Episode 10 – Marjorie Miltenberger: Nosework for our Reactive Dogs

Marion

Hello and welcome to episode 10 of the Animale Thérapie podcast, the animal behavior podcast. Today, we’re welcoming Marjorie to talk about NoseWork and particularly its application for reactive dogs. Hello Marjorie!

Marjorie

Hello Marion!

Marion

Can you introduce yourself a bit to tell us what you do? Where you come from, what’s your background and how do you work with dogs?

Marjorie

Certainly. My name is Marjorie Miltenberger, I’m a canine sports trainer. It’s a rather specific profession. I’m not a dog trainer, I don’t do that part. I really focus on canine sports activities, whether official or not, and in particular today, we’ll talk about nosework. I’m a certified nosework instructor. I trained with the Federation that created the activity in the United States about twenty years ago. It’s the NACSW. I’ve been coaching teams in various activities for about fifteen years now and for the last five years, mainly in nosework and dogparkour, I’ve specialized over time. And to give a very brief personal introduction, I have the chance to live with three wonderful dogs who, I hope, will behave, who practice different activities with me including nosework. And then, I had a first career in a completely unrelated field. I think many of us had a first life before dogs. And I mention it because it’s not completely unrelated to nosework, as I was a research engineer in environmental sciences, specializing in explosives detection, so everything related to the migration of substances in the environment. We didn’t use dogs, of course, but somehow, I find a lot in nosework that comes from my first profession.

Marion

That’s really great, this first career path. I had no idea. It’s indeed very correlated between the two. And then, something I’m thinking about is that maybe the people who are listening to us are not all familiar with this type of activity for dogs. So, first question, since I think you can give a pretty clear answer. What is nosework with our dogs?

Marjorie

Actually, everyone has this image of operational detection. We’ve all seen customs dogs, drug-sniffing dogs on the news, for example. Nosework is a sporty, fun, civilian version, let’s say, of the detection activity that comes to us from operational work. In fact, what’s really funny is that we were talking about reactivity at the very beginning of the podcast. It was really an activity that was developed for the dog. That’s the big difference with operational detection, where the dog is at the service of humans, while nosework was developed to put this activity at the service of the dog with a number of benefits that can be brought to dogs. It was created in a rather funny way because it was developed by three Americans who were touring shelters trying to find dogs that might potentially fit with operational detection work. They were casting and putting them through lots of tests, and they did this with hundreds and thousands of dogs. And they realized that not only did all dogs have capabilities, which we knew, but that they all really had something to offer in this area and that they were having a good time, which was really important. And then, they thought that alongside what they were doing, they could develop an activity, a way of approaching things for shelter dogs. And it all started from there, because naturally, the shelter staff saw these professionals working with the shelter dogs. They started wanting to do it with their own dogs. And then it opened up to the outside, and that’s how the nosework activity began, which was really based originally on, again, I insist, the benefits that these scent activities can present for dogs. Then from there, naturally, people wanted to test the dogs against each other, so they developed a competition aspect. And then the activity had an extraordinary boom as they went from a few dozen practitioners to tens, hundreds of thousands of practitioners in about twenty years. It developed at lightning speed and arrived in Europe with the development of this scent search activity. The principle is just that, it’s the search for a specific scent that we teach our dog. That’s basically what nosework is.

Marion

It’s really super interesting to see the evolution and especially where it comes from. That is, it comes from shelter dogs. There was really this transition between the military aspect and the civilian aspect that happened somewhat spontaneously, ultimately, and especially this emphasis that is placed on the benefit for the dog. And that, I think, is super important. And by the way, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Question, how is nosework practiced? Because it’s a scent activity, we think ‘the dog knows how to do it on its own.’ Is it really that easy or does it require a little work, a little training?

Marjorie

In fact, we know that all dogs can search. They do it with varying degrees of motivation, engagement, strategy, and awareness of what they’re doing. What we aim to do is to really develop the maximum number of tools for the dog in terms of search strategy, so that they’re as comfortable as possible in all situations they’ll encounter. This requires work. We don’t teach dogs to ‘search’. We develop these capabilities, particularly the abilities related to processing olfactory information, so that they’re comfortable, efficient, and quick in the activity itself. Then, there are several ways to approach the activity, that is, to introduce and teach this to our dogs. Once again, we’ll find this dichotomy between the operational aspect and the civil and recreational aspect, let’s say, because many approaches currently proposed come from operational settings and not necessarily from the origin of nosework. These are people who will use approaches and methodology that are quite common in operational settings and transpose them almost as is, with minimal adaptation to our companion dogs and everyday dogs that aren’t necessarily selected for operational work. On the opposite end, we have the true nosework part as it was developed. In fact, it’s not called nosework originally, it’s called K9 nosework. It’s really a trademarked term. They developed a methodology that is precisely the most adaptable possible to the average person’s dogs. Because we are average people. We’re not all operational handlers with 15 years of experience. We don’t all have dogs that were born to be extremely efficient in this activity. We don’t all have Malinois, hunting dogs from hunting lines. We’ll have Shih Tzus, Greyhounds, Bulldogs, shepherd dogs in the broad sense, mixed breeds. And so the motivation that exists in dogs born for operational work or selected for operational work can potentially be different for us. We might take a potentially different path to lead our dogs to be effective in the activity, to enjoy it, potentially using routes that are a little different from what we typically see for operational work.

