Joanne Soyke | Becoming a Better Listener

I wanted to say thank you for coming on the podcast because I have a goal and that's to talk to a judge in every state. So I'm really excited to say you're the first from Illinois that I'm talking to, so congratulations.

Well, thank you so much for having me on. I'm happy to be here.

Yeah. And I will say I'm also excited to talk to you. It's not just because of where you're from. I put out on the Facebook page, I said, I want to talk to some judges outside my area. Who do you guys think I should talk to? And I got a whole bunch of replies and your name came up a couple times. So there are people out there that like you, Joanne, I guess.

Oh, I'm happy. I'm pleased. I know.

Let me, let me do the official intro. This is Alert Scent Work. My name's Scot, I'm Murphy and Keeva's dad. With me today is Joanne Soyke Now you're NACSW certifying official. Is that right? AKC Scent Work.

Yes.

And you do, do you do UKC as well? Are you a judge or do you just host UKC trials?

I both. I'm a judge and a host and I do CPE as well.

What is CPE?

Canine Performance Events. I would say it's. It's similar to UKC.

All right. And I was looking at your judging history on AKC and you have to scroll a long way to get to the beginning. You've been doing it for a long time.

Yeah, I've been doing it since it kind of came out. So I just, I love it. I love Scent Work.

Was AKC when. Well, I actually, I should also say we need to talk about your dogs.

Who. Your mom dog too. So you've got a pack of five. Who, who's in your pack of five? We want names and breeds.

So I have Noah. He is a nine year old Vizsla. He's the, he's the good one. He's perfect. Nothing's wrong with him. He's just always, always ready to please. I have bam. He's an eight year old Doberman Pinscher. I have Fyre. She's a 13 and a half year old border collie. I have Roscoe. He is a four year old super mutt. I always say he's like a lab herding breed mix. And then I have Tilly and she is just turned two. She's. I always say she's a little bit of sweet, she's a little bit of Satan. She's a. She's a Chihuahua rat Terrier mix.

You. That is a crew there. Do they all do scent work?

They sure do, yep.

Are you kidding me? All right, well, we're gonna have fun today, because I know another one of your things is you are very passionate about understanding the dog that you're working with, the dog that's in front of you, their nuances, to get the best out of them, to appreciate them. So, I mean, with that pack, you have to do that. Is that where that came from? Because you have such a variety? I mean, a lot of judges will just have one breed, right?

Sure, sure. No, it actually came long before that. So I did some obedience work, and then the behavior really grabbed me. So I do a lot of behavior work prior to scent work, even being a sport, and that just grabbed my passion, and it really made me want to dive more into. Not cookie cutter, I guess I'd call it style training. Right. Where this is the one way you have to do everything. And that's been about 20 years in the making now. So just being able to find what makes a dog tick, what floats their boat, what do they find enjoyable, what don't they like? It really helps push training along a lot faster, I think, when it comes.

To looking at an individual dog as their own dog in scent work. Give us a couple of tips that might help us with our own dogs. Being able to recognize that.

Sure. So I'm going to name drop here. I came up as a young trainer, and I was really blessed to find Suzanne Clothier. She's out of New York. She's been around forever, and she designed a program called CARAT. It's C A R A T. It stands for the Clothier Animal Response Assessment Tool. And she kind of came up with that, working with Guiding Eyes for the Blind, trying to weed out dogs that wouldn't make it into, you know, training. Being able to find out at 8 weeks old who we're going to put our money into and who we're going to wash out. And she then shared that kind of with the public, and I was blessed to be kind of one of the very first public trainees of that. And I've used it ever since. It's one of those programs where once you know it, you can't unsee or unknowing what you've seen. It just gave me an entirely different perspective on dogs. So she kind of narrows it down. You're looking at energy and sociability and arousal and resilience and things like social tolerance. How much can they take before they'll react to you? And so if anyone's interested in that, I would highly recommend just Google it. There's tons of information about it, but it really changed my life. And like I said, I. Once you learn it, you can never see dogs the same way again.

So give us an example of how that might apply in either participating, competing in scent work, or even training our own dog. Like is, do you have a good story or example? Like is that the reward? See the thing I think about is a reward sequence because every dog's motivated by something else. Some like attention, some like food, some like toys. Would that be a good example or do you have another example?

