Summary: Stacy Barnett is an active competitor in Nosework, Tracking, Obedience, Rally, Agility and Barn Hunt, but Scent Sports are her primary focus and her first love. She is an AKC Judge and contractor, as well as an instructor at FDSA. She hosts the Scentsabilities podcast and blogs regularly on nosework topics at www.scentsabilitiesnw.com. Links mentioned: FDSA Podcast Group Scentsabilities (Stacy's Site) Next Episode:  To be released 7/20/2018, featuring Deb Jones, talking about teaching people to teach dogs.  TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we’ll be talking to Stacy Barnett. Stacy is an active competitor in Nosework, Tracking, Obedience, Rally, Agility and Barn Hunt, but Scent Sports are her primary focus and her first love. She is an AKC Judge and contractor, as well as an instructor at FDSA. She hosts the Scentsabilities podcast and blogs regularly on nosework topics at www.scentsabilitiesnw.com — I’ll be sure to include a link in the show notes for anyone who is interested. Hi Stacy, welcome to the podcast. Stacy Barnett: Hi Melissa. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Melissa Breau: I’m excited to chat. To start us out, can you just remind listeners who the dogs are that you share your life with? Stacy Barnett: I have four crazy hooligans who live in my hut. They are; they’re nuts. I’ll start out with my older dogs. I have an almost 11-year-old Standard Poodle named Joey. He’s a brown Standard Poodle. He’s absolutely wonderful. I absolutely love him. I have a 7-year-old miniature American Shepherd, which is, you know, a mini-Aussie, named Why, and Why is actually his name. He came with it. I always have people ask me, “Why is his name Why?” And I always say, “Why not?” So I have Why, and then I have my two Labradors, who I refer to as my Dream Team. My Labradors, I have Judd, who’s almost 9 years old. He is my heart and soul. He’s actually the one that really got me going in nosework and is the reason why I ended up quitting corporate and pursuing a whole job in nosework. He’s my baby, he’s my Labrador, my 9-year-old Labrador. And then I have my youngest, who is a major hooligan. She is about 15 months old and she is a Labrador, a little shrimpy Lab. Her name is Brava, and I absolutely adore her. She’s the only girl in the house, so she’s like my soul sister. Melissa Breau: I’m sure she gets a little spoiled being the only girl in the house. Stacy Barnett: She does, and the boys love her. They absolutely love her. They fawn over her. We all do. We think she’s wonderful. Melissa Breau: Alright, so I know you’ve been on the podcast a few times now to talk about different aspects of nosework, but today I want to focus our conversation on how handlers can tailor nosework training to their specific dog. Is there a particular type of dog or particular skills or maybe a personality type that really lends itself to helping a dog become a strong nosework competitor? Stacy Barnett: There are, but at the same time I also want to emphasize the fact that every dog can do this sport. Maybe not every dog can compete in this sport, it really depends on the dog, but every dog can do this sport. There are certain aspects of the dog’s personality or what is intrinsic to the dog that will help the dog to become a really strong competitor in terms of being very competitive, or a dog that will really gravitate toward the sport and really, really love the sport. In my experience, all dogs do love the sport, but there are some that just seem to live and breathe for it. And the ones that seem to live and breathe for it, there are a couple of different things that contribute to that. Number one, the dog is a little bit more independent. If the dog is