Kristi Murdock | The Smellevangelist Behind WeSmellBetter.com

How's your day going so far? Are you having a good day? You feeling pretty good about yourself?

Okay, good. Well, I'm gonna make you feel even better about yourself. How about that? How's that for starting a conversation?

What a guy.

Well, it's not even me that's gonna do this. So I posted on the Alert Scent Work podcast page and I said I was gonna be talking to you, and I asked people if they had any questions or stories they wanted to share. And I want to share some. You. You're probably the most loved person in Scent Work, I think. Sally said, Kristi and the coder are fabulous. So I tell them I appreciate all the work they've done. Aaron said, I so enjoy their site. Always a fun trip down memory lane. I used it to research something that another episode of your podcast got me curious about. Our very first trial novice exterior. The judge said he smelled that from before he hit the start line. It made me feel like a million bucks. And I was hooked on trials after that day.

And then she said she was able to go to your site and find out who that judge was. So it was a fun trip down memory lane. Jennifer Hamilton. Kristi and her husband have done a fabulous thing for our community. I'm privileged to see around Arizona Scent Work community often. Her smile, her humor and calming presence is always so welcome at Trials. You're gonna have a great conversation. Prepare to nerd out. Cheryl said, thank you. Kristi is awesome. I can't wait to listen to what I'm sure will be a wonderful conversation. Joyce said, you can let her know she's the most appreciated person in AKC Scent Work. Her website has saved us so much time and energy and decreased frustration. AKC should have a direct link to her. Somebody else. Thomas said, just thank you. So those were just some of the comments. How does that make you feel?

Isn't that sweet? And I thought I wasn't paying those people enough.

You're going to have to let me know what the compliment rate is because those are some good ones. I might want to. I might want to pay them as well, so. And I'm going to add my own story to this whole thing. So what you've built with wesmellbetter.com is just awesome. And I know it's completely volunteer. You're just doing it for the love of the sport. And it's definitely changed how people engage and enjoy the sport. And then you said you listen to the podcast, so that's always a ticket on my show. Tell me that you listen.

But the Thing that really hooked me was one time on the Alerts Network Facebook page, I asked about trial superstitions, and you said, if you're on a way to a trial and you hear Karen Carpenter, bad luck, and you love Karen Carpenter, but not on the way to a trial. So we're starting there. What's up with that story?

You know, I mean, how do superstitions really start? You know, you hear it from somebody else or something happens and. And I think. I don't know about you. Do you listen to music when you're on the way to a trial? Generally, no, I don't. So podcasts.

No, I just. I I usually. My ritual. This is actually an interesting conversation. What is your, you know, on. On the way to the trial ritual? I usually just kind of review in my head my game plan for the day. Like, I go through, like, all right, have fun. Cover your area. What does cover your area mean at this particular trial? You know, And I think about those types of things. I think. So what do you do? Actual strategic thinking. That never occurred to me. Let me. Let me pause a minute and write that down. Yeah.

No, but I think a lot of. I think a lot of listen to music, whether it's to relax or just because they're used to listening to music in the car. And certainly if I've got fresh podcast episodes, I do cue those up, especially when it's the long trips, the two hour trips or whatever. But I think that the whole listening to music, I started realizing that there were certain songs that I was like, oh, that's a good omen. That's going to be good for us. That's the kind of walk on music my dog should have. And that there was other music that maybe it was a song that I loved, but it was kind of making me introspective and sad and bringing the energy level down. And I think if you kind of look at the. The Carpenter's catalog. Right. That music tends to be very soothing, and it's just not the energy I want to go into a search with. So, yeah, it's soothing that. And it's heartbreaking. Most of their songs are heartbreaking, so. All right, I love it. All right, let's go ahead and do this. This is Alert Scent Work. I'm Scot Murphy and Keeva's dad, and on with me today is Kristi Murdock, mom to Gabe and Ziva, who just recently passed away. Are there any other dogs? Your mom, too?

