No, we’re not suddenly training our dogs on narcotics.
Do you have your dog search areas where there is little or no clutter? Or do you tend to gravitate to areas where there are cool hide placements on “things?”
If we spend too much time searching areas with objects or placing our hides on objects, our dogs can easily become patterned to detail objects in an area, often moving around the perimeter, or becoming stuck in areas where there is clutter. Often ignoring areas where there is apparently “nothing.”
Objectless areas can also be hard for the handler, if there’s nothing around, what are we going to do?
As you progress in your training, you’ll be setting your hides on various vertical planes, so they learn to search high, at nose height, and low, on the ground. Some dogs naturally like sniffing the ground and in the case of crack hides, this is a distinct advantage!
I like to introduce crack hides quite early on in the canine’s scentwork training as these puzzles are a good way of introducing objectless areas.
Here’s an example of how this works – a straw in a crack in the sidewalk with nothing around to search.
Easy, right? Well, not necessarily. These kinds of hides can be very tricky depending on weather conditions and the nature of the substrate they are placed in. Setting crack hides in pathways that have long thin gaps between the pavers can cause odour to travel quite far along the crack. In the case of slippery floors, odour can end up dispersing quite literally, all over the place.
I recommend when you start crack hides that you place your hide close to the side of a building or other structure to give odour something to “hold on to” aka pool, so that the dog can use it as a reference point to work back to source. Then gradually, as your dog becomes more proficient at the exercise, set the hides in more wide open spaces.
What’s the difference between a crack hide and just putting a tin in the grass in a big field? Well, both of these placements work on the dog’s ability to air scent and locate hides on the ground, but the difference is that crack hides tend to show up in trials, where a visible tin in the grass won’t. Working crack hides gives you the opportunity to work on air scenting as well as working through odour moving around on slick surfaces.
So if you want to give this a go, you’ll need to have your straw hides or small thin metal hides, something that can easily be tucked into a tiny crack. If it’s the first time you’ve done this, I’d suggest using two or three QTips, make sure the hide “pops” this isn’t the time to work with low odour.
Set a hide for your dog either out in your driveway in a crack between two pavers or a crack in the asphalt, somewhere that you can easily tuck in a ground hide. Alternatively, do it indoors in your tidy garage and put the hide in the middle of the room.
Try to make your search area somewhat devoid of objects and see what your dog does with it – does the canine check the perimeter of the area? Do they air-scent, or realise the hide must be low and start sniffing the ground?
There are a few variations of this one of which is to set the hide in an area where there is a choice for the dog, perhaps half the room is full of clutter and the other half fairly open without much stuff. Set the crack hide in the open area and see what your dog does. Are they immediately drawn to the objects or do they follow their nose?
Another fun game using crack hides is to set out a line of cold containers with a crack hide in between two of them. Is the dog working the containers on autopilot or does he figure out that the containers are unproductive?
Those kinds of dogs that spend a lot of time sniffing the ground will have an easier time than larger dogs that tend to wave their noses around a bit bit higher.
Have you tried crack hides with your scentwork dog? How did it go? Any questions? Put ’em in the comments section below!