Learning From K9 Nose Work® NACSW™ National Invitational Video Part 1

Okay, I received a flash drive in the mail with some video of Muriel & me doing our searches at the National Invitational (woo hoo, Christmas came early this year!). We're going to look at a number of the searches using the Coach's Eye app and see how much we might learn from them. Some of you may not know much about the National Invitational - what the location was like, how each day flowed, what it was like to be a competitor sitting in shade on the backside of a building all day waiting to search and wondering where everyone was! Here are some answers: the location was industrial, each day had a morning and afternoon and we split into running orders of six teams each for the searches, the backside of the building was not too hot, and we had food, chairs, and each other's company to prevent us from going sniff crazy! That covers the summary. On to the video! I aim to keep this post lean and mean like a 2 minute, 6 hide warehouse search!



The Moat - The first search of day one of the National Invitational was a 3 minute, 5 hide mixed element search with forklifts and tires, a stand with a vice clamp, a working table, and other miscellany. It was a cluttered area with lots of tight spots for handling.

What made this search area difficult was the wind blowing across the length of the area and causing dogs to chase a little and overlook at least 1 hide (no dog found all 5). The hide overlooked by most dogs was on a stand with a vice clamp. This was between the table and one of the vehicles, and near a hide on a utility pole. Muriel & I ducked under the table to get to the back of the search area and passed right by the stand without a twitch of the nose from Muriel.

Again, this search could have been a bit different for us if we had handled the blowing odor situation better. We spent the lion's share of our time trying to work out odor on a forklift (see video below) that we never end up finding... I should say, Muriel did find the odor, she just didn't take off one of her shoes and throw it at me to tell me so.

As for the hide on the vice clamp stand, this might have been a matter of handler strategy - make sure to cover ground in many different ways, and make sure your dog is in a position to actually search that ground. This means finessing things so you guide your dog to an area, but then permit him to take control and search it. Not an easy task. I imagine this strategy would have resulted in a mess of tangled leash or the funky dance of "You go first." "No. You go first." "I'm not walking through that pinched space with that thing above my head. No thanks."

When you practice this kind of search scenario, start out with an easily navigable area and work your way to the pinched space with a thing above your dog's head (just make sure the thing can't fall on your dog's head). Even simple set-ups with tables, chairs, and household stuff to clutter the area can really help the two of you learn to navigate awkward search environments.


The Lily Pad - This search was our second of day one and it consisted of two side by side areas within a large 3-sided covered storage area. The search times were brief (3 minutes and 2 minutes), and there were 3 hides in one area and 4 in another. Forgive me, but I may not get exact details for each search area correct, but that's very much what competing in the National Invitational was like, hard to correctly remember the details during and after each search.

Search Area 1: We're going to focus on two things in this search, first is the dog that can't quite commit to the hide, and second is the handler that can't commit to the dog's signals. In the video, Muriel is pretty clear on where she wants to work, but she is not content to alert to a source (she can't reach it - not even close). I let her work for an extended period of time, but I'm not confident enough in what I'm seeing to call alert.

We waste a lot of time being discontent and unconfident. The nearby hide on the other side of the stacked wood could have been causing trouble with the decision making on the high hide. Had Muriel been guided away from the area, found the more accessible hide, and then went back to work the high hide, she might have made a clearer decision.

This is one of many cluttered and busy areas we searched, and it's worth pointing out that the very strong desire to let your dog work longer because the area seems busier is not necessarily a good strategy. If your dog struggles to lock down a hide in 15-30 seconds, move on. You can always go back.

Search Area 2: The learning experience that was search area 1 had not quite sunk in, but I was more prepared to call alert sooner if she gave me similar behavior to the high hide in search area 1. Time once again got the better of us here. We found two hides and got caught up working blowing odor to eat up the remainder of our time.

A good strategy for me & Muriel might have been shorter leash length and a little less freedom to roam. A few times she got caught up between odors or by blowing/pooling odor. For some reason, this is a hard scenario for our team to recognize and work through. Slowing things down might make it clearer for both team members when blowing/pooling odor is leading nowhere, when two odors are converging, etc. On the other hand, sometimes an odor problem needs to be solved by getting further away from the source and finding the edge of the scent plume, so, strategize with caution!