No, just Gabe. And it's actually Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. Named after the character from ncis, which if you search the scent work databases, there's at least 50 dogs with that name. Yeah, very popular. That's funny. I gotta put on my readers because my notes here, I'm not able to see them apparently today, so. And you're one of the two people behind wesmellbetter.com, which is a free website that you run with your husband, who is the second person that tracks data and results for AKC Scent Work competitors. And you also, I read this about you as a competitor, marginally competent handler and trainer who said that mean thing about you. I think, I think, I think you. Did actually, when we were chatting on offline once. So your husband, you said when we were talking, got tired of you complaining about AKC's lack of stats and then that's when wesmellbetter.com was born. What were you specifically frustrated with? And then how did that turn into actually building this site?

Well, it was kind of over the holidays between 2023 and 2024, and I was doing a lot of whining about, about the fact that I didn't know where my poodles stood in relationship to other poodles. Poodles. And that was kind of the initiating thing. We had been very, very bad, my dogs and I had been very, very bad at scent work for a very long time. And when we finally started doing some actual achieving, I was frustrated that I didn't have some of those fun little metrics that you like to look at to see where you stand in relationship to everybody else. And so I was moaning about that, kind of pointing out that you and see the results on the AKC website, they're publicly available to anybody, but you have to go through absolutely every trial to dig out the information that you want. Wouldn't it be nice if a computer did that for you? Hint, hint. And my brother was visiting at the time and he does a lot of website scraping for other reasons, all of them perfectly legitimate. Okay, sure, I'm glad you clarified that.

But he kind of got us started in, in thinking about that. And when we were looking at the numbers, at the dates last night, Doug said, well, they were visiting over the holidays. Surely it wasn't February 29th of the same year that we started producing the reports. And I said, yeah, it was. You are just that good. So that was where we first started. It was about 22,000 reports

each time we would run that batch process, one for every dog that had ever gotten a cue, as well as one for each breed. And we produce those as static reports a couple of times a week

and put those out on a Google Drive. The problem was that people had difficulty finding their dog in that they had difficulty downloading the reports from the Google folder at times. And so in September of that year, we transitioned to putting things on a website instead.

It's just incredible, and I don't want to get too deep in the weeds because this is going to make people's eyes roll back in their heads, I'm sure. But I just want to say that this site has to be an incredible amount of work, just more than anybody who doesn't have experience with APIs and coding could even imagine. So the dedication that you guys have to put this site together to make this work, do you. Do you understand all of that or is that your husband or, like, who actually handles all that backend stuff?

So I have a professional background in computer stuff and haven't done that for. I mean, that was what my college degree was in, and I haven't done that for decades. So you are asking the right question. It is all Doug. He does all the stuff. And it's even more impressive to realize that when he started this, he knew up front that the languages that he has used professionally weren't ones that were going to work for this. And so he was just like, yeah, I'll just learn Python. I'll just do these things and it won't be a big deal. But he does put in an incredible amount of time on it, which is even more impressive when he realized that he doesn't run a nosework dog, nor really have any desire to do so. Right. Just does it for the love of watching his darling wife and dogs compete and be happy. Isn't that amazing? What a guy. That is amazing. All right. I want to share my experience with the site. So it also impacted how I experienced the sport. So, first of all, I don't get my stickers anymore, which is so freeing not to have to worry about managing those stickers, because I tracked everything myself, and the stickers are the best ways for me to track my cues. Right? Because some clubs would send out a report afterwards, some clubs wouldn't. I put them in a notebook. But then that was always a hassle. Now I can just see all of my qualifications, my titles, my placements, even fastest in trial. A lot of people know that as high in trial, but you refer to it as fastest in trial. It's all available there. You could do a search for your dog and you get all that information. But I'M going to tell you that you're also going to make me spend more money because I never really used to carry about titles that much. I was just doing the sport for the fun and if I got titles along the way, that's great. But I was looking at a report and I see that we're just a few more titles from being on the main titles rankings. We could move out of the Australian shepherd title rankings and under the main page. So now you got me chasing titles. So thanks, I appreciate that.

So glad we could help.

