheese Cube- Elite Trial Recap - Lessons from the Desert

Dust, heat, and a whole lot of critter scent—this elite nose work weekend had it all. We headed to a Western movie set and came home with a sharper game plan: how to spot channeling odor, decide when to finish early, and build independence without frying your dog’s brain. Along the way, we faced a classic trap—two hides on one side of a truck—and turned that miss into a concrete progression using off-leash discovery, long-line refinement, and short-leash control. We lay out our exact drills with chairs and boxes, why we set sources deeper off the plane, and how we balance elevation work with ground hides that ride up walls and read “high.”

You’ll hear how a six-foot leash can calm a fast dog’s acceleration, how structured pre-trial exercise trims arousal without killing drive, and why “benefit from a no” is the skill that separates steady teams from spirals at elite and summit. We share the timer habits that actually help—halftime alerts, risk thresholds, and knowing when a quick finish beats burning minutes on a hide nobody solved. There’s honest talk about handler errors too, including the cheese cube heard round the leaderboard and a timeout that cost placement, plus the mindset shift from “find them all” to “bank points and build skills.”

If you’re prepping for NACSW Elite or eyeing Summit, this is a field-tested roadmap: converging odor realities, site-specific prep for schools vs desert sets, elevation progressions without guesswork, and low hides that teach patience. We’re candid, curious, and focused on decisions, not drama—so you can leave your next trial with clearer notes and a smarter plan.

If this helped you think differently about your recap, subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a quick review. Tell us: what’s your toughest call—stay and hunt or finish and bank?

Transcript

Late Release And The Puppy ER Story

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Hey everybody, welcome to our podcast for February. It really is just a day or two past February. We really had intended to get this out to you last week, but we had a little puppy problem. So Alex had to make an unexpected visit to the ER. She'll tell us a little bit about that with her new little gal, because you know, you never know what the puppy's gonna try to eat. So um we had to postpone until today. But we're so glad that you could join us. I'm Jill Klavosovic um with Mountain Dogs, and I have with me Alex Woodruff from K9 release canine.

Western Movie Set Trial Overview

SPEAKER_01 0:49

So hey Alex, say hello to technically if uh February had 31 days, we'd be okay almost. Yeah, too funny. Yeah, so last week we're ready to go, ready to sit down, and I had Vespa beside me, and uh she started to vomit a lot and a lot. And it turns out she got a little bit of a dissolved uh dish or washing machine pod. And luckily I used some natural stuff, so it wasn't terribly bad, but definitely I think some ulcers in her esophagus, and so we're able to manage that. Uh so she's on the mend, we're good, no problem. She seemed to do very well this weekend. She came with me to California and got high combined, so her sniffer works. Um, we're just managing a little bit of the cough that seems to be there right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Yay! So we're really happy about that. We were even trying to craft, I was even trying to pull up like what our topic was going to be for today. Since then, we actually both participated in the Benson, Arizona uh um uh elite trade. What is it but yeah, but it's a movie set. Oh, it's a movie set, yeah, Western movie set. And I of course love it because I've got two other sites that we do for mountain dogs that are like that western town. So I feel pretty confident, pretty comfortable with my dog in that environment. And that was our mission, is that we wanted this to be our first elite because we're both gonna champion out within, I don't know, four or five elites this year. So that's kind of our goal is to do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

And it's a very cool site, it has its unique challenges, it's very crittery. As in, there's rats that are running under the floorboards, there's a cat that typically lives there. Um, I didn't see its house this time. Normally it's in the saloon, but it definitely had some evidence that it had been around.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

I can attest to the fact that I think the cat still has a house in the saloon.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Oh, it's tough to work around. Um, but yeah, it's got a lot of extra challenges that way. That and you're in the middle of basically desert. And so the dust is there, the heat is there, there's no shade, but it's really fun. The time of the year is perfect. So we had gorgeous weather. It was a little hot, but if as long as you had shade cloths on, you were good. It was really fun. It was a good trial.

Why A Thoughtful Trial Recap Matters

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. We decided that what we wanted to do was not just, I mean, you are gonna hear a lot about our experience because often, right? That's what you bring to the table is what we just experienced. Right. But it's in the concept of a trial recap. Okay. So you just come out of trial and you walked away with either certain successes and maybe certain misses. And by miss, I don't just mean missed hide, I mean anything, right? Uh some thought that you might have thought um initially, and you know, what might be areas where you can now focus on for training. Yeah. So that's kind of what we wanted to do, was use those most recent experiences to kind of give you guys um a good discussion about um the things that go through our brain, or at least here's here's the better way to say it. What we remember what we're which is what recap is often.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Because often Yeah. Yeah, we're saying it basically happened. Exactly. And we're seeing it from a competitor's point of view. Um, a competitor's point of view that also teaches other people and potentially sets hides, right? So our mindset that we're gonna share isn't just as a competitor, which is fresh on our minds. That's what we feel the most in the moment. But then the recap and what we learn from those moments often has a little bit different lasting. Um, we might think about how the picture's presented. Do we like that? Is that something that we want to emulate and do again because we kind of liked how it showed up. Personally, I thought Laura, this was Laura's, I think, first elite. She was ACO.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah, she did her. This is an elite fabulous.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yeah. I loved the pictures she gave us. They were so like uh well thought out. There was like a high problem amongst everything else that was blank uh for the elite premiere. And it was such a cool problem that I was like, oh, I wish I saw it better. Right. Because I I could sort of see it, but it was one of those like aha kind of searches. She did a great job. I really had fun with her searches this weekend.

George’s Growth And Leash Strategy

SPEAKER_00 4:59

So just to kind of give you guys the um template, right? So it's a NACSW trial. It was first day was an elite, second day was an elite premiere. The elite premiere is there for our I don't want to say retired, but our elite champion dogs. Yep. So that they have a one-day trial they can participate in that is still an elite. It's not yeah, a half, it's not a one-day summit. It's still the high placement and all of that is still within the elite category. Um so Alex was running George on the Elite, and she ran uh Tana on the Elite premiere.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

And it was her last trial, too. So it's a little bittersweet, sad. She got her title, and uh, we're not traveling anymore. So it was it was nice to be able to get it.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Um you might be able to do one of your own if you have it.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yeah, we're Stacy and I are brainstorming if we can make something local. Last travel trial for sure. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

So um, and then I ran my dog Zeke and then came with Latin who ran Ellie. So we have kind of all those comparisons and that sort of thing. So um starting with the elite.

