I've been discussing scent work with some friends. I learned a new method at the Laura Romanik seminar, and I've been playing with it. To help others, I made this video using three of my dogs in various stages of training.
Em has never done this work. Zane has been doing it and has been choosing between 2 items. Bella chooses among several items and does some pretty good room searches.
Warning: This vid is 10 minutes long! Way too long in my opinion, but there are a lot of steps along the way.
Very cool! I may be taking a class in this soon from a friend that actually works in the local prison system with her fully trained dog doing searches. Looks like a great rainy day game to play in the winter. I guess there are a lot more steps to get to the point of actually hiding an item and asking for a find? How do they know what to look for?
ReplyDeleteMary
What you see was Emily's first training session for this. Yes, she was a quick study, but I was already getting them out of sight! And she was definitely using her nose when it was out of sight.
ReplyDeleteYou just gradually hide it more and more out of sight. When I was doing it in my bedroom, I'd leave a dog on one side of the room and go hide something on the other side of the bed. I'd touch several places then send the dog - they knew it was on the other side of the bed, but had to figure out where.
Then I'd take it into the next room - started with it just inside the room, then getting more and more hidden. Bella will search a small room (like a bathroom), but isn't up to a big room yet.
I'm going to a Noseworks seminar in February. I hope to learn more there!
Oh, and they learn very quickly to find the thing with your strong scent. When it's just out of sight (like behind the dog bed) they do use their nose to find it. I like hiding it in the toy box because then they have to ignore all the fun toys and smell for the right thing. Dog noses are amazing!
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