I would think more. So some dogs get really over aroused at the start line. Okay, you've seen that dog. Wide eyed, eyes like saucers, they're panting, they're right, they're choking themselves trying to, trying to bust off that start line. And you might see that dog completely blow by odor. Even though they know it, it's because their arousal is too high. So they're just, their central nervous system isn't kicking in with that olfactory yet and so they just, they miss it. It takes them a minute to run around, maybe calm down and then they can kind of get to work. So if I see that arousal level, I'm going to work with the dog. What is the dog like? My Doberman for instance, is super over aroused. He was as a youngster, he's better now, but he still has issues. And I tried kind of sits and downs at the start line. Well, he didn't like to sit still, still. Then we started to do a progression of. All right, can you sit, can you down, can you touch, can you shake, can you touch, can you sit, can you. So I would do about 12 things to get him moving, to use his brain and then right from that find it. And we would just walk across the start line, already pre engaged with our brain.

Right, so you had to come up with a whole ritual to deal with that dog and the fact that it tended to be really aroused in order to get it searching from the beginning as opposed to running around for a minute, wasting the time.

Yes. Yeah. I'll give you another example. I just had a student join my, my intro to nose work class. And we started a few months ago and she had a tiny little, little rat terrier. The dog was very nervous and we started with boxes. The dog was terrified if a box were to move, wouldn't stick her head in something. So I said okay, we're going to go backwards. We're going to use paper plates because they're not tall. She's not going to bump them. They're right on her level. And she was like, oh, I can do this. This is totally fine. So we just progressed up from there, and it built her confidence into something she could do that she was confident about. And then you just keep progressing from there. And now she's a little rock star. She'll knock a box around the room.

That's so awesome. I love those stories. I want to know, though, what is your scent work story? So there was a time there was no scent work. Now you're in deep, deep. What was that moment that got you in? What happened?

I had a border collie. His name was Flip. And we spent the beginning part of his life trying to find something for him to do. He was a dog that so needed a job. He was kind of neurotic with the border collies. That's kind of a given. But he was a little on the spectrum, I think. And I tried agility, and he would run so fast, he would fall off of the equipment, and I was worried he would hurt himself. Obedience too methodical for him. He didn't like it. You could do fast cat things like that he enjoyed, but those are far and few between. That's not something you can play with every day. So, you know, he was just my ball Frisbee dog. He loved. That's what he loved. He loved to do. So scentwork came along and I thought, let's try this. This is a sport we haven't tried. He took to it like a duck to water, and it was. It was his jam. He just fell in love with it. And so did I.

What was it. What was it that made you fall in love with it? Like, he. He loved it. And. And I trust that you know what you're seeing, since you are very attuned to dog's behaviors. But what was it that you loved about it so much?

Seeing that he could use his powers for good instead of evil. Right.

So scent work. And there's a T shirt there. There's a T shirt there. Scent work. Use your powers for good instead of evil. With the picture of a border collie on it.

Absolutely. So, you know, he. He just. He wanted to participate in something so badly, and when he found this, he was in charge. He was the one who had the skill, he had the talent. I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning because this was back when no one knew this Was a brand new sport and we were just trying to figure it out. So seeing him just find joy and you could just almost see him grinning after he found a hide, you know, just like, oh, I got it where I did it. Good. Yay, Mom. So, yeah, I was hooked after that.

Yeah. Yeah. Seeing his happiness and then what, what sucked you in even deeper then.

I want. I knew I wanted to teach this to others. That, that, like, that was a big thing. Like.

Like the joy that you got out of it. You wanted to give that to others. Is that what the motivating factor was?

Yeah. And how many dogs out there couldn't do agility or obedience and, you know, couldn't find the things that they could enjoy something with their person for. For the people who actually like to play sports or like to participate in group activities. So I thought, if my dog can do this and excel at it, there's so many other dogs that even if they are doing other sports, are going to find so much joy in this. I have to share this with other people. Not only that, it's so cool they let us into their world. Right. Like, I don't know where it is. And to watch a dog come from across the room and bob and weave and get their heads in and under something, it's so amazing to watch that natural talent and something that they're born with. They let us into that world.

Yeah, I feel that way as well. I think that sucks a lot of people in. I think just the amazing. Just watching the dogs do this amazing thing that we have no idea how they do it, how they find a Q tip with essential oil in a 5,000ft area is beyond me. Right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. And then. So you wanted to teach it to other people and then was judging just a. Another way to teach it to people, or did you just really want to see more dogs do this? You were addicted watching dogs.