Two Hides One Vehicle: Training The Picture

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Overall, I was super proud of him. I thought uh it felt like he's four and a half now. It felt like we were starting to get over the hump of arousal and just trying to figure out how to work as a team. It felt like we were a team and we were able to execute things together. Um, I worked them all on a six-foot line, which I have switched to over the past two months now. We weren't ready for it last year, but we definitely it's it's our way of controlling some of those pieces, ours, as in he gets too wild if he gets too much leash because he has too much acceleration and then the deceleration is too much, and we're just running around. So, working that it adds a little bit of extra challenge, leash handling with a fast, strong dog in these spaces with uh chairs and tables and things like that. So it added some challenge that way. But I thought we handled that pretty well. What was really cool is I could start really seeing him communicate when he understood the odor picture belonged to something, he would be able to work it back just a little bit, dismiss it, and be really ready to move on to find a new picture. And so that was something that I hadn't seen necessarily before. And it was really cool to see that really starting to develop and kind of work in this elite setting. So I was really happy with that. Uh, the biggest problem was one of the hides that we missed, and it kind of put a little hole that I knew sort of was there, and it was two hides on one side of a truck. And so both wheels had hides. He found the first one really nice on the front end, the back end, we were working the back end of the vehicle, and he was almost ready to source, but then he worked it back to the front end. And I think that's on both of us that we thought it was the same hide as the back. So that says experience, we need to work that a little bit more and understanding that that pooling can occur and it's two separate hides and not making that assumption.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Right. And that's also that confirmation where the dog may even go back to that first one, yeah. And then with the experienced dog who recognizes it as being a new rabbit, right? Right. Right. Yeah. Um, then kind of breaks off from that first found hide and then moves back towards the second one. So, and we can that's really a uh I think that's at the forefront of a lot of people's training this year. Um because if you look at the debriefs for even at NW3, I'm gonna suggest that some of your hide placements may be closer than what you anticipated before, because we're realizing that even at level three, those dogs are skilled enough to understand. And I and I hesitate to use the word converging, close converging, because we don't know what the convergence is until we run a dog, right? Yeah, and so it will change too.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

So you might have no convergence for the first half of the class, and then it starts converging as dogs moving it around or whatever conditions change.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Or where you are in the running order, yeah. So um, and the other point that I was gonna make that you were talking about was um just the experience you said that that of having George recognize you saw you were able to capture when he was sorting a new pathway to a new hide. Is that kind of fair to say or a founder? Or that it was part of a prior picture, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, and you could see that that understanding starting to be there, which is what we need for a lead.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, so that was really nice. Yeah, sometimes I call it the um the dog already has is working the next hide, even as you're rewarding them at the highest. Yeah, that's cool to see. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

That's he's not there yet.

Converging Odor And Handling No’s

SPEAKER_00 9:54

He's not a thinker. And you're gonna have different dogs who are gonna be more talented at that than others. So Ellie, the border collie, is exceptional at that. She's she's not uh a rambunctious, she's and she's not timid either. Yeah, but she she comes in and she's already thinking as opposed to being overcasted into expectation of oh boy, this is fun, right? Yeah, and so with my boy dogs, we see the oh boy, this is fun. And with the girl dogs, it's more like I've got this, I've got my calculator out, I can tell you exactly where this hide is, right? Yeah, so she's more that kind of thinking dog. But boy, you can watch, you know, even in class, we'll watch her and she will um really be solving that next hide as she's coming off of where she's being re reinforced or re-informed. I love that. That's cool. Yeah, and a prior height. So that's kind of a skill set that and if you and if that's something that you feel you need to work on, there's a ton of different exercises you can do for that.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

She only missed two heights, and he ended up second overall, which was quite nice. I was gonna say she didn't brag about that guy. I didn't, I didn't. So she threw that out there right now. Um he he did really well. I was happy with that. I think the big uh a lot of us, I looked at the results, and a lot of us had the same 61. Yes, you did. A lot of people had the same.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

If everyone had from one to six, scored the same score.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Totally, totally. But gave us yeah, yeah. Um, what gave us that time? So we had a quite a bit faster time, which put us in that second place. And it was because in the saloon we worked it one direction, we worked it the other direction. We had four out of the five hides, and I didn't see any new changes of behavior. I saw a few little, which now after the fact I know was a higher hide that was moving off of it. But here's a little thing he's a lot of dog, and he was going up on surfaces that I didn't want his paws on. So I thought, uh, this might just be him increasing arousal. Maybe there's nothing else. And so he's just trying to cast higher to try and find other odor. I don't want to encourage it because I don't like his paws on things. And so I called finish. So we finished that search in three minutes, and I think we had five and a half minutes to do that search. So that gave us a very fast time in comparison to sticking around and trying to find another hide.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

And that was the one hide that none of the dogs got in the saloon. So in that case, then you can end up right in a good placement position for that search if so it is not to say that that's kind of what Alex and I do when we go in as handlers.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

No, I thought maybe that's she was making a decision.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

So that's what I'm trying to say. She was making a decision based on being in the moment with her dog and what her dog was showing her at that time and his level of growth, because it's really good if you can go in even as a seasoned handler, and you're not gonna try to say, Oh, I have to get every hide, right? It's more like right. So finding hides, and that is the one that um kept me in the search longer.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Yeah, yeah, and I think that happened to a lot of boy.