I also wanted to share what somebody else said. So another competitor that I compete with, I love this. She said she realized her dog had earned some breed first titles and never would have known that without your website. So that gave her an extra little kick to want to, you know, upper game. And she said she thought there was maybe a little friendly competition going on because she would watch the reports and there was another dog at another place in the country of the same breed and. And she would watch that dog get a couple more titles and then she'd get a couple more titles. And she said she noticed the increase when she started upping her game too. So that was kind of another fun way to experience a sport. And you know, that never would have happened without the site. So I just love all these stories that come out of all of the cool things that your site can do. I am wondering what are some of the site's features you love or think that others really need to know about? Maybe you're kind of underrated.

Well, you know, I mean, the whole thing really is incredibly selfish on my part. From the, from the whole. I really want to just know the answers to these questions to. Well, now I want to be able to do this. And so whether it's. I would say my latest infatuation is the alerts and I'm going to have to really promote those because I do know that there's 15 people, I think, who currently are signed up for alerts.

And what are the alerts? What are those?

So it's actual email notification of changes in trial status, primarily future trials is what you're worried about

for things that you want to know about. Whether that's trials in a particular geographic area, whether that's a state or a distance from you, a particular calendar span of time,

when the trial is going to occur, when does it open, when does it close, who the judges are, what levels are being offered and upcoming. I don't know why we didn't do this in the first place, but we are adding being able to know which elements are being offered, including handler discrimination, which was the big request, which I feel silly that we didn't think about to begin with. So you can. For, for me, as somebody who travels quite a bit, I can say, okay, I'm going to be in the Midwest from May through June. Where are the trials that have these levels, that have these elements? And maybe throw in as a little frisson of excitement, some of my favorite judges are going to be there.

That's awesome. Because the old way that you'd have to do that is you'd have to go to the AKC website and you'd have to enter in two or three states and then you'd have to do all this clicking on premiums and looking through there and like this, just this. This consolidates all that information into an email. You gotta be kidding me. Am I understanding this correctly? Yeah, that. That's exactly. And it is a very. It is a. Sometimes that's a big consolidated email. If there's a lot of things happening across the country, sometimes I feel a little bit stalkerish. You know, I'm like, I'm really not planning on competing in Connecticut anytime soon. Why am I getting alerts from there? And it's, oh, one of my favorite judges is going to be judging out there. So I hear about it. So just so you guys know, I know where you're going. It's a little bit spooky sometimes, but it is crazy how quickly you come to rely on it. I used to put everything into Google Calendar and you'd get up in the morning and say, okay, what's closing? Do I need to make any changes in my entries? Do I need to get that entry in the mail? Do I need to get up at 6:00'? Clock? Because that's opening on Secretariat at that time or something like that. And now I get the email that says, hey, tomorrow you need to be aware of this. And so that's amazing. That is incredible.

I love it. I noticed the favorite judges checkbox. I think that is so cool.

The tri. The Trial Finder feature. And I love the Trial Finder feature because I'm looking for detectives in my region, right? And the old way is again, go to the AKC website and you click on states in your region and then you got to go through each premium and you don't have to do that. You just, you just get this list of where the detectives are and then you can make your decisions. So the achievement section is also something that I really, really love. Where you can see every cue, your title, where it was earned, the judge, the placements, fastest in trial section. That's fun to look at and just kind of see where you were, where you came from. On my very first episode I asked a judge like who was your very first queue under? And I had forgotten what my first Q was under and I went to you know, wesmellbetter.com and I was able to look it up. So that was really cool trip down memory lane just like one of the other listeners said. I am curious though. So one of the things that I like to do, I was a bit of a DA data nerd my first couple seasons. I kept all the stickers and then I even wrote down the nqs and I started an Excel spreadsheet and I knew my Q percentage in all elements and all levels and I could watch as I move from novice to advanced to excellent to master that Q percentage drop in some elements as you would expect.

But I haven't found anything on your site for nqs and that's the data point I need in order to continue to do that. I don't Suppose AKC provides NQs, do they?