Large Warehouse Interior - A large area search with 6 minutes to find an unknown number of hides. The real challenge of this area was the high hide in the stack of pallets. Although, a number of dogs breezed by a hide at the outside corner of one of the rows of shrink-wrapped material - handlers were told to be careful in that area because of some open boxes of solar panels on shelving just a few feet away from the hide. Not sure if handler preconceptions and concerns had anything to do with dogs being less successful on that hide.

This search was about covering ground and staying out of the dog's way, as well as dealing with close convergence involving a very high inaccessible hide. Once again, troubles abounded because of blowing/pooling odor. A huge exhaust fan cooling system was running overhead while we searched, and, I believe a cargo bay door was open beyond the search area. Who knows exactly what was happening to the odor but the dogs!

Muriel had no trouble finding the threshold hide, the medium height hide in the wooden cargo box, the hide near the solar panels, and a hide in between two rows of shrink-wrapped material. I think we missed a hide on the building wall deep in the corner of the search area (or we didn't), and I missed the high pallet hide. That makes for a total of 6 hides in the area. The amount of time we spent trying to work out the high pallet hide was maddening! In the end, Muriel got frustrated and went to the wooden cargo box, sniffed the bottom corner opposite the hide and alerted. I knew it couldn't be right, but the two of us were desperate for some validation of our efforts at that point, so I called it. Nope. False call. Lose a half point.

Small Warehouse Vehicles - A traditional vehicle element search with the option to go off-leash. There were three vehicles and an unknown number of hides to find in 2 minutes. I chose to run Muriel off-leash and it worked out nicely for us. Because of the focus on vehicles I was much more able to read her signals and guide her to areas I wanted her to search, as compared to the more cluttered environments of the mixed element searches. Unlike the forklifts in The Moat, these vehicles were passenger cars (a minivan, SUV, and a 4-door sedan), and the configuration and hide placements were not really causing difficult convergence of the odors or blowing/pooling odor. This was more of a speed test to see if the team can stay on task and work efficiently.

This video contains some decent searching, but not the teachable moments contained in some of the other videos. I'll focus on the hide on the front of the SUV in the bumper to the left of the driver's side fog lamp. Muriel showed interest early on indicating she wanted to search towards the front of the SUV, but she turned off fast and worked problem. When she made her way to the front of the SUV she caught odor early, but wasn't quite there. I can't stress the usefulness of sourcing exercises and lingering odor exercises. I read Muriel correctly, but I'd prefer she work her way to source without needing to check in and test my handling skills!

Next week we'll continue the video analysis (and possibly the week after, too). Hopefully, it helps to see searches in action and hear some of a handler's inner monologue, as well as some post search reflecting.


Happy Sniffing!

A K9 Nose Work Conundrum: Is it Residual or Lingering Odor My Dog's Sniffing?

This week's post cites information from an article in Police K-9 magazine, which in part describes why scent terminology can be problematic for drug detection dogs. To see the article in its entirety, click here.



There is a key distinction between the work that drug or bomb sniffing dogs perform and the sport of K9 Nose Work we enjoy with our pet dogs, the key lies in how the two worlds define and place importance on what we call residual and lingering odor. According to the article in Police K-9 magazine, in the world of the police K-9, odor is odor regardless of the presence of 'source', or should I say regardless of the strength of the 'source'. If someone had a joint in his shorts three weeks ago, a drug sniffing dog might detect residual and/or lingering odor and alert on that guy's shorts! In the sport of K9 Nose Work we ask that the dogs find only the most concentrated source of the odor, and that they not alert to lingering odor - and try not to alert to residual odor (this can be challenging for reasons to be explained). So why is it that the professional sniffers get to alert to stinky gym shorts and our pet dogs have to parse a specific bloom from the scent bouquet? How do we help our dogs to become such scent sticklers? It might not surprise you to find out that our pet sniffers are capable of picking out a single pollen grain from that scent bouquet, all we need to do is give them a clear understanding of what we want from them in the search and fine tune it over time.