Marion

So, it’s something that requires a bit of work, a bit of knowledge too, in that you need to know which path to take, I imagine, not only regarding the activity itself, but also regarding your own dog. If tomorrow I want to start nosework, since it’s olfactory search, if I take three kibbles or three bits of treats and sausage, if I throw them in my garden, am I doing nosework there?

Marjorie

You will be conducting primary reinforcer research, which is a foundation of nosework, but you will not necessarily be building the things you want to build in your dog to make it more effective in a search. This is the whole difference between scent activities or odor searches in a broad sense and activities that we will really build with conscious progressions where we really want the dog to progress in terms of its technique and understanding. For example, if you throw kibble in your garden, I do it daily, it’s enrichment and the dog will of course search for the kibble, but the cognitive effort has absolutely nothing to do with searching for a kibble or a specific scent in the environment. To draw a small parallel, it’s a bit like going to the cinema and arriving after the session has started, and when you enter the room, you will need to find an available seat. In the dark, of course. When you enter the room, if there are 10 people for 100 available seats, the effort for you to find a seat will be extremely simple. You will somewhat opportunistically throw yourself onto the first available seat. Whereas if you enter your cinema room and out of the 100 seats, there are two free seats left, you will have to find the available seats and therefore develop strategies to find them in the most efficient way. Maybe you will go row by row, maybe you will position yourself higher up and look from afar, but the cognitive effort you will make, the strategy you will develop will be completely different. This is exactly what happens when you throw a handful of kibble. There are plenty of kibbles in the grass and the dog, quite opportunistically, will rummage more than search. And then, if you place one or two kibbles in specific, spaced locations in an environment, the search work will be really different for the dog. Not all scent activities are odor searches in the broad sense and are not necessarily nosework either. To somewhat answer your question. Just to answer your question, can we start with three kibbles? Yes, but we need to know how to place our three kibbles and what we are explaining to our dog.

Marion

That’s great, thank you very much for all these explanations. I loved your analogy with the cinema because I so imagined myself looking for my two seats. Personally, if I’m disorganized, I don’t go row by row. Typically, if I had to, I think I would work to try to gain efficiency, maybe indeed, if I had a coach next to me, they would have said “Marion, calm down and go row by row, calmly, do it in a structured way and you will go faster than trying to look everywhere and maybe taking much more time, or even risking losing the seat if we take much more time.” I loved this analogy because it’s exactly that. So thank you for that. And so, I follow up. If I understand correctly today, nosework requires a structure that simple enrichment or simple rummaging does not necessarily have. It will really require the dog to go from point A to point B and ask it to activate certain cognitive resources that it potentially either does not have, or simply does not use habitually, either because it does not need to, or maybe because at this stage of its life, it is not yet capable for one reason or another. What advantage does this nosework have for the dog? We talked earlier about well-being. What advantage does it have for the dog?

Marjorie

There are a huge number of them. The list won’t be exhaustive. The first thing to keep in mind is that the search activity itself is a reinforcer for the dog. We know that it’s part of normal behavior for dogs. They are born with this ability to find their food, it comes from there originally, or possibly to be able to smell something from a distance. They have this sensitivity and they already have a pre-wired processing of olfactory information, so to speak. They have this program installed. Now, the effort of searching is something that will release dopamine. It activates the seeking system. We’re dealing with the release of a neurotransmitter that facilitates learning, regulates anxiety, and brings a lot to dogs if we don’t abuse it, of course. The first thing is that it will activate this seeking system, this pleasure that we have, for example, in solving a puzzle or a Rubik’s Cube or even reading a spy novel and wanting to know at the end if the villain will be unmasked, in what way, etc. So, all this anticipation of complexity and problem-solving is something that is satisfying and deeply satisfying for the dog. That’s really the first thing that’s really important, that’s paramount. I insist on the “search” aspect. It’s not about signaling to handlers that they’ve found something, it’s not about all that. It’s really about the search part. If, in addition, the dog intrinsically, -for X reasons, it could be its selection, it could be its experience,- has this need to explore, to work the nose, we give them the opportunity to do it in a perhaps slightly more structured way than running after all the smells in the forest. If you have a dog that naturally hunts, you’re going to allow it to hunt something and it will hunt a scent. It can be a specific target scent or simply a kibble. We can start there or even with its favorite toy. And so to satisfy this need for the dog under controlled conditions. I have a hunting dog and it’s true that she has this need to be able to activate her nose, to follow trails, to follow scent plumes. And I allow her, through this nosework activity, to be able to satisfy her need in the safest and most structured way possible on my side. So as a result, I have fewer problems in the forest too.