So once I was teaching and I got to watch dogs in classes, I kind of wanted to expand that. And again, it was more about how can we bring this to more people. So once the areas kind of picked it up, I think United Nosework was the very first one that originated in Texas, and then that ended up turning into UKC. That was one of the very first venues after NACSW. So I applied to be a judge right away because I thought, this is so much fun. We can do them at training facilities. NACSW doesn't allow trials to be at training facilities. They have to be in novel locations, places that, you know, you don't use more than every six months to 12 months. And so UKC, you could hold multiple trials a year at your training facility. So you can. It's a. It's a place for your students to not have to travel, to be able to participate and play. And so I really wanted to kind of bring it closer to home. And once I got the first one under my belt, once I started doing UKC trials, I just was hooked on judging again. It's just watching handlers and dogs and the combos, and sometimes it's like that ballroom dance partner of 50 years, and it's beautiful and sometimes it's clunky and it's new and you're like, oh, my gosh. But it. It reminds me, like watching novice and brand new people. It reminds me of when we all started and we didn't know what we were doing.

Yeah. I want to ask you about judging. So you've been doing this for a long time. You do it for multiple organizations. And one of the things that was told to me when you were recommended by my listeners was you. Have you ever seen the movie the Matrix with Neo? You know?

Yes.

All right. So they say that you're kind of like Neo, that you can see all the zeros and ones when you walk into a search area and you just know how it's going to work while the rest of us are fooled by the Matrix. Is that true? Do you. Do you. Do you kind of feel like you have an ability to see it in a way other people don't?

That sounds like Kristi Murdock is who that sounds like.

Maybe, maybe not. But does that sound like you?

I. Sure. I think I can see it in a lot of different ways and a lot of different perspectives. And I think having so many years of working behavior prior to doing this really allows me to see multifactors happening at once. It's not just the dog and the handler. It's the dog's feet, how heavy they're stepping, which way they turn. Did their ears perk up when something happens? You know, a car went by, did that stir something up? Did the dog speed up, slow down? I'm so used to watching behavior that all that stuff plays into every nuance of nose work.

Right. So it's the behavior aspect that you kind of are like, Neo, what about, like, the odor theory? Like, can you walk into a room and have a pretty good idea how odor is going to behave in that space?

I would say yes. I'm. I would probably sit at like a 93%. I can tell you what odor's gonna do now? I don't care how long you've been doing it. I just co'd a trial a few weeks back, and I had an indoor vehicle search and indoor. Right. There wasn't a lot of air movement in there, and I had three hides on four cars. And, boy, that odor moved all the way across the room. It did not do what I expected. I'm still kind of wondering why it moved so much. And so, yeah, you know, sometimes you just get surprised. You still don't know why.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry.

Oh, who's.

Who's.

Who's fussing there? Who's that?

My old lady's under the desk. She was. The little one is bouncing around. Sorry.

Well, having five dogs, it's incredibly quiet there actually. So that's a. That's a pretty amazing win. So help me understand, as a judge, when you go into a space, interior, exterior, whatever, and you look at what you've been given, and I'm primarily familiar with AKC, but you can talk about any organization you want. What kind of challenges or tests are you trying to set? What are you trying to do? Do you have an overriding philosophy when it comes to the kinds of hides you set? What are you trying to accomplish?

I think if you're talking overall, I want everyone to pass all the searches, but I need you to have the skills of the level to pass them. So I like to tell people, I'm not trying to trick you, I'm not trying to trick your dog. My searches are pretty straightforward. I don't think anyone would come in and say, oh, that was sneaky, things like that. So I'm pretty straightforward. But novice, for me, the lowest level on any of them is just, can your dog come in and tell you where odor is? You know, especially with AKC and UKC, you have people coming back to novice, so you might have someone with a lot of titles coming back into novice, but you also have the people who have never trialed before. I want them to come in and the dog goes, oh, my gosh. Boom. It's right there. So I enjoy the novice level very much. Moving up from there, there's a little more skill factors. You might find an inaccessible hide, you might find a low hide, you might find, you know, something with a small bit of elevation. I don't do anything above your head, but. And then, you know, when you get into excellence in AKC or masters in UKC, you have three hides, you have the. Can you clear a room? Those are kind of challenges. In and of themselves. And to me, when you get to the top levels, when everything's unknown, it's a skill in and of itself. Right. Is to be able to read your dog when they're done, do it in the timeframe, and detective is its whole owner thing. I've seen some detectives, I've seen some people describe some detective searches, and I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, you don't even find some of those challenges in, you know, NACSW elite trials. There's five to 10 hides in 10 minutes or less is a feat in and of itself.

