NW170: Building Blocks of Nosework - Before Odor

So in our Core Lecture on the Benefits of Nosework, we learned how sniffing and searching activates the Seeking System in our dogs and releases dopamine, the feel good neurotransmitter! Now we are going to get a little practical and will start to stimulate some dopamine releases in our own dogs!

We are going to do this with simple things that we have around the house. You shouldn’t need to buy anything expensive. In my pantry I had a set of plastic microwave dishes…. These are perfect for hunting bowls! Some methods for doing nosework use cardboard boxes. That’s fine too. The reason why I prefer bowls is that I try very hard not to encourage too much interaction with cardboard boxes from the very beginning. Why? Well, if a dog is destined to compete in Nosework, you want to avoid box smashing as much as possible. In NW101, we will give you alternatives to boxes and small Tupperware dishes. I actually don’t introduce boxes to my dogs until they understand how to indicate odor properly. Of course that is down the road so now instead I like to use plastic bowls.



In this case we will start with a bunch of bowls…. They don’t need to be all the same! Whatever you have will work. Just spread them out on the kitchen floor and put cookies in one. Your dog will very quickly start to hunt for the cookies! Congratulations!! You have just triggered a dopamine release!

In this video I am working alone. You can either put your dog in a Sit-Stay (if they have one) or you can crate your dog or puppy. This search forms the very basic beginning of the exercise, Make sure you don’t skip this part!

In the lecture about the 4 D’s of Dog Training, remember we talked about Duration, Distance, Distraction and Diversity? These exercises will help to provide the foundational aspects for all of these!

We can start to work on DURATION by making this even MORE exciting for dogs! Once your dog has found the bowl with the treats in it, throw MORE treats in the bowl, one by one. Later, this foundation will encourage your dog to “stay at source”. Although we probably won’t want to throw rewards to our dogs when they are searching for essential oil down the line, this will help them to understand that there is value is not moving from the location where the “hide” was found. Plus, it’s really fun for the dogs!

Notice in this video, after Brava gets the idea that food is going to keep coming, I’m actually waiting for her to put her nose back in the bowl. When she does, that triggers me tossing in another cookie. Now imagine what this will look like when there is actual odor! That’s easy-peasy stay at source behavior! This skill will readily transfer later on.

We can start to work on DISTANCE by slowly starting your dog farther and farther back from the food bowls. Later, this will translate to drive for odor. In your trained Nosework dog, you will want the dog to search for source that might be quite some distance away, latch on to that scent and follow it back to the hide.

For Distance, it’s helpful if your dog has a Platform behavior. Platforms are a super way to start to introduce Stays. I just bought a Klimb so I thought it would be a cool application! You can use a mat, dog cot, or if your dog or puppy doesn’t have a platform behavior yet, you can use a crate and simply start your dog farther back!



Once your dog is excitedly searching for the correct bowl at a distance, we can take the next step and add DISTRACTION. Down the road, your nosework dog will need to pass up all kinds of distracting smells and goodies in pursuit of the target odor (we call the essential oil that we are looking for “target odor”. This is the scent that dog has been trained to find). In this video, Judd found 3 target odor boxes in 37.95 seconds ignoring 12 distractions consisting of food and toys!



To add DISTRACTION, we can set up our food bowls near some other interesting smells. You can use your own shoes (the stinkier the better!), a dog bed, anything you can think of! When you work this exercise initially, don’t worry about distance. Remember, when we work the 4 D’s, we need to make things simpler each time we try a new D.

Next, we will work on DIVERSITY. Remember that Diversity is all about generalization. This means that you might have to get out of your kitchen and train somewhere else! You can get creative here. Go ahead and start in other rooms of your house. If you have an especially brave pup, you can even do the search in the bathtub! (Don’t try the bathtub search if your dog shows any trepidation…. Remember that Confidence is Key!)

In this search, you can see that my bathroom is very small and tight! This is an essential skill for your future Nosework dog. Lots of dogs dislike working in tight spaces. Building that ability NOW will pay off in spades later!

Here’s Brava trying the bathtub! Before this search I got her comfortable with jumping in the bathtub by playing a little fetch with her favorite ball. Although your Nosework dog will NOT have to be climbing into bathtubs, it can simulate the requirement to work different surfaces. Remember to only try this if your dog is COMFORTABLE jumping into the bathtub. This might be a little harder for very small dogs or older dogs, so make sure you use common sense in your training decisions.

So now we’ve introduced some hunting skills and we’ve started to add DURATION, DISTANCE, DISTRACTION and DIVERSITY.

HOMEWORK:

Work on the 4 D’s and submit a video showing your progress! Make sure you don’t rush through the steps… take your time!