Donna Morgan Murray | Scent Work Beyond AKC, Reading Your Dog, and When to Excuse Yourself from a Search

I know that you know that you have been there for some of our best moments as a team.

Some of your highs and some of your lows, as you said.

My first Detective qualification after three attempts, three unsuccessful attempts, was under you. Do you remember that? You celebrated with me, which I love because some judges do not do that. I have noticed some judges are very low key. They are just like, "Yes," and that is that. Others like to enjoy the moment with the competitor. I think that is you. You like to celebrate with them, right?

Absolutely. Especially when someone says this is their first. We had several firsts at the German Shepherd National at that trial and that is always special. It is also special when somebody titles and there are happy tears. Particularly for Detective, I like to celebrate every qualification because they are hard. It is hard.

Yes, it is hard. Do you remember the run? Do you remember what happened? Because it was not the cleanest, prettiest run.

I just remember it was your first. I do not remember all the gory details.

Alright, here are the gory details. I call that run Snack Fest 2024.

Oh right.

It was in a school or a gym. I do not remember exactly. There were little flat pretzels on the floor and popcorn all over the floor. My dog went in half searching and mostly eating.

Oh, I do remember.

I remember thinking, "Oh great, this is not going to go well." Then somehow we qualified, which made it all that much sweeter. It got so ridiculous with his eating that I started laughing out loud.

I do remember that now. Schools are tough because there are so many kid smells and so much food and so much body odor. In this case, because it was a grade school, there was food everywhere. Absolutely everywhere.

I remember thinking I could either get frustrated or I could laugh. I chose laughing. And we are going to get into another not so great moment that you were there for a little bit later.

But first, let me introduce the podcast. My name is Scot. I am also known as Murphy and Keeva's dad, and we are talking to Donna Morgan Murray. She is Laelia, Zia, and Brixi's mom. Are there any other dogs you are mom to that I left out?

Yes. We have Dashiell. He is technically my husband's dog, but there are four German Shepherds that my husband and I share our house with.

Got it.

And this is Alert Scent Work, a podcast all about scent work. I want to know how you started your journey with scent work. What was the first moment that led to where you are now?

A long time ago, even before Laelia, who is fourteen and a half now. I trained with a friend of mine, Marty Bailey, back in Connecticut. She ran a facility called Smarty Dog, and she set up all kinds of fun activities. One day she set up nose work. I had never heard of it and had no idea what it was, but it was amazing to watch the dogs find a tiny piece of kibble hidden somewhere. It was completely different from tossing a food scatter on the floor. This was intentional searching and problem-solving. That was the beginning of my journey.

We all relate to loving that moment of watching our dogs do something incredible with their noses.

Absolutely. I never tire of watching them solve scent puzzles. Just this past weekend at a North American Sport Dog Association (NASDA) event, there were so many examples of dogs ignoring what they could physically see because they were relying on scent. Sometimes the hide object is right in front of them, but the wind is doing something interesting. They follow the scent, not their eyes. I never get tired of that.

Probably part of why you became a judge, which I want to talk about in a second. But first, how did searching for food translate to competing? What was your first trial venue?

My first question was, “This is a sport? We can do this somewhere beyond class?” At the time, the only organization that existed was the National Association of Canine Scent Work (NACSW), so that is where I started. I didn’t go very far with my first dog because he had food allergies and other issues. Then Laelia came along. When we moved to Washington, I found a Certified Nose Work Instructor (CNWI) and began taking classes.

She is a gifted scent dog. She made everything look easy, and that is a wonderful first dog to have. When the next dogs came along and were not as naturally gifted, I realized how hard this sport can be.

Your first dog can spark the passion. Once you see what is possible, you are in. I had the same experience. My dog picked it up quickly, and I know that if he had not, I probably would not still be doing this. He sucked me in, and now I am stuck doing scent work with all my other dogs too.

Of course.

You are involved in American Kennel Club (AKC), United Kennel Club (UKC), United States Canine Scent Sports (USCSS), and NASDA. You also compete with multiple dogs. Was it simply the joy of watching your dog work? Was it Laelia’s talent? Or was there something deeper that kept you all in?

I should add Australian Shepherd Club of America (ASCA). I am a judge for them too, and I feel bad leaving them out.