What do we mean by residual and lingering odor? Simply put, residual odor is some concentration of scent left behind after the removal of the source odor. Typically, this would occur when a scented cotton swab comes into direct contact with the environment as opposed to being contained in a tube or tin. Lingering odor is described as the fainter remains of scent in an area where source is no longer present. Where a dog might find a 'source' when residual odor is present, lingering odor is presumed to be much less concentrated and not resembling source odor for the dog. Lingering odor may be present without residual odor, but residual odor cannot be present without lingering (whatever more concentrated source left the residual odor also left lingering, and residual leaves its own, fainter lingering odor).

*Be careful not to contaminate your search areas with residual odor. A cotton swab dropped on the ground or stuck to a block wall is something the dogs can work through, but if the oil used to scent the swabs contacts any part of your search area, it should be removed and cleaned, and no searching should be done in that area until the highly concentrated oil has dried and the vapor has dissipated. Also important, never give your dog a reward and never use negative feedback if your dog gives a final response at a residual odor location. Just say, "okay, good dog", and move on. In most situations, we can be reasonably sure that the residual odor left after hide removal is not as strong as the hide itself, so the best course of action upon moving on is to have a sourceable hide for the dog to find and get rewarded for so learning and reinforcement can take place.

When a dog trained to find drugs or explosives does his job, he will find any amount of that substance or material he can - and in the case of explosives, we all want a dog who can find a subatomic particle's worth of bomb material to save lives and be better safe than sorry. When a dog trained to find birch, anise, or clove does his job, he will find the source of the hide. Birch, anise, and clove are not substances that put lives in the balance or break federal laws for possession (however, concentrated essential oils can be harmful, read product warnings and handling instructions before use). A K9 Nose Work dog can learn to process scent information - lingering and residual odor - and use it to reach the goal of finding source. This makes the activity & sport challenging and exciting; it's like marksmanship in the Olympics, a sniper in the field of battle may get the job done in whatever way necessary (and his is a serious job), but a marksman in a competition must use precision and meet a tighter standard (and his job is the exhibition of his skills).

Now that we can examine just what lingering and residual odor are and how they affect our dogs' performance in K9 Nose Work, how do we confront these challenges and get our dogs effectively using the scent information to find source?


Recognize the dog's earliest introduction to lingering and residual odor situations - dogs searching for primary reward (food or toy) will encounter lots of lingering and residual odor. Food grease leaves residual odor on boxes, food placed in a container and moved from one box to another leaves lingering odor. Take notice of how this is never a problem for the dogs. The main reason being that they know the ultimate reward in the search is the food or toy and there's no point hanging out where it was - only where it is. If you observe your dog as confronting these lingering and residual odor problems from the start, you should be less concerned about problems when you move to a target odor, like birch.


Allow the dog a chance to compare and make a right decision - Just like when we introduce food & toy (or critter) distractions, it's best to put the dog in the same vicinity as what you want him to ignore in favor of source odor - this way he actively chooses source odor over the distraction. With lingering & residual odor the choice is not to ignore their presence, but to use them as a marker on the path to source odor. When doing target odor searches, moving the hide just a few feet and letting the dog encounter lingering or residual odor in the presence of source odor will allow the dog to understand what pays. Keep in mind that we don't use some kind of rigorous process to prepare odor, nor do we use the same number of scented cotton swabs for every hide - it would be impossible to control the concentration of source odor for every hide. The dog does not have to make decisions regarding specific strengths of source odor in a search, he just has to choose the strongest concentration(s). If there are multiple hides, he works to find each one because they are all stronger sources than any lingering or residual odor. The hides can be different strengths, two cotton swabs and twelve cotton swabs, the dog will not ignore the two cotton swab hide because it's not as strong a source as the twelve cotton swab hide, he will treat them both as sources. And, over time, because he's consistently rewarded for source odor, when the dog reaches NW3 level skills and must clear a search area, lingering odor will not prompt him to give a final response unless the handler fails to read the dog and pushes him to search too long.


Keep your searches straightforward for the dog's learning - always make most of your training and practice searches straightforward such that the dog can build his understanding of what we want him to do for the game of K9 Nose Work. If we have him searching hides out of reach too often, we could be rewarding the dog for sniffing odor that is more like the lingering odor we don't want him to give an alert to - this usually happens because we handlers expect our dogs to give a final response in a certain area, but that might not be where the strongest concentration of odor is coming from. A search that allows the dog to puzzle through lingering odor and make a decision at source is more helpful than a search where he alerts at the base of a sign post to a hide that is 6 feet above him.



