E45: Stacy Barnett - "Optimal Arousal for Performance"

SUMMARY:

Stacey Barnett is an active competitor in Nosework, Tracking, Obedience, Rally, Agility and Barn Hunt, and the host of the Scentsabilities podcast -- but Scent Sports are her primary focus and her first love.

Links

• www.scentsabilitiesnw.com

Next Episode:

To be released 1/19/2018, and I'll be talking to Lori Stevens about how you can help your dog reach optimum fitness in about five minutes, so stay tuned!

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'll be talking to Stacy Barnett.

Stacy is an active competitor in Nosework, Tracking, Obedience, Rally, Agility, and Barn Hunt, and the host of the Scentsabilities podcast — but Scent Sports are her primary focus and her first love.

Hi Stacy, welcome back to the podcast.

Stacy Barnett: Hi Melissa. How are you?

Melissa Breau: I'm doing well. So this is our third take, thanks to technology. So hopefully this time we have good sound and everybody does well.

To start us out, Stacy, do you want to tell us just a little bit and remind listeners who your dogs are? I know since last time we talked you have a new addition, so maybe you could share a little bit about that.

Stacy Barnett: I do, I do. I love talking about her anyway, so that's really great. I have four dogs now, so I'm getting closer to the "crazy dog lady" status. I don't think I'm there yet, but a little closer. I have four dogs. My oldest dog is a 10-year-old Standard Poodle named Joey, and Joey is competing in the NW3 level right now in nosework. I have a 6-year-old miniature American Shepherd, or mini Aussie, and he is at the end of E2 level.

Then I have two Labradors now, so my main competition dog that I've done most of my competition with out of these dogs is Judd. Judd is — I can't believe it — he's 8 years old now. Time flies. He's an 8-year-old Labrador Retriever, and he's a dog that's my elite dog that I competed at the 2017 NACSW National Invitational this year. He's really the one that brought me into nosework in a big way.

Then I have a brand new addition. I have a — she's going to be 9 months old, believe it not, this next week — and she is a Labrador Retriever from working lines. I'm very proud of her breeding and her breeder because they produce professional dogs for the professional sector, like FEMA dogs, cadaver dogs, that kind of thing. So she's bred for detection. She's definitely living up to her breeding, which is really exciting. But she's a really super dog, I absolutely love her, a little peanut, she's only about 35 pounds right now, but she may be small, but she's mighty.

Melissa Breau: I know that you mentioned on Facebook a little bit, and some other places, that Brava's been a little bit of a change from some of your other dogs. She's a little different. Do you want to share a little bit about that?

Stacy Barnett: Sure, sure. Brava is, she actually thinks her name is Bravado. That's her attitude. Her nickname is actually Big Bad. She's really a piece of work, but I absolutely adore her. She is what people would typically refer to as a high drive dog, but she's also a high arousal dog. With my other dogs, I can get them into drive, but they are not what I would call high arousal dogs. I would say that they're either low arousal or moderate arousal. But with her, she's a high arousal, so it's totally on a different side of the Yerkes-Dodson arousal curve.

Melissa Breau: I want to talk a little more about that. Do you want to explain what the curve is and how it works, and what you mean by saying she's on one side and they're on the other?

Stacy Barnett: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm actually really interested in Yerkes-Dodson Law because I find that it is the number one success criteria. Like, if you want to be successful in nosework, and probably a lot of other sports, but the number one key to success is managing this curve. So this is a really important concept.

Basically, with the Yerkes-Dodson Law — and it's a law, by the way — it's not something you can break. Picture a curve that looks like a bell curve. It's actually a normal distribution curve, but it looks like a bell curve. As your arousal increases, your performance increases. So as the dog — or whatever we're talking about, but we're talking about dogs right now — as the dog's arousal continues to increase and increase and increase, the dog's performance also goes up until it gets to a point at the peak of the curve. And at the peak of the curve, this is the point at which I consider the dog to be in drive, and that's at the point where you're going to get the highest amount of performance, the highest degree of performance, out of the dog.