Marjorie

Another point that I find absolutely essential is the development of resilience. Because in every search, there is inevitably a moment when the dog will find itself a little bit in difficulty because it will not find immediately, because the access conditions to trace back to its source precisely will require it to go around. It still needs to think about that. Or it will be tracing back to its source and then the wind will pick up. A gust of wind will come and it will get out of the scent. And there, it is “a little lost” in its search and it will have to bounce back. And the simple fact of having to face this form of adversity, of overcoming problems, because we can’t be exactly in the case of a search, as in error-free learning, there are inevitably things happening all the time. The dog is perpetually a little bit in difficulty. It overcomes the difficulty. And that, I find, is really essential because it helps our dogs realize that they are capable of overcoming many things to build this habit of resilience, quite simply. And we have constraints in everyday life that mean that our dogs will, at one time or another, be confronted with a problem. So the activity is really extraordinary for that.

Marjorie

I’ll just give one last point, which is habituation to certain stimuli and generalization of the environment. We were talking about potentially reactive dogs, a bit sensitive. Often, the outside environment can be for them either a source of great excitement or an enemy, because there are lots of stimuli everywhere that can worry them. By using nosework activities in different types of environments that remain manageable for the dog, of course, the goal is not to put them in difficulty, we make the world become a huge playground and not necessarily a place where they feel bad. We can also make very positive associations with certain types of environments or certain types of stimuli, with the act of searching, which is a reinforcer. If we search with a primary reinforcer, so at the first stage of nosework, we are also making that association. Really, there’s a whole range of benefits for the dog that can be used, that should be considered and we can use and abuse it with pleasure. There aren’t too many contraindications, finally. It’s really more than a sporting activity, it’s really something that can bring things to dogs.

Marion

Indeed, you’re starting to address the aspect that interests us today, which is what are the benefits of nosework in the context of reactivity. What interests me is that often in reactivity, we have the dog who is ultimately disconnected. He’s completely disconnected from the human. We pass what we call the red zone, so we were talking about the threshold of tolerance in the first podcast episode. The idea is that you have a dog that will, depending on its sensitivity, be either completely connected to us, in the green zone or at the limit in the yellow zone, meaning that it will be facing stimuli and potentially, it doesn’t make him react or very little, or on the contrary, it’s something that is associated positively in terms of emotion. Or on the other hand, he might be extremely afraid of a stimulus or something that scares him spontaneously, even if initially he had no recoil movement, for example. If, for example, there’s a very loud noise, it could very well surprise him. As long as it remains episodic, it’s okay, but if indeed, there were always negative things happening outside, it could be very complicated for the dog to live with and often, it’s something that can happen. When you have a dog, living in the city, in the city center and you go out with it always on a short leash, that it has little opportunity to have enrichments or to do activities, whatever they may be, that it is often confronted with a lot of noise and that, let’s say, for one reason or another, we have a dog that is sensitive to noises, sensitive to movements, there are cars passing very close to him, all this makes the walk very complicated. We can have a dog that will start pulling on the leash, that will not enjoy its walk at all and that will not take pleasure in doing this walk. It could be interesting, in this context, to introduce activities like today, you just told us about nosework. It’s really super interesting because it’s something that can be applied more or less in all environments, if I understood correctly, and that we can even put in an urban environment. Obviously, it requires a little preparation, I imagine, because we’re maybe not going to put it on the road, but it’s quite workable in any environment. This can be interesting, especially to bring back a little positive emotion. You were talking earlier about dopamine, you were talking about the fact that it’s self-reinforcing for a dog to search. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do, ultimately, when we want to work on reactivity. We don’t necessarily want to work on the problems.

Marjorie

Exactly.

Marion

Traditionally, we’re used to doing it in desensitization or counter-conditioning, we also want to work on the dog’s mood and positive emotions, allowing it to feel good and comfortable in the environment we’re going to work in, even if there are very negative things in that environment, even if we’re doing management. The idea is to help it already associate positive things with this environment. Nosework could be a lever for some dogs, to perhaps reassociate a walk that had become extremely negative in a certain context. To say to oneself, ‘I’m taking this walk, I know that at a certain point during the walk, we’re going to stop, we’re going to do this activity, so it’s going to be great. I’ll be able to enjoy doing something whereas until now, I was just enduring my walk a bit.’ Our goal will be to help it enjoy itself as much as possible, quite simply.

Marjorie

I’m going to bounce off something where you’re talking about positive association with the outside, on the notions of green, yellow, red zones, etc. And this is something that’s super interesting because it’s also something that affects nosework, because even if we want to use this activity to bring benefits to dogs and potentially to reactive dogs, it’s very important to have this notion of zones because conditioning works both ways. That is, we can certainly bring something the dog likes into an environment it likes less, hoping to contaminate this environment with a positive association, but we can do the opposite if we rush things a bit. If we bring a dog that hasn’t yet understood the game and is still in doubt, into an environment that’s too complex for it, then we poison the activity. This is something that’s really interesting to keep in mind. In the progression, it’s always important to teach dogs the rules of the game, to give them the pleasure of this game in safe environments. And then, we gradually bring it into a green zone environment where it can generalize. And then, possibly, potentially, if we see that everything is going well, push a little bit towards this zone that’s a bit… We’re outside the comfort zone, but we stay within a threshold, in something that’s entirely manageable, and never go beyond what the dog is capable of offering. And since it’s an activity where the dog… Normally, it works alone, meaning we accompany it. We’ve set up the hides, we accompany it, we support it, but it’s not us who take it from point A to point B. It’s the dog that has to open up and take charge. And the simple fact that it comes from the dog gives us additional information on how it feels. Because sometimes, when dogs don’t feel good, they turn to us or they disengage and we can’t force them to search. So, it really gives us a temperature of where the dog is at that moment in this environment, which can be really interesting so it’s also almost a tool for the human, to know if the dog is comfortable in this environment, not quite, but it’s able to do things, or it’s completely out of bounds and there we have to stop no matter what. Activity that has benefits or not, we need to get it out of there.