You know the answer to that. No, they don't. Yeah, the AKC doesn't record NQs. It's like they never happened. Which I think for a lot of people are particularly thinking about their checkbooks. That that's. I know for a long time I was like good. It's glad that that information just completely went away. I'm happy not to know. But I agree with you. Now that I have, I've started using We Smell better to track mine and there is a way to do it, but you do have to put that information in yourself. So did I understand you correctly? So if I kept track of my nqs, there's a spot. Are you telling me there's a spot on your website where I can enter that in and actually I am telling. You that and I know, but once you have the free account, we don't. We're not collecting information, we're not selling it to anybody. It's. It's all entirely voluntary on your part. But that allows us to keep certain data for you and that includes things like NQs that you have or your favorite judges or different things like that. So the way that that works is you can enter those two different ways in all cases you have to have the free account and then you have to set up the trial to be one of my trials. So if that's A trial that occurred in 2018, you just find that trial and trial finder and say, this is my trial. I was there. And you can then pull that up under my account and note any classes where you didn't qualify.

Wow, you have just blown my mind. I didn't even. This goes even deeper. So if you sign up for a free account, you get access to even cooler stuff, it sounds like.

Yeah, yes, definitely. That's awesome. Yeah.

In addition to that, some of the ranking stuff that we're playing with as well. The original impetus for that was to allow clubs, and particularly the people who are trying to keep track for the clubs, how are people qualifying for awards within our club? Who's out there really cleaning up and doing great things, who started, who's a newbie, who might need encouragement, all of that sort of information. But that more morphed into the ability to define ranking systems and kind of look at, oh, something like, for instance, if the AKC were to calculate a championship for nosework, an earned championship, what would you like that to look like? And you could play with different systems to apply different criteria to. See, I think that data is so cool. Isn't it just data? Yes. Yeah. What you can do with it. And you've brought this. That's so awesome. I do have one selfish question since you, you know, this is my podcast and you are on my podcast. I am curious what a term means and I couldn't find it defined on your website in the most titles section. This is my selfish question. What does designations mean? Because I've noticed there's like, you know, it shows element titles, level titles, and then designations. It adds all that up and then that's how I could get off the breed only list, onto the main list. But knowing what those designations mean would help. And not a lot of people have them. Some have a lot. What are designations?

I'm so glad you asked. We got an email just this morning that said, why do you track titles that aren't titles? And the answer to that, hopefully is we don't. We don't call anything a title that isn't an AKC title. And instead we have designations. I would say that those started as the title things that we hoped that the AKC would track at some point. So things like numeric detective.

Why in heaven's name, if we have numeric elites and everything else, why wouldn't the AKC award numeric Detective titles? How many does June Mintchell have? At this point, I've lost track. It's well over 100 detective cues with one of her dogs. I think that's

an astonishing achievement and I think that we should track that. So the basic definition is a designation is something that we are tracking. But that isn't an AKC title. You're not going to get a title certificate. It's not going to show up in your title string. But it does include things like numeric detectives, what we characterize as the super elite, which is elite at all of the different levels because the AKC only includes the, quote, highest level in your title string. So a dog with a master elite shows up the same as a dog that has all of their elites, novice through master.

There's no way of telling for the title string. So anything that the AKC doesn't award. All right, so for example, If I get 20 detective cues, then I would get a designation because AKC doesn't recognize that, but you do. SWD2.

Got it. Got it. Cool. All right, let's talk competition. You want to talk competition? Do you like to nerd out about competing and trialing and stuff?

Yeah, sure. Who doesn't? Good. Nothing. Nothing. Nerve wracking about that. No. You described yourself as, quote, a marginally competent handler and trainer, unquote. Now, I'm going to go ahead and push back against that. But tell me more about your competition. Why do you describe yourself that way?