Part of the reason I stayed in the sport was that it is so much fun to watch dogs solve scent puzzles. It is also something you can do at home, anywhere you go. In those days, we were heavily into agility. Scent work was our side gig. Then I got injured. Laelia recovered from her injury. I did not. So we slowed down on agility.

I worried she would miss it because she loved agility. To fill that gap, we started exploring all the different scent work venues.

Just last weekend, I took my younger dog Zia to her first agility trial. I was talking with a friend who also competes in scent work. We both laughed because agility used to be everything and scent work was the hobby. Now scent work is everything, and agility is the hobby.

I have heard similar stories. Nose work starts as the little side thing and then takes over. And it is great at home, especially when the weather is terrible. It gives your dog something meaningful to do and burns mental energy.

Absolutely. And I do it with dogs of all ages. Puppies start with simple scent games at eight weeks old. Laelia, at fourteen and a half, still does scent work. When we lived in New England, I would poke a hole in an empty water bottle, drop a scented Q-tip inside, toss it outside into the snow, and let the wind take it. Then I sent my dog out to find it.

Perfect. And you got to stay inside.

Exactly.

With a new puppy, do you start with primary or odor? What is your philosophy?

Here we go.

Alright, maybe not. That sounded like a long discussion.

Actually, it is not that long. I started in NACSW, where they begin with primary and spend quite a bit of time on it. With Laelia, I struggled to get her to stop alerting on food distractions.

Then I met an instructor who started dogs straight on odor because odor is more valuable than cookies. I switched and have started all my dogs that way since. I am blessed because my working-line German Shepherds come with natural hunt drive. I do not have to build it. Primary is great for people who need to build hunt drive, but that is not a problem I have. So starting on odor works for me.

So it was the solution that worked for you. It may not work for everybody.

Exactly.

Tell me more about USCSS and NASDA. I am not familiar with them. Was it just another place to play the game, or do they add something different?

They do things differently. USCSS is closely aligned with NACSW and ASCA. They do containers, interiors, exteriors, and vehicle searches. Anything with wheels counts as a vehicle. So you can have golf carts or anything similar, which makes it flexible and fun. I love vehicle searches, and Brixi, my ten-year-old, absolutely loves them. Vehicles are her favorite thing.

USCSS also has games. One is called HEPA Highs. You have a set amount of time to find all the hides. You do not know how many hides there are. You qualify based on the percentage you find. Another game is Ludicrous Speed. You find the first hide within forty-five seconds, then each additional hide within thirty seconds. It sounds easy. It is not. The pressure changes everything. Even experienced handlers fall apart under a time clock.

I am glad you brought up the time aspect. People underestimate how much time pressure affects the search. I have competed in a thing called Detection Dog Trials (DDT), and the time limits are long. You can relax, think through your plan, check corners, check perimeters. Time changes everything.

Yes.

That time pressure is real.

Yes, it is. There is a part of that time pressure in some of NASDA too. North American Sport Dog Association (NASDA) is basically either searching for rats in a quarry box out in a field, so it is a big open field that you are searching, or searching for rats in a quarry box in a more urban setting, like a barn or a garage. You can also search for shed antlers out in a big field. The last piece of NASDA is searching for human scented objects. At the first level you are searching for handler scent, and at the upper levels you are searching for stranger odor.

It is totally different from the essential oil venues and it is a lot of fun. I started in it when I was giving a handler discrimination workshop at my place. One of the participants said, "There is this new venue that does something like this and they are having a workshop in a couple of weeks. Why do you not come check it out?"

So I did. I went and checked it out. I have never been a barn hunt person and never had any interest in barn hunt, but I found that the lost item recovery, the human scented venue, was very interesting. I realized I could teach my dog to search for shed antlers at home and we could do this. After the workshop I went and signed up for the trial, entered lost item recovery with Laelia, and entered shed dog so she could hunt for antlers.

Then I watched the other things they did and thought, "This is really fun," because you are out in the field, which is my favorite thing. You are out in the field working with your dog and you really cannot handle or guide your dog much. The dog just has to go do the work. You stand back and watch your dog search and have a blast. I love it. I got hooked on NASDA right away.

