What to listen for: "If you are not doing search and rescue for the right reasons, you need to look in the mirror. Because it is not about you, and it's not about your dog." Today, our hosts, Stacy Barnett and Robin Greubel, have set the dogs aside (mostly!) to talk about something that affects every handler who has ever posted a training video, shown up to a webinar, or scrolled too far down a comment thread. They're calling it the “toxicity tax,” and they've come to argue i

What to listen for: “At the end of the day, taking care of our dogs is everyone’s job.” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, talk with Joy Brenner of K9 Medic about looking at canine first aid not just from the perspective of flashy trauma response, but that of the quiet, daily work of truly knowing your dog. Joy, who began in human wilderness and tactical medicine, built K9 Medic to teach handlers, medics, and even surgeons pre-hospital care tailored to real field con

What to listen for: "The bigger the gap between the image in our head and reality, the more we're going to struggle." Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, chat about a peculiar kind of self-deception. The kind that costs years of training, thousands of dollars, and sometimes the well-being of both dog and handler. They call it beer goggles: the tendency to see the dog we want rather than the dog standing in front of us. Robin talks about Flash, her Lab who simply doesn

What to listen for: "There’s immediate applicability of what you're learning in a chicken workshop. You might think it’s pretty basic. But it is transformational for your training." Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, welcome Bob Deeds back to debrief the first-ever chicken workshop hosted at Robin's farm. Bob, drawing on the legacy of Keller and Marian Breland and Bob Bailey, the operant conditioning pioneers behind Animal Behavior Enterprises and the IQ Zoo, explain

What to listen for: "Unless you have a dog who is engaged with you, you can't build that relationship. And you can't get through distractions. It's impossible.” Today, our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, are talking relationships. Specifically, what it actually means to have one with your dog when the pressure is on. They argue that a real relationship isn't Kumbaya, it's the thing that keeps a dog still on a medic's table and calm on a tailgate in Texas! Robin descri

What to listen for: “We put a lot of effort into how we pick the best dogs. But maybe we should also have some discussion [about] how we pick the best handlers.” In the second half of the conversation with Dr. Jennifer Essler, our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, discuss her current research and future goals bridging academic science with real-world handler expertise! At SUNY Cobleskill, Dr. Essler's conservation work demonstrates how detection dogs fill practical nich

What to listen for: “My pet project has always been to take what you guys as professionals see in dogs, and your ability to accurately assess them, and write it down and put it into numbers and words.” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, sit down with canine cognition researcher Dr. Jennifer Essler. She unpacks her journey from coding Capuchin monkey videos in a windowless lab to studying fairness in wolves and dogs. Starting with music studies before discovering comp

What to listen for: “Trust your dog, but trust your training first.” Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, welcome back veteran USAR handler Bob Deeds to talk about the artificial divide between working dog and sport detection communities, and why both sides desperately need each other! Bob shares his journey from FEMA disaster work into nose work, leading into his innovative "geo-scenting" protocol. This hybrid sport combines geocaching with scent detection using clove

What to listen for: "A chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and that applies to behavior change, too. So therefore, build fluency...

What to listen for: "Get a dog, take the dog you have, start training, do it yourself. Yes, the client dogs will come, the other pieces...

What to listen for: “Distraction Camp and Intentional Handling and Hide Setting are always one of my small joys on being able to see...

What to listen for: "I care about my dog's emotional state, how they're feeling, and how confident they are. And I work on that a lot....

What to listen for: “You’re putting so much pressure on yourself, and that’s impacting your dog.” Today, our hosts Robin Greubel, Stacy...

What to listen for: 2/3 of the Dames of Detection, Robin Greubel and Crystal Wing, return with the brilliant Katylynn Sloan for part two...

What to listen for: In the second part of the series on consistency, our hosts Robin Greubel, Stacy Barnett, and Crystal Wing take a...

What to listen for: “You’re constantly writing and rewriting a contract with your dog.” Consistency makes or breaks dog training—but...

What to listen for: “If I cannot, in five repetitions, isolate a variable down and get it where I want it, I do need to stop. That...

What to listen for: “Are we setting up hides in a way that our dog is becoming better and we're finding holes, or are we setting up hides...

What to listen for: “For the disaster, particularly this last one, you have to appreciate your emotional response that you’re going to...

What to listen for: "If we're a really confusing trainer, then our dogs have to be really damn confident because they’ve got to put up...