Strategy: Known vs Unknown Hide Counts

SPEAKER_00 12:59

I really recognize, oh my gosh, he is so close to getting this. He's so close. But then it was like, okay, we're just not gonna be able to. It's the one hide where it came down to the last, you know, few seconds, and I had to say, okay, we're just gonna have to say finish and leave that one there because we didn't have given enough time, he could have solved it.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

But right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Yeah, so you got second overall, and you got a placement in the search, didn't you?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah, we did. I think it was the saloon search. So we got a first in the saloon, and I believe a third. Um, I'm trying to think of which one. I think it was the livery or church. I think it was livery. So we got two placements. So yeah, I was really proud of him. He did very, very good.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, Ellie got first in the livery.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Oh yeah. For the church. She didn't.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

She got first in the church.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Yeah. Because she just went bing, bing, bing, bing. Oh, done. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was a known number.

unknown 13:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

So that's the other thing too. You know, the strategy with a lead is that you get two searches with unknown number of hides.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Typically, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

One with known number of hides and one with a range.

unknown 14:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Right. And I think that so looking back, I think one of my growth things with Zeke is I'm not as nervous as I certainly used to be. That's good. With the known number. I actually now like them. Because and it's not because I don't come in nervous. Oh my gosh, am I going to be able to get whatever it is? Three, five, whatever it is. It's more because I know what my ceiling is. It's easier to call finish or know this is not going to happen and I'm only missing one. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Right. And but boy, I see that at Summit too. I will say that. Then that's a good carryover skill set.

unknown 14:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Is not to get caught up in having to get them all because there may be one that you just can't solve within that time frame, which is kind of what we're doing at Summit.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

So let's break that down a little bit because I think that that to me is the biggest problem I see. At least I've got a lot of teams, like as an instructor. A lot of my teams are coming from detective, yes, and they're working a lot of AKC, and then they're starting. So they're NW3, starting to get into a lead. And what I see a lot of is stress because they have the pressure and they have had the pressure of you have to get them all. There's no way to title in Detective if you do not find all of the hides in that search. And it is such a different mentality. And I know I was there with Tana for a long time. And I think for her, maybe it was a little bit different because I had the belief she could get absolutely everything. Right. And so the feeling like I should get them all is still there. I don't have that feeling with George. He is, he's a good boy. He has found them all. He has done that and he's done very well. And I think the 16 out of 18, and we missed the one that I sort of saw. I'm like super proud of him. But I also am leaving each search going, we're finding hides and we're getting points and we're having fun playing this game together. And so it's a mental shift from I have to get them all and cover absolutely every inch of the space and double check it versus we're fun, we're looking for odor, he's finding hides, I'm giving him cookies. Let's have fun.

Time Management And Finishing Early

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Well, I think that part of that mental, and if if we want to call it mental management, we certainly can is that, and it's not when we say I have to get all of them. What we're what part of what that means is just okay, I've tried this training, I have the skill set to meet that level. So then you show up, but the level that how the measurement of the test is a hundred percent versus in elite, the measurement of the test is really much more flexible because the other thing is hugely important at elite to build the skill set to carry into summon is being able to benefit from a no. Benefit from a no, exactly. And it's either I know I'm close, yeah, I'm going to be patient and let my dog continue to work this rather than that fear of, oh my gosh, if I stay here, I'm gonna call another no, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Versus I'm going to benefit from that no because everything in every part that I am to get to this level is telling me we are close. And I've actually verbalized that. Yeah. Zeke, we're doing a great job. We are almost there. Yeah, yeah. Hang in there, keep working. You know, this is all going on my head. Totally. Yeah. So so I think that that's a really good point, right? Which is how do you turn a no either into a yes or into a benefit? Right. And is that important in yeah, in Summit? Because certifying official at Summit, my goal is to set that high, period. One more piece of patience, one more piece of letting that dog work.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

I've competed at that level. Yeah. And the biggest thing is understanding no's are part of the game in Summit versus we're so avoidant of no's. It's no no's. Yay, no no's, yay, exactly, right? One, two, three. That is your goal. Elite, we're even still elite, no's can be the difference, like for you. We'll talk about it. Um, of placement, right? Yeah. One no. Yeah. Um, and I could tell you it was one no for Tana for placement again in the elite premiere. But understanding and being okay with a no is such a shift, and it's hard to get out of that shift to go to elite premiere. And I think that's possibly something that's happening too, is the teams who are now competing at Summit and kind of used to that picture and that understanding, then going back to Elite Premiere and understanding that yeah, sometimes you can get no's in elite premiere and it's okay, but it is going to matter a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

And it's also the time out. Oh no, we got a remote digger. And then I went, Oh my god, big deal.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

It's just a no.

Zeke’s Highs, Misses, And The Timer Fail

SPEAKER_00 18:52

It's a half a value of one hide. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, so fine. Right. But that also comes to so one of my um kind of pieces of of looking at your trial metrics and trying to decide what you need to work on has been looking at those pieces, right? Because often we do set our trial objectives as I want no no's, no timeouts, and I don't want to leave any hides behind. And as I've reiterated, those are really goals, not objectives, right? So, and because we don't know how to articulate why I am getting the no, right? Right. Is it because my dog is working, pooling, and trapping, and I don't understand it? Do we have sufficient communication between? What would be your takeaways from? So, how would you then formulate, like, I think we need to work on X, Y, Z with George, and here's how I'm gonna do it, and then into my next elite, whenever that might be. Because say if that time frame is a long ways away or a short ways away, does that make a difference on what you're gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Yeah, for him. So I'm gonna look at the misstide because not both misstides. Okay. I'm going to look at the one that many other teams were able to get, and he started to work, but we just couldn't finish. So that's gonna be the one that I want to make better. So yeah, we moved on. I saw it, and when I found out where the hide was, I go, oh, I know exactly what the problem was. That allows me then to go back and say, okay, we don't have experience of two hides on one vehicle. We do need to work that. That is not something in his repertoire. I need to be able to work two hides that might be channeling within a space. So, not necessarily a vehicle, but I need two hides on two chairs that are along a wall that has a little bit of structure. Um, so I need to be able to work that picture with him independently doing it, and then with me maybe proofing against it, and then me also observing and seeing what it looks like. Um, so recognizing that, I felt like we didn't get trapped in pulling and trapping. Uh, that was kind of nice. So that's not on the agenda necessarily, but it's normally kind of there. It's something I'm looking at. He wasn't distracted with the space, but he did have a few moments where he was ducking under looking at the holes. There's holes everywhere. So he was checking out a few of those. Um, something I didn't see, and it was a nice metric for me, is he only grabbed once some grass in the space. And the only time that he grabbed that, because that's been an arousal problem. Um, I've only seen that once, and it was because I was holding him in an area where we were already done. So that was kind of a nice understanding that the only moment that I saw with the grass grabbing and kind of grabbing it was because of holding him in the space. So the the rest of the space was totally fine. He was working really nice. He didn't get stuck anywhere, he was anchoring. So for me on my list is continuing working because he did do it around grasses, so that we are doing that reset protocol still and the arousal management. But then we're going to be working some closer. Hides and in that drier environment because that wind and how it was swirling in the space is a challenge, and I think that's something that I need to continually continue working.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Good. So then um, can you be more specific? Like, okay, so let's just take the two hides on the one vehicle. One working an actual vehicle with two hides. Right. That's one way. What and you said, or some chairs. So how else can you do it with the chairs?