Boy, because I'm seriously challenged as a handler. I really am. And I've been slow off the bat from the very beginning. We got started in. I was living in Iowa and we had nose work back in 2015, both NACSW and what became UKC nose work. And we started training with Ziva back then, along with all my friends. And I mean, we would go into competitions and yes, I would cry, but the judges would cry. I'm not making it up. This is Novice in 2015. It's a pile of nine things out on somebody's parking lot and my dog and I are just wandering around like lost in the desert. It was tragic. And all of our friends were succeeding and having a wonderful time and we really just got left behind. And I really thought I had a situation where I had a dog that just didn't like nose work. Now 10 years on, I look back and I think. I don't think there is such a thing. Is a dog that genuinely doesn't like nose work. Yeah. What? What I found out. What? Which she ended up having a health crisis and we found out that she. She was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease and she. So she had food Sensitivities. So all of the things that we were doing with. With nose work, you know, higher value treats, more treats. Wow. Everything that we did was actually aversive in the long run and made. And dogs are just so amazing and so stoic. We didn't realize until she was just over the edge how bad it was. And so there was a lot of hospitalization. There was a lot of getting her stabilized on medication. And In February of 2019, I brought home from the hospital this incredibly debilitated dog who'd lost so much muscle mass. And it was Iowa. It was frozen outside, and it was,

what are you going to do? To try to, you know, we had no access to rehab, and in desperation, I got out my nosework kit, and I just started setting hides all over the house with absolutely no intent to compete to do anything. It was just to get us both up and moving and not so depressed about everything that had happened. And so eventually, the snow melted and Ziva got better,

and we went to a couple of trials, and miracle of miracles,

I had a nose work dog. It was just a stunner. We came out of it. And so I, you know, I I call myself a smell evangelist because

nose work saved my dog. Nose work saved her life.

What incredible story.

Well, it was, but the problem was I still sucked. And I think, you know, AKC is a really good example of how far you can go with a good dog, even if you as a handler, still suck. Yeah.

So in 21, Doug and I retired. We moved from Iowa to Arizona because, I don't know, that's what you do when you retire. It was somehow obligatory. And I got to start. I started to work with Aleks Woodroffe as a coach out here, whereas before, I'd always just taken classes. And I hadn't been very good about that because I thought it was all the dog's job. I thought, you know, dope on a rope. I just follow her around. Right. That's cool.

I had no idea that I was supposed to point my shoulders or

pay attention to anything. So I've been a work in progress since then as a handler, and I am better. We. We have video evidence that I am better, but marginally competent is still probably generous.

You've given me so many things that I want to dive in on here. So first of all, your dog had food issues when you first started nose work with your dog, and then that then got sick, and then you rehabilitated with nose work. Am I understanding that correctly? That is correct. Okay, so then what was the Reward. When you came back and you realized the food was the issue, did you switch to toys? What did you do? Well, so the problem is pretty much no matter what you do, the dog has to eat. Right. So the trick with food sensitivities of whatever type is to figure out what they're sensitive to and try to eliminate that from the diet, which is a really difficult thing to do. We got incredibly lucky by just being able to go out and pick up some novel proteins. For us, it was duck. If you can't get that kangaroo or llama kind of are the kind of your choices.

I'm gonna have to interrupt you, Kristi. I I think if you're having trouble getting doc, it's going to be even harder to get kangaroo, isn't it?

Yes, I think you're right. Especially, I mean, I've got a lot of US listeners in Australia,

so I'm sure they're like, no, kangaroo, that's easy. Right. But here in the United States, anyway, that's great. So you just found a better treat, something that was tolerable.

Yes. And she was medicated as well for the rest of her life, but. And that. That helped as well, so. Yeah, but she was on a very restricted diet. But once food was no longer aversive to her, that didn't matter. You know, she was, she was a very willing dog and would work for duck treats no matter what.

Yeah, yeah. Go back just a little bit. Before that. How did you even get into scent work? And I think part of this story that is intriguing to me is it was a struggle for you. Like a lot of the people in my story was we went and we had this success and that success, you know, breeds excitement, and then you just want to keep doing it. Right. My story, I think, would have been completely different if I'd have been faced with the challenges you faced. So how did you get into it originally? Well, I had the. I mean, I had this brilliant dog and we brought her home and all of the people in the training club are like, but what are you going to do with her? Right. You know how they are and what that. That means dog sports. Right. And so my goal is to do a novice everything that. To do just do novice everything and see what she liked. And the nose work was really a surprise to me that, that it wasn't appealing to her because I'd done some tracking in the past and I love the idea that the dog has the lead. I love that part of the relationship and was really looking forward to that with her. And was so disappointed that this wasn't something that apparently she wanted to pursue.