Thank you. Thank you. I've often thought that as I've watched, like I will watch rounds after I run. And it's occurred to me, like triangles and converging odor and everything else aside, covering an entire search area with an unknown number of hides, five to ten. And getting that. That like, that's 60 to 70% of the job.

Yes. I feel like it really is. It really is.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, and when I set my detective searches, I will tell you, probably three quarters of the hides are hides you just have to source and get to. And there might be two depending on how many hides I put out. Right. There might be one or two. That. That's your challenge. The odors readily available. Do you have the skill to solve that problem? But again, when. When you have that big of a space and you know, that kind of timeframe, you can't have. Well, you can because people do it, but you, you shouldn't have seven challenges that are going to take the dog two minutes to work out each hide. I. I feel like, I feel like that's kind of trying to trick dogs and handlers and I might get shunned for that.

But that's my opinion, especially then when also AKC detectives. All or nothing. I mean, like, exactly. You don't, you know, I'm looking forward to get into the upper NACSW levels because there I would imagine you could have a little bit more difficult challenges because it's not an all or nothing thing. And if something's so hard that nobody gets it, then nobody suffers. Is that kind of how you look at NACSW?

Yeah. And even in NACSW, I think you still want all your hides to be found. Like, you don't want to have that one hide that nobody finds all day. Maybe not a large majority of people find it, but again, odor is available. Does your dog have the skill to work that? And that's kind of the challenge there too. Right? You have A time limit. You have four searches a day, though. You can have up to, you know, two no's before. Well, three no's before they let you go. And, you know, it's. It's. You can leave that search and go, ah, bummer. That didn't go as well as I wanted. Now let's go to the car and we're gonna regroup for the next one.

Yeah.

I had a search with my Doberman in an elite trial, and we got three no's in 20 seconds. I was like, oh, wow. What? That didn't feel great at all. And it was this huge room. So you walk out of there kind of defeated a bit. Like there could have been so many hides in there. You know, there was two hides in that giant room. So I missed. I missed two hides out of that whole search. And I squeaked by that day. But, you know, those are the types of things that can happen where, Detective, now that I'm glad that they offered the reduce, you can kind of give people an option.

Yeah, the fix and goes.

Fix and goes. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, it's. It's hard when you are like, thanks, bye. You're like, oh, okay.

My first detective run ever was 38 seconds. It was literally like I walked into the room, threw $40 in the air at the judge and walked out. That's how it felt. Yeah.

You're like, thanks for the opportunity. I'm gonna go now.

Right, right. What kind of challenges do you like to set? So on the upper level ones, do you intentionally try to set, like, triangles, high lows? Do you try to set different, varying levels of converging? Do you think about those kind of things when you're. You're placing searches?

Of course I do. I. Let's be fair. I think when you're working with AKC odor, it's all converging. It's such a high level of odor. I think you can set some better challenges. Things like converging in AKC because the odors are so strong. Where in NACSW, it's the. The nuance of the odor is much lower. So the dogs can do it just fine, but it takes a little more skill to work that out. But no, I'm not a big fan of two hides really close together. If I do do it, it's because it's a simple search area. So you kind of have to give the. Give the search the appropriate skill for the level. So if I have just a giant open room and there's not much in it and there's some stuff in the middle of the floor. Yeah. You might get a little bit more of a challenge. If I have a really busy kitchen and cafeteria with tons of tables and tight spaces and things like that, you're probably going to find much more easy to find hides. You just have to find them all.

Got it. So you take the environment into consideration.

Yeah, absolutely.

If it's a hard environment, then maybe the odor puzzles aren't quite so difficult.

Correct. Yeah.

That's cool. On NACSW, because of the odor concentration, I hear a lot of people. Well, there's a little bit of a debate there. I think some people say the odor concentration is less, some people say it's not because you can put like two or three Q tips in a vessel and NACSW. Right. So you would get something similar to AKC or what? What's your take on that?

I. I don't. I don't think it's similar at all. I know some people can say yes, but when you. When you just think about the chemistry behind it, NACSW has, you know, what, between five to seven drops in a jar and AKC has two drops per Q tip. You already, if you put One in there, 1Q tip in there, the concentration on that 1Q tip is just so much more.