Marion

What you’re saying is super interesting because there’s something I haven’t mentioned, but that I’ve already mentioned previously in other episodes, which is that a dog can’t learn from the moment it’s in the red zone, from the moment you see it disconnected, from the moment it starts to react. In reactivity, we can get all kinds of behaviors. Reactivity remains a label, but we can very well have a dog that lunges at cars, that barks at the end of the leash, that even chokes itself. We know that in reactivity and respondent conditioning, the consequence no longer matters. Even if your dog is choking itself, it will continue to choke as long as it’s subjected to the same intensity of stimuli. If we want to implement something positive, it’s a necessary step: we know where we want to go, but indeed, as you say, we absolutely must start working in an environment that is serene. Firstly, to avoid the activity itself becoming poisoned and announcing the future arrival of, for example, negative things to come, but also and especially to allow learning to take place.

Because otherwise he might start digging, he might very quickly lose focus, and we might also experience frustration because he can’t manage anymore and will systematically fail. So not only is he likely to be in a difficult environment, but he is also at risk of systematic failure. So frustrated, therefore no longer wanting to do it, there’s that aspect. And then, it will also be felt and impact the walk. So ultimately, there is no other choice, and we know from the moment we work with a dog that is reactive and sensitive to one or more stimuli, to work in a calm, relaxed environment, a green zone. Initially, really, if we start at home, we start at home. If we are in an apartment and want to start there because he feels very good at home, we start at that place. Tell me if I’m wrong, but in any case, that’s what I would have done in reactivity. Not necessarily talking about nosework, just like any other activity or anything we want to work on with our dog, we take into account the dog’s emotional state and where he is at. I love that you highlight the fact that once well implemented, it can also serve as an indicator of the dog’s emotional state. Where is he at? Can he do what he normally does when he is super relaxed in super good environments? Or can’t he? If he can’t, is it because my activity is too hard? Is it because maybe I did something too difficult? Did I ask him for something too hard all of a sudden? Or is it perhaps because there are too many stimuli that completely distract him, that make him rise very high in emotional value, and we know that when the dog is in the red zone, he can no longer concentrate. It’s a matter of cognitive capacity. It’s just physical. We’re not going to do a neuroscience course today, but basically, when we have a dog that is in the red zone, he simply can’t concentrate anymore – with all due proportion -, but it remains difficult. The more the behavior has been well-repeated, the more he will manage, but anyway, we want the activity to remain positive, and for that, we have to take it easy when introducing it into complicated environments for our dog.

Marjorie

Absolutely. I agree, it is necessary to start in comfortable environments for the dog while being progressive. At the beginning, we teach them the rules of the game, so they enjoy discovering things. And then, gradually, we increment a little. But you highlighted an interesting point when you say when the dog can’t manage outside, is it the environment, the dog’s emotional state, or is it the difficulty of the search? That’s a key point for this activity. It’s one of the most complex activities I know in terms of knowing what we pose for the dog, what it will represent. And there, it really requires a lot of knowledge on the part of the human, whether it’s your trainer, whether it’s you when you train alone, to know what we pose and if it’s within the range of what the dog is capable of overcoming as a situation at that moment. Progression is really essential. Indeed, it’s not just “I’m going to put a treat on a bench” and then “whatever happens, happens.” Because if the bench has open slats, if the bench is full, if there’s wind, if there’s no wind, depending on the surface underneath, everything will change for the dog. There’s really that work to be done. I add one thing, it’s when we start working outside… Personally, I have dogs work outside almost immediately, on baby searches, let’s say, but really very, very quickly. When working in an environment that is potentially a bit complex, it’s the environment we work on, not the search. So, we go back to things that must be as simple as possible. What we want is to build success, a habit of success, the pleasure of the activity, that the dog can derive from it, in that environment. We are not working on technical things.

Marion

You were just mentioning that it requires a lot of knowledge for the handler or if we’re accompanied by a coach, presumably, we’re guided from A to Z. But if I want to start with my dog and do nosework, can I achieve it spontaneously, just by thinking ‘I’m going to play on my dog’s sense of smell and imagine certain things.’ Can anyone, ultimately, start by thinking ‘I know it has a lot of benefits, I’d like my dog to benefit from it.’ So, I’m just going to take my kibble and imagine what I could do with my dog’. Does that work?