Turning Errors Into Training Objectives

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Um I'm also looking at, I could even do this with two boxes, but I think the visual pull of the two boxes is going to be um strong enough that it's not going to show that challenge. Because I do think that he knows how to work two hides. Um, but it's working where the pooling and the trapping is going to be within each other. And the hides are not surface level. So to me, if they were both really surface, like on the edge of the tire, like it's Okay, I was gonna really what do you mean by surface level? Um, so on the outside of the tire and just sitting there ready to grab. I don't think that that would be the problem at all. And so for me, it would be setting these deeper six inches to 12 inches off of the surface, where it's the understanding of the odor around those objects that is going to grab the hide versus the object itself pulling them visually in. Um, because I don't think that that is going to be a problem. He can work two close hides, it's figuring out how that picture can work. So we go to a train museum often, and I'm thinking, oh yeah, that would be a nice setup to put into there on the side of a train where I've got some structure happening in there that I can use. Um, I can use a vehicle, right? I can use a vehicle to set that up. And even in my yard, I could, as long as I've got some sort of wall that that odor is going to be somewhat contained, like the vehicle, because if he can get at it from behind, I think I'm losing some of that difficulty that I'm trying to achieve. He knows how to work 3D. This is asking for that push in through the plane of something.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

So aside from just like setting those hides, now I I set the hides, I've got George. Are you gonna run him first time like on your six foot?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

I'm probably gonna do off leash.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Okay, there's because yeah, independence progression, right? So when he gets an opportunity to he has to learn it, yeah. Okay, that's what I wanted to point out. That that we're not gonna jump right into the structure handling it handling, right? Where it's because at that point it's dog opportunity to experience and learn first. Right, yes, then the progression goes to now. Do I have the skill set where the dog recognizes that older picture? Then we can get to the point where Alex puts him on maybe a long leash, then maybe she puts him on a short leash. So it's a it's a progression over time of introducing those close hides. Because so I was talking to um Kathy Vito about Loki, she's getting ready for another summit. And I see she said one of her her practices, she was a little worried, but we need to work on close hides. Well, she's also pulling up like what I just did in Florida for the summit, right? And go, oh my god, I said that, and and he blah blah blah. Well, we don't know if what she set poses. The same. Yeah, because yeah, right. However, when you go to do those, what you can do, I like the I actually do like a five-chair running bunny.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

And I call it a running bunny, it's really not running.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

No, it's just many of them.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Bunny in the hole. I don't know what you want to call it, right? Yeah, but I put one hide on all five of those chairs, yeah, and then it's let the dog go individually on their own off-leash without handle handler observation, and all you got to do is deliver the pez. You know, you're the PES dispenser at that point, just deliver the reward and let the dog experience it first, and then develop your skill set from there.

Building Close-Hide Skills: Chairs And Boxes

SPEAKER_01 25:49

So, what's really funny is I've started up my uh containers class. I have making containers fun is my class online right now. And last week was week one or the week before, and the assignment for it was pretty much exactly that. You have four boxes, they're within the environment, everyone's hot. So the dog just goes from box to box to box to box. And oh my God, we love boxes. Yeah, right. And it's the same concept of that's there are bunnies in everyone.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

If you don't have chairs, I don't have five chairs, I don't have a room that's big enough. You've got a hallway, you've got a garage, you've got some space at home. Do it with the boxes. And then we're like, well, but isn't that visual if they're just going box to box? There still is an odor picture that the dog will learn. And the biggest thing that we want them to understand is that two sources can be closer because levels one through three, and for heaven's sakes, even when you get your three hide search in two or in three, we still have those certifying officials, we're still probably placing those quite far apart.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Right? It's they're not like you're not working them as that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

And so what's really nice about even the chair, you've got borderline, depends on where you put the hide on the chair. But with those boxes, because the sourcing is so easy, right? The answer, if once they get within 12 inches, they have the answer, right? So that allows you to do that. So then if we talk about progression of okay, the easiest version are the open boxes, then then maybe we do chairs on the front of the chairs, back of the chairs. Um, we can get to more complex hides. Maybe can you do five inaccessible hides nearby? Like that's not an easy thing to set up. You have to have the right environment, but that's kind of talking about that progression. And so, where I would think with George, where we're at, is those hides are not the easy box hides. We're kind of mid to late within that progression of some of these deeper kind of pictures where they are overlapping. And so that would be that picture of where I'm trying to work right now.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Got it. All right, so what about so that's kind of what we want to do here, guys, is not just right, say, oh, here's what we did. This is what I did. Right. Um, but give you an idea of like what we see as some of the challenges and how we want to measure it and how we want to potentially train it, right? Yeah, okay, so for Zeke.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

All right, Zeke.

Elevation Work Without Guessing

SPEAKER_00 28:05

All right, so going in, my so coming off of last year, my goal was and my objective, but it was you know pretty much a goal, was to just be consistent, right? So I had done all of this, I was trying to, you know, to get 80 points and above. And and I know that sounds because believe me, I've been down in the lower section with other dogs plenty of times. So I'm not saying that if you have that dog where your goal, right, and we've got close friends who have that dog where the goal is just to get 50. Right. And that's a wonderful goal for that dog, yeah. That team at that time, and especially for that handler to be confident and comfortable with just succeeding at that level for that dog, right? Yeah. So this isn't in any way, shape, or form to brag about our dogs or discount um, you know, those dogs, but more just this was this is where I am with this dog, right? So he's definitely got the potential for me, and Alex knows, and all of my hostine knows, it's been rather difficult for Jill to leave behind the host hat, put on the handler hat, be in the moment with my dog, so that for a long time, that's been just getting through three. That's been the the goal. Yeah, just yeah, be with him, forget, let everything fall away. You've got excellent people doing the other stuff. You don't need to do it, just put on that this handler hat. So I've gotten better at that. We have gotten better at that. So okay, so coming off of last year, you know, we did really well with the consistency, and then we get to Delta and poor Jenny Kiefer, she comes in from California to CO for us, and we got a 55.88, but that was 11 out of 22 highs. 11. Yeah, high-end trial was 11 out of 22 highs. Yeah, you can have that trial where that just happens for whatever reason. And it was, I don't think it was categorically where you'd say, Oh, but you guys just didn't have skilled handlers because you did. You have handlers there whose teams were in the 80s and 90s, right? Maybe even 100. And that's just what that happened on that day at that trial at that moment in time.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

So yeah, yeah.

