E39: Julie Symons - "Handler Discrimination & AKC Scentwork"

SUMMARY:

Julie Symons has been involved in dog sports for over 20 years. She's competed in flyball, conformation, agility, obedience, herding, tracking and nosework.

One of Julie's favorite things is a versatile team! Her first Belgian Tervuren, Rival, was the first of his breed to finish his championship in conformation, obedience, and agility. Julie truly believes that participating in multiple sports is enriching to both person and dog and builds on that mutual partnership and trust.

Today we have Julie Symons, of the newly-named Savvy Dog Sports, to talk about handler discrimination and AKC scentwork.

Links

• Savvy Dog Sports

Next Episode:

To be released 12/8/2017, featuring Nancy Gigliardi Little. We'll be chatting about start line stays!

TRANSCRIPTION:

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods.

Today we have Julie Symons, of the newly-named Savvy Dog Sports, to talk about handler discrimination and AKC scentwork.

Welcome back to the podcast, Julie!

Julie Symons: Hi Melissa. Thanks for having me back.

Melissa Breau: I'm excited to chat today. To start us out, do you mind just reminding listeners who you are a little bit and share the dogs you share your life with?

Julie Symons: I have Savvy, she's my 9-year-old Belgian Tervuren. Gosh, she's going to be 10 in February. She's doing great. She's a champion Mach2, UD, TDX, and recently a Nosework 3 Elite dog. She's retired from all sports except for nosework, and I keep meaning to work on my variable surface tracking with her. She's just a phenomenal tracking dog, so if I can just find that time. And I have Drac, who's my 2-year-old Malinois. He just turned 2 last month, and I'm waiting for him to mature a little bit and his hormones to settle, but he has his Nosework 1 and his Level 1 Interior, Container, and Vehicle titles from the Nosework Association of Canine Scentwork, and he also has his AKC Scentwork Novice title, which means he's earned all of his novice element other titles. He also has two legs toward his Handler Discrimination Scentwork title and his first Advanced legs in Containers, Interiors, and Exteriors, and he's actually really turning out to be a nice nosework dog. So it's been fun training him there. And since you mentioned Savvy Dog Sports, I'll share that I'm in process of building a training facility — on my property, actually. We have enough acreage out in the country. I've always wanted to do this. Back in probably the year 2000, I had thought about doing something like this. So we're going to start building in February and I'll be able to teach more dog stuff. There's, I think, opportunity and need in this area to offer some more obedience or pet classes, so I'm really looking forward to that. And then my nosework students, I'd like to be able to have more opportunities to train with them. So very, very excited.

Melissa Breau: And you said you're in Rochester, right? Rochester, New York.

Julie Symons: Right. I'm in a suburb of Rochester. I'm south of Rochester near the New York Thruway between Syracuse and Buffalo.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. So if anybody listening is in that area, Julie's your new go-to person.

Julie Symons: Yes. So we'll be busy getting some more information out on that soon.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Last time you were on the podcast I know we talked a little about the AKC Scentwork. Since today I want to dive a little deeper there, do you mind just starting us out by sharing a little about how the program works?

Julie Symons: Yeah. The AKC Scentwork program has three divisions. They have their Odor Search Division, which is what we're typically familiar with, with the oils, the birch, the anise, and clove, and they have a new odor, cypress. And they have four search elements: Containers, Interiors, Exteriors, and Buried. Buried is a new element across any of the venues that I'm aware of. There is no vehicle search in this venue. I think that's actually nice, because vehicles are always hard for trials to find to use, so people don't want to get their cars scratched up or just to get enough volunteers to volunteer vehicles. So that's a nice difference for some variety there. They have four levels: Novice, Advanced, Excellent, and Masters. And then they have the Handler Discrimination Division with also the same levels: Novice, Advanced, Excellent, and Masters, where the target scent is your handler scent. It could be your dirty sock that's been in the laundry, or a cotton item that you scented with your hands. The first level there in Novice is your scented sock or glove that's in a closed box. And then after that the higher levels are a scented Q-Tip or cotton ball that's hidden in an interior, exterior, or a multi-element search area. So we're starting to get some trials out there at the Advanced and Excellent levels, so it's fun to see how that division is going to progress as time goes on. Then they have a Detective Division, which hasn't been offered yet because there's nobody yet that's qualified to enter one of those. You have to actually have a Master title in one of the other divisions before you can enter a Detective Division. It's an integrated search environment with unknown number of hides in a variety of elements, so you could be indoors with containers, or outside and buried with containers, and it's multiple search areas up to ten hides, all four oil odors, and they want it to emulate as closely as possible to the work of a true detection dog. So that's going to be a really exciting class, once people have trialed enough to get to that level.