But now what happens is, as the dog continues to increase its arousal — so your high arousal dogs tend to live on that side, on the right side, of the curve — so as they continue to increase that arousal, their performance actually decreases. So as the dog is more and more aroused, the performance gets worse and worse and worse, and it gets to the point where it becomes beyond arousal. It's actually the high anxiety, and it's that anxiety that is kind of like there's a point of no return at that point, where the dog's totally out to lunch.

That's basically the curve, and like I said, it's a law, so to be successful, you can ride the curve a little bit. So trying to figure out, you want to take a look at what your dog is giving you, where their emotional state is, and then modify that emotional state so that you can try to get the dog back to the peak. When you get the dog back to the peak, the dog's in drive and you're going to have the best performance.

Melissa Breau: To talk about that just a little bit more, what does it look like when the dog is on that right side of the curve and getting to the point where they're so over-aroused that it's impacting their performance? Maybe what are some of the things people can do to bring that back down?

Stacy Barnett: OK. Let's talk about the right side. The right side is — this is the part of the curve that Brava is really highlighting to me. I have to say, though, she's just to the right, like, she's able to focus, which is really nice. With a dog who is high arousal, you're going to see a number of different things. You can see … let's say the dog is waiting. Waiting is really hard on these dogs. They tend to sometimes … they might be barking. So if you see a dog and they're obviously very agitated, and they want their turn, they want to go now, they want to go now, they want to go now, they want to go now, those dogs that are barking, they're in high arousal state. Or if the dog is pulling you to the start line. Or they're coming off of the start line and they're exploding into the search area. These are indications that your dog's arousal is too high. It's basically picture a 3-year-old child on a sugar high. That is high arousal, right? They can't focus.

Melissa Breau: Sort of the way people think of a dog who stresses up.

Stacy Barnett: Yes, yes. And actually there is a direct relationship, like, if you think about stressing up. I actually like to think about this in terms of real arousal and perceived arousal. We

perceive high arousal dogs that stress up to be high arousal dogs because it's very obvious to us. So the real arousal equals perceived arousal.

Interestingly, there's also another kind of stress that we see that doesn't look like high arousal, but it really is, and that is when the dog stresses down. So the dog is still stressed, the dog still has high anxiety, and it's still on the right-hand side of the curve, but you see these dogs and they're shut down, and it's very easy to misinterpret this, to think that the dog needs to be lifted up in its arousal state. So sometimes you see people try to jolly the dog, or "Hey, let's go, let's go, let's go," maybe some toy play, and all they're doing is actually increasing the arousal even more, they're increasing the dog's arousal even more, and the dog actually can't get out of that anxiety state. That's where the perceived arousal is very different than the real arousal.

Melissa Breau: You started to touch on it there, the other side of that curve, the left side of that curve. By contrast, what does that look like, or how does that work, and what should people be looking at?

Stacy Barnett: The left-hand side of the curve is our lower arousal. If a dog is really low arousal, he's basically asleep. So you have the really low arousal that might be a little … very laid back, very like, "Hey, I'm here," they might be a little bored, they might seem bored, they might be a little slow, they might be a little over-methodical, they might be unmethodical. Those are the dogs where you just want them to give you a little bit more. Those are the dogs around the lower side, and as long as they're not too low on the arousal curve, it's actually pretty easy to get them up the curve.

I actually find that the ideal state is slightly to the left as a natural state, because a dog has a natural arousal state, and then they have the state that they're currently in. So if their natural arousal state is slightly to the left, just the fact that being at a trial will actually put them at the top of the curve.

I'm actually very lucky Judd's one of those. He's slightly to the left as his natural arousal state. I take him to a trial, he loves trialing, it puts him right at the peak arousal, and he's in drive.

Melissa Breau: We all want that dog, right?

Stacy Barnett: Yeah, right. Everybody wants Judd. Everybody loves Judd.

Melissa Breau: We talked before this and we talked a little bit about this just kind of outside of this context, but I know another big thing for you is really adapting your handling and training to the dog you have, and not just in terms of arousal levels. You also talk about the importance of adapting your training and handling based on how secure your dog is, or how confident they are, and whether they're more handler focused or more environmentally focused. I wanted to ask you a little bit about that. Can you share what some of that looks like and how people can adapt accordingly?

