Learning From K9 Nose Work NACSW National Invitational Videos: Kristie & Jasper Part 1

Thanks again to Kristie & Jasper for sharing their videos with everyone! Each clip will show the raw search footage first and then analysis of key moments. Enjoy this awesome example of odor obedience and teamwork!

If you're looking for more details on each of these search scenarios, refer to the 3 posts featuring Muriel's National Invitational video, you can find them in the archive by scrolling down on the right hand side of this page.



The Moat - This is a fun search to watch. I asked Kristie what she was thinking as they passed the one hide Jasper didn't find...

Jeff McMahon: You hesitated as he passed the vice stand hide going towards the forklifts and going towards the table. Any idea what you were thinking at the time?

Kristie Cervantez: Jasper stopped as if he smelled food or rabbit poop or something other than odor.  He was sniffing the dirt but not searching so I told him to keep going.

The Lily Pad 1 - This search highlights the teamwork at play when Kristie & Jasper search. She lets Jasper run the search, but she keeps an eye out for areas of interest that should get a second look, and tries to make sure no areas get missed.

JM: The high hide you block with your body, what was your thinking at the time Jasper was working over there?

KC: I knew there was something in that area.  He was working the far wall and the smaller pallet quite a bit, I could tell by what he was doing he knew there was something there, he could just not quite source it.  It seemed like he worked over there for a long time.  Now that I see the video, I was blocking the source.  He decided to go to the other side of the search area, glad he did, and I figured we could be back, which we did.  He ended up finding another hide and I told him “let’s go back and figure out where that other one is”, thus guiding him right by another hide (I think).  By luck, I was in a better postion behind the short pallet and not blocking the odor this time.  He finally sourced it to the best of his ability and I trusted him and called it and we got it right.

JM: You respond well to his behavior changes, are you looking for something in particular that tells you he's definitely on to a hide?

KC: Jasper is a Labrador Retriever and he likes to retrieve.  When he is on an odor, he will do his best to try and retrieve it.  It is my best indication that he has found a hide.  Even if the hide is inaccessible, he will try to figure out a way to retrieve it and if he cannot, he will sit and look at me.

The Lily Pad 2 - Really nice search. Just watch & enjoy.

Large Warehouse Interior - Kristie didn't feel this was their best search, but I think they did quite well, and there is a lot to learn in the video.

JM: Glad you went off-leash to start, I think he would have been fine, but maybe you wanted to save Jenn Brown from getting slobbered on!

KC: This was not one of my favorite searches.  I really wanted to go off-leash but was apprehensive because the area was not completely secure and so many of our classmates were sitting in front.  Jasper sometimes like to visit.  I am glad that I tried it and I suppose if the area were secure I may have let him continue..but I did not.

It was a very difficult area to search, especially on leash.  I was feeling pretty good when he got the bucket right away and than he found people and than he was headed for the doors and on went his leash.  I was really proud of how he worked the pallet hide and in hindsight, watching, I see that he was working the shipping crate also.

I do not remember much of that search except that it was so hot in there and he was working hard.  I remember trying to go down the aisles with him and at one point I was out in front of him, not a good position.  I lost track of what he had found and where he had been and I think that I may have just given up on any kind of strategy I may have had.  I am most disappointed in how I handeled this search.  I did not do my part and he was getting really hot. 

Small Warehouse Vehicles - This search Jasper finds everything he gets access to - the only hide he misses is on the far side of a vehicle he doesn't get to search.

JM: He's not on a vehicle to start the search, yet by working the space (esp wall opposite the SUV bumper) he ends up at the first odor pretty quickly. Did any part of you really panic when he ran in not searching a vehicle right away?

KC: Another bad habit that I have during a vehicle search is to pull to the vehicles if he starts searching the wall or not searching the vehicle.  During this search, I actually did not panic (for a change), I thought to myself “leave him alone..maybe he is working his way to the vehicle because the odor is bouncing off the wall”.  I trusted him and he was right.

JM: Before he finds the hide on the mini-van, he ducks under the rear bumper and checks a few times on the driver's side of the vehicle. You seemed to hold him on that side (hence the attempt to crawl under the rear of the van), was that because of the find on the SUV rear bumper being so close by?

KC: The rest of this search is a blur.  It went so fast.  I wish that I had done if off-leash.  I forgot that we had the option.  After he found the first one, I was just trying to remember where he had already been.  Everything started to look the same and the time went so fast.

JM: He misses the last hide because you didn't give him total access. Interesting that you went back to the area you'd covered several times rather than go check the one car that you'd barely checked - any thoughts on why you turned back to the area already covered?

KC: Again, lost track of where we had been and what he had already found.  It was fun though!