Melissa Breau: That sounds awesome.

Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah. And like with most AKC sports, you're required to get three qualifying scores in each element to earn a title. That's different from what we're typically familiar with with the Nosework Association, where you have to pass all four of the elements. You have to pass Vehicles, Containers, Interiors, and Exteriors in the same day, which adds an element of challenge, and you can't have any errors to title. Whereas in AKC you might not do as well one day, but then you can get your next score the next day and title. So it's just different. Some people think one's easier or harder, and I'm just telling people they're different. They're just different programs that, to me, result in the same outcome, the same challenges and skills and work involved.

Melissa Breau: You mentioned a little bit in there kind of how it compares to the other venues. Is there more you want to say there? Are there more differences and similarities that are worth making sure people know about?

Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah. I think the skill level's pretty comparable, and some of the other venues have game classes or specialty classes, like speed, a speed class, or a distance class, you can't pass or cross a line, or some endurances where they're going to have, like, ten hides in a small area. So a lot of venues out there can offer something for everybody. AKC is going to allow spectators, and that's one item that's different from other venues, where they keep things closely monitored where there's less people. And in all venues you never have another dog out when you're working your dog. So those are the differences that you really want to read up on the rules before you decide.

And a lot of the other not-as-known venues are starting to get more popular, some of the California-based, the sniffing dog sports, they're starting to make their way out here. So there's a lot of fun options so that you can trial more, because sometimes I've only trialed sometimes twice a year. And now it's so exciting because there's so many more venues out there that you can get out there and get more experience, and that's just better for you and your dog.

If you're already trialing, if you've already been trialing in nosework, you're pretty much ready to go into the early levels of AKC. You pretty much have the skills, but you do want to practice the stronger odor, because AKC does two drops of oil on each Q-Tip, which is quite a lot of odor. It's not too big of a problem, it's just sometimes a little bit more pooling odor going on in these search areas, dogs picking it up off hide and alerting on the fringe, and so they might get a "no" because they're not close enough. So you want to practice with a stronger odor, and you also want to practice buried hides.

Buried hides is unique of any venue that I'm familiar with, and in some ways it's straightforward, the dogs generally have no issue. The first level it's just buried two inches from the surface of a stand and a container. So you have six containers. But once you start getting to the advanced and higher levels, it's deeper, then it's in the ground, and I think it's just a little different for the dogs, some different skills that you're going to want to focus on specifically for buried hides.

And the other main difference with AKC is that they have intentional distractions that get pretty challenging at the higher levels. So you have your typical food and non-food distractors at the early levels, but once you get to Excellent and Masters, they'll have auditory, visual, mimic, and human distractions, which has concerned a lot of people. A lot of sensitive dogs do this sport, and so if you want to trial in AKC, you definitely want to acclimate your dogs to that, introduce them to these types of things before you're doing a nosework search.

So those are some of the things that are different and unique in AKC. And I haven't heard, and we have an AKC judge form, people really are going to be fair. They're not trying to scare dogs. The intentional distractors aren't supposed to be meant to scare them. You're not supposed to drop loud pans or slam doors or anything like that. But they're going to have, like, a flashing light, or some toy that turns on when your dog gets close to it, or somebody clapping, things like that. Mimic is a statue or stuffed animal that looks like the real thing and might make dogs want to go check it out. So you can train for that stuff pretty easily.

And then I think one of the hardest things for some dogs would be having more people in the search area. So already your dog has to learn to work with the judge, and a couple of the other helpers are in the search area, but they usually stay off to the side. The human distractor can be actually right in the middle of your search area, sitting or standing. So, to me, that's actually something that's very doable to train early on with somebody that you know, and let the dogs get used to it. And by the time you're at that level, if you're trialing at the Master level, you're not going to have an issue with that. And dogs, from what we find, once they get working, they get so focused on odor that they really all their worries go away. So those are some of the things you want to look out for, and I would make sure to read the rules very closely because it describes them in more detail.