Marjorie

It can work because you might be very lucky, you might have a dog that is naturally very motivated and already has a lot of strategy and is very resilient. So, if it doesn’t work right away, if you’ve set it up too complicated, he will still try until he succeeds. It can certainly work. Thank goodness. Otherwise, I think no one would try it at home anymore. But you also have a lot of situations where you can shoot yourself in the foot because you don’t understand what it represents for your dog. You have a dog that isn’t necessarily especially motivated by smell or you might put him in difficulty too often, ask for searches that are too long, too complex, forgetting the aspect of development and particularly motivation development. And you can either not progress well, or even regress depending on what you set up or not. I always advise getting guidance, simply because there are people whose job it is to have learned how to dose progression according to your team. However, there are exercises that are easy to set up because the type of scenario is relatively clear for the dog. Often, people skip them because they seem too easy. It’s putting kibble in boxes, what we really call boxwork. You receive boxes, parcels, you keep boxes, you have containers, you have buckets, you have shoes. Anything that is a container that will confine the odor a little, make the odor very clear. You can play with this indoors, in your living room and already introduce a lot of techniques, a lot of reflexes in the dog with a scenario that will be relatively controlled. It’s harder to make mistakes in boxwork than when you place a hide directly in the environment.

Marion

There’s also this aspect that you mentioned earlier and that I think is worth reminding right now, which is that if we introduce this activity for the dog, it’s for the dog, precisely. It’s not for a search… Well, it could be, but in this case, it’s primarily for the dog. At least, that’s how I see it, it’s primarily for the dog and even before doing a performance search. The problem is that the search for performance, so being able to say “Yes, my dog managed to search for this thing at this distance, at this depth”, whatever, and ultimately forgetting the aspect “Is my dog enjoying it? How does he behave during this activity? Do I see a relatively linear progression?” You were talking earlier about the fact that it’s impossible not to make mistakes, but still, I imagine that we should still have a nice progression curve, even if it’s not linear. Anyway, in training, it’s rarely the case, even when we try to do errorless training. The idea being not to forget the well-being aspect of your dog above all. And even if from time to time, we do extremely simple things and we tell ourselves “But this is useless, my dog knows how to do it.” Isn’t it still worth setting it up, simply to develop this well-being aspect for your dog, re-trigger dopamine in his brain, keep the motivational aspect, all that.

Marjorie

Of course, absolutely. In canine sports, there’s a saying that when you’re a beginner, you want to do advanced level things because you find them super sexy, and when you’re at an advanced level, what you want is to work on the basics. That’s really it. When we start an activity, we have this image of certain things that are super sexy to watch and that’s what we want to do. And unfortunately, no activity escapes this. We’re built that way, we want to do what we see in videos, etc. And in fact, the more we progress, the more we realize that what’s important are the basics we put in place, the foundations. Always coming back to our scales, to developing motivation, to the benefit for the dog. And we can certainly be in pursuit of performance somewhere. There’s no contraindication to wanting to progress. However, indeed, we must never lose sight of what it represents for the dog.

And indeed, when we know the history of nosework, that we know it was developed for this, but it’s not necessarily well known. Americans know it because they saw the creation of the activity. In Europe, it’s not necessarily something we know where it comes from and what the objective is for the dog. We’re looking for independence, we’re looking for motivation, we’re looking for resilience, we’re looking for adaptability in the dog, a taking of autonomy in what they’re doing. Normally, these are the pillars of the activity. And if at one point or another we go into a quest for performance that will damage these pillars, we’re almost no longer in scope. It’s essential to keep this in mind. Maybe we should make a t-shirt so we don’t forget it, because as we progress, we tend to forget it. So we only look at the t-shirt with the pillars of nosework. And then coming back to the fundamentals, that’s what will build performance in the long term. Even if we’re excited by this idea of progression, it’s the solidity of the basics, coming back to them regularly that will allow the dog to consolidate what they’ve learned and then be as performant as possible, since that’s the question. It’s really something that is essential. We always think about the progression curve, but consolidation should really be at the heart of our concerns, because if we only make things more complex, every time the dog succeeds at something, what do we do? We make it more difficult. And I think that’s the worst way to thank them and reinforce their progress. We must always come back to anchor ourselves in our comfort zones. This is also true for reactive dogs. If we constantly take them out of their comfort zone, there will come a time when they will give up. We can really find parallels in these issues, even if they are very different at the base.

Marion

In piece. Of course. You mentioned consolidating, and it clicked in the brain. In reactivity, we rarely work, at least I don’t work like that, in a straight line, precisely towards the difficulty. That’s what you were saying, precisely, we don’t approach in a straight line in each session, we don’t go 25 meters, 20 meters, 15 meters, 5 meters, up to the stimulus that poses a problem because we need to consolidate. And when I say “consolidate,” it’s not just… It involves repetition, but it also involves emotional consolidation. That is to say, once we have acquired a place where the dog feels quite good, we start to see real relaxation, we start to see that he is capable of doing something else, sniffing the ground, finally prioritizing his own needs before being vigilant about the stimulus that poses a problem, etc. And often, when we reach this stage, the mistake we tend to make is to immediately try to advance very, very quickly towards the problematic stimulus because we want to approach quickly, we want progress, we want to see it. And in reality, it ties into what you do in nosework where you will rework the basics at some point. Here, the idea is to do the same thing, not to go in a straight line towards the stimulus in question, or even sometimes, simply not to work, not to associate an outing with work, but simply to go out and take a “win” walk, if I may say, where we will simply, for example, do an activity that our dog enjoys and the walk will not depend on work that will require the dog to be emotionally challenged a little, because we will tease his emotions when we try to desensitize him to a stimulus, whatever it is, sometimes we want to take a walk and not confront him. We just do an activity and do not confront him with the problematic stimulus or stimuli, simply to consolidate the fact that outside, we do positive things. And it is only at this price that we will build a positive emotional valence outside and that not only the activity we will implement will be more and more appreciated, but also that the work in reactivity will be more and more effective.