So we really just set it aside and kind of just cheered our friends on. And, you know, you go and volunteer at your club's trials and

post on everybody's Facebook, congratulations, because you're happy for them. But it was hard. Her littermate belonged to my best friend, and they were having tremendous success. Success. So it was. It was just really difficult. And then we went through this crisis and came out the other side like a little rainbow. Right, and how did you decide nose was? Nose work, the rehabilitation

activity? Just because you could do it in the house, it wasn't physically demanding like the other ones. Is that why you went back to nose work?

That's it, exactly. It is. It is the perfect sport for rehabilitation. I love that NACSW has their huge emphasis with shelter dogs. I have seen that in action, and it is. I knows, work. I'm telling you. Smell evangelism. Yeah. We're all out there doing it because we know how good this is for our dogs. I'm putting that on a T shirt. I'm a smell evangelist. I'm going to steal that from you. That's okay. I'll send you. I'll send you. I'll send you one for free. Just tell me what size you need, and I'll get that. I'll get you hooked up with that. I'm curious. So what are your handler challenges? You ready to dive into this? Because I think a lot of people probably could relate. What are some of the things that you find challenging about nose work that you've really been working on and trying to get better at?

I was thinking about that, and I think it's living in the moment.

I think that I am somebody who has focused on what could happen

more than what is happening. And as a result, I miss a lot of what my dog is telling me.

Yeah, I've heard that before. I feel that same way. And part of my definition, I have. I have right now, I have a simple philosophy. Every time before I go into a search. Actually, my search philosophy is, have fun. Cover your area. But, you know, you got to dig into what does have fun mean? And for me, having fun is actually watching my dog do the thing right? Because it's so cool to watch dogs do this and to be able to watch your own dog do it. And that forces me in the moment. And I guess I hadn't realized that was one of the superpowers of this idea of have fun, that watching my dog is fun to Me. So I'm going to do that. Forces me in the moment. Because I've heard a lot of other people say this too. Like, scent work is one of the few things where people can actually live in the moment. So that sounds like that developed that skill for you.

Hopefully. Hopefully getting there. I think it's a work in progress. Yeah. It's hard not to be thinking about all the other things. What's the judge thinking right now? Am I going to run out of time? Is this really a hide? Like, there's so many other, like, what else goes to your mind that keeps you out of the moment?

Well, and I call it odor goggles, too. I say, you know, that, that, that the really. The really. The good people, a lot of the people that you have interviewed, a lot of those judges in particular, I know, are so good at this. They can just look at something that is unfolding in front of them and they can visualize the odor. It's not. They. We call it an odor picture, but they can see it. They can. You're right. I can't see. Okay. The odor that you're seeing, is it in the room with us now? I hope I can get there. But you talked about that where you said, Gabe and I had success in Detective. Yeah. Us every. Now I want to say, you know, I'm tracking on. We smell better. I think our percentage is somewhere in the. Under the 20% in detective. So it's not like those come across all that frequently. But in that situation, after it was over, the judge said, oh, I really liked the way, you know, he. He sourced that elevated hide, and I really liked the way he was showing the edges on this particular hide. And I've gone back and watched the video. I'm still not seeing.

What are you talking. Yeah, yeah, I I can relate to that. I'm getting there, too. But some of these judges that have done this for a long time, like, you're. You're right. They just. It's like, they understand. It's like the movie the Matrix. You know, you're. You're into computers, right? So, like, they. They can read the ones and the zeros in a way we can't when that dog's moving around in the room. That's awesome. I'm glad to hear. You know, that's. That's part of what I think is fun about scent work. When I first started, it was just about the dog finding the odor. Like, I didn't realize there were all these other aspects to it, but the aspect of reading your Dog and trying to get better at that. Does that motivate you? What motivates you to keep going? Because again, you know, you say you struggle with successes, you get a few here or there. What is it that you love about it that just keeps you wanting to keep doing it?

