If the journey with your dog in this sport is the priority, success can fall into place for any team. And Caroline Oldham puts a lot of effort into focusing on the journey. And doing so helps both the dog and handler achieve their goals.

She also talks about her crate-to-crate ritual and why she does it, what your dog's breed group tells you about how they search, building handler grit, and a start line tip she thinks will make a difference for most teams.

What We Talk About

• Caroline's pack, Timber the Welsh Springer, Kate the Malinois who made her a planner, and Rebarre the yellow lab she planned a year before she got her
• What training a Malinois teaches you that no other breed will
• Breed groups and what they tell you about how your dog searches
• The dog is always learning whether or not you're teaching, and what Caroline did with that idea the first hour she had Rebarre
• Your dog is perceiving odor, not just smelling it, and why that reframe changes how you handle
• The toy basket mistake and why all good things should come from you
• Clarity, no gray days, black and white rules that hold even when you don't feel like training
• The one treat that is only for the discovery of odor
• Crate to crate, what the ritual looks like from the hotel to the search area to the car ride home
• What success looked like with the first dog and what it looks like now
• Two stories about what it looks like to drive home from a trial and call it a success even when you don't do as well as you wanted
• Handler grit and what it takes to keep your rituals in place when everything is falling apart
• The self-care coach on her training team and why the handler is half the partnership
• Seven questions with Caroline, including her signature distractor, the start line tip she thinks will make a difference for most teams, and what her dog would say about her in one word

Links and Resources

Find Caroline:

Facebook: Caroline Oldham

Facebook group: Scent Work Texas

Southern DFW Scent Training seminars: [email protected]

Alert! Scent Work is a podcast for competitors, the parking lot conversations you'd never get to have at a trial, with the judges and community members you wish you had more time with.

Listen to the podcast and find everything here: https://www.AlertScentWork.com

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