Stacy Barnett: Absolutely, absolutely, and I just want to give a little bit of a plug for Denise's book Train the Dog in Front of You. Now, again, this is focusing on nosework, but I think every competitor, if you do dog sports, buy the book. And no, she's not giving me any kickback on that — I just wanted to let you know! Basically because the most important thing that you can do from a dog training perspective is to know what kind of dog are you dealing with. I don't mean are you dealing with a Border Collie, a Labrador, or a Shih Tzu. It's the dog, the personality type, the very specific what makes your dog tick. What's really cool is Denise has actually broken down the dog's personality into dimensions, and these dimensions, if you can understand where your dog falls, it can give you insight into what's the best way to train your dog, which is really cool.

For instance, what I like to focus on specifically, especially for all our nosework stuff, is there's two particular dimensions that I think are really important. One of them is, is your dog secure or is your dog cautious. The dog who is secure, that's ideal. We want that secure dog. The dog who's cautious might be a little bit more timid.

Actually Judd, as an example, is a cautious dog. So you have a cautious dog, but then you compare that to Brava, who is very secure. You see the difference in their searching style. I did a search just the other day in my back room, and there was a tight space. Brava was really pushing into that tight space, where Judd was like, "Ooh, I don't know, it kind of makes me nervous." So you have secure versus cautious.

Then you have another dimension, which is also really important, which is either handler focused or environmentally focused. Along with other sports, we do like to have the dog fairly handler focused. However, in scent sports specifically, we need to have a dog that's a little bit more on the environmental side, but not so environmental that they're prioritizing their environment over target odor or over working with us as a team, because again, this is actually a team sport with you and your dog, and you have to work together as a partnership. So ideally you actually have a dog who is somewhere in-between handler focused and environmentally focused. But if you can understand which side your dog is, that can give you insight into how to train your dog.

Melissa Breau: So what it seems to me is like what you're talking about really is balance, this idea that you want to hit this perfect in-between on a couple of things, right? Working to balance out our dog's natural tendencies, whatever they may be. So I wanted to ask about one more skill where balance is important. How do you achieve that right balance that you're talking about in teamwork, between teamwork and independence, especially during a search?

Stacy Barnett: There are some handling things that you can do. For instance, one of these things, I actually call it proximity of influence — it's just a term that I coined — that the closer you are to your dog, the more influence you're going to exert on your dog. There's actually a sweet spot, and every dog is slightly different in terms of where their sweet spot is.

You don't want to be so close to your dog that you're influencing your dog too much, because at that point you're providing a little bit too much input into the search, and let's face it, we don't have a nose. I mean, we have a nose, but it doesn't work very well. But you also don't want to be so far away that you're not a partner with your dog. So by understanding a little bit about is your dog environmentally or handler focused, it can tell you how sensitive they're going to be to your proximity.

I know, for instance, with Judd, Judd is actually quite independent. He's pretty … from an environmentally focused perspective, he's more on the environmental side versus handler focused, and he will actually tolerate a lot of handler interference because he just tells me to get in the back seat anyway.

Whereas if you have a dog like Joey, my Standard Poodle, who is actually very handler focused, he's very open to suggestions. I actually did a search this morning where I had a hide, and it was in the proximity of an area where there's probably a little bit of residual odor from a few days ago. Joey paused for a second and he looked at me. I made the mistake of saying, "Joey, go search," because as soon as I did that, I actually prompted him, especially because of my proximity and where I was, it in effect prompted him to alert on residual odor, because he was like, "Oh, OK, you think this is where the hide is absolutely. I think it is too," so he alerted. These are the types of things that had I been a little further away from him, or not talked to him, I think he would not have alerted there.

So this is just an example, and the really cool thing is I got it on video. I love video so I can share it with people. It's different kinds of things like that, so you can really work that balance based upon the position of your body with a dog and your voice.

Melissa Breau: I think when we talked about this before, you talked about there's a certain kind of angle that you like to see between you and the dog.

Stacy Barnett: Yes. The 45-degree angle.

Melissa Breau: Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Stacy Barnett: Sure, sure. This is something I actually talked a little bit about in my handling class, but it's also going to be in my Win By A Nose class. We'll talk about it there also. I think, personally, there is a perfect position in relation to the dog, when the dog is searching, for the handler to be. That position is actually 45 degrees behind the dog, but out away from the dog. You're not parallel to the dog.