Teaching our dogs how to interpret lingering and residual odor is an ongoing process - we can add blowing/pooling odor to the list as well. Every search situation presents new challenges, and often the only way for our dogs to learn is to experience the search; we can't create a lab where we can teach them skills that will apply to real world searches, they just need to learn from the school of hard sniffs (with us, their chaperones on hand at all times to keep things from getting too hard).

I have some videos of the searches Muriel & I did at Nationals, so look out for a post in the coming weeks that shares those videos and tries to pull some teachable moments from them (shouldn't be too hard with the handling errors!)

Happy Sniffing!

K9 Nose Work® Blog Passes 35,000 Page Views!

Many thanks to all of the readers of the blog from all around the world, your continued interest in the weekly posts has helped us reach the 35k mark in less than a year!

A few fun facts to share:

Countries - we have readers from the U.S., Canada, Germany, Australia, Russia, and the U.K. (Latvia is on the list, too, but - correct me if I'm wrong, Latvians - it's more likely spammers than sniffers)

Popular Posts - the top five posts are:

Primary Reward: The K9 Nose Work Way
The K9 Nose Work Practice Group
A K9 Nose Work "Dog In Bloom" By Paula Nowak, CNWI
Your All Access Pass to Inaccessible Hides in K9 Nose Work: Part One
A Review of the First NACSW K9 Nose Work DVD: The Parker Videos

Pack Members - We now have 117 members of the blog, as well as a number of people signed up to receive posts via email. Becoming a member of the blog is an easy way to get the latest posts and maybe we'll even do some members only content in the future! Just look for the 'Join This Site' button on the right hand side of the blog page to become a member.
 
How People Find the Blog - google searches top the list, with Facebook coming in a close second. The yahoo discussion groups also help a lot of people find their way to the blog.

Beyond the Blog - Many of our posts have been printed and shared with students in K9 Nose Work classes and some of our blog posts have been used as handouts in workshops & lectures across the country (thank you Barbara Schwerdt!). If you're looking to become a CNWI, you may even see some familiar content from the blog in the next update to the training manual.

Special Thanks - We try to focus on bringing you the best smelling blog posts out there, consequently, we don't spend a lot of time self-promoting! We'd like to acknowledge some special pack members for making the blog the bark of the town:

Silke Wittig, CNWI, for always enthusiastically sharing the blog with everyone she knows
Barbara Schwerdt, CNWI, for making the blog posts part of workshops and lectures across the country

We'd also like to thank K9 Nose Work co-founder Amy Herot for inspiring most of the blog posts, and handler Gretchen Farrell & her dog Amica for inspiring most of the rest.

Thanks goes to all of the contributors to the blog, including CNWIs Paula Nowak, Jaime Fellows, Gail McCarthy, and Leah Ganglehoff! And, thanks to Christy Waehner, CNWI & the NACSW for releasing the Parker Videos DVD, the review of which is one of the five most viewed posts on the blog.

Last, but not least, thanks to every reader, every commenter, and all the people & dogs who help to grow the activity & sport of K9 Nose Work.

Happy Sniffing!

p.s. - can't forget to thank Muriel, one of many great K9 Nose Work scent translators, helping us humans understand - and write about - the world as the dog smells it.

Muriel at LAX after Nationals, wondering
why they don't make the ribbons out of
meat.

Reflections on the 2013 NACSW National Invitational Trial

This would be a great post for pictures, but instead of sharing them here, I will direct everyone to the NACSW facebook page. There you will find lots of great pictures, fun facts about the trial, comments from people all over the world, and a sentimental slide show charting the journey thus far for the sport of K9 Nose Work, the NACSW, and the 13 teams invited to compete at Nationals this year. Here on the blog, we'll reflect on the trial weekend and see how we can apply the very unique searching experience to helping future invitees to Nationals - really any nose work team - have fun and success like was had by the twelve teams that competed this past weekend.