Got it.

I. I believe.

Do you find that then in NACSW that the dogs that detail a little bit more are a little bit more successful as opposed to AKC, where I feel like sometimes my dog just kind of runs around the room till he hits a plume, because there's. They are available a lot of the times.

I think it depends on your area. I have seen dogs detail and they were not successful. I have seen dogs come running into the room and they missed things maybe in a corner or something like that. So I think it really just depends on how your search area is set up. Also, how strong is your dog? So, I mean, I'll go back and tell you. I did the detailing when I was working with a detection trainer. And for me it became more about the left to right, go around and then we'll do the middle. And then it became less about the dog's freedom to feel like he could move in a different direction. Cause if they break off, you kind of circle spin, you put them back. And I felt like it was more methodical, not because the dog wanted to be, but because I was making him. And it took away some of the fun. And I was not very successful when I used that method of training at NACSW.

That's something I've been struggling with lately myself. And I love this idea that you just brought up of the competing things, meaning, one, it's a competition and you do want to do well, or two, this is also a sport that we're doing because it's fun for the dog, and the dog does get to make the decisions a lot of the time. So I'm struggling with that balance. That balance of how much do I intervene to try to clear areas as I go versus how much do I just let him kind of do his thing. I kind of landed on one point where I let him do his thing, and then after we did that, then we'd go back and we'd. I would. I would direct a little bit if we missed some spots, but I'm not sure that's the right answer either. So you feel that as well?

It sounds like I. I do. I. I kind of use that with all my dogs. If we really missed a giant chunk of the room, a lot of times I might say, like, hey, I know you didn't want to go over here. I hear you. There's probably nothing here, but can you do a quick little pass for me and just appease me? And most of the time, the dogs are like, sure, I can do that. Still nothing here, but, you know, I'm happy to do that for you. I just find if you give them the freedom to move how they need to, and then we don't interject, because think about how many times your dog's found a hide, and you're like, yay, good dog. And you might take a step like, let's go. What if there is a converging hide there? What if there is another close hide? Your one step is telling the dog, now we're going this way. And dogs don't fight us very often, so they're like, okay, same thing. If. If they really say, I don't want to go in that room, I believe them. I might say, can you take two or three steps in? They're like, yep, still nothing. So the more that you focus on that and the more you kind of use that as a norm instead of just in training, if you really put that into trials, you'll start to become much more confident in it.

I loved one. The big takeaway for me is something you said just before, that both of those things were gold, but the one that you said was, find a hide. And then you are so, you know, ready to go. You take a step, which tells a dog to leave, and you might blow Off a converging. Guess what I did last weekend in a detective run. And guess what the judge told me I did. You were so excited you found that hide that you started walking and your dog really wasn't searching. And I've had judges tell me that I'm impacting their behavior, his behavior, a lot in the past few trials. And it's so that really resonated with me. So thank you, Joanne, for that, because I am going to try after we find a high, just to stand there and then let him re engage on his own.

Yeah. Have your party. Just don't move anywhere.

Right, Right. Yeah. And there was another one where I. I walked and I was told he was working a converging, and I kept walking. And the judge said, he's such a good boy. And I think what she was getting at is like, he's like, oh, we're going over here, dad. Okay, cool. Like, but it's funny, in training, he's really, really stubborn about leaving hides. He'll be disobedient. But apparently in trials, there must be a different situation going on. So.

Well, yeah, you. Right.

Well, yeah. Right. We always talk in the parking lot. My dog was acting really weird in that search. Like, if they could go out in the parking lot, they'd probably be saying the same thing about us. Right, Right.

He seemed fine when he woke up this morning. I don't know what his problem is. When we stepped to the start line, he got all weird on me.

That's so funny. All right, a couple more things about judging. I want to just get your perspective. What do you love to see from a team? Whether they Q or not in any of the organizations you judge, what is it that just lights you up, makes you smile?

Listening to your dog? If the dog is really persistent about something and you read it or you know you're sticking with them, the dog really says, I'm done. And they are confident and call it awesome. I just love to see somebody listening to their dog and letting their dog be the leader of that. You are a partner, but they're the strong one.

I love that. It's a game about communication, isn't it?

It really is.

It really is. And you used a communication term, listening to your dog. Right. It's this beautiful communication between a handler and a dog. I think, that you're describing maybe.