Vehicles Open Bay - This search was tricky for video cameras to capture, but there's a nice view of Jasper working a deep hide under the flatbed truck.

JM: Nice work on the drum hide under the flatbed.

KC: It is the retrieveing thing again.  Jasper is not afraid to go as far under a vehicle as he can to try and retireve a hide.  When he is working like that, I know he has found it, I just need to wait for him to let me know.

JM: In this search there are parts of the vehicles he doesn't pay much attention to, interesting that he misses the hide in the metal frame on the rear of the flatbed. You were moving pretty fast through the area. 

KC: I have a bad habit of moving too fast in vehicle searches.  I need to slow down my pace a bit so that he will slow down his pace a bit thus not missing things because we go by too fast.  Funny at the end, he had his eye on my back pocket.  I guess he figured out where I was keeping his treats.  :)

More videos to come soon!


Happy Sniffing!

Getting to the Source: Finding and Fixing Hidden Training Issues With Your K9 Nose Work® Dog (And You)

Almost every K9 Nose Work team will face one or more training speed bumps on their scent work journey. Some have easy solutions (stop reaching in your pocket for treats just before your dog finds the hide), others, like a suddenly false/fringe alerting dog, take more time. Let's look at a few of the most common issues and some tips on how to fix them so your team can get back to sniffing at highway speeds (regardless of what Sammy Hagar says, in nose work, you CAN drive sniffty-five)!

*Remember to always seek out the knowledge and expertise of a Certified or Associate Nose Work Instructor (CNWI/ANWI) to guide you on your nose work journey and help pump you up when your team's sniffer goes flat. A trained eye observing you and your dog can identify and fix more problems in a few searches than you reading every article on nose work out there and trying to fix things on your own.    



My dog loses interest or gives up in new/challenging environments: This problem can blindside a team that is otherwise strong. If your dog does well in class - his home base for nose work - and advances his skills, there is a tendency to train at that level in all situations. But, a dog who is less experienced in an area - like exteriors - will not respond well to advanced challenges as an introduction to an already challenging environment.

Keeping with the exterior area example, an otherwise strong dog may get into this environment to search for a challenging hide, show a little odor obedience, but not see the search through to source. He may get distracted easily, choose other activities to do instead of searching, and he may even show signs of stress, or give up altogether.

The fix: Shift your thinking back to the early stages of the game and how your dog was introduced to searching. Bring out the boxes, use a little presentation, keep search areas small, keep searches simple. Get your dog to buy-in to the game in this environment. Don't move too fast to increase the difficulty of the searches. Keep the sessions short and end with an easy search. If your dog just won't come on board to search for odor in this environment, pair food and odor.

Tips to avoid this problem: While your dog is searching for primary reward and paired food & odor, try to spread your training out evenly across all the elements of K9 Nose Work. Don't wait until your dog is searching odor only to increase the difficulty level of searches. You're much more likely to see a motivated sniffer working tough problems when his nose tells him there's definitely an edible reward waiting at the source.



My dog suddenly started false and/or fringe alerting: This is not a problem that just fell out of the sky. Your dog has been thinking a lot for a long time about what gets him his reward, and he's probably not the one to blame for this new behavior. This is very simply a communication issue. You don't see too many dogs false or fringe alert when searching for primary reward. They might go back to the last hide placement and check it out to see if what paid once will pay twice, but there's rarely a commitment to that spot, it's more like wishful sniffing.

The problem starts developing when we a) introduce a formal alert or wait for the dog to offer a final response b) start working more blowing/pooling/lingering/inaccessible odor hides c) start working more blind hides. We introduce too many other possibilities for our dogs to be right and get rewarded. Suddenly, pawing after finding source or looking at you after finding source gets a reward. Sometimes a sniffing dog working lingering or pooling odor near source can get a reward because we think that's good enough or we're having a lazy day. With inaccessible hides we can send all sorts of mixed signals; a dog doesn't get rewarded for catching the scent at it's strongest point, because we think that's not correct, or a dog gets rewarded, but could have worked closer to the source.  

The fix: So, the easiest thing to do is slow down on a, b, and c. Go back to easier hide placement (like small cones or buckets that the odor collects in around the hide so the source is easy to find and stick with), go back to instant reward at source, and keep the blindfold off (no blind hides) so you're not giving your dog the wrong signals about what pays. Work your way slowly back to the more confounding hide placements and occasional blind searches, always with an eye to reward your dog for source odor recognition. As much as 'looks at me' is a pretty obvious final response for finding odor, there's a risk that the 'looks at me' behavior becomes the trigger in your dog's mind and the source odor is just an extra step in the process. Odor needs to be the final stop on the train to treat town. Practice rewarding your dog more for a nose sniffing source, and hopefully that will reduce the chances that he'll sniff a chair halfway across the room from the hide and give you that treat eliciting 'looks at me' face.