And I think it’s something you find within the nosework itself, without necessarily talking about nosework in reactivity, but simply within nosework itself, sometimes just doing things that the dog already knows, that he appreciates, going back a little, not always having this search for additional difficulties. It ties a little into the search for progression, and it’s something we also see in reactivity. I think there’s not much that escapes the rule, honestly. Like that, I certainly don’t think of everything, but in any case, even in separation anxiety, we don’t work in a straight line towards the difficulty, it doesn’t work. The risk of crashing at some point is significant.

Marjorie

There comes a time when we need to let the organism rest, and rest means either not asking it to search, letting it breathe, or staying truly in the comfort zone, so that it only requires minimal effort from the organism, both emotionally and physiologically. You know, I often draw a parallel – I’m getting back into sports. I won’t say my age, but let’s say I’m more at the age where one starts yoga rather than paragliding. I really want to be able to run again like I did a few years ago, and I tend to train too often to try to see rapid progress. If I don’t do that, if I don’t let my body rest regularly, what will happen? One, I won’t progress, I’ll get tired. For me, it will become increasingly difficult to progress, so I’ll lose the pleasure I was seeking in getting back into sports. And then, I’ll get injured. And we can have stress fractures, nerve fractures in our dogs, to the extent that if we don’t let the organism rest regularly, indeed, the nervous system can’t manage everything. It doesn’t have time to return to homeostasis. And it’s the same for cognitive effort or even physiological effort that can occur during a search or in any canine sports activity. We need to let the dog breathe for a moment. It also allows the body to integrate everything it has learned. Really, these rest moments are absolutely essential. And regular moments in the comfort zone are also essential. All of this, to avoid constantly pushing to the limit.

Marion

So, I’m coming back to the aspect of reactivity and nosework. There’s an aspect you mentioned about nosework that particularly interests me, which is that the more we repeat nosework, the more we allow the dog to easily access, develop new tools, concentrate, and maybe even that it becomes a form of automation, meaning that it won’t consciously realize it’s using this or that strategy to reach its objective. Tell me if I’m mistaken.

Marjorie

Absolutely. This is really something that is real and truly important, it’s fluidity. Sometimes we talk about searches that are easy, but a search is never easy. It will be more or less in the dog’s comfort zone, adapted to the dog’s level. There comes a time when indeed, the dog no longer needs to be conscious of what it’s doing. It’s almost in unconscious competence, and we see it give a sniff to the right, a sniff to the left, and it has deduced that it was five meters behind it. This is part of the moments where the mastery is such that there’s no longer the same cognitive effort. This is a reality, yes.

Marion

And this is really interesting, and it’s what I wanted to emphasize as well: if it’s well implemented, well worked on, both in terms of emotions and positive valences, and repetitions that are done to the maximum in success, etc., which is each time well implemented, that is to say also according to the level of the dog, it’s from there that we might be able to start implementing it in reactivity. Because reactivity, precisely, the problem is that it calls upon the sympathetic nervous system, so we react immediately. It doesn’t go through consciousness. For example, if someone goes ‘boo!’ to me, I’ll startle. I didn’t have time to go through the conscious phase of thinking ‘So, what should I do when I hear ‘boo’?’ No. In fact, there’s an immediate response from the body, just like if, for example, there’s a cool breeze, I might get goosebumps, I might warm myself with my hands, I might do that kind of thing, and it doesn’t go through the consciousness phase. And thankfully so, because if we had to consciously process absolutely all the information we receive, it would be very complicated, obviously. But if we manage to free up the brain by having repeated an activity so well that we almost manage to make it automatic, implementing it later in a certain framework will be that much easier. What interests me in reactivity is that today, there are many aspects that are automatic in relation to certain stimuli in reactivity. You have your dog that responds or reacts directly to other dogs, reacts to cars, reacts to a jogger, whatever the reason. And again, get support, this is not a cooking recipe today. It’s not that at all. Here, we’re just talking about a very small aspect that can be interesting to implement for reactive dogs. But still, get followed up because it’s often much more complex than that. But in any case, often in reactivity, we have this loss of the brain. We have the brain that goes into the red zone and afterwards, the dog is completely lost. And we can clearly see that the reaction is automatic. We can see that it doesn’t go through the consciousness phase and yet, the damage is still quite real. That is to say, there are very negative emotions. It often takes time to come down in pressure, even after the end of exposure to the stimulus, whatever it may be. And the advantage of Nosework, and this is where I wanted to get to, is that it could be used, particularly in the context of management as well. It can be as an activity like what we talked about at the beginning, but also as a management strategy. If your dog knows very well how to react to this, so as soon as there’s a smell, I focus on it, etc., obviously, it will be much less well constructed than when you actually do the nosework activity, but on the other hand, it can also be used as a management activity. What is management? It’s about trying not to expose your dog beyond its tolerance threshold until it’s able to handle it, because that triggers all the behaviors and emotions we talked about earlier. The idea is, for example, if we’re going to encounter a jogger on a very narrow road, we know we’ll be crossing beyond the tolerance threshold. We know it. We have no choice, we can’t turn back for whatever reason, there’s no side path. We’re trapped, we’ll have to make this crossing and we start to see our dog looking at it. Even before our dog starts to get very worked up, what we could do if your dog knows nosework, let’s be clear, we’re keeping it very, very, very, very simple here. We’re not going to do the nosework activity right away, especially not when he’s going to be strongly confronted with this. But what you can do is, for example, take your kibble or the things you usually work with and put it on one side and implement it so that he can focus on it and not focus on the jogger who’s going to pass, so that not only do we not go into the red zone, everything happens as if he hadn’t even seen the jogger. That’s the idea. Of course he’s going to see it, of course he’s aware of what’s happening, let’s be clear, and we shouldn’t overuse it because, again, we’re “stirring up emotion in these moments, but it can allow you to” avoid triggers that can be really detrimental to your progress. Because, again, it’s going to make him get very worked up, beyond what he’s able to handle at that moment in his protocol. It can be interesting to implement it in these moments. I don’t know what you think about it?