Yeah. I think if you've ever seen videos, some of the best searches you will ever see, qualify or not. Like, I always like to use that phrase. It's like that ballroom dance partner that's been your partner for 50 years. You can almost predict what way they're going to go, what step they're going to take, how they're going to turn, because you just have that jive. You just are so connected with them. It's just beautiful. It's just like a beautiful dance.

Give me an exercise or something I can do in training to improve my connectedness with my dog.

So here's one. I got this from Jeff McMahon. He's lovely. Take a room, cover your eyes, and chuck a hide in there by yourself. Don't know where the hide goes. Just. And go in there and listen to your dog. And you have to find it along with your dog. So you are both running that blind, and there's nobody there to watch you. You're not in a trial. You got all the time you need. There's no time clock on you. Just go in there and really see if you can absorb what your dog is telling you. You can support them by going wherever they want to go. Did they give you some information that you thought might be important, but then they left? Do you want to go back there? Do you not? I always feel like blind. Blind where nobody knows where it is, even the instructor. If you're training with someone or even your friend, it's completely unknown to you and the dog. You don't have any of that telepathy, like, oh, we're getting close. It. It's just beautiful.

Yeah. It probably forces your senses to become more aware of those behaviors, I would imagine.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And without the pressure of other people watching. Do you narrate to yourself? All right. I think my dog's like. If it's out loud or even in your head, do you narrate? All right, what did I just notice here? What. What could that possibly tell me?

I do in my head? We do in classes sometimes I will actually narrate the dog as they're working a hide. So do you see that speed change? Do you see the head sweep? Do you see the tail came up? Do you see this? Do you see that? And it's. It's almost just put, like you said, putting the narration on the movement of the dog.

Yeah. I've had a couple of mentors, coaches, whatever, that have done that. And that was so invaluable. So I think a good takeaway from that is if you are training with somebody and they're not doing that, see if maybe. Maybe they would do that for you or see if you can find somebody or even if you're training with friends. Narrate it and see, you know, if you're all seeing the same thing or seeing something different, it just makes it real, I think. Yeah, that's an awesome idea. What do you wish the competitors knew about what's going through your head when you're standing there judging? Give us a. I'm running one of your detectives. What's going through your brain as you're watching me?

What's going through my brain as I'm watching you?

Yeah. Or anyone.

I love seeing how the dogs work and what they're trying to tell you and whether or not you're picking up what they're putting down. The dogs are always pretty spot on. It's how well they're communicating with their humans. And I always like to keep the perspective of me being a judge. Knowing where the hides are. Right. Oh, did you see that small little head flick? No, you didn't because you don't know where it is. I know where it is. So I can see all those tiny little behaviors. I might not see it if I was in your shoes either. So trying to keep the perspective of the competitor where you're a little nervous. It's a new space. We only have a certain amount of time. So trying to. I also sort of like to. I'm a little woo woo. So I kind of like to put out a very calming vibe. If. If a human or a dog looks at me, I'm just. I like to smile. I like to kind of just put that out like, you're doing amazing. You're doing an amazing job. Pass. Fail. What? What better day is there to play with your dog?

That's awesome. I love that. Is there a judging moment that stuck with you? Something you always think about and it could be good, bad, funny, serious.

Yeah. Something that's like one of my very first trials that I ever judged. I set a hide up under a table leg and we ran a dog in white. And it worked beautifully. And you let it sit for a minute. And we came back and for whatever reason, it took more than 10 minutes. I think it was like 20 before we could start the class. And I took my first dog and I watched the dog really kind of follow odor all around the room. It was not a clear hide. And I was like, what is happening? I realized there were these windows on the very top, kind of like the ice block windows, and it was letting this ray of sunshine pour onto the table. So that odor just started to rise up and go everywhere, and I felt terrible. And back then, when the sport was new. We didn't have the confidence in ourself, I would say, to say, you know what? Stop. I don't like this. I'm gonna go back and. And redo it because this is not working like my dog in white worked it. And that moment has always stuck with me in multiple ways. One, you better darn well check out that whole room. Where's the windows, where's the airflow, where are the doors, where are the drains in the floor? Where are all these things that can play a factor on that? And number two, people spend their hard earned money to play this with their dog. And they deserve a fair search. And if I don't think it's fair, I'm gonna fix something. I'm never gonna let that go on like I did there.

So have you, have you had to restart rounds since then? Levels?