Melissa Breau: That's a good tip for any sport.

Julie Symons: I find actually that people don't read the rules. And sometimes I feel bad that I didn't tell somebody something in one of my classes, and I'm sure I do at times. Maybe they didn't go to that class. But you have to take responsibility to read the rules, because you'll find something. I mean, I'll find something that I haven't read the first time I read it. So that's germane.

Melissa Breau: I want to switch a little bit from outcomes to training… what challenges are there when training a dog to search for handler scent, you kind of mentioned that, that may not be present when you're teaching traditional odors?

Julie Symons: That's a good question. First, it is just another odor. We can attack it that way and it's true, this is another odor that we teach your dog. But it is different in that it does have its challenges, especially for savvy nosework dogs that have been in oil for a lot of years. We've seen a little bit of it being a little bit more difficult for them in certain situations. For example, there's no aging handler scent, like with the oil odor. So oil hides, the nosework venues we've been at, they're usually placed and they're out there 30 minutes to hours, so the odor is going to disperse more and diffuse into the area. For handler scent you pretty much give it its last scent, you hand it over to the helper, they place it, and then you go in and run. So the scent's going to have less diffuse in the area, handler scents is heavier, that's going to fall down more than, like, a vapor odor oil will disperse in a room, and of course it depends on airflow. Any kind of airflow is going to travel in each scent. It's going to be helpful to your dog that the scent's going to travel into the space.

With my dogs and many teams that I've worked in, I find that the dogs have to get a lot closer to where the hide is for handler scents to really hone on that. So in this case I'm not talking about the novice level and boxes; I'll get back to that. But if they hide Q-Tips or cotton balls in a search area, your dog really has to get close to it to find it. So what I'm finding is that I'm actually introducing a little bit more of direction with my handler scent and it's actually helped a lot, and it gets my dog focused and more... not a patterned search, but just getting them to search. For example, in Advanced Handler Discrimination, it's an interior search, and no hide is higher than 12 inches. So I'm going to plant low. I'm going to be, like, have my dog search low, and they find it really easily. And I found when I have blind hides somebody has set up for me, I feel more liberated to point and direct. Whereas if I know where the hide is, we tend to not want to intervene at all and my dog finds it quicker, because I don't know where it is and I'm just going to have my dog cover the area and then they usually find it. So that's been very helpful in the difference with the handler scent.

Also another thing that's interesting if you watch dogs search the traditional oil hides in a box, they just find it really easy. You put your scented glove in a box and the dogs just search differently. They have to go cover the boxes a few times, they just don't hit on it as easily as oil. That oil odor, especially for AKC, is so strong, and your handler scented item is just not going to be as strong in a box, especially it's not aged. So those are some of the differences and why I think the handler scent is a little bit harder to source for a dog, just because of the amount of odor that you have and the fact that it's not aged.

Melissa Breau: What additional skills or things do people who have previously taught their dogs on oils need to consider when adding handler scent to their lineup? What do they really need to think about that might not have occurred to them?

Julie Symons: We actually found this when I taught my first Intro to Handler Scent. It was so fun because we were realizing these things, exactly what you just said, like, we were realizing, "Oh yeah, I didn't think about this." A couple of the things are, we were really worried about "How can I train in my house? My scent is everywhere." We were really worried about that, but it ended up not being a problem at all because we actually teach our dogs to find our hottest scent. Just like we do with obedience and articles, you're rubbing, you're scenting, a hot item. All the other items have been lightly touched by somebody else, so it's your hottest item. So it ends up not being a problem if you've touched stuff in your house, or touched a box that you moved around. It has not messed up any dogs because they're looking for that hot cloud of odor, the highest gradient of odor. So that was kind of neat to realize we can train at home.

Melissa Breau: That's awesome.

Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also you can reuse boxes. In nosework it's about boxes. You can put Q-tips in there, a hide in there, it's always hot, because if an oil gets on cardboard, it's there forever. Handler scent, I do keep my hot glove or sock separate, that's always hot and I throw that in a jar. But for the boxes that I use, if I throw my glove in one of those boxes, once I'm done with that session I'll just open up my boxes, air them out, some people put them outside on a nice day, let them air out, and you can reuse those. So I don't have to make a box hot, and always hot, because we all have so many boxes, nobody wants to get any more boxes.

The other thing that's really important is if you think about the trial situation, so if you're searching for oil, containers with oil in it, the same container is out there for every dog. So by the time, if you're at the last of the running order, these dogs, these boxes have saliva on it, they have probably food drops near the hot one, they're pretty traveled, they've been traveled very heavily by the other dogs. In Handler Discrimination you have your unique box that's pristine, so when the next dog comes in, they take another box that has your glove in it, and you leave with your box. So when you run and hopefully you find your hide, or not, you leave with your box. Your box is never used for another dog in the trials. So they're pretty pristine when you're trialing.

In training we were all using the same box just over and over and over, and it had saliva on it, and some food crumbs, and we realized when we went to a clean box, when we switched out to a new box, our dogs really had trouble. And we figured out that the dogs were alerting us the saliva they had left on the hot box, so what we've learned is you really, maybe even more so in the oil searches, is to rotate out a new box in your training sessions because you're going to have a pristine box that doesn't have any dog's saliva on it when you go on there. So that was another neat thing that we found out.

Melissa Breau: Interesting. You mentioned your Intro to Handler Discrimination class. When is that up next?

Julie Symons: That is up in December. It opens Wednesday is the registration day and it starts December 1st.

Melissa Breau: Wednesday for us, and we're talking now, for when this airs it will have happened already, but yeah, so registration will be open when they hear this.

Julie Symons: That's right, that's right. What else is different? You can make things different from your regular nosework training. You can have a different start on your routine. That's really important, so we discuss that a lot in our classes. I decided I'm going to make my handler scent searches to be similar than my obedience article, where you're rubbing your hands, because you're scenting an article in obedience utility, and so I'm going to rub my hands because my advanced dog knows what that means, so that means I'm going to do a pivot and turn and send her. So my start routine for my advanced dog, I actually face away from the search area, I rub my hands like I'm scenting an article, I pivot, and I send her, and that just gets her into that frame of mind that it's, because she turns around and she sees these twelve or ten ORT boxes that look like nosework that she's done for five years. My young dog, I'm just facing it and rubbing my hands, and I might put my hand up to his nose and send him on his way. So that's been important. I find having a different search routine when you're starting to training your dog….

Melissa Breau: Interesting. That's neat that you use your AKC obedience work to carry over. I wanted to ask if there's anywhere that people really tend to struggle as they work through this stuff.

Julie Symons: I found that people have a hard time reading their dog at at source initially when we are starting to introduce it. Oil odor is so strong, you know the dog can't help but notice it. I think they can build that association quicker with a strong odor. But it really is no different with our scent. You just have to have good timing. Your dog has to actually be sniffing and using her nose. Sometimes when you're starting to get socks or gloves out there, a dog is like, "Oh I'm going to pick it up," or they're going to retrieve it, and they're not sniffing. That's one problem that they have. So we can work on some of that through the class. You're not even waiting for an indication. The minute they take it out, you're rewarding it, and then they're going to start understanding that, "Hmm, the smell keeps giving me food."

The other thing is dogs perch, and when you start putting things in containers, and especially we have had more obedience people coming into this area because it relates to them, "This sounds like something I'd be interested in, you know, it's handler scent, I do this in obedience," and those dogs have done a lot of platform and pivot work, so they see these containers and boxes and they perch on them. So that's one of the problems that we deal with.

And tracking dogs. We had one of my students, it was a great, great experience to have her in the class, her dog saw these socks and started downing on them like scent articles. Not scent articles, tracking articles. So what we did was we immediately got them in a bowl, we took her bowls in her kitchen or whatever, and once we changed that picture to the dog, he started doing much better, because again, context is so important that for that dog it just said, "Oh, I always down on socks." And that's how we actually teach them article indication. We just lay out some item, and the dog's supposed to go up to them and down on them. So we got creative with dealing with dogs that thought it was an article.

