by Leigh Crews
You go to class, listen to the advice of experts and practice diligently with your favorite pup (or pups). You have an established and thorough training program in place, what more could you need to insure success? Have you considered participating in mock trials, such as SSWA’s Run & Done? Why are mock trials an important, if not essential, element in any serious training program? What is a mock trial, anyway? And, can they really make that much of a difference?
A mock trial is a form of training where the conditions mimic the stress and pressure of an actual trial. A mock trial uses certified judges, is run like a trial day, has professionally placed hides, time limits, scoresheets, and placements. The only thing you can’t get from a mock trial is a title. SSWA Co-founder Lue Ann Lott, a successful trainer in her own right, says: “From a training perspective, an event like Run & Done (mock trial) is an opportunity to gain valuable experience with less pressure than a trial but more pressure than a training session. The team can experience all the elements of a trial day; getting ready to attend the event, managing one’s dog and one’s own internal dialog at the event and, being around other teams and, finally, executing the searches. The preparation a mock trial offers for improving performance on trial day can’t be beat for efficiency and effectiveness. Run & Done allows each team to establish and hone their strengths and, at the same time, identify and mitigate weaknesses in training. With less fear of penalty or failure, you can take a mental step back and discover new insights. It is absolutely a win-win!”
Here are five reasons why you should consider adding mock trials like Run & Done to your training routine:
- Unique locations. In choosing locations for a Run & Done, SSWA prioritizes locations that would not be available for individual teams or too expensive to rent for a day of training. Unique locations allow you and your dog to experience the same sort of environment as a trial: a place you have never been, with sights, sounds, smells and distractions that are totally different from a regular class or at-home training. Training in “strange” locations allows your dog to learn that scent work is fun no matter where you do it.
- Hide placement. Let’s face it, we all have our pet (pun intended) types of hides we tend to set. If you’re like me, knowing who the CO is for an event begins to frame your expectations of the type of searches you are likely to see. One CO may be known for converging odor problems, another for threshold hides. Am I right? If our COs are not immune from the tendency to emphasize some scent problems over others it’s no surprise that we can get into a rut on hide placement. If you mostly train at home, or have limited experience setting hides, this can be a “biggie”. Our dogs scrutinize our behavior, always, and they learn to expect certain hide placement patterns. They learn our “tells”. I knew I was in a rut when both my dogs walked a threshold hide to check the blank (that time) fire extinguisher in a workshop where we often practice. A mock trial is the golden opportunity to experience scent problems that are not only outside of your experience, but outside of your imagination. You get some much needed feedback from working scent problems that are new to your and new to your dog.
- An opportunity to polish all the potty, vehicle, staging, start line and back to the car routines. Our dogs need to understand and be comfortable with all the differences of a trial situation, as opposed to playing at home or “school”. Rarely at home do we crate our dogs in the car before they run! At practice, do you perform your staging or start line routines before each search? What about the sounds and smells of unfamiliar dogs? What about the use of a timer? If you never practice realistically with it, it can be awkward to use under pressure, possibly throwing you and your dog off your game when it counts the most. Mock trials in a realistic setting give you the opportunity to practice HABITS (aka: good practices you want to become habits and bad habits you want to become history).
- Get accustomed to time pressure. We all know the feeling when we hear those dreaded words, “30 seconds!”, yet many of us rarely spend time practicing under time pressure, when the deadline is real and it counts. In our day-to-day training environments, it can be difficult to replicate that experience. Expanding your training experience to include real time limits allows you to confidently make the most of those last 30 seconds, instead of quickly calling finish, or worse, timing out.
- Get feedback from a different set of eyes. Whether we train with a trainer in a live setting or virtually, having a different perspective on your handling skills can make a world of difference in your training and game day performance. New eyes will see new things. Our Run & Done events include a virtual debrief at day’s end, giving teams insights from the judges on the thought process behind setting the hides, and their observation of the behavior of the odor, dogs and handlers during the course of the day. One good tidbit from a debrief can open your eyes to an unsuspected or unexplained weakness and give you the power to convert it into a strength.
As professional trainer and judge Todd Hendrix says, “Everything in your training program should change constantly. Everything except anise, birch and clove.” Mock trials give you an opportunity to change it up in ways that are hard, if not impossible, to manage at home or with your regular trainer. With near trial level performance pressure, time limits, novel locations and experienced judges input and feedback, a mock trial can, ultimately, be one of the most time efficient and cost-effective ways to broaden your training experience and have lots of fun with your pet in the process.