When I was a new judge, I probably had that happen two or three times where I restarted something, whether or not it was something the dog in white didn't find but other dogs started to hit on. Yeah, I've had that. You know, I don't go. Go around opening desks and drawers. You know, you've had that in a school, right? The teacher has a bag of wintergreen lifesavers in her desk and you're like,.

Oh, crap, would you, would you restart that one?

You know what? That happens. I think two years ago, I did not restart the dog had already found all the hides and then hit the desk. I qualified the people. I said, I'm going to give you full time and I'm going to give you your Q.

Yeah.

And they were thrilled. Right. Because the dog who proofs on wintergreen Lifesavers, they're so close to odor. I don't feel like that's a fair thing.

Yeah, yeah. Got it. I love that. I love what you were just saying about. It can be really hard to as a judge to wanna, to want to stop the whole thing. It's gonna take extra time. You gotta reset, you know, Then people are like, well, what's going on? But I think there's a lot of respect for that as well. So I love that you, you say that and you think about that. Yeah.

And I think the longer we go on, back in the day, you had to watch 10 dogs. Now if I see two dogs hit something hard, I'm like, we gotta see what that is. I don't go that long anymore. It's like one or two dogs, so.

Yeah, that's good.

Yep.

All right, well, we're getting Close to time here. Man, this has been such a great conversation, but I got a couple more questions here before we get to seven questions. So give me an idea. You watch a lot of dogs, not only in training, but across all the organizations. What are some. What's. What's one or two kind of mistakes that you see at a level or things that people do that if they just fix it, it would just make their life so much easier. And we can start at novice and then, you know, move to an upper level or just start. Start wherever you want to. If there's something that comes to mind.

I, I think one of the biggest mistakes is people not trusting their dogs. They get to the trial and whether or not it's nerves or you're not used to a competition, you don't like to be watched. You know, people have all of their different things, and even if you say you're not a nervous person, there's something on trial day, you get a little bit. Your heart rate goes up a little bit, same as the doctor's office. Even though you try to not get that way, a lot of us do. And the dogs react to that a bit. And I've heard people like, come on, why aren't you searching? Or oh, you lied to me. It's like, nope, you're as big of a part of what's happening as the dog. And I think at all the levels, if people would just share the responsibility of the search instead of, it didn't go well. That's my dog's fault. Versus, it went great. We did awesome type of thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So just trusting your dog, I mean, that can be hard, right? Because you don't, again, you don't know the history. And one of the things you said earlier that I love is you don't know, you know, you don't know the history of the team in front of you. You don't know what's going on. Right. So maybe that team has a history of the dog, you know, sniffing pee. Right. So they're sniffing something and the handler thinks, oh, that's pee. So I'm not going to call that. And it's, it's absolutely a hide. How would you help somebody kind of get over that? Like, would you recommend if a dog gives their alert, you should just call it in trial and then deal with it in training or what are your thoughts there?

I do if, if you're well and let's talk about the alerts. Right. Your dog can whip back at you. And for somebody who has a look Back alert or a paw alert or whatever you want to say makes you call alert. Some people only wait for that one thing. It's teaching people what were the 72 things that actually happened before that that gives you that real true, hard. I mean, it alerts versus confidence to call.

I like. I call it collecting evidence.

Yeah.

A whole bunch of evidence. In order to have a percentage of certainty that when the alert comes, that you're confident that that's an alert. Like, I'm 90% because of everything I saw before that.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes. And. And I will say this, too, especially a novice, you know, I lost all my dogs due to a tragedy. And so I got Noah just soon after that. And I'll tell you, I pushed him too hard, too fast, because I love this sport. It's also a social sport. You want to get back with your friends. You want to get back to trials, and I started him too soon, and that's on me. He tried his best, but, you know, knowing that maybe you're not ready to trial, and that's a hard hit to take. Right. But I want to. Are you trying to trial today, or are you trying to trial for the next 10 years? And I think it's really hard to keep the perspective of, I want to do this and be successful for the next 10 years. Maybe I should wait a little while longer and perfect my skills and. And put more confidence on myself and the dog.

Yeah. All right, well, we're gonna need a part two. Are you up for a part two sometime?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Good. Because you're fun to talk to, so. I'm having a good time. You're having a good time. That's all that matters. All right, we're gonna wrap this up with a seg. Questions. I'm going to ask seven questions, just looking for your first thought. One or two sentences for each one. Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Question number one. What do you hope competitors say about your searches?