Tips to avoid this problem: From the very first time you reward, pay careful attention and time your reward to be delivered when your dog is actually sniffing the odor. This is fairly easily done when pairing food and odor, because your dog is already there doing what you want without having to wait on you. As you and your dog progress, there may be times where he gobbles his reward at source and turns to look for seconds from you - this is a good time to chill out and be cool. His nose will go back to that source and that's when you bring in that reward. Do that often enough, and even if he looks at you occasionally, he'll be a true believer that only odor pays.

When I say "show me" my dog sometimes doesn't go back to source: I am always interested to see this command in action. The luckiest handlers speak it and the dog goes and finds the hide again and gets his reward, but most of the time this command translated to dog speak goes something like this: "Well, if I found it the first time and didn't get paid, why am I going back to that same spot? Maybe, I'll try something else." And so you get a dog that starts checking other spots around the source of the hide, and maybe he sweeps over the source again and you reward, but maybe he doesn't - and you reward. You can see how this gets confusing for the dog.

The fix: Zip your lip and let your reward do the talking. If you miss an opportunity to reward when your dog is sniffing source, have patience and be ready to deliver a well-timed reward the next time he finds the hide. If getting your dog to stick on odor is a chronic problem, then see the fix for the prior problem and work on setting hides that promote your dog sticking at source. When you reward, pay it out slowly so your dog stays at source longer, and don't hand out a reward for him looking at you, only for him sniffing at source.

If your use of "show me" comes from past experience misreading your dog and calling an alert too soon, it's best to phase the phrase out of your vocabulary. Your dog could actually get used to the chain of events you're reinforcing, get in odor and close to source, check-in with handler, get told "show me", sniff again somewhere near source and check-in for reward. It's better to set up non-blind searches and plan only to respond to your dog sniffing source. That means if he stops two feet before the hide and looks at you, just keep on walking, and if you must stop, don't engage your dog with eye contact or body language. Be patient and only come to life and deliver a reward when he finds that hide.

Tips to avoid this problem: Don't introduce a "show me" command. Instead, observe your dog carefully in non-blind searches and get to know the signs that he's found source odor. When you encounter the rare situation where you're not confident in your observational skills or your dog isn't giving you his normal signs, just relax. He'll know there's only one way to get his reward: go to source; and if you miss him going there the first time, he'll go back, because he's never been paid for anything but going to source.

My dog urinated in a search. He's never done this before!: Dogs relieve themselves during searches for many reasons. Some dogs reveal themselves early on in the game as uninhibited eliminators. Other dogs show pretty good control, closing the flood gates on command before so much as a drip of urine drops to the ground. All dogs have the potential to go to the bathroom during a search, no matter how long they've been doing nose work. Still, it's shocking and embarrassing to a person when his dog soils a perfect search record by answering nature's call in the search area.

The fix: Management. Try a pre/post-search routine that involves a command to get busy and empty the tanks. When searching known areas of urinary interest, don't support your dog's pre-potty routine. Keep him moving until he's actively working the hide. Take note of how your dog looks in areas that have no nearby hides. Often, with no or very little available scent dogs will check out of the search and check in to relieving, marking, checking their peemail. If you learn to read the signs, you can manage your dog in the search and keep odor obedience at the top of his list.

If and when your dog eliminates in the search, don't panic. Give him a break and get back out there to find that odor. Adjust the search to make the hides easier to find if necessary. The key is not to keep your dog from areas where he's likely to pee, it's to increase the importance of odor in areas where he's likely to pee. If odor obedience is winning 9 times out of 10, he's doing great.

Tips to avoid this problem: There's no avoiding nature's call. It's better to face areas that he may want to eliminate in and do your best to set him up for success: pre/post-search elimination routine, easy hides in smaller search areas, careful observation of when he's switched over to critter/pee mode.  



Despite the different issues that can pop up in our K9 Nose Work journeys, our dogs are uber-forgiving and always willing to wait for us to catch on to the problem and offer a solution. So, be the handler your dog deserves and approach each bump in the road knowing that the road was smooth to start, you probably caused the bump, and the road can be smooth again if you focus on clear communication and odor obedience for your dog.

Happy Sniffing! 

Learning From K9 Nose Work® NACSW™ National Invitational Video Part 3

This week we look at the last two searches from the National Invitational (no more searches - cue the sad horn, waaah waaah). I want to thank the NACSW again for giving us competitors the video footage of our searches and encouraging us to share it with the world. The response to these posts has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's clear that future posts featuring video would be warmly welcomed... so, we will see what can be done.

In the meantime, happy viewing!