Oh, it's definitely that connection with my dog. The fact that what's the time that we spend together, even traveling to and from classes, has been really valuable for both of us. I've learned to drive in a metro area. Growing up in Iowa, that wasn't really something I had the opportunity to do. And it gets my dog, who can be a little bit reactive and a little bit stranger danger, gets him out into a lot of different places. But just every now and then, David Lear, you know, is. I mean, we've got so many fabulous photographers out there for scent work. Right. But does anybody capture connection quite the way that he does? And there is a picture that he caught at an NW3 up in Oregon of Gabe and I looking at each other. And I look at that. I keep that. That's my phone background. I want that all the time for our relationship. And I have to admit that there are times when he's barking at a delivery truck going by or. Or staring at a rabbit instead of coming with me or whatever, that it's hard to remember that that's what we're striving for. But. Right. That's when you pull your phone out when he's barking at the UPS truck, pull your phone out and go. This is. This is the game I love right here. All right, we're going to get to seven questions here after just a couple more questions. So I do know that you travel a lot. Your home base is ar, but you got the rv. You pack your husband up into it and you travel around. What are some of the states you've been to? And I'm kind of curious, what are some of the more interesting or unique venues that you've trialed at? Like, you know, there's a lot of fairgrounds and schools out there, and we've all been to those. But what are some unique places you've been? What are some states you've been to? Do you get. Do you get out of the western part of the United States much, or. What's that look like? The year before the last we. We went up to the Canadian Maritimes, and so we were up in the. The Atlantic states and the United States Northeast as well. We really haven't spent much time in the Southeast, per se, but I think we've got a map of states. Gabe's been to somewhere and it's more than most people. For sure. I'm a huge disappointment on the cool venue

list. I know about them. They're on my bucket list. And I

haven't been to really very many of them at all. Okay, what are some of them that are on your bucket list then? What do you like out there? Oh, I want to do. I want to do some of the ball fields, you know, the. The big stadiums.

Who's doing this? Who's doing ball field stadiums? They do that, I know out like Illinois, Ohio area, I want to say. Really? Okay, yeah. All right. What else are you seeing?

Well, obviously the haunted houses, some of the museums, the airfield kind of places. We did. Oh, we did do the hall of Flame, which is the Firefighters Museum and Memorial in Phoenix for a couple of detective trials with Copper State Scent Work Club

this last spring. And that was a really cool venue. That was nice. Yeah. Did you go to a movie set or was it a Western town replica recently?

Yes, we have. That's so fun. Because it is in Benson, Arizona, just south of Tucson. And so for us it's characterized as local. But I saw on the Internet that there were some people who drove in from Tennessee because that was such a novel site for them. So it's. Yeah, it's hard to remember that. That is such a really cool site to go to. It was super challenging for us. There were things living under the floorboards. Oh, no.

Gabe was kind of freaking out about that. So, you know, it's always we should find a place to practice that has things living under the floorboards.

Yeah. Easier said than done, right? There are some things you just can't. I mean, how do you duplicate that? Right. You know, there's a lot of things you can try, but I'm going to go ahead and just take a little side quest here and say if you're listening and you have some cool venues that you've been to, let us know who's doing what where in these cool venues. Because I, I would. It would be cool to start a list of some of the cooler venues. I think, like, the stadiums sound cool. Like, are there other things? I think there's a. There's a nacsw. I think it's an exhibition only that Mountain dogs out of Colorado runs and they do it every year and it's in San Diego on an aircraft carrier. Yeah. Yeah, you. Have you been to that one? Oh, gosh, no.

Oh, gosh, no. And why not? Well, that was an invitational.

Oh, I see. So they give priority to people who have done it before and then that. I don't think. I don't think we're quite there yet. But someday, Someday, someday. I love it. Your attitude is just the best, Kristi. I've just absolutely adored this whole conversation. And if you're not careful, you're going to earn yourself a repeat appearance on this podcast. So be careful. That sounds absolutely delightful. Good. I would love it. All right, let's move on to seven questions. I'm going to ask you seven questions. Just whatever comes to your mind. Short one sentence answers. If I want you to expand on something, I'll ask you to expand on it. Are you ready?