That was fun and fair?

Fun and fair. That's good. I think that's good. I think that's what we, as competitors, would want. What. What are your dog's favorite rewards after a great search? So I know you got a lot of them. You can pick one or two and get specific.

Yeah. Noah's very favorite thing when we leave a search, I usually take a bunch of extra cookies, and I toss them in the air, and he gets to leap up and grab them out of the air. He loves it. It's his favorite thing, and we just have a blast walking Back to the car.

I love it. Give me another dog.

Fyre. Who's my old lady? She's about to retire, and she just loves the sweet talk and some cookies on the way back. You're the best dog in the whole wide world. Who's my goodest girl? And she just has this little smile on her face walking back.

Awesome. What do you wish competitors knew about being a judge?

We try our best, but we're only human.

Out of your five dogs, who's the easy one and who keeps you humble?

Noah's the easy one. He's always wanting to please the two. Well, Bam's over. Arousal's hard. Tilly is a monster, but she has her own agenda. And Roscoe has some environmental stuff, so he's probably my hardest to read. And it's not just about odor for him in a trial. It's about odor and the environment. So he's my hardest one to work with.

Give me a story about something your dog did in a search that made you laugh.

I think Noah, when he was younger, we came in, and he had to do the. The wedding line. Thank you for coming. Thank you for watching. I'm glad that you're here. Thank you for being here, honey. peeled off. And went and found a hide. So.

I love that you call it the wedding line. That is perfect. We all know those dogs, right? They got to go say hi to everybody before they can get to work. Yep. That's awesome. What still delights you about this sport?

Everything. Yeah, it's. What better way to spend your time than getting to watch dogs? Share their world, share it with us, try to educate us as much as they can, even though we don't get it a lot of the time,.

And.

And, you know, just be so willing to work with us humans. They're. They're such amazing animals to be like. Yeah, you don't get it. Let me. Let me try and tell you a different way. How about this?

Yeah, you're right. Like, sometimes they're communicating very clearly. I found it. And we're not picking up. And then they will do something else.

Yeah.

They'll all of a sudden do it down when they've never done that before or just whatever to get your attention.

Yep. They're so connected to us in so many ways and. And allowing them to be in charge of this and then share it with us. I. I just. I can never get over how amazing that is.

If I talk to your dog and you can pick one and ask them to describe you in one word as a handler, what would that be?

Silly.

Silly. Why? How are you silly?

I. I mean, my most recent summit trial, we had a container search, and I was just giggling the whole time because he's tearing off to this side of the room and then tearing to the other side of the room and tearing back here, and I'm like, oh, my God, you're gonna kill us. Oh, my gosh. And I was just laughing and the judge is laughing, and it's just. I'm just a silly. I just want to have a good time. So we're just finding Q tips, not saving babies.

Right on. Give me one more second here. See if I need one more or not. I think we're good. Okay, last one here. What's one piece of advice that you got that has stuck with you all these years?

I would say I got this from Jeff McMahon and he says it's his mantra and I've sort of adopted it. I'm going to give him credit because it's his. He says he comes in to every search and says, I'm grateful for whatever the dog wants to share with me today. And I really took that to heart. And I try to live by that and I try to center and ground myself and make that my mantra as well. Because isn't it all about the dogs and what they can tell us?

And every time you start to go to the start line, that goes through your mind. I'd imagine it does.

What do you want to tell me today?

I love it. Perfect. What a great way to end Joanne. Let's find out where people can connect with you. I know you train and you do have a social media presence, so give us all the places.

Sure. I mean, my name's Joanne Soyke You can find me on Facebook. My business name is Fur Better Fur Worse Dog Training. F U R. We have a Facebook page there. I also have furbetterfurworse.com shows. All of our classes reach out. I'm happy. I love talking dogs.

Perfect. And if you have a need for a scent, work judge. Do you like to travel? I look. Looks like you kind of stay around your area, but would you travel out further?

I would travel out further. I just took my first visit to New Jersey for an AKC trial in March. So fun.

That's great to hear, Joanne. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend. If you don't subscribe, subscribe. You should. You could go to alertscentwork.com and then the other thing is, if there was something in this episode that really stuck out to you. It's a lot of fun to talk about it, and we do that on Facebook. You go to facebook.com/AlertScentWork Part of the community. Joanne, thank you so much for being on Alert Scent Work.

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.