That is so cool. I want to learn more about that. It looks like a lot of those events happen up where you are in Washington and maybe on the East Coast. It does not look like there are many around me. Is that right?

Yes. There are quite a few in the Midwest now too, but yes, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, it has become very popular in those areas.

I want to talk to you as a judge for a second. At the beginning of the day, during the briefing, judges always give some quick tips like, "Do not crowd the start line," or whatever. I want to go a little deeper since I have the chance to talk to a judge, instead of just, "Are you ready?" and "Thank you."

What are some lessons handlers can take from your judging perspective? I want to talk about Novice and Advanced teams together, and then maybe Excellent, Master, and Detective teams. Of course I am talking about American Kennel Club (AKC), because that is what I have experience with. You have seen so many dogs and handlers run. What are some lessons we can take from your judging perspective?

One of the first and foremost things is to train your dog. When a handler comes to my search area, and most often it is Buried, and says, "We have never done this before but I entered my dog anyway," it makes me very sad. You are not setting your dog up for success, because Buried is not just a container search.

Train your dog. Train your dog and know the rules. That is another big one. When someone comes in to Advanced for the first time and says, "How many hides?" I think, "Oh my gosh. How many cookies do you have? Do you have enough cookies for your dog?"

So this happens a lot? That seems crazy. Does it really happen often?

A lot. Then they move up to Excellent and it is, "What, there are three hides?"

Train your dog. Know the rules. And do not overwork your dog. So many times people go around and around and around. They go around the search area the same way three or four times. What is your dog going to find differently after doing the exact same thing more than twice?

Yes, change direction. If you go around an interior search clockwise and your dog has not found the hide, go back around counterclockwise. Maybe the wind is doing something different. Maybe the hide is tucked in a way they cannot quite pick it up from that first angle. But if you go around two, three, four times, whether it is interior or containers, you are just overworking your dog. You can see the dog get frustrated. You can see the handler get frustrated.

Sometimes it is better to get in and get out. You can ask for help. You really can ask for help rather than overwork your dog and end up with both of you frustrated.

When you say "ask for help," what do you mean?

You can say, "My dog is not finding it," and you can call the search. Then the judge can tell you where the hide is. You can go over, reward your dog, and have a little party with them.

For me, I want dogs to leave the search area happy. When handlers overwork the search, the handler does not leave happy and the dog does not leave happy.

In those levels where there is a known number of hides, if you are in Excellent and you are only finding two out of three hides, your advice would be: try it one way, then the other, make sure you have covered edges, and if you are still not getting that third one, call it. That way you can get that last bit of success and get out of there.

Yes. End on success.

For Master, the advice would be to call "Finish" if you have already been around a couple of times.

Oh my gosh, yes. Again, know the rules. Sometimes even Master handlers come in without really knowing the rules about how many hides there can be, particularly in Interiors, because that can be confusing.

Have a timer. Use a timer, because it breaks my heart when a Master dog has found everything and the handler is not using a stopwatch and runs out of time. If you do not call "Finish," it is a non-qualifying run. If you call "Finish," you might qualify. Please call "Finish."

I cannot tell you how many times in Master and Detective people are not timing themselves and they do not qualify simply because they did not call "Finish." That breaks my heart.

Getting beyond advice like, "Know the rules, time yourself, do not overwork your dog," do you have a couple of other tidbits, maybe things you have seen recently that we can all learn from?

In trialing, I encourage people to work off leash whenever they can, because then you can stand back and watch your dog. You can see what your dog is doing. When you are working on leash, it is amazing how many people come in with a twenty foot leash and then only give their dog three feet of it. They wrap the rest of the leash up in their hands.

I say do not come in with more leash than you are prepared to give your dog. If you are going to give your dog twenty feet, great, use a twenty foot leash. If you are only going to give your dog three feet, do not come in with a twenty foot leash. It is going to get you in trouble.

If you can work off leash, do it, because your dog shows you so much when you can stand back and watch them.

That ties into training. I encourage people, when they are training skills, especially new skills like elevated hides, to do one hide and be done. Know exactly where the hide is. Stand back and watch your dog so that you can say, "I can tell when my dog is in odor. I can tell when my dog is chasing odor. I can tell when my dog is confused, not in odor, or crittering."