Prep for Trial - what the National Invitational reminded me of was the first NW1 and the first NW3 trials. Dog & handler teams had no idea what to expect and were tossed into the deep end of the ocean and left to swim to shore! The big difference is that the teams at Nationals had the skills - like a Navy Seal team - to handle lots of unknowns and environmental challenges and come out sniffing. Yet, I think all 12 teams would agree that our dogs were pushed to the limit with the heat and test of endurance over two days of searching, and that we all could have used more rest the day before trial and more conditioning to do hot, large area, long duration searches.

Make sure your dog is well rested and comfortable in the days leading up to a trial. If your dog usually likes to go for a long run on Fridays and you're in a Saturday trial, make it a long walk instead. Give your dog plenty of food and water in the days before a trial, but don't feed too much the morning of a trial. If you know you're not likely to search until ten or eleven in the morning, maybe an early AM breakfast is okay, but make sure your dog is hungry enough to get some reward from searching. Remember, even dogs who search for the fun of it - hungry or not - sometimes need a little motivation to hunt from mother nature when going to trial at a new location.

You the handler should be well rested, too. Save the partying for after trial. Don't do too much strategizing leading up to trial or at the trial. Everything that will help you at trial, you already know in your gut from lots of practice and experience. If you fail at something, you'll practice and get better so next time it's in there, too.

Get in the mindset to have FUN. We are not in control of how well our dogs will do on any given day. We are just along for the ride, with a few opportunities here and there to add some value in the search.

No matter what level of nose work you and your dog are enjoying, make sure to expose your dog to as many environments as possible and to as many search scenarios as you can think of. Take advantage of an experienced CNWI or a practice group with some seasoned teams and soak up all of the search knowledge you can.

Finally, in preparation for trial, know the rules (people work very hard to set the rules and update them to make for fair competition), but do not let the rules override your dog's communication to you in the search. For example, many people fixate on the boundaries of a search area and worry about source odor being hidden on the boundary line or inside something that forms the boundary line. Just worry about watching your dog and letting him get where he wants to go - boundaries or not. But, don't be silly, if he alerts 10 feet outside the search area, move on.

Never Forget Foundation Work - a number of the searches at Nationals had some very basic hides that required threshold searching, hitting corners, covering the whole area, etc. Granted, the environment and other factors (converging odor) made finding the basic hides a bit more challenging - and a number of us missed some of these hides altogether - but there's no doubt a few of us could have used some foundation skill building in the lead up to the competition to remind our dogs and ourselves not to complicate the searches and forget about the simple stuff.

In your training, always go back to basics, but give it a fun twist to keep your dog excited. For example, the shell game we play with boxes to introduce dogs to nose work, play that game with your dog using a hide that you move back & forth along the rear bumper of a vehicle. If you have an interior area with several doorways, or pass-throughs - what we would call thresholds - set a hide at every threshold. You can work this two ways, once as a continuous search and once as individual searches where you line up at each threshold to find the odor.

Do lots of very accessible hides the dog can source, this will keep his job very clear and when he does search inaccessible odors, he'll be conditioned to get as close as possible. One thing to be mindful of, some dogs want so badly to get to the source of the odor that they may not stop trying and may not give their final response when a hide is way out of reach. Become a careful observer and take note of the behavior changes that signal your dog is onto an inaccessible odor - but also observe the times your dog is caught up in a blowing/pooling odor situation. The big difference for most teams is that when source is present the dog will not leave the area as readily as when there is no source. Another notable difference is most dogs make a decision on source odor within 15 or 20 seconds (or at least it's obvious they're working toward a decision), whereas they may work for as long as you ask them to in an area with just blowing/pooling odor.

Make a Wrong Call Sometimes (But Make Sure Your Dog Is Always Right) - The National trial was set up to allow competitors to make false calls (at the expense of points) and to continue searching, unlike the NW titling trials where a false call means the search is finished and a title will not be earned for the day.

I think almost all of us in the trial made at least one false call. Some we knew better than to call, and some our dogs sold to us like source odor kool-aid on a hot day! At the end of the first day of competition I learned that Muriel was all over two pretty high hides and I didn't buy in, and the false calls I made stemmed from me not correctly reading her interest in blowing/pooling odor. My poor dog worked back and forth for a minute or more in one search before I finally false called - she only stayed because I thought there was something important in the area.

