[Skylar]

We did this today in our nose work class. I thought one makes a good recall game. The other is a fun game for any dog who has been introduced to nose work.

First game was to help us improve our leash handling skills. You toss food out so the dog runs to the treat. Then call your dog back. I thought this is a great game to teach recall on a long line if you treat when the dog comes back. You could even bend down and hold the collar for a second before releasing your dog to run out for the treat. Your dog learns that coming to you doesn’t end the fun. In nose work we are not supposed to have the leash touch the floor or get tangled up and move any containers in the search area. My nose work leash is 10’. This exercise was to help us release leash quickly when our dogs run ahead to find the scent and to reel the leash in quickly when our dogs move in the area closer to us. We need to give our dogs enough leash to do their work, we don’t want to distract them or pull them off scent without the leash touching the ground.

The second game consisted of tossing a container with scent so the prey drive kicked in sending them running to the scent. As we treated them over the scent container we picked it up and tossed it another direction for our dog to chase again. Boy did Babykins love this game. It’s a great exercise for any dog that has been introduced to any scent.

 

[Click-N-Treat]

Your post has a red frown face. I was wondering if this was a NOT fun game day.

Sounds like a whole lot of fun. I like the restrained recall game with puppies because it builds the drive to get to the person who is calling them. One person holds the dog's collar. Second person calls the dog, only the person holding the collar doesn't let go right away. All kinds of exciting things are happening outside of where the puppy can get too. The person who is calling has toys and treats, but still the dog can't go. Then finally, the collar is released. The puppy explodes from excitement to get to the person who called. Ever see a puppy try to outrun their own body? It looks flailing and cartoonish but builds drive for the recall.

The scent tossing game, wow that does sound like something Noelle would enjoy. She's a "sniffy" dog. She would really like being rewarded for using her nose. I'm intimidated by those scent trials, though. You're much braver than I am, Skylar!

 

[lily cd re]

Certainly both of those games sound like great motivators for scent work. I don't really have any plans to pursue scent work myself since I want to keep Lily focused on rally and I don't want to add things in for Javelin that might mess up his utility scent work which needs to be methodical, not prey drive charged.



That first game is a variation of what my trainer introduced to me as "get it get it." We start introducing it on a short lease and toss a cookie making sure the dog sees it and we tell them to get it. As they pick up the cookie and start eating we call their name. As the dog gets close to the handler you toss another treat and repeat however many times you want. For a pup this is a great way to teach the dog its name and also serves that purpose of come to me and something fun will happen before you know it. You can add a collar grab to help the dog to understand that they need to accept your hand on the collar as not just a way to end fun. I do it off leash now sometimes as a warm up exercise.

 

[BabetteH]

Those sound like fun! We're not on odor yet, but we'll try the first game.

 

[Skylar]

Your post has a red frown face. I was wondering if this was a NOT fun game day.

Sounds like a whole lot of fun. I like the restrained recall game with puppies because it builds the drive to get to the person who is calling them. One person holds the dog's collar. Second person calls the dog, only the person holding the collar doesn't let go right away. All kinds of exciting things are happening outside of where the puppy can get too. The person who is calling has toys and treats, but still the dog can't go. Then finally, the collar is released. The puppy explodes from excitement to get to the person who called. Ever see a puppy try to outrun their own body? It looks flailing and cartoonish but builds drive for the recall.

The scent tossing game, wow that does sound like something Noelle would enjoy. She's a "sniffy" dog. She would really like being rewarded for using her nose. I'm intimidated by those scent trials, though. You're much braver than I am, Skylar!

Click I don’t know why that red frown face is there... it was there when I hit the new topic button. It should have a happy face because dogs love both these games.

Noelle would be amazing at nose work because she’s already trained to alert to low (hypoglycemia) or high (hyperglycemia) blood sugar. But I wonder if doing nose work with other scents would distract her from being a diabetic alert dog? I wonder if anyone with a trained alert dog competes in this sport. But I could see using the game of chasing the scent container being useful in early stages of training alerts to high or low blood sugar.

I just thought it was clever to modify games already used for other training to build skills in nose work.

Babette when you are ready both of these ga,es can be done early in scent work training.

Catherine, one of the scents we’ve worked on is handler discrimination where Babykins has to pick my scent out from empty containers and a container scented by someone else. I’m hoping it strengthens Babykins for the scent articles and doesn’t confuse her.

I started nose work just for fun, then we started to compete and discovered that Babykins is good, clearly understands the work and most importantly this is the one sport that I don’t experience high anxiety. I love that I can rehearse competition with low anxiety with the hope I can adopt this feeling when I compete in other sports.

 

[Click-N-Treat]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that problem. Maybe Noelle should stick to finding scent articles. She really, really, REALLY likes doing that. I put her scented article on a shelf and put the rest of them in a pile on the floor. Noelle hit the pile, sniffed all them and realized the hot one wasn't there! Then I heard her nose just working. Sniffing, sniffing, where is that dumbbell? She found the missing dumbbell and was elated when she brought it to me.

 

[Skylar]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that problem. Maybe Noelle should stick to finding scent articles. She really, really, REALLY likes doing that. I put her scented article on a shelf and put the rest of them in a pile on the floor. Noelle hit the pile, sniffed all them and realized the hot one wasn't there! Then I heard her nose just working. Sniffing, sniffing, where is that dumbbell? She found the missing dumbbell and was elated when she brought it to me.

What you described is a nose work dog in action, that’s exactly the behavior. She’s nailed the scent articles. That’s the behavior I expect from Babykins when we do scent work... she is finding the scent in the room and working it back to the source whether it’s on the floor, on a shelf, hidden in a container or hanging on the wall. When you hear that sniffing noise, you know they are seriously working that scent cone. Noelle knows what she is doing. She’s got this.