When you spend too much time doing blind hides in training, you become fixated on making the call instead of watching your dog. You miss learning what your dog looks like when they are in odor, at source, or working an inaccessible hide. You need to learn to see when your dog cannot get any closer to the odor and have the courage to call it, because you know they are doing everything they can.

I think it is a shame. It took me a long time to learn to read my dog because of how I first learned the sport. I think that might be true for a lot of people. I just started putting odor out and letting my dog find it. I did not realize that the game was going to depend on me being able to read my dog at some point.

I love that you hit on that. If someone is starting the sport with a Novice dog from step one, they should be looking for change of behavior from the beginning. I did not even know "change of behavior" was a thing. Those are things I wish somebody had told me early on.

I want to ask you about something you shared in a Detective debrief on the AKC judges Facebook debrief page. In that Detective search, the exterior was blank. You said you left it blank because that seemed like the fairest thing to do. It was a wide open space. The wind was unpredictable. It sounded like there were not many great places to put a hide where the odor would be contained. You decided that leaving it blank was the fairest thing.

What does "fair" mean to you in scent work judging, beyond that example?

Fair to me means that the dogs have a good chance of being able to find the hides.

One of my philosophies in setting Detective hides, and also in National Association of Canine Scent Work (NACSW) Elite searches, is based on that. In Elite, the dog does not have to find all of the hides. They only have to find half the hides to keep their points. In Detective, the dog has to find one hundred percent of the hides in order to qualify.

I should not be setting something that I do not think a dog can find.

So what I am hearing from you is that in AKC you feel it is really important to make sure odor is available to the dogs.

Yes.

There has to be a plume available.

Yes.

And you put a lot of effort into making sure that happens.

Exactly. In NACSW, a Certifying Official might set a hide thinking, "I bet most dogs will not find this," and that is okay because you do not have to find them all in Elite.

Are there other things you keep in mind when you are setting hides that make a search fair?

This is just me personally, but I will not put odor on two Buried buckets back to back. Buried is hard enough. The dog barely has their head back up from eating their cookie when they are sent to the next Buried bin. I think Buried is too hard to stack hides like that.

In Containers it can be a different story. I tell a story about a handler here who has a Corgi. In one of my Excellent searches I had odor, blank, odor, blank. So I had three hides with two blanks between them. She did a beautiful job, and I wish I had it on video. The dog found the first hide, and she said, "Chew." She waited until the dog was done chewing, took a step, and the dog was on the next box and then hit the second odor box and alerted. She said, "Chew," let the dog chew, and then moved on.

Many of the other handlers bypassed that second hide because they found the first one and then rushed on. Their dogs had not even finished chewing, so there was no way they could smell again to get to the next odor box. It was a totally fair search with a high qualifying rate, but she took High in Trial because she let her dog chew.

Otherwise she would have had to come back and find the ones they missed the first time.

Right.

It is also a great time for us as handlers to look around and reorient ourselves while the dog is chewing that treat.

Yes, especially in Detective. I am thinking, "Okay, this dog is chewing and I just found a hide on the bottom drawer of the cabinet on the left." I say that to myself.

If you say it out loud, it sticks.

I say it out loud. I absolutely do. I have to.

Do you have a type of hide or challenge that teams might jokingly call a "Donna Morgan Murray classic"?

Yes. I did not realize this until someone pointed it out to me. I guess I like threshold hides, both near and far.

From my perspective, I want to see the dog work the whole search area, whatever it is, whether it is Detective or another element. So I tend to put a threshold hide at the beginning and a threshold hide near the end.

We are going to call that the Donna Morgan Murray from now on. I like it. We are naming that after you.

I want to go back to the story I told at the beginning. You have been with us for some of our best moments, like when we got that Detective qualification, but you were also there for Snack Fest 2024. I want you to completely understand I am not blaming you as a judge. My dog is a food hound. I know it.

But the rest of that weekend he was constantly on the hunt for food. A new problem was created. It even caused me to pull him off odor a few times because I was getting frustrated, thinking he was searching for food and not odor.

As a competitor, what is your dog's "thing," and how do you handle situations like that as a handler with your own dogs?

Laelia is perfect. She has always been perfect, so I never had any issues with her.

