NW250: NW3 Prep - Mental Strategies and Advanced Puzzles

Week 1:

Each week we are going to test our skills with advanced scent puzzles. Some of these you might find in trials, some might be a bit more challenging that what you are liable to come across. Each puzzle is intended to stretch your skills as a handler as well as help your dog to learn to source complex hides. There will be NW3 options and Elite Division options for each challenge. If you have a very strong NW3 dog, feel free to try the Elite Division option. The Elite Division option is intended to be extremely difficult as there are no hide parameters for this level. These puzzles should NOT be done blind. A quick note… these are VERY hard challenges… I don’t expect that you will be 100% successful. These puzzles DO however work on necessary skills for NW3 and above.

This week we are going to start on complex puzzles with converging odor and pooling odor.

Exercise 1:

Inaccessible and Accessible with Converging Odor

In this challenge place an inaccessible hide (not inaccessible by elevation, inaccessible due to being in a drawer or some other enclosed or hard to reach space) near an accessible hide. Make one hide Clove and the other Clove/Anise or Clove/Birch combo. If you are training for another organization, please substitute for your target odors.

NW3 Option: Place the hides approximately 4 to 6 feet apart

Elite Option: Place the hides 2 to 3 feet apart

Here’s an NW3 type of puzzle with converging odor, one hide is accessible and one hide is inaccessible. This was part of an Elite Level search (which I will share in its entirety at a later point). Watch Judd’s body language as he transitions from one scent cone to the other.

Here’s a video of Judd doing a high convergence search. One hide is inaccessible, one is accessible. Hides are about 2 feet apart in a small enclosed space. He found the accessible hide immediately but you’ll notice that I didn’t recognize it right away since the heat shrink tube had fallen to the ground. It was originally at nose level. He still does a nice job working out the puzzle.

Before you enter the search area, keep your dog on the start line for a little longer than usual.  Let him catalog the hide locations.  You'll find that as you use your start line more effectively, your dog wil start to do much of the difficult work before even beginning the search. 

The key to this exercise is to not rush your dog out of the area.  This is especially important in the Elite Level searches.  By training with a combo odor you are giving your dog information about a second hide.  Once your dog gets adept at this challenge you can start to use the same odor (which really increases the level of difficulty).  However, remember that every hide has its own scent profile so even if both hides were Clove... a skilled dog will be able to find both.  Don't rush this exercise!  This is about your dog figuring out the puzzle rather than completing the exercise quickly.

The other critical aspect is that you MUST age your hides.  Dogs who have worked with non-aged hides for a period of time will develop a habit of hunting and pecking for odor and instead of following the scent cone to the next nearby hide, the dog may tend to leave the immediate search area all together.  Scent cones are like three dimensional maps for our dogs.  If your dog is struggling with the distance between the hides, keep the aging the same (at least 20 to 30 minutes at a very minimum) but increase the distance between hides.

If you are doing well with this exercise, you can enlist a helper to set them as blind searches for you.

Exercise 2:

Converging odor with one hide in a corner

In this challenge we are also practicing converging odor. However with this challenge we will place one of the hides in a corner. Corner hides are especially difficult. Place your non-corner hide at approximately the same height as the corner hide. The non-corner hide can be accessible or inaccessible. Make one hide Clove and the other Clove/Anise or Clove/Birch (or use odors specific to your organization)

NW3 Option: Place hides 4 to 6 feet apart, no higher than four feet high

Elite Option: Place the corner hide at a higher level (4 to 6 feet) than the non-corner hide or vise versa

Here’s Melissa and Edge working on converging odor with a corner.  The odor was collecting in the box.  In fact, the odor from BOTH hides were collecting in the box.  This is quite a difficult puzzle as the scent from the elevated hide is actually falling onto the hide in the box.  Edge has been taught to value corners.  By keeping him in the immediate scent area, he was able to catch the scent of the elevated hide and work it to source.  Having the structure on the shelves helped him to find source.  Remember that structure holds scent and changes air flow.

So how to you encourage your dog to search a corner?  Remember that handling is a dance.  Although ideally we would like the dog to do 100% of the work, we are still a part of the team.  The dog is in essence the "Team Captain" but the handler is also an important resource.

Watch my body language in this very short clip.  With a step towards Judd I'm able to simply encourage him to search a corner without actually helping him (this is a blind search however because of the way I handled this corner, Judd did not miss the hide and we easily passed the element (this is an example of a NW3 hide).

Exercise 3A:

Pooling Odor

Pooling odor is something that you will have to deal with in NW3 and Elite Division. Where the odor pools doesn’t necessarily mean that that is where the odor is located! This is a puzzle that dogs need to learn to figure out on their own.

For this exercise you will need a fan and an area where odor can pool. Place the fan near the odor on very low setting and let the odor age. Make sure that the fan currents are pointing towards a naturally pooling element. Run your search.

NW3 option: Place 1 hide for this exercise

Elite Option: Place two hides for this exercise

Here’s Melissa and Edge working the Pooling odor exercise. Notice that the odor is pooling in the corner and collecting below the hide.

Here's Bounce working through Pooling Odor.  Notice that as the hide gets farther from the pooling odor that the difficulty level increases.

Exercise 3B:

Pooling Odor with Containers

Another alternative of this exercise that is VERY useful to work is to apply this to Containers.

Set up Containers like the puzzle in this section of a recent NW3 trial that I attended....  Place the hide with odor in the center as indicated.  Then place a fan at 12:00 so that the odor pools up against the neighboring containers.  

NW3 Option: Do not worry about distractors in this exercise if you are doing NW3.  

Elite Option: If you are practicing for Elite, put out 3 or 4 distractors.