Melissa Breau: That's really interesting.

Julie Symons: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was such a great, and it was so good to have her in class, because I think some of the bronze students really, really resonated with that because they were having the same issues. And then we have dogs that want to retrieve, and it's not really a problem if they're retrieving the right one. I mean, I've always heard even in nosework, dogs will retrieve a tip or the hide, and there's nothing more clear when a dog retrieves the source but eventually, they'll never be able to retrieve at a trial, especially handler scent because it's either in a box or it's pretty tucked away, it'll be a Q-Tip or cotton ball that they'll hide very well. So unless a dog's not sniffing, and they're just retrieving randomly, then we have to pick back up and build the value for that odor before we move on.

Melissa Breau: Since you mentioned that, I'm going to jump around with my questions a little bit here. What can students do to help their dog understand the different contexts? You mentioned the retrieve thing. What should students be doing to make sure their dogs understand, "OK, in this situation, in this type of trial, you're doing this, in this type of trial you're doing that"? I feel like that's such a complex thing.

Julie Symons: I think when you get to the final picture, I think early on, when you're training, they look very similar. How you teach scent articles is very similar to how you start teaching oil or you start teaching the cotton items with your scent on them. Once you start getting to a picture that looks more like the final picture, like a pile of scent articles, they're going to know they're going to retrieve it. And I do think the odor versus handler scent can look similar with the boxes, and that's why the routine, your start routine, is really important, as well as a different search cue. I had to think long and hard if I wanted to really have a different search cue, and I decided to go ahead and do that. In obedience I do a "find it," so I did a "find mine" in handler scent, and I've always done "search" in nosework, so that's how I do it. Whether the dogs are really going to pick up on that verbal cue, I don't know, but I'm going to be consistent with that because I do think in the long run that is going to make a difference.

And then gear is really important. I've had people think tracking dogs shouldn't be doing nosework at the same time. And I get a little bit where one of them is more air scenting, one of them is more ground sniffing, but dogs recognize that flag out in the field versus "I'm in a classroom searching for," or "I have twelve boxes out." I think they know the difference between "I'm going to go check these objects" versus "I'm going to go run a track in the field." So when you have handler scent now in the mix, I think it's in our minds, we realize it's just another odor, whether it's birch, cypress, or handler scent, and we've taught our dogs that those odors will pay, then I think with time and some experience they're just going to be searching for any of those odors, and when they find them, they're going to all work. That's how I'm approaching it.

Melissa Breau: You mentioned the start routine in there, and I did just want to quickly ask at what point in the training process do you start routinely using the same start system or process?

Julie Symons: I don't start that right away. I will start using it when a dog's doing some mini-searches. But of course the first couple of weeks you're just building value for odor -- we're just building value for odor -- so I would say maybe halfway, or by the end of a six-week class, you're going to start putting a search cue, but as with anything, I'm not going to put a search cue to something until they're actively searching. I think the rubbing of my hands, I did start that pretty early because I often would rub the item and then go put it, hide it, or something, and that was always a warm-up. So we would go place to hide, and then, when we were warming up, I would have another item on me, and I would warm up with my dog with another. You can do that, you could actually, at a trial you give your scented something to the steward, and at the start line you could actually warm up with another glove, and show it to your dog, and then have them search. So I think those things just are all going to be context that's going to help your dog.

Melissa Breau: You mentioned earlier a little bit about the idea of pulling from your start routine for obedience into your scentwork stuff, and I want to talk a little bit more about how those two things compare. How does the new scentwork program compare to the classic handler scent discrimination task in obedience?

Julie Symons: Again, we mentioned that contextually they're just very, very different. So when you are going to be in an obedience ring, your dog's going to have done probably an exercise prior to the scent articles, they're going to see a pile of articles. When you do obedience scent articles, you start off by facing the steward who's jingling the bag and putting the articles down. So right there your dog is thinking scent article retrieve. You've also taught them that those articles are what you retrieve, so you've already gone further in that training process to complete that picture of the behavior that your dog is going to do. So in that case it's a chain of behaviors. You're going to be pivoting with your dog, sending your dog, they're going to search for scent, they're going to retrieve it, they're going to do a front and finish, so it's all these chains that you've already taught up to that point. And a good thing is a handler scent search looks so different from that. Like I said earlier, I'm more worried about a search area looking similar for oil odor or handler scent odor. That's going to be probably more confusing, but between those two exercises, the obedience scent articles and handler scent, the dog's going to know what they're there for right off the bat.

