The First Pancake Rule

The idea behind the first pancake rule is that it’s okay if the first one doesn’t turn out. It’s a do-over. The first one is the practice round for getting the cooking conditions just right. The adjustments you make will lead to perfect pancakes afterwards. It’s a strategy that encourages learning through practice, feedback, and continuous improvement.

As a tool to aid in developing skills and expertise for any business, the first pancake rule can be useful. Encouragement to improve, forgiveness of failed attempts, support and advice on what to change. These are all part of the implementation and lead to success. But can the pancake rule be helpful in nose work?

Nose work, aka K9 scent detection, is a performance sport to do with our dogs. It’s about searching for target odors, cotton swabs with a drop of essential oil, hidden in an area, on a vehicle, in a container, or buried in the ground. Just like professional K9 detection dogs, each team of handler and K9 searches for the essential oil, but the handler doesn’t know where the odor is hidden. One at a time, each handler/dog team runs the search. We decipher the dog’s behaviors and, based on what she communicates through body language, we say where the odor is. A judge who knows where the odor is hidden confirms if we are right. Through much time, training and experiences, we are quite accurate.

Winnie is not my first dog, but she is the first dog I have ever trained. I learned from my parents how to handle dogs based on generations of pet ownership, but there is nothing formal about it. The basics; heel, sit, stay. How to behave on a leash, how to behave indoors, and so on. Nothing my folks did with our dogs involved a specific activity, nor was there any kind of reward/re-enforcement. We made the dog uncomfortable when it didn’t follow our requests and soon they understood certain words meant something, but the rest was gibberish. We rewarded them with verbal and demonstrative praise, but never punished them. They chose the former, and we considered them trained. Then along comes Winnie. Nothing I do with Winnie is the same as any of the dogs that precede her. She is my first pancake.

When we started nose work, it was not the decision but the back-up to our first plan: Agility. Our first class was a disaster for me. I hadn’t a clue what to do. For Winnie, it was a breeze. She thrived in the beginner’s arena, did every obstacle on the first or second try and by the forth lesson, I could send her over a jump or the plank walk, up and down the A frame or across the teeter by simply saying the name of the structure. The tunnel became Winnie’s favorite. Most of the time she would go in but didn’t come out. She was too busy corralling all the abandoned treats inside. The other dogs in the class needed more encouragement to convince them to go into the tunnel so the handlers would toss in a handful of treats. Their dogs almost never cleaned up the handful. Winnie took care of that.

By the second month of agility lessons, Winnie was bored. I was learning the basics of handling and Winnie spent the time cleaning up the unfound and dropped treats in the entire arena area. She loved to use her nose. Snuffling and snorting her way around, she zigged and zagged her way back and forth. It was her extra credit activity when she finished the regular class assignment.

A floating patella joint diagnosis of both hind legs meant we would never go far in the agility arena. This and the fact that Winnie loved using her nose led us to nose work. If agility qualified as our first pancake, we tossed it out. Undercooked or scorched because of inconsistent heat, the batter that was lumpy or runny. It added up to us, changing our direction.

For the past six years, Team Winnie has dedicated our energy to nose work. It is exciting and challenging. The variability of searching areas, the dynamics of odor behavior, it is addicting. We have struggled and learned, succeeded and risen among our peers. On any day, Winnie can be as good as our fellow sniffing comrades. It isn’t a competition among teams, but a practice to do better than we may have done before. The continuous improvement.

Just like the first pancake isn’t always perfect, the ‘First Pancake Rule’ has its flaws. The idea of throwing out the first pancake seems like such a waste. Team Winnie has our flaws. From the early days of handler confusion and inconsistency has risen less fluency in our communications. We’ve overcome a lot after handler mistakes during training, like mistiming rewards, misunderstanding expectations, and misinterpreting coaching and instructions. We have been the floppy, undercooked pancake and gotten scorched. Our batter has been pasty and downright distasteful. Still, there is no need to throw us out.

As for what to have for breakfast, I’d rather honor the first pancake, flaws included, and be inspired by the example of what practice can achieve. For a pancake, Team Winnie results from much tweaking. We’ve turned the burner up and doused out the flames. We have added a pinch of sugar or a tablespoon of flour. And when we weren’t certain what else to do, we made scrambled eggs and bacon. Everything tastes better with bacon. But we always returned to the batter.

Nose work with Winnie is not something I ever thought I would be doing. It is now the one thing I can’t imagine doing without. Whether we are training, practicing, or trialing, Winnie and I are always together. I have traveled to places far and wide to participate in seminars and to compete. I have met like-minded people who have broadened my mind and reinforced my philosophies through our shared experiences. The unexpected kinship is a bonus I never expected.

When the time comes to try nose work with another dog, it remains to be seen, if I will. With the things Winnie has taught me, the next pancake will probably be as good. Maybe even better, but that will never take away from the extraordinary pancake made only by Team Winnie. The first one will always be the most special of all.