Ground Hides That Read Like High Hides

SPEAKER_00 30:19

So now I'm a little jittery, right? So I'm coming off of that fall with a lower score than what I expected. Yeah. Uh I hate to say expected, but yeah, you do, right? Yeah. Because you just don't want to get so caught up in the score expectation, measuring your skill set versus still there. Having confidence in your skill set, right? So I did just kind of have to say, you just let it go. Let it go because you have confidence in everything he's ever done. And it was just so I really had to etch a sketch that trial and just go, okay, pull out the things that went well there. Some of the things I noticed that didn't go well. Um, I recognized him working odor, but didn't stay in certain um areas to support him so he could work for that. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. So okay, so now we're to Benson. So he um did really well. We had 17 out of 18. I'll I'll just brag for a second here because it doesn't it doesn't turn out this great. We had 17 out of 18 hides, so we had high in trial based on number of hides. We did not get high in trial because I made some errors. Okay, having said that, and when I was teasing about, so we ended up with an 87.89 or something, yeah, but there were six teams from first all the way to six who scored 88.89. Yeah, so by missing by having one half value error, I dropped from first to seventh, right? Yeah, yeah. So, and I'm saying that not because I'm a first place monger, because if anybody knows, there's been many trials that I haven't done that, right? Yeah, but more as a measure. So I use what how my peers are doing more as a skill set measurement of that day. And that delta trial was a pure example of that, right? So I walked away from that going, and we had a few no's in there that were blurts. Like I think there was one legitimate no that I turned into a yes, and there were a lot of missed hides. But when I looked at the whole uh scope of how the field did, right? Not reinforced. Hey, we aren't like losing our mojo. Right, right. It was that trial was particularly, and it wasn't even Jenny's hide placements because they were totally fair. Yeah, Alex has her own opinion about Delta, she thinks it's a little um, you know, mysterious.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Delta gets funky, and I think it's because the trial time of year is cool, yeah, especially first thing in the morning, and it's in a bowl, so it holds like the cool, and I think inversion I think has an effect in there for a little bit of.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Yeah, it's a little bit lower. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

The whole town is a little bit lower than the surrounding environment. So I do think that that affects it. And so your morning searches are going to be a little different than your e afternoon searches.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Just thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

I wish I had all of the gizmos to kind of measure everything. I know she just said okay. So then so what happened was um, and of course, you always remember those moments, you know. I do remember all the excellence, right? But part of what I take away on a takeaway from a trial is also looking at for training purposes, yeah, where where my um areas and not necessarily even gaps, but on that day working a I compete against the environment, I compete against the search, right? Yeah, rather than competing against who's in the parking lot. So bringing that to the table, I went, okay, so which search, you know, elevated itself above our skill set? That's a good way to look at it, right? Yeah. So the saloon was where I got a no and I left a hide, but that's the hide that I left that nobody got because it was an elevated hide on a pole. However, I so recognized it, I'm so pleased. So he it was in engulfed, kind of pulling and trapping in one whole half side of that saloon, and he was moving in there and moving up, and then there were a flight of stairs that went up to a second area. He must have gone up that flight of stairs four or five times. And I kept saying every time he went up it, there's a high hide in here. There's a high hide. He's trying to get it from the second floor. I was actually verbalizing this, and had I had like the guts to just sort of go fling my arm and go alert.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

You probably would have got it.

Planning Next Trials And Site-Specific Prep

SPEAKER_00 34:48

I'd say up, up, up there, somewhere in the room. Right. And I think if I had not had some other errors, um, yeah, maybe I would have done that. But also in the saloon, the other thing that I did, and this is not a uh typically a crittery dog. This is very much a corner, though.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

And that's where the odor for the high hide was.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yes, a hole in the floor behind a propane tank, way over in the corner, that it even crossed my mind like no CO in their right mind would set a hide down in this hole. Right. Yet he stuck his whole head in there with such like wonderment. Enthusiasm? Yeah, wonderment. It wasn't even like his standard alert, right? Just wonderment. And I went, Yeah, alert.

unknown 35:31

It was wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

So when we were talking about do you have the capacity to turn a no into a yes, I at least knew that that was not the thing that I was gonna hang out for to try to figure out as he's nose poking a cat under the floorboard? Exactly. As he's nose poking the cat under the floorboard, exactly. Yeah, and he doesn't have exposure to cats, he's got a lot of exposure to mice, but that that definitely was something new for him. So so that was the saloon search. And then the one that got me though was the um in the livery, and we had been working right up um, I think almost all last fall and into the spring on his high hides.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Zeke is very, very good about understanding high hides. Jill is not so good at reading what Zeke is doing, right? It's that thing where you make them do it a hundred times, and then by the hundredth time, they're gonna peel off and go, okay, I guess you know, I'm not getting paid for all this work, so I'm gonna go, you know, go get a different job, right? Yeah. So we we really worked. Um, we had some fabulous practices where I had friends and and classmates and students around me and just saying, okay, like where are you gonna reward that? Plus, I did a lot of progressive high high training instead of just setting the two-minute, three-minute drill of where you're asking the dog to continue to give you information that you're just guessing about, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

So that really helped. So we got the high hide. It was not tremendously elevated, it was just on a sign on a board. I want to say it was four and a half feet, though. Four and a half, five feet. So excited, right? I mean, I read it within two, like once you went up, and then he went up again, nailed it, and I went alert. Yes, and I went, Oh my god, we got a high up. Hey, right. Yeah. So I grabbed a whole handful of cheese because I was so excited. I mean, I must have had at least five pieces in there.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

My dog's not a huge dog. He's not little, but he's not huge.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

No, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

And then just sort of shoved it in his mouth, right? Well, guess what? One of those little pieces of cheese fell out of my hand and rolled across the floor.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Uh-huh.