 

Garage Bottles - One of the coolest K9 Nose Work searches ever. Toys, bottles, food in bottles, and garbage was scattered throughout the small warehouse. This was a 6 minute search for an unknown number of hides. A few teams had trouble with the distractors - dogs were picking them up and carrying them, false alerting, and just losing focus and wasting time. Muriel was made for this search because she has no interest in toys - or in using water bottles as toys - and she does a good job ignoring food distractions.

We found 7 out of a total of 8 hides and made one false call. There was a hide on the small blue step stool that we missed, and Muriel barely even noticed it. I know I don't even remember seeing the stool in the search area, so I was no help as far as making sure she searched everywhere.

One thing we really did well in this area was covered the threshold at the end of the search. Always important to work the whole search area, even if you feel like you cleared the threshold when you and your dog passed through it at the start of the search.

Interior Tables & Chairs - Our last search of the event. There were 5 hides to find in 3 minutes. This was a very fair, well thought out search. The dogs were challenged by the convergence of odors and the handlers were challenged by navigating the area in the time allotted. We missed one odor and I made one false call, and it was mostly a case of not covering the area completely and getting hung up on blowing odor.

Something to note on this false call and the one in the garage bottles search is that in both instances, there doesn't seem to be any behavior on Muriel's part that indicates she's close to or attempting to get close to a source odor. If the source is within her reach, she'll quicken her sniffing, detail the area around the hide like she's following a dashed line to an 'x' marking the spot, and inhale/exhale loudly at the source, taking in that sweet source odor like a fine wine. If the source is out of her reach, she'll make a clear attempt or attempts to get closer to the source, which usually manifests as bracketing the source (the high hides from last week's videos show this), and she's determined in her sniffing, like she knows the scent she's smelling is coming directly from a very nearby source. If no source is present nearby, her investigation of the area can look similar, but is usually missing the bracketing and determined sniffing. She's not locking down a part of the area where she knows source is coming from, rather, after an extended period of me enabling/encouraging/forcing her to work an area without source odor, she arbitrarily picks a part of the area and lets me fill in the blank.

Next week, we look at a few nose work training issues that can go undetected until you're least prepared to face them, and we offer a few tips on how to get your dog's sniffer back up to speed... and, in the coming weeks we have a special treat, handler Kristie Cervantez with her black lab Jasper has put her video from the National Invitational in the mail to Minnesota to be analyzed and shared on the blog! Kristie & Jasper did a fantastic job at the National Invitational, coming in first place overall for the two day competition, as well as earning a number of other top placements over the weekend. A big thank you to Kristie!



Happy Sniffing!  

Learning From K9 Nose Work® NACSW™ National Invitational Video Part 2

Here are two searches from day two of the National Invitational. I'm pretty sure all of us competitors felt much better on day two with the experiences from day one under our belts. I really got thrown by some of the challenges of day one and the way Muriel reacted to some of the hides (not quite her usual self). On our drive back to where we were staying after day one of searching, Muriel and I agreed to put the failures of the day behind us and do better on day two. Thanks to Muriel really searching her heart out, we did much better day two.

On to the first two searches of day two!

Equipment Exterior - This is easily the most fun I've had searching an exterior/vehicles. The size of the area is hard to recall, but it seemed to be around two-thirds of an acre - big, and full of stuff. This was an 8 hide, 6 minute search. No one found all 8, but a few dogs found 7 hides. The start line stretched the length of the search area and was flanked on one side by a trailer and metal steps, and on the other side by a fence and forklift. I will confess that although I used some dust to check wind during the walk-through, the only wind going through my mind at the start of the search was blowing between my ears where my brain should have been. In my case, at least, it will probably take years more of searching before I can consistently assess wind in the search area and apply the information to read/help Muriel as she works to find source odor.

Going over the video for this search made me think about the importance of observing as many dogs as possible working blowing/pooling odor problems. I think there is an observable difference between a dog working blowing/pooling odor when a hide(s) remains to be found, and a dog working the same problem when all hides have already been found (or at least all hides in that general area). Something to think about when we handlers start hanging around too long in these blowing/pooling odor areas.

Warehouse - This search tested how quickly dog & handler can work an area under time pressure. There were 6 hides to find in 2 minutes! Working quickly is not our strongest attribute as a team. Muriel sometimes gets caught up sniffing every particle of scent on her way to source, and I sometimes let superfluous sniffing go on too long. In this search, we did well enough with time management, but we missed a hide and had a false call.

The hide I made the false call on is similar to what trips up many handlers in NW1 trials: a hide where the dog may catch the odor strongly near, but not at, source and/or the handler may call alert before the dog is done working to source.

Two more searches remain to be analyzed, the Garage Bottles search (with tons of distractions), and the Interior Tables search (with lots of tables & chairs). Those videos will come in a post next week.


Happy Sniffing!

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!