As scary as it was to be making false calls in a trial, it was very useful in learning to better read and understand my dog's behavior changes. By the end of the trial, I still made a few false calls, but it wasn't because I was convinced Muriel had found source odor, it was because I wasn't convinced and I knew calling it would not mean the end of the search.

In practice, I'd do more blind searches with coaching. Make sure the dog is never rewarded for a handler's false call and that the handler is careful not to make too big a deal about calling the alert - just raise a hand or use another word than alert. The coach should give immediate feedback - often catching a handler before he can commit to the alert call and moving him on. This kind of practice gives the handler more feedback and helps address the root of why these false calls are being made. It's important to note that when we call alert it is not necessarily when the dog has decided he's done searching and has found source. It's when we think he is done and has found source.

Another benefit of going out on a limb and making a call you're not sure of is that you're likely to make all of your calls a little faster. I'm not saying yell alert at the first sign of a nostril flare, but maybe call it once your dog has sniffed to the left and right of an area or object, he's poked his nose in an opening, his whole back half is wiggling and waggling in anticipation of a reward - that kind of faster call. I called many of our finds faster than usual and it only got me once, we were maybe a foot away from a hide when I made the call, but we went back later in the search and sourced the hide. All in all, I feel much better about calling it faster, making a false call, and paying closer attention to my dog. I think it will make me a better observer and better handler when we go to trial and every call has to be right.

Relax and Have Fun - For Nationals Muriel & I traveled by plane from Minnesota to California. Flying her for the first time ever was a little stressful and I know it wasn't easy on her either. Our first two searches on the first day were tough and I got a little down - I made a point to blame jet lag, to say she wasn't being herself (maybe true, but not an excuse). I also think there was a bit of pressure to perform partly because we spent so much money to come to the competition, and to honor the sport by acing these searches. Thanks to the wonderful atmosphere created by the NACSW and the other competitors, it was easy to put things back in perspective and just enjoy the amazing opportunity we were given to search with our dogs.

I think this is how it should be any time we do nose work at any level, regardless of the venue. We did not take our dogs into our homes so they could parachute into the mountains of North Waziristan and find bombs and terrorists, and save the world. The fact that our dogs have learned nose work and become skilled detection dogs, with scenting and searching abilities beyond our wildest dreams, does not mean we always have to earn a placement or go home with a ribbon, or find every hide. We need to have fun and appreciate that our dogs are willing to put out a great deal of effort to find stinky cotton swabs hidden in strange environments.

We also need to remember that every search, every hour, every day is different. The best we can ask is that our dogs go along with us as partners into these searches and that we both do our best and come out smiling. K9 Nose Work trials are very specifically the measure of a dog & handler's search skills at that trial location, on that day, under those conditions. Some dogs have more good days than others, but   any day could be your dog's day to shine.


A future post may look at the individual searches at Nationals in more detail - maybe with some video. A big congratulations to all the dogs & handlers who competed at Nationals. A big thank you to the NACSW, to Amy, Ron & Jill, to the amazing judges for the weekend, and to all of the volunteers and spectators. We can't wait to see what the 2014 Nationals will have in store for the invited teams!

Happy Sniffing!

What Can You do With a Single K9 Nose Work® Search Area?

Here's a challenge: confine yourself to a single area - it can be large or small - and use it in as many ways as you can come up with for searches with your dog. I'm not talking about moving the odor to every square inch of the area - although that's probably not a bad idea - I'm talking about searches that have some sort of purpose: teaching your dog the importance of corners, working lingering odor, elevation, converging odor, working on leash handling skills, etc. This doesn't have to be a marathon day of searching, you can use the same area over time. Take some pictures of your searches, submit them to the blog or to me, and we'll have our own little social search network - instasearch or k9nosebook.

Here's an example:

Search area at the park with blue line representing the
perimeter of the area

I went to a park the other day and saw this area that was naturally defined by the slope of the land. It had two levels of block retaining wall on one end, and a lending library resembling a birdhouse on the other end. Immediately, I knew I wanted to place two elevated hides on opposite ends of the search area that would be on almost the same plane, with a third hide at the lowest point between the two elevated hides.