Host Brain vs Handler Brain

SPEAKER_00 37:43

So then not only do I like, you know, I probably could have just gingerly picked it up, not made a mess, and hoped that I didn't get a fault for it. Although the rule is drop food. It's whether it's from the dog's mouth or from my hand, right? It's drop food and it fell out of his mouth. And so what do I do? I just go, yeah, you're gonna get a fault anyway. So I just walked over to him and said, Zeke, get that. And I pointed right down at the food. So I'm sure that Laura was okay. I don't have any discretion here. You just like, right? It's like out there in the So I've judged before, and I get people, oh, I dropped a piece of food.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Like, oh, it's like the big admission, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Versus um, you didn't see that, right? Right. Yeah, like maybe just take it as writing and you're right. Yeah. Okay. So there's the, but as it turns out, that's one point, right? So at this point, I still have the 17 hides, but I've got two and a half, and now I've got three and a half, because they were they're worth what 5.68 or something like that. Because we had that many. Okay. So I'm still in the running at that point, right? Yeah. So, but then what do I do? So I timed out. It was the timeout that what that broke the camel's back, right? Yeah. So because that's what dropped me to the 87 point, blah, blah, blah, rather than so. And here's the lesson I learned from that. It's not that you shouldn't time out, because really I was done at that point. But um, I looked at my my timer, and here's my problem. If you're gonna use a timer, start it, you ought to know how to use a timer. I've been practicing a lot because that was one of my goals up in Montana was to use more time, right? So I was going in and I was accurately starting it. I come from a sailing family, so I bought the sailing timer. I didn't buy the equestrian timer. I bought the timer. If you don't know anything about sailing timers, they count back up after they reach zero. So be sure when you go to buy one of those that if that right, I think it's the Omni, that you ask for the equestrian unless you know sailing, right? Yeah, yeah. And then usually I have my beep, beep, beep, beep, beep at 30 seconds. But it didn't. Well, it I hadn't worn it since last fall. So I have no idea if I turned it on. And I didn't like try it before then. I just put it on my wrist and went in, right? So the good things are I remembered to turn it on. During the search, I looked at it and knew I had enough time for that high high to work it. Perfect. Okay, so there's two bonuses there. Yeah, yeah. And then the poor timer. So she didn't give me a 30-second warning either. Cause she and maybe I she was engrossed in your lovely search. Yeah, Zeke was just like, he was just amazing.

Key Takeaways And Listener Invite

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Or she was going, I can't believe she just dropped that piece of food.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

And she said she was like, Oh no, now it's like so. I didn't even get like five seconds or 10 seconds. Oops, I forgot to call. She just she just had to go, time, and I went, Oh, okay. And then I did say to her, Don't worry about it. That's on me, that's not on you. Yeah, right. But then I'm going out of the search, going, I had 19 seconds because I stopped my watch when I said finish, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Except I was counting back up.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

It was 19 seconds after full time.

unknown 40:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Yeah. So I actually had to go back to my car, run my GoPro. Uh-huh. And as I'm running my GoPro, I'm going, Oh, look, you're way past time. So yeah, there's no objection there. So I did go right up to the CO and let her know that, or to Chris, who's the CO, and to Laura and say, No, don't discard what anybody says about that was on me, right? Just in case the timer's still worried. Let her know she did a good job and that one was on me. So, what are my takeaways? My dog is exceedingly good at this level. That's my first one. That's a good one, right? Um, we're really uh gaining um experience and a good skill set on reading, pooling, and trapping. Yep. Really gaining that. And that was something I wanted to gain going into cool, um, going into summit, right? Yeah, yeah. And then third is handler needs to work on using a timer. Yeah, and you can do it. And you'll need that for summit. And you can still do a blurt alert at Elite when you're closing in on your elite champion. It's still totally possible to just have it come out of your mouth because you're so excited. Yep. And drop food. So it was the three of them together. It was the three of them together. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Which is fine. That's that's how it goes.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Well, those are kind of my takeaways. And I think that some of the training that I can do for that, I think I still want to because I really think that with the high groundhides seem to be more within the dog's bailiwick. Because think about this. Yeah. There are going to be certain dogs who will hunt squirrels and trees. Right. Right. But for the most part, most of what they hunt is probably from their shoulders down.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Well, okay. So speaking, because now I've got a spaniel, I can tell you she observes things above her head real fast. She does not observe necessarily on the ground. She's she casts on the ground, right? But her eyesight is definitely going to catch higher. So, and maybe this is a small dog thing too, because I've watched many small dogs work higher hides. They glance at it so much as they go through to try and connect odor picture to what they see around them because they kind of have to, and they learn how to do that. So I do think that saying that ground hides are going to be more straightforward for a lot of dogs isn't always necessarily there. It really depends on where your history is on where you're setting hides. Because I've seen dogs that have never worked a ground hide and they struggle.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Because it's just not in their picture. Um, this past weekend we had a ground hide kind of in grass. I I was renting one of the first dogs, I think I was maybe second dog to run. Really humid. It was like 90s already. It was crazy our weather this past weekend in California. But the hide was in the grass area. There, Chana had no change of behavior. Even after it got pointed out where it was, it was an AKC master search. No change of behavior whatsoever. And And maybe because of the other stuff in the space, it was very distracting kind of space. But she was tracking it up a tree. She just could not find it on the ground. And I think that's conditioned sometimes too.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

Well, and that's also a good takeaway right there for just a second, guys, for me to throw out there is that sometimes when you're reviewing your trial, you know, kind of we we have a tendency to kind of want to go, oh, it was whoever set that high didn't know what they were setting or didn't present the kind of odor picture our dogs could solve. So at what Alex just described is a dog who can solve that problem, but on that day, at that moment in that search, based on that hide and the conditions, just the odor picture wasn't clear enough to do it within the time frame.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

So and then the dogs that ran 10 dogs after me, fine for the rest of the day.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

It is just time. It just didn't work within.