Marjorie

Absolutely. For me, it’s the opposite! That is to say, sometimes, as we work a lot outdoors, we’re often in public spaces and we sometimes have stimuli that come to us, people passing by, etc., that we hadn’t necessarily anticipated, so we monitor. But it happens to us very regularly to find ourselves with a dog that is launched into a search and will absolutely not see that there’s a remote-controlled car that just passed 30 centimeters from its behind with a child running after it, because it’s focused on what it’s doing. These are two different things. It’s funny that you mention that. There’s the fact that the dog doesn’t see the disturbing stimulus because it’s locked into what it’s doing, and a dog that’s focused on olfaction, the visual diminishes. This is really an added bonus for dogs that are very sensitive to visual stimuli. It allows us to not have a problem at times when we could have one. And also to do the opposite, that is, for the dog to be aware of the presence of the stimulus that bothers it and to invite it to launch into a search.

And that’s something I do myself with one of my dogs. I can tell you about it if you want. I have Birdie in particular, who is hypersensitive to noises, to certain noises. She’s a herding dog, working line with a sensitivity level that is what it is. There are certain strange noises, I don’t know why those more than others, she will react to. And I work a little on deconditioning to auditory stimuli with nosework, but on phases where I work on primary reinforcer. It’s not even worth working on scent. For example, I take a vacuum cleaner and I’m going to turn it on in another room, for example in my bedroom, and I’m going to do a very simple search in the living room. There will be background noise, but it’s really background noise in this case. If it goes well, I might end up with the vacuum cleaner in the same room, in one corner and in the other corner of the room, I’ll have the search part. The dog is aware of what’s happening and I’m going to watch how she reacts. If she’s in a nominal state and works almost as well as if there was no noise, I say “OK, it’s going well”. If I see that she’s a little lost or less efficient or that we see that part of the brain is absorbed by this stimulus, I’m going to move it back because I went a little too fast. Eventually, what I’m going to try to do is not to have the dog search on the vacuum cleaner. That doesn’t interest me. We’re not always in proximity yet. What I want is for the dog to be able to do more complicated things, in terms of search, with the presence of the vacuum cleaner in the same room. I’m going to play on the cognitive effort with this hindrance behind, rather than absolutely involving contact or interaction between what really bothers her and the dog. It’s something I see progress on. I have other issues with, for example, Steady who is a kind of human-reactive dog. She’s very focused on humans. These are very positive reactions, but they are very high emotional levels.

Marjorie

Seeing her able to search next to a dozen people, or even people are in the search area, it was work over several months for her to be able to concentrate in these moments, even if we had no risk for people, for her to be able to make the distinction between “people are there, but I ignore them, they’re part of the furniture when I’m searching” It helped her to better manage the people she may encounter in daily life now.