I actually started Muriel from right beside the car about 50 yards from the search area (she'd done some searches between the car and this current area, so her motivation was pretty high). She took off down the slope, made a 180 back up the slope and into the parking lot and worked the scent on the wind all the way over to the search area. A few yards before the retaining wall hide she turned hard left down the slope and went right to the tin on the block wall.

Hide in tin on block within blue outline. Through the trees would be the
ground hide in the valley, and beyond that, the elevated lending library
hide up the slope at the opposite end of the area

Her next move led us down the slope, across the walking path and beyond what I would define as the search area, but I wanted to see where this was leading. About 20 yards beyond the search area she made a choice to turn around and this time she was on to the elevated hide on the lending library. She got about 5 feet from the hide and hit the skids, turned down the slope and started working the ground hide. Muriel's herding instincts were telling her to round up the flock, which resulted in about thirty seconds of her bouncing between the two scent trails like a ping pong ball. Luckily, her more recently acquired scent detection skills took over and she knew that to find both sources, she best find one first. Up the slope she turned to tackle that elevated hide. The wind was blowing the hide straight across the lending library, Muriel went up and alerted to the first gust of scent she caught - still about a foot away from the very accessible hide. I gave her a shrug and one second to think about her decision and she right away went back to work, sniffed up to and nose-kissed that odor tin.

The distance from the lending library hide to the block
wall hide is about 50 yards. Notice how all three
hides are more or less in line. The wind was
blowing towards the houses in the
background, beyond the parking lot

Nothing like a good hide & a good John Grisham novel

After resolving one of the remaining two hide locations, the ground hide turned out to be pretty easy. Muriel raced down the slope on a scent avalanche from that elevated hide, then picked up the trail of the ground hide and went right to source. All smiles as she scarfed her reward over the odor, Muriel zipped off looking for the next hide (eternal optimist). Taking her back to the car was like telling your toddler that play time at the park is over - she looked a bit like a prisoner in her crate... so I tossed one more odor behind a tree just ten feet from the car, let her out for the quick find, then back into her crate a little happier (I wish it was this easy to get a toddler to leave the park).

The tin is in the bottom right corner of the image (trust me).
The retaining block walls are in the background

Given the way the search played out with the three odors in a line, two elevated, I would continue moving that line like I was creating a starburst pattern. See what happens when the wind isn't blowing two of the hides into the third, when only one or none of the hides are elevated.

Then, I might take away one of the hides and place two on opposite ends of the retaining wall. Or two along the edge of the walking path. Then, I'd try two on diagonal opposites of the search area.

Next, I'd go down to one hide and place it where the original ground hide was, see what kind of problem - or easy success - that creates. Same with the elevated lending library hide, see if that hide is easier by itself (no doubt it will be a little easier with the prior success, so factor that into your observations).

Sticking with the single hide, I'd move to different parts of the search area to start. See if starting at the top of the slope, or in the valley, makes the search different.

If my dog was on a searcher's high right then, I might use the block wall to run a fun exercise. I'd place four odors spaced out evenly on the wall and keep a short leash, giving her enough line to pass an odor, but not enough to pass it and get to the next one. For this exercise, each odor should be found before moving on. I'd do this down and back and rest on that.

Different colored dots and squiggly lines marking hide placements to
begin to illustrate the endless possibilities a single search area can offer

If Muriel and I had done all that in one day, she'd get carried back to the crate, blissfully exhausted from a search marathon! The better thing to do is to spread these different searches over many trips back to that same search area - this way you get the added bonus of different weather conditions to add variety to this single search area.    

See how easy it is to get out and have some fun searching in just one location! Your dog is game for whatever you can come up, wherever you can come up with it.

Let's get sniffing!

Is My K9 Nose Work® Dog Struggling, or is it Just Me?

Typically, it's just you (it's been just me, too, so I'm not pointing any digital digits).

We have a tendency to project our emotions onto our dogs. Heck, we have a tendency to project our emotions onto almost anything (pet rock, anybody). When it comes to K9 Nose Work, we sometimes approach a search thinking only about how quickly and easily our dogs will find the source odor, and that becomes how we measure their success. If our dogs don't find source odor quickly and easily - or by taking a certain path - we sometimes feel that they are struggling and not having fun. If it's a group setting and one dog finds the source odor quickly and easily and as we expected, the likelihood that other handlers will feel less excited about their dogs' performances if they deviate from that gets pretty high.