unknown 44:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Well, and I saw that Laura Tokar joined us. So we went welcome. We prior um gave you lots of accolades. Yeah, it was fun. So um, so I think that kind of gives you an idea. So moving away from that, right? What am I gonna train again? I'm gonna stick with my high hides, right? Because I really want to um make sure that here's kind of what I think happens, and especially after I just uh was CO for a summit in Florida. And of course, I'm gonna purposefully set more challenging high hides and high-low converging, those kinds of puzzles for summits. So some of it applies to an elite, some of it doesn't. But my point is that I think once you get into the trial, you can have these high hides you set in training. And you either, even if you're doing them blind, blind with help, or known, I think our reward is typically quicker and more confident in training, right? You're willing to make those kinds of risks of right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell my dog they're right and I'm gonna reward them here. Yeah, and so the dog is kind of right when you're working on that. And that's why I do think with the high hides, elevation hides, it's so important to start. Like we used a hallway in a school, and my first hide going down the hall was maybe two feet off the floor, further down, and I literally, like you said, it was on the front side of the object. Yeah, literally just stuck the tin against the wall. It was not on an object deep behind anything, it was right there, accessible, right? And then the next one would be three feet, then four feet. And then what we actually did is I took a tube when for our highest hide, and there was part of the hallway that had a lot of black tape at the top, like the teachers that had you know, like construction paper or something up there. So I put a tube up there and it kind of blended perfectly so that you couldn't the the dog wasn't then visually accessing, yeah, and confirming or verifying by visual so that can help. And then I think with the ground hides and the low hides, you it you just have to be prepared for the amount of time that it may take the dog to work all of those pathways back to source rather than um you know, because we come out of even at elite, we come out of, and I definitely this runs into Summit where your expectation is um alert yes, alert yes, alert yes, alert yes, alert, right? Like it's quick. Like you're coming into searches, and typically the dogs are getting a hide. If I've got a five-minute search, you're still probably getting one or two hides very quickly in the search, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Um, and it's not that elongated time before you actually can confirm you and your dog can confirm um an alert. So so I think that that's that's good. One reason to do some of those uh ground hides is because they just necessarily take more time and they'll help you understand um that your dog is working a pooling pathway on the ground.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

Yeah, right back to source. And something else, because I was working this morning, I tried grabbing video and the next dogs didn't do it. But uh with a ground hide, especially if you have it in a space where it might run up a wall, it can start looking like a higher hide. And if you are doing it blind, you wouldn't know, and it you might start pushing your dog against a wall. So I think it's a good situation where we're balancing if we want to be working high hides that we also need to be working these ground hides that might run up walls and where the dogs are starting to think it's a high hide, but it's just because they can't source it within that space and they have to understand that picture. So it's a nice balance.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Well, one of the great places that you can do that is, and I don't know that people have access to like a parking lot. Um, but even if it's like a Walmart parking lot versus a school parking lot or a school basketball court with a wall on one side and just a curb on the other, because then you're gonna see when the odor crosses and goes up that wall, what it looks like, right? Investigating up from odor low, hitting that wall and going up, and then the confirmation is on the other side where it's very low, and the dog is collecting it against the curb and then turning back into the space, and you're able to go, okay, if it was truly high coming down, the dog would be working on the top of stuff. Right. Potentially, you always want to caveat this stuff, right? Because potentially, yeah, I don't know if until I see it, right? Yeah, but right. So um, because we had a practice where we did a crack, several crack hides um at a school, and boy, you know, those old playgrounds that are cracking up. Yeah, they're really good for this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we did also realize, too, that when you go to set that hide, you really want to set one literally like if you can get your tube just to set at the top, not buried in any dirt, yeah. Do that as a progression, and then slowly try to put it further down, right? Um maybe with gravel on the top of it, because we had one where we kind of scooped it out, put it down, and then put the dirt back on it. It did not move away from where it was in the same way that it did when we just scooped it out, put gravel on top of it, or when we put it on the very top.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Right?

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

So get all three of those pictures, right? So if we're looking at that for trial, now what are gonna be? So we were gonna talk about what are our next trials coming up for our dogs. How would we prepare for those next trials? And then how do we take away from what we just did um as making a reasonable expectation for this next one, right? Because sometimes it's not reasonable to say, I want a 100. I'm sorry, but that's what I want. I need because technically my dog gets a 100 every time, right?

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Yeah, for what he knows.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

I'm I'm gonna tell you that he probably he did. He solved 18 out of 18 hides in the Benson trial, period. He did.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

He knew about 18 out of 18.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

He did. Yeah, so the fact of he has to then communicate it to Handler, sufficient for Handler to call alert, sufficient for the judge to say yes, that's really not his deal, right? That that's the responsibility of me as a handler. So agreed. Yeah, I feel like we can all kind of look at those and say, okay, or although, like maybe Alex feels like, okay, you know, I that wheel to wheel, because Zeke came right out there and just went bam to bam. Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

And it might be the direction they got it, the wind at the moment, the sun. Right, there's so many factors.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

And well, and George is taller too. So who knows? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Oh, he was working it from the truck bed.

SPEAKER_00 51:53

Yeah, he wasn't under the tire at all. See, and Zeke, Zeke was halfway on the hub caps.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Yeah, he was above it.

SPEAKER_00 51:59

Yeah, went in, poked one, came around the other one, worked the back side of the tire, and then got that one.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

Okay, so you're going into what's your next elite.

SPEAKER_01 52:07

Okay, so my next elite is actually the one I'm hosting next week. So that will be fun. It's Jenny Kiefer. Um, really looking forward to that. I think we should have fun there.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

He's gonna enter and then I had to bail. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Yeah. Sorry. So I've got a big long wait list. Don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

Oh, goodness, I bet.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

Yeah, yeah. So looking forward to that. It's out of school. Not often his strong suit. Uh, he definitely likes more like the Benson type. I think because he can get traction. So his movement on the surfaces and how odor moves is more within his wheelhouse. That's fine. We're gonna have fun looking for points. Um I don't think I have any specific goals other than really maintaining that teamwork and we're both reading the search as best as we can. So that's gonna be kind of my goal with him is maintaining that and arousal management. Um, skill-wise, yeah, we're gonna work on some of the close stuff, but I don't have a lot of time between now and then. Right. So, really, what we're gonna be working on, and what I did before the last trial was really we did a full obedience lesson, we did agility, we did uh treadmill for an hour on the day before. Like, so I did a lot of energy management before going into the trial. So that's gonna be my goal next week is considering those pieces of it. So he's going in on Saturday morning, not with this pent-up energy, that he's able to just think a little bit more. So that's gonna be my goal with him. Um, and then after that, I'm hoping to enter your Montrose show um trial coming up in May. Um and then after that, hopefully Leadville, and then he might be done for the rest of the year. We'll see what he can get to based on your schedule.

SPEAKER_00 53:44

And then Montrose is another little, and it's much more compact than Benson.

SPEAKER_01 53:47

But he found them all last year, so yeah, he likes that space.