Marion

It’s great that you’re talking about this, because… I didn’t mention it, but often, when we talk about reactivity, we’re talking about either aggression or fear. I consider these to be very, very strong reactions that can put either people or the dog at risk in their environment, because, for example, in this case, if the dog sees humans, it might cross the road, putting itself in danger. Even if it’s not inherently mean, as we often like to label it, nor particularly problematic in daily life, it can still be dangerous. There are people who might react badly, and if, for example, it “was directed at dogs, it could also create other issues. My definition, which I discuss in the” dedicated episode, but there are certainly people listening today who haven’t heard it. My definition of reactivity is reacting too intensely to a stimulus to the point of losing control. It’s neither fear nor aggression. It’s simply losing control of one’s own behaviors in these kinds of situations. Exactly what I was describing earlier where, for example, someone says ‘boo!’ and I jump. In this case, it might be because it surprised me. There could be fear, there could be other emotions. It will certainly depend on the individual. It will certainly also depend on the context. If someone says “boo” to me when I’m in a haunted house, I’ll certainly be more scared than if I’m in my room at home because the environment plays a role. But in any case, there’s this notion of an automatic reaction, regardless of the stimulus in question. Trying to work on this – and what you’re saying is really interesting – with another behavior that we’re going to try to repeat so well, implement so well, make so valuable for the dog that it will also become, not always, but relatively automatic. That is to say, when we put the dog in the right conditions, it thinks ‘Okay, I know what I have to do here. I like it, so I’m going to do it,’ even if there are other things around. Obviously, we shouldn’t see any stress signals and so on. It’s ultra-positive and it allows the dog to handle things differently. It also allows us to break this fixation that can occur with certain stimuli. Since you said ‘I’m going to try to make Birdie do more complicated things. I’m going to try to make her do more complicated things than normal, with the vacuum cleaner noise in the background.’ This is also interesting because these reactions, in this context, are not so much about associating the vacuum cleaner noise with the activity itself, but it also gives you information about her processing of the “vacuum” distraction.

Marjorie

That’s exactly it. If she’s not comfortable enough, she won’t be able to do more complicated tasks. It really serves as an indicator for me and it’s what will tell me that “in the long run, indeed, this noise will potentially no longer be a problem, because she would be able to function normally in its proximity. It’s not increasing proximity that interests me, it’s decreasing the” emotional state and the mental space that this stimulus is consuming in my dog that interests me. I’m not going to work on proximity or interaction with the problem, but with the fact that it has become something that is normal, simply put. I just want to add, we have the same definition of reactivity. For me, it’s not actually about whether it’s a positive or negative valence, it’s the level of emotional intensity that makes the dog no longer in control of what it’s doing. That’s why I was talking about positive reactivity, let’s say, for Birdie. It’s the same problem whether a dog starts to celebrate or starts to grab people. Somehow, it’s the same underlying issue. It’s the intensity of the emotional level. The response is different and sure, it’s more pleasant to have a dog that jumps to celebrate. I’m digressing again, but we can have dogs that, when young, jump to celebrate, and then around 18 months, two years, when hormones have settled, etc., completely change the value of the valence and we can have aggressive responses where we didn’t have them before, simply because the dog didn’t have the maturity for it before.

Marion

I’m sorry too, I was also going to digress, but that’s exactly what I was going to say. I was also going to say that in reactivity, often, we don’t see the problem, we don’t see it developing when it’s precisely “a so-called positive reactivity”. We don’t see it because we think “on the contrary, it’s good, he likes people”. We start from the principle that there’s this positive form and we’re going to put a word on it that will also guide our behaviors because we won’t necessarily see the problem even though it can become one. Maybe not, but it can become one. The same goes when we have a dog that gets excited about other dogs and harasses them, in itself, it may never be a problem, but one day it can become one because if he doesn’t know how to stop, if there’s a dog that doesn’t want to play, he’ll get bitten and then, on the other hand, his emotional valence in contact with other dogs will change. His harassing behavior will still not change because we still haven’t taught him to do otherwise or because he has too intense emotions that we haven’t allowed him to learn at some point. So, then, we’ll have to start working on it and it’s a shame because we could have started working on it much earlier.

Marjorie

I’ll tell you, I had this case. My first dog was super happy to see other dogs, very, very excited. I didn’t help him “at the time, he was quite excitable and I didn’t know how to recognize the fact that yes, the problem wasn’t” that he was very, very happy to go see other dogs and jump on them, etc. And it’s play as they say “Yes, he wants to play”. Except that when he reached “adulthood it was no longer play at all and I had a dog that would systematically get into fights. It vaccinated me on that side and it made me very, very early aware of these issues of” emotional state and emotions in dogs more than in what we see coming out of behavior at the moment T.

Marion

It’s really super fascinating. We could continue like this for hours, I think, but we’ll stop here. We’ve already covered quite a bit of the subject. Thank you so much, Marjorie, for coming, for accepting the invitation and for sharing your knowledge with us. I believe there are very few, or maybe you’re the only one, in any case, you’re the first certified in nosework in France.

Marjorie

For now, I’m the only one, so I hope there will be others who will start. I really thank you for this moment of exchange, because really, I had an excellent time.

Marion

I’m super happy. Thank you. And don’t hesitate to follow Marjorie on her social networks. What she does is super fascinating. If you want to be coached, I can only recommend you go see Marjorie for nosework, because she’s ultra-skilled!

Marjorie

Thank you very much Marion for this great moment. And see you soon I hope!

Marion

See you soon! I hope you enjoyed this new episode.

If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, don’t hesitate to comment. By the way, in the comments section too, you can absolutely suggest a future topic that’s close to your heart. You can also join my Instagram or Facebook for more information, tips and free resources under the handle @animaletherapie. Do you have a behavioral issue with your animal or do you want to get ethical and professional guidance? You can contact me directly at contact@animaletherapie.com and I’ll see you very soon for a new episode.