That is beautiful. I love it.

But then there is Brixi, my crackhead, who is not perfect.

She is the one who barks all the way to the search area. Once she crosses the start line she is quiet, but she is still a crackhead. I have to keep in mind that she is going to run and run and run and run, and there is no point in me trying to redirect her at first. I need to let her get that out.

Luckily she is fast, so we do not run out of time in Detective, for example. But she is not going to find anything for the first minute or two. She is just running around being very happy. She is bouncing and exuberant. When she finally gets enough brain to find odor, then it is boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The other thing about her is that I cannot rely on her to tell me that she has found everything. Again, Laelia was perfect. Laelia would find everything, then look at me. She would give me "the look," I would ask, "Are you sure?" She would give me the look again and I would call "Finish," and she was right.

Brixi will search until she drops. So even though I cannot direct her very much during that first crazy phase, I have to pay very close attention to where she has found odor, where she has been, and where she has not been. I have to make sure she searches those spots and then decide when to call it.

There was an example at that trial in Idaho. She went in and ran and ran and ran and ran. Then she started finding things and she found them fast, which made it hard for me to keep straight where she had found hides. There was one place I was pretty sure she had not been, so I pushed her back into that corner and she found a hide there. I called "Finish" and it was correct.

I really have to pay attention to where she has been and whether she has gotten into all the corners and covered everything. I have a habit of telling my dogs to "look up." I do not have to do that with her. If the hide is up, she is going to find it. But I still find myself saying, "Did you check up?" That might be one of the things that drives her crazy.

Once she is past the crazy phase, I feel like I need to manage her more by paying attention to whether she has covered everything.

So your solution to that crazy phase is to just let her do it. At some point you tried other things and realized this is what works.

Yes. I cannot really direct her in that phase. She is not truly in work mode. She is not in "search mode." She is in, "This is a new place and this is great fun and I am off leash" mode.

She is very fast. She covers the area much faster off leash than if I were trying to handle her on leash. She would probably kill me if I tried to handle her on leash because she works so fast and runs through everything.

I realized she is not working in those first moments and nothing I do is going to make her work. Telling her "find it, find it, find it" is not going to make her work. That is one of my pet peeves, when people say "find it, find it, find it" over and over.

Think about if your boss were standing over you repeating instructions over and over. You would get pretty annoyed. I try not to do that to my dogs. It would not work with her anyway. She would just be, "La la la la la, I do not hear you."

One of the things I admire about you as a handler, and I do not know you that well, I have mostly seen you passing through the parking lot on your way somewhere, is that your dog is vocal but you really take it in stride. You keep things light. You do not let it bother you or frustrate you or embarrass you. You just take it in stride and you have a smile on your face. That is something I want to learn from you.

She is ten. Trust me, I have tried everything to stop that barking in agility. We stopped running agility because she does not stop barking at the start line. She barks the whole time and I cannot handle that. I admire people who can handle a dog through that. I cannot.

I have tried everything. I have worked with multiple trainers. I have done all the things. This is the dog who, at eight weeks old on the drive from Sacramento to Seattle, screamed for fifteen hours nonstop. It is who she is. I am not going to change it.

Most people who know Brixi joke and say, "Oh, Brixi is here."

That community helps too, I suppose. They help you keep it light.

They do.

I want to circle back to one of my worst moments. When I was in the ring with you, my dog peed in a Master exterior search earlier this year. What made it even better, in my opinion, is that in the briefing I cannot tell you how many times you said, "Be sure you potty your dog. We have peeing issues. Potty your dog. Do not bring your dog in here without pottying your dog."

I have to admit, I am usually very consistent. Ninety eight percent of the time I am careful about that. I do not remember if I actually pottied him before that search. It is such a habit that I think I did, but I am not sure. You went through that whole reminder and then it happened anyway.

That was already a rough day for me, and that was like the icing on the cake. How do you deal with or recover from a rough day or a frustrating moment?

I have a lot of them with Brixi.

Sometimes I say this in a briefing too. My number one goal is that the dog has fun. That is the most important thing. The dog has to have fun. Number two, I try not to do anything stupid that will get us a non-qualifying run. That is my second goal. If we happen to get a qualification, that is icing on the cake, but the dog having fun is the priority.