Let's say the dog is searching a vehicle. You're not parallel to that dog. You're actually behind the dog and at an angle of about 45 degrees. What this does is it puts you into a neutral position. That neutral position is something that helps to offset that suggestion that we have. Dogs are very suggestible, and some dogs are more suggestible than others. And understanding how suggestible your dog is actually is really good information to know.

The interesting thing, this is my theory, is that our dogs don't understand that we have a really bad sense of smell. Our dogs don't know that because our dogs just assume that whatever they're smelling — they're smelling birch, anise, or clove — that we can smell it too, and a highly suggestible dog is going to be like, "Well, I think it's here. Do you think it's here? I think it's there. Do you think it's there?" And then they start an alert at you. Having a 45-degree angle can help to negate that and offset that. It's cool stuff.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. I know that nosework isn't the only sport you've done. It's where your focus and where your career is now, but you started out in obedience, you've done a little bit of agility, so I was curious. Is there anything that you've learned from those other sports that has carried over into nosework for you?

Stacy Barnett: Oh absolutely, absolutely, and I think a lot of the times with nosework, I think sometimes people forget that it's just another dog sport. Granted, the dog is out there, they're doing something that they are very adept at doing because they have this great sense of smell, and because it's a dog sport, it has a lot of corollaries to other dog sports. Those corollaries, things like the dog has to be able to acclimate, that sort of thing, and from a behavior, there's a lot of behavioral corollaries.

There's also from the perspective of … so I'm going to use an example: movement. If you do agility, you'd learn that your body position and the way you move affects your dog. It tells your dog where to go. Now interestingly, the same thing happens in nosework. But in nosework we're sometimes very oblivious to that because we start off with the dog doing most of the work and we do like to have 80/20, we want the dog really driving the search. But it's very easy to forget that our body movement, our body motion, and our acceleration or deceleration, how we're standing in relationship to the dog, that all that is communicated to the dog. So if we look at, say, agility, and all the motion cues, and the body position cues, and all these cues that you give to your dog, you can actually look at that and say, "Hey, those are natural cues," and those type of cues also apply to nosework.

Melissa Breau: I know that your life has changed quite a bit since we last talked. Not just the new puppy, but you've been working with the AKC on their new scentwork program. I wanted to ask you what being an AKC contractor is about, what are you doing? Do you want to just share a little bit about what you're doing for them, what's involved there?

Stacy Barnett: Sure, sure. I'm one of the contractors. There's a small handful of us. We're basically consulting, so we're helping the AKC with … we're just bringing some thoughts, some ideas, to making sure and really helping to support the program so that we end up with a really excellent sport coming out of it, because that is a new sport for the AKC. So we're helping to consult. We're also supporting some of the trials, like maybe if there's a new scentwork club or something like that, to make sure that they have the support that they need for trials, and to answer questions and that sort of thing. And we're working at doing some judges education, so we're helping to define what we need to do to help make sure that we have the very best judges out there.

Melissa Breau: Last question. I know you've got your Win By A Nose class coming up on the schedule for February. Do you want to just share a little bit about how much of all of this is incorporated into that class, and maybe a little bit about what else you cover?

Stacy Barnett: Yeah, so that's great. A lot of this will be incorporated, but the Win By A Nose class is all about successful trialing and training strategies. So it's how do you get from the point that you're going to be good to great? What is it going to take to help to become a really great competitor? And we're going to get into, there's probably going to be a little bit of mental management in there, there's going to be a little bit of this, a little bit of that, some different trialing strategies, different cue strategies. We'll be talking about arousal, we'll definitely be talking about a little bit of handling, a little bit of what's the best way to set your training strategies up so that you can get yourself ready for a trial, all this type of stuff that comes together to get to the point where you are really ready to go out there and hit a home run.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. It sounds like a good class.

Stacy Barnett: I think it's going to be fun. I think it's going to be good, yeah.

Melissa Breau: Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Stacy, and for sticking through the technology fails. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We will be back next week, this time with Lori Stevens to talk about how you can help your dog reach optimal fitness in about five minutes at a time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.

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 and transcription written by CLK Transcription Services.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!