I am ready. What is your dog's favorite reward after a great search? And be specific.

It is a natural, crunchy peanut butter treat. All right, what's one piece of advice you'd give to your beginner scent? Work self.

You have some responsibility here, too. Start paying attention. It's not just your dog.

If your dog could talk, what would they say about you as a handler?

Oh, she needs work. Okay. But you are working on it, so tell your dog not to be so hard on you. What's the best compliment you've ever gotten at a trial?

Oh, I'm going to use Judith Guthrie's. When it was the detective trial where there were goats, there were goats in the exterior area. And as soon as I So basically, when you went out the door into the exterior area, they were right there in front of you.

Yeah. There was a chain link fence. That was the boundary. Exactly. You saw that when she did the walkthrough for it afterwards. I did. And I knew as soon as we saw that that that was gonna be a problem for us. And so as we were going to go out the door, I said to Gabe, okay, let's try this. We have a strategy. Let's try our strategy. And we're gonna do this. And so I basically put a cookie on his nose and did this little do si do through the door so that he never faced it. The goats. And he was just facing up into the rest of the search area. There was only one hide out there in a tree. And we went up and got that and went to the end and checked the rest, and then we came back toward the door, and then he saw the goats, and then everything was done. If there had been a hide up closer to the goats, we would have been out of it, but we got that. So I'm going to say she said, I Liked your strategy.

I'm going to say that that is a brilliant example of what a partner can do for their dog. Like you as the partner, understood that, you know, my teammate's going to have a problem with this, so how can I support them to, you know, still get the job done? And I thought. I think your strategy was brilliant. So kudos to you again, you're offering some evidence that you're not as bad as you say you are. I'm just saying.

Well, I think ideally, odor would. Would be the most important thing to the dog. Right. And they would be able to look past the goats. But that's just not the way Gabe is wired. I'm not sure that that's ever going to happen for us.

And it's not the way all dogs are wired. So those are the accommodations you have to make. So I love that you did that. All right, what's your dog's biggest search? Quirk or funny habit that makes you laugh every time it happens, you chuckle. He it's. He has a pop off alert which drives judges crazy.

But basically his alert is I found it. So he leaves the search and runs back to me. And as part of that, he licks his lips.

So the vast majority of professional photography at trials that we have is him licking not the hide, but just getting ready for treat delivery.

That's funny. How do you manage your trial day stress? I use exercises primarily that have been provided by Hélène Lawler, and I can get you the spelling of her name. She's a Canadian who primarily does herding kinds of things, but she has a whole big curriculum on stress management for dog sports. Oh, for the handler, for the dog, or both?

It really is both because she focuses on the physicality of arousal in the brain, which goes to both mammals and talks about what you can do concrete to be able to combat that.

And finally, what still amazes you about this sport scent work?

What delights you?

It's that part where we get to step into the dog's world and they let us be there, see what they're seeing. Except it's not seeing. We just don't have a good word for it because we don't see with our noses.

I love it. Kristi, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We smell Better Dot com. What a fabulous resource. It seems to be very much appreciated by the community. Thank you. And your husband, tell your husband, too, thank you for all the coder. I guess he's probably the coder for all the work you guys do on that website. Are there other places that people can connect with you, or is that the primary one I know you have a blog on? We smell better. You are an advocate for AKC scent work. I We didn't really get into this, but the fact that there's less sand and buried tubs might have something to do with you. If I understand correctly, the fact that there was a national championship last year might have something to do with you. Anything else you want to add before we wrap up?

That doesn't have anything to do with me. That was all Dave Schneider's work. He did an incredible amount of work with that. And I I when the community comes together, we can make a difference.

And I just think we need to do more of that. I will just throw out one more plea on behalf of the coder. And that is anything that you want to see, anything that you want us to do. He is always open to requests, and his list is relatively short right now. So anything else that anybody's got on their list, please let us know.

If you liked this episode and think somebody else out there might like it, please be sure to share it. You can follow and subscribe@alertscentwork.com we also have a Facebook page. It's facebook.com/AlertScentWork. Kristi, thank you so much.

Thank you, Scot.