Brixi always has fun, but sometimes it is very frustrating. There have been times in Detective when we have not even found five hides. If she is in a particularly crackhead mood, we have had those days.

For me, I still want her to think she did okay, whether she did or not. I will come out of the search area and what helps me decompress is to say, in a cheerful voice, "You are the worst dog in the whole world. I am sending you back to Julia. You stink." I am saying that in my happy voice while I am giving her treats. By the time I get back to the car, it has rolled off me.

So it is "fake it till you make it" not only for the dog, but for yourself.

Exactly.

Perfect.

Donna, this has been wonderful. I am going to wrap up with a little segment we call Seven Questions. I am going to give you seven quick fire questions. I just want the first answer that comes to your mind. You are going to do great.

Give me just a sentence or two. If I want you to expand, I will ask you to tell me more. You ready?

Okay.

What is your dog's favorite reward after a great search?

Food. It is absolutely food. They hunt for food and I try to use really smelly treats, like salmon. Salmon treats are the best.

What is one piece of advice you would give your beginner scent work self?

Smile. Breathe. Your dog knows whether you are smiling and whether you are breathing. When you do not breathe, your dog thinks something is wrong and that you are going to die, and it makes them worry.

It is amazing how often we do not breathe during searches.

Exactly.

What would your dog say about you as a handler?

"She is so stupid."

Come on. I find everybody defaults to the negative. What is a positive thing your dog would say about you as a handler?

"She loves me and she gives me the best treats."

What is your favorite search to run your dog in?

Probably NACSW Elite because it takes all the pressure off. I only have to get fifty percent.

What is one compliment you got from a fellow competitor or a judge that really stuck with you? Any role, handler or judge.

A judge who was a police officer said he wanted to take my dog to work with him.

That must have felt good.

Absolutely. Especially with German Shepherds. There is some pride in that.

What has your dog done in a search that made you laugh out loud?

Brixi does that so often. She hops in search areas. She will just hop and hop, and all of a sudden it is like, "Oh look, there is odor, feed me," and then she goes back to hopping. It makes me laugh.

She hops right into a plume.

Yes.

I love it. Do you have a signature distractor you like to use in your searches as a judge?

No, because I trade them out. I am packing right now to go away for a judging weekend. I looked at what I had and thought, "Okay, I need my summer toys." I take my dogs' waterproof toys and make sure they are in there. During football season I have footballs and things like that. I change them out.

I love it. You are seasonal. You come up with seasonal distractors. That is fun. If you had a music distractor, what would the playlist be?

Deep Tracks on SiriusXM.

So classic rock deep cuts?

Yes. Some good Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd.

Perfect. What other judges do I need to get on this podcast? Who needs to have the kind of fun you just had?

Tracy Hill is a fairly new judge. Vicki Lovejoy always has fun. Vicki would be great. There are others, but those two come to mind.

I will stop you there. That is a good start.

Donna, this has been great. Thank you.

Thanks, Scot. It was fun. I appreciate it.

How can people contact or connect with you if they are looking for training or judging, or just a fun hang?

Obviously you can find my address, phone number, and email address in the AKC judges directory.

Do you want to plug your business too? You do canine fitness.

I do canine fitness, and I think it is very important for scent dogs. It is amazing if you think about a Detective search or if you are doing back to back interior and exterior searches at the Master level. Your dogs need stamina. If they are couch potatoes and you just throw them into trialing without good workouts, it is hard for them.

You can tell which dogs are not in shape. They are panting, really struggling, and slow. Good core strength is important for our search dogs, particularly if they are trying to work elevated hides. People think fitness is really important for agility dogs, but it is really important for scent dogs too.

And for companion dogs too. I would imagine it gives them better quality of life and a longer quality of life.

Exactly. My theme is "for the life of your dog," from puppies through old dogs. I have workouts that are safe for all those different life stages and I can work with veterinarians on rehab programs. It is my other passion.

You are on Facebook, and people can learn more about that there. What is your business name on Facebook?

CedarTop Canine Conditioning.

Donna, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being all that you are to the scent work community. This has been a fun conversation. Thank you for being on Alert Scent Work.

Thanks, Scot. I appreciate it.