Melissa Breau: Does it matter which one somebody trains first?

Julie Symons: No, I don't think there is any order to that, and if I haven't mentioned it already, a lot of teams that have come through my class that did obedience are thrilled with their, that have come through are saying their obedience scent articles are just better and better. And I think what we're able to do is, we're able to play a lot more games, and the handlers that work arena before were even worrying about retrieves or anything, and were able to build a little bit more value there. And I'm going to already, I already have with Drac, teaching him his scent articles differently than I did my previous dogs, rewarding at source, I'm doing these games, worrying about the retrieve later, but just getting them sniffing. A dog cannot search a pile unless they're using their nose. So we're going to teach them to use their nose, we're going to teach them what odor is valuable. So I don't see any problem with teaching those two at the same time.

Melissa Breau: Are there any concerns at all when training one or the other if you hope to compete in both sports? Is there carryover? Is there anything else that students should know if they're going to do both?

Julie Symons: A lot of the ways we train carry over to each other. I think in that way a lot of the same games and exercises that I do are going to carry over. So I found that when I started doing nosework, it helped my tracking dog. It upped her article indication. She started downing an article and holding her nose to the article because of nosework, because I taught her that reward comes from staying at source, whether the source is an article on a track, or it's oil, or now if it's handler scent. And they all really just complement each other. One thing that I just love is I love this new sport, I love this new division, Handler Discrimination, because it gives us another thing to learn about our scenting dogs, and learn about scent and our scenting dogs, and I just think, I think they all complement each other. Now I wouldn't start maybe them on the exact same day, but they can overlap in whatever timeframe, I think, that you have. I have not seen any problems with that.

Melissa Breau: That's certainly reassuring to hear.

Julie Symons: That question comes up all the time. You'll see it. It's one of those questions that just resurface. People are really worried about it. And now maybe some dogs it wouldn't be the right thing to do. I mean, you have to know your dog, and you have to know your skills, and you just have to make that decision for yourself, for the most part. But I'm here to say context is playing a large hand here, and as a handler I learn more about scent and scenting dogs by participating in these multiple scent areas because of that. So once you do one, you're just going to be more skilled and be more ready for the other one.

Melissa Breau: To round things out, if someone hasn't taught any handler scent yet, where should they start? What does that process look like?

Julie Symons: As we mentioned earlier, if people can sign up for this Intro to Handler Scent course, that would be great, and it's on December 1st. But what you would do, if you've done nosework already, then you start the same way. We use a game called It's Your Choice. I'm not going to hold these scent articles in my hands because my hand actually has the scent, but I get the item on the ground, I just put one item that's heavily scented, the dog checks it out, I mark quickly and reward, I get quickly to two and three gloves, two cold one hot, and move them around in the shell game, and then I get again quickly, I get some more items. Sometimes people get stuck at a few items, and I think dogs do better with more choices. They're going to start using their nose more. So I get up to four to five items, socks or gloves, and what I do is I heavily scent it between reps, I do a cookie toss to reset, and then I just move the hot glove and repeat. So you want to get a high rate of reinforcement in a short period of time. So they find a scent in a short period of time, they're going to hopefully find it, like, twenty times, and you're going to give them a lot of reward for that. So that's very similar to how we teach a nosework scent oil, and the same way that we start out scent articles for obedience. We get these metal canning lids, or I actually use some leather strips that I have, and it's the same way I start that. So if you've had some experience at either of those sports, all you've got to do is just go get some cotton gloves, some cotton socks, and play around with the same way you've taught your other scentwork.

Melissa Breau: Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Julie!

Julie Symons: It was great. I love talking about this. I enjoy teaching it, and I enjoy competing and training in it.

Melissa Breau: I think that comes through. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Nancy Gagliardi Little to talk about start line stays.

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CREDITS:

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.