So how do we know if our dogs are enjoying the challenge of doing K9 Nose Work searches or if they're sending out an SOS?

Happy Dog Signs - A happy dog is usually a working dog. If he appears focused on the search, that's good. A tail that's up and/or wagging is a good sign your dog's enjoying the game. If your dog shows one or more of the common behavior changes associated with working the scent, like a head turn, head rising or dipping to follow scent, detail sniffing, quick direction change, etc., then he's probably enjoying the hunt.

Stressed Dog Signs - a dog who is in over his nose in a search might whine or yawn, or cover the same area in a pacing manner without showing any of the behavior changes mentioned above. A stressed dog will look "checked out". If your dog has searched for an extended period of time and is showing one or more of these signs, he's probably not having his best day.

* If a dog appears to be stressed during a search, make sure to rule out any more serious issues such as injury or disease. Consult with your vet before deciding it's a training issue.

When Happy Dogs Get Stressed - a search can start out great for a dog, but something about the search can present him with one too many challenges - complex hides, larger area, longer search time, unforeseen distractions, tougher environmental conditions - and he can become overwhelmed. This is when you want to have a plan B (and a plan C & D sometimes!). If you can see the signs early enough, you can manipulate the environment to give the dog a better chance at success. If your dog has worked too long and too hard to finish the search, give him a chance to work a very small, separate area with a very accessible hide and give him a break. Return to the challenging search and have a plan to change the environment so your dog can succeed. 

What's Better? The Easy Success or the Lesson Learned Through Blood, Sweat & Tears? - in K9 Nose Work, easy success is never bad. I like to think of easy success searches as conditioning for the dogs. Like a basketball player practicing layups before a game. A search that's too challenging can have less of an impact on the dog's learning than we might hope. Now, a search that is challenging, but within the dog's ability to succeed at - that can be a great learning experience.

I was once part of a search exercise where we set up multiple 3 1/2ft high wood barriers at angles to mimic office cubicles and then we placed chairs among the barriers. Many dogs running this search took a long time to sort out the converging odors and to work through the challenge of the barriers allowing scent to move freely, but not allowing the dogs the same freedom. I had to reassure a few handlers that their dogs were actually having a good time working out the problems and were not struggling or stressed. We had some edge-of-your-seat moments that day while everyone waited to see some of these hard working dogs find success, and big cheers when odor was found!

Could this search have turned into a happy dog getting stressed situation? The possibility is always there. But, it didn't on that day, and the dogs had some great learning and fun being challenged within their ability to succeed. Perhaps the heading for this section should have read: What's Safer? The easy success searches carry little risk of stressing your dog out or hindering his progress, they're easy to set up and guaranteed fun for your dog; whereas, the challenging search that's within the dog's ability to succeed at is hard to plan and execute and often requires the keen eye and quick thinking of an experienced instructor - a CNWI or ANWI. On the plus side, those well thought out, challenging searches can open whole new worlds of scent detection possibilities to your dog.

When You Practice, Follow The 80/20 Rule - also known as the Pareto Principle, it generally refers to 80% of the results being attributed to 20% of the causes for a given event. Applied to K9 Nose Work, aim roughly to make 20% of your training the challenging searches that increase your dog's scenting skills and 80% the easy successes that strengthen and motivate your dog in the hunt. You'll maximize the benefit from the challenging searches, and you'll find that the easy searches you set for your dog will be last month's challenging searches and will carry lots of benefits, too.

Next time you get out to do some K9 Nose Work, look for the signs that your dog is having a good time, and don't worry so much about how fast he's finding it or comparing him to other dogs, let the search itself be part of the fun along with finding the odor. Keep the searches fun and easy and limit the really challenging stuff to class or training with your instructor. And give your dogs some credit, they do amazing things with their sniffers - often times making a very hard task (impossible for our human noses) look easy.

Happy Sniffing!

p.s. - If you absolutely need to project your emotions onto something, I'm sure somewhere they're still selling pet rocks!