SPEAKER_00 53:51

So it's a lot of fun, yeah. So what about you? So um, I'm going to be entering um Laramie. Aha. Okay. So um, I've done dog in white there multiple times. Yeah, we're gonna have a summit the first two days, right? So that space that it while it is a western, if you will, western museum, but it's more concrete. Yeah, it's all cold concrete. So especially the prison building itself, yeah, and even the theater upstairs in the theater, right? So I I'm very familiar. That's one good thing, right? Yeah. Sometimes I'm not always really familiar with the site that you're going into, and especially if you're not also a host. You know what I mean? Like the majority, yeah, because we kind of like, you know, most of the trials I enter are my own. Yeah, yeah. So if you want to say that's a benefit, yeah, maybe, but you also got to realize it's taken me what year is this? Like 15 years into those work? It's taken me almost 15 years to be a handler. As well.

SPEAKER_01 54:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

A handler. No, yeah, just a handler. Don't be the host. Don't be looking at your crew going, why are we flowing this way? I know.

SPEAKER_01 55:03

That's gonna be my challenge next week.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

Just ignore her, just ignore her, let her go to her. Just tell her it's fine. I told her it's good. Right? So they're like, I can just see them going, Oh Lord, she's gonna run Zeke. Okay, well, let's see how this goes. Yay, yeah. Um, but anyway, so at least they're very supportive guys. They've never abandoned me, or yeah, they may say, Okay, you you I'm doing the same thing next week. Your head is spinning, so knock it off, right?

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

So every now and again they'll say things like, We got this, and I'm like, No, you don't. That's not it. I was like, oh Lord, right. But anyway, so so that's still one of my goals, right there in the forefront is be a handler. Don't be the host, right? Make sure, and if I I also to be a handler, I have to make sure I have the crew, right?

SPEAKER_01 55:51

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

If any of my crew were to call in and can't make it for whatever reason, then you might have to pull. I have to pull the host, right? So you have to be prepared to be able to do that, which is always kind of one of those things where you're a little concerned, right? Because now I also have my goal. Um, so both Lawton and I, Ellie and Zeke, will champion out in about four trials. So that was our first. So we were both thinking we have about three trials left, right? So that's my other thing because now what have I done? I've looked up Digger, got his elite champion in Gunnison in June of 2017, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:30

Yep. So now I'm like, oh, wouldn't that be fun if we came full circle and Zeke got his elite champion in Gunnison in June 2026? Right.

SPEAKER_02 56:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:40

Um, so yeah, don't yeah, yeah, talk about burdening yourself with these silly things, but you know, that's I got it. That's kind of what we do.

SPEAKER_01 56:47

That was Tana, the elite premiere.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Yeah. So so that'll be our kind of cool thought process there. And yeah, I think so. Then I think I do want to continue to work on uh the high hides, elevated high hides, right? Yeah, but I also have to be mindful that that lofting and cooling look different, yeah, right. So I may even pull, and the lucky thing is I have I think I have GoPro video and or video service video from Laramie with this dog from prior years. So I may very well look at that and just see what it looked like, right? Yeah. Um, and then the other piece would be uh, so if you're gonna put that timer on your wrist, which I if we're getting ready to look at summit, part of my skill set, right? And when we talk about it, summit, you really should be wearing a yeah, there's a lot. There's people who can do very, very well, who have a very good sense of time and can even wait for get the 30-second call. Should they get a 30-second call and be okay? Or come in and clear a space and get out without going, okay, I should have stayed in more, blah, blah, blah. So you do have those people. I don't know that I'm one of them yet, that that timer is still at least not a crotch in terms of telling me what to do when. It's more of a calming device. I'll have to. Well, and it helps, right? It just helps you keep on track. Just chill. You know, I used to use it on my with Digger, I used it on my watch. And what I did was just set it for halftime. Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly. Just so that I wasn't rushing through halftime. And then after halftime, so it was a five-minute search, I set it for two and a half, run the two and a half, get what we could, and then just relax. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:33

Yeah. Um, but you know, that was also prior to me laying on top of my skill set all this potential experience that I think I should have, right? Because as we get further and further down the road, whether it's as a trainer, right, as a um podcaster, as a CEO, as a judge, right, as all of right, all these things, an instructor, you have a tendency to um, while we love the idea that we would have free flow of information that we can share with others, when it comes back, you put a lot of pressure on yourself.

SPEAKER_02 59:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

Right. So it's also that thing of not gaining an expectation that I have to in any way, shape, or form admit that I know what I'm doing. Yeah. Isn't that hard?

unknown 59:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:22

Just let it go. Just let it go. Well, guys, thank you so much for joining us. I think that what we're gonna do is try to get um, well, I'll get this out uh by Wednesday. Well, wait, that's tomorrow. Um, by Wednesday or Thursday this week, so that we can get that out there. Yeah, and then by the end of the month, uh we'll hopefully be doing another one. Uh, we have we we hit like, oh my goodness, we're like at 17,000 total downloads.

SPEAKER_02 59:46

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 59:47

Um, and we've had 500 and something in the last 30 days. So we're reaching a lot of people, and I think that's really our goal. It isn't so much to kind of overshadow any of your other learning that might be out there, it's really just to provide um kind of another outlet where we strive, Alex and I do particularly strive to be as inclusive as as we can. Yes. So if there's anything that we have mentioned that like just goes so far against the grain of what you feel was good communication or good discussion, please let us know and we're happy to kind of talk about the um where we come, adverse consequences, right? So you have to always think about that. I can always remember Amy Horeau would always say that, not adverse, but she would say, you know, what are those unintended consequences, right? Yeah from whatever you're training or teaching, and have you like when they come up, okay, the hole in the floor, right? Like I hadn't seen that in so long, so much credit right in so long, I didn't even know what to make of it. Rather than just go, okay, um, if that, you know, he gets to investigate and go multitask every now and again. And had he just picked up his nose, moved on, then I could have said, if it's important and it's odor, he's gonna go back to it. Yeah. And instead, what did I do? I just sort of blurted it out and no. It's like she should have put, no, that's a hole in the floor. Right. So don't say hi to the cats. Yes, say hi to the cats. Yeah. That that could be the name, that's the name of our uh of our podcast. Say hi to the cats.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

Say hi to the cats.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

Say hi to the cats. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Alex. Really happy that we were able to get this done. So thanks for joining us, everybody. And we will hopefully um provide you with some tips and tricks for your next trial success.