For a little under a year, I've been working on a variety of dog (woozle) related sports with my rescue Shepherd, Sasha. We started in 'Traditional' (though basic) Obedience in February 2010. She earned her CGC (Canine Good Citizen) certificate, and we moved on in two directions - to Rally Obedience and to Agility. As I started to show her in Rally, I also attended my first seminar on a brand new dog sport.
It's an amazing sport - one I've seen dogs of all ages and degrees of physical ability (or disability) excel at and put their heart (and nose) to.
This is something that anyone could enjoy with their dog. Join me over the jump to learn about Canine Nose Work, and give it a try with your own pup.
And yeah, it's a sport. I learned about Nose Work from 2 of the 3 founders of NACSW (National Association of Canine Nose Work); I audited a seminar in July (that is, I attended without Sasha and watched other working teams), and held a working dog spot at an "Introduction to Odor" and "Continuing Nosework" seminar, last month.
At the first seminar, I watched the first rounds of Nose Work ever run by dog/owner teams - the teams included dogs of all shapes, sizes, and ages. There was a 90% blind year old White German Shepherd who really liked salmon; there was a 4 year old Dalmation who can't have fats in his diet (he searched for cantaloupe); there was a 10 year old, very high drive Nova Scotia Duck Tolling retriever who searched for her tennis ball.
Currently, the AKC offers "nose work" through traditional working events: Earth Dogs (terriers) track rat scent to their prey in Earth Dog trials. Sporting breeds track bird scent to their prey in Hunt Tests and Field Trials, and depending on their breed they are either focused on the flushing of the birds (like English Springer Spaniels), the retrieving (like Golden Retrievers), or pointing the bird (like German Wirehaired Pointers).
AKC also offers Tracking, where the dog is given an item with a scent (like someone's t-shirt) and then follows an aged track to the person who provided the item. This is like what search and rescue dogs are trained to do.
In Conformation, the handler is allowed to use 'bait' to 'stack' the dog - and that's really the last of the dog sports where using his (or her) nose is an advantage; in Traditional or Rally Obedience, or Agility or most other sports, scent is more of a distraction. (Though I have been known to 'scent' my hand with treats, before walking into the Rally Ring.)
These types of nose work might be considered different to detection dogs' work: that is - a dog walking through an airport, sniffing for drugs or for explosives. [And that was one of the questions we asked: Are dogs trained for drugs and for explosives? and the answer was no, they are not. However, the explanation made clear that this was due to the limitations of the human handlers in reading the dog's reactions. If a dog sits before a piece of luggage, you want to KNOW he's reacting to explosives, and ONLY explosives, not either drugs, OR explosives. The dog could be taught to 'paw' explosives and sit before drugs - the dog has that capacity. Still for safety's sake, a professional detection dog searches either for explosives or for drugs.]
Detection dogs have long been trained with positive reinforcement, though that doesn't always lead to the expected results. Ron, one of the instructors I've taken seminars with, told about training drug detection dogs by playing with marijuana wrapped in towels. However, when the trainers started to run the dogs by marijuana, the dogs were confused.
Where were the towels, dammit?
Amy, the other instructor, told us about a Shepherd who would find the scent, push her nose as close as she could to the source, and then start moving her head from side to side.
Where's my tennis ball, dammit?
Nose Work, the sport, uses fun and a complete lack of obedience, to turn on instincts that have been - if not turned off, usually ignored - for fun and to allow owners to witness the miracle of the dog's nose.
Ever look at a dog's nose?
Hmmm, let's try that again:
That's better. Notice that the dog's nostrils are slit? That is, the dog as the round holes at the front of her nose, and then slits along the side? When a dog sleeps at night, breathes normally, sneezes, or snorts in disgust, the round holes are used to breathe in and to breathe out.
When a dog is scenting, they breath in through the round holes. The breath/scent runs over swirls of odor detecting cells within the nose. Then, to not lose the scent by blowing it out of those round holes, the dog exhales through the slits on the sides of their nose.
So, how does an owner teach their dog to smell? Yeah, I know. It's a silly question. We don't. :) This is something the dog all ready does, every day, nearly 24 hours a day, to one degree or another. What we are doing with nose work is learning to focus that need to scent, and to learn to read the reactions of the dog.
It's pretty simple - it just takes patience and some pleasant time spent with your dog. We start with the container or box search. In order to work on this, you need a few boxes (alike, or not) and some 'high reward' treats for your dog. (Liver sausage worked well for Sasha, but to be honest, so did chicken, steak, honeydew, cantaloupe and cheese. If I had to guess, I think she may have responded most strongly to steak, but that might have been because she was hungrier that day.)
Several cartons are set out on the floor. One is marked as a 'food box' so that we don't scent all the boxes with food (and with repeated use, the 'food box' becomes well-scented). And the dog is held back while the food box with treat is placed.
Some dogs are a little timid around the cartons, and need to receive a few treats directly from the box; one Yorkie was fed dinner from cartons for a week, and completely forgot his carton-fear. Others will walk around the cartons, and others will walk over or through the cartons. It's all good. :)
The dogs learn to run through the cartons, and find their rewards. If a handler is doing this alone with their dog, there's a lot of 'three box monte' played - that is, using one or two cartons to distract the dog from the 'hide' carton. (The dog always looks at the last carton you pretend to put food in, and in the carton that moved last.)
If the handler is working with another person, they can hold the dog back while the hide is placed. I've worked Sasha alone, and with other people handling the hide - either way is very do-able, and a lot of fun.
After the dog will work the boxes all on the floor, we start to add elevation (placing a carton or two on a chair) or intricacy like one carton in another.
Once the dog is showing anticipation, drive and focus, we start to vary the cartons, adding in buckets and other non-carton containers. We'll move to different areas in the building, and then start spreading out the search items, until, basically the dog is just searching a room.
The dog then has 'container' and 'interior' searches under their belt. When we add 'exterior' searches, we'll include some of those containers - buckets, cartons. 'Vehicle' searches are handled a little differently. But basically, we start with boxes, use boxes to introduce Interior and Exterior searches, and we expect the dog to see the vehicle as a Really Big Box. :) The carton search is always used to build the enthusiasm or drive for the hunt.
Once the dog is performing these searches for their treat/self reward, we begin to pair the reward with an odor. For Nose Work Level 1, that odor is "Sweet Birch" oil. Levels 2 and 3 use Anise Seed and Clove Bud oils. Sweet Birch is very wintergreen-y (Think "Ben Gay"). We'll take a bunch of q-tips (with paper/cardboard sticks) cut in half, and treat a babyfood jar packed with them with a couple of droppers of the oil, shake well, and then let it set for at least 24 hours.
One or two of those cotton tips in a container (a metal tin or plastic holder) is placed in the carton with the dog's treat, so that the dog associates the smell with the treat. After several rounds, one round might be odor only (with the reward given after the 'find', and given right at the 'source.')
This video was taken at our 'Introducing Odor' seminar. Note - since we've been playing this game for about 4 months now, Ron has set up the cartons in a line. When we started, cartons were strewn around in a circle or semi-circle.
The video shows the first time I used a toy as a reward instead of food; her enthusiasm for finding the hide was not diminished.
This game/sport is fun for the dog, fun for the handler, and is amazing to watch. (The coolest thing is watching a dog run by the carton and then see its head snap back toward the scent.) I encourage you to give it a try with your dog. There are a few suggestions:
- Never use any 'obedience' in this. There are no "no's", no "off's", etc. Dogs that destroy boxes by tearing them up are ignored, not rewarded, and eventually learn that they get the treat faster by NOT doing that.
- Don't try to race this. If you decide to introduce odor, that's fine, but the longer you work the dog without odor, the better. And once you do introduce odor, don't race to try to 'lose the treat.'
- Treat at the source. Give your dog a treat right where it found the original hide.
- Pull the carton with the hide away from the dog, not the dog away from the carton.
If you're interested in learning more about this, check out http://www.nacsw.net and http://k9nosework.com/...