It’s a common question and here in New Zealand, one that’s discussed a lot. Many handlers are quite happy with the allocated times for their searches, but others not so much.

So let’s take a look at what’s important in a trial search and why continually timing out may not be that there’s “not enough time.”

In my opinion, when a dog doesn’t find all the hides, very rarely is the answer “they needed more time” (note I said rarely, not “never”).

There are many reasons why a dog may miss hides, particularly in a multiple-hide search – and if after four minutes your dog has not located the three hides in Dogs New Zealand Excellent level, for example then it’s likely that’s a good time to stop anyway.

There is nothing to be gained by walking your dog around, showing them where you want them to sniff, and overhandling so it becomes just “obedience with targeting.”

There are a number of reasons that folks can time out on a three-hide search, including but not limited to:

• the puzzle was too difficult for that dog on that day
• the hides were wonky as a result of changing environmental conditions
• the dog was simply not “feeling it” that day, they aren’t robots
• overhandling and keeping your dog in unproductive areas too long
• searching from a human perspective rather than from a dog perspective

Excessively long searches will more often than not end up with the dogs looking flat and dejected being shown where to search, leaving the “covering” of the area to the handler, and not actually hunting.

Scentwork or nosework or whatever anyone wants to call it, is at it’s very core a “hunting” game, tapping into all the instincts and joy of the dog hunting for something and finding it – or not.

Is the only definition of success finding all the hides? In my opinion, no.

Ask yourself (yes, novice handlers, too): how often do you finish a search at a hide vs. while the dog is still hunting? How often do you capture the focus and joy of the hunt, regardless of whether they locate the hide or not?

How long does it take your dog to find hides at home? This is a good indication of your dog’s ability to cast out for odour, catch a thread, and work it to source. If you’re doing a three-hide search at a trial (Excellent level, Dogs New Zealand) you have four minutes.

Four minutes is a long time.

If your dog finds none, one, two, or three hides in that time, celebrate! Spend more time in training allowing your dog to cover search areas themselves, hunting for that first thread of odour.

Dogs see a search area as a vibrant watercolor of different levels and depths, they don’t see a table and chairs and a couple of old fridges in the middle.

The usable information for the hide might be on the other side of the room – if you make the dog walk around in a specific way, there’s a good chance the dog will miss a vital piece of information that they could have found themselves, and used that information to find source.

More time in a trial doesn’t equal more success.

And what even IS success? Are we focusing on the piece of cardboard or are we focusing on having a front row seat watching our own Best Scenting Dog in the World doing their thing?

Of course it’s disappointing not to qualify, that’s why we go to trials, right, to test our skills. And one of those skills is knowing when to stop. Stop the search, the dog doesn’t have to find all the hides as the only measure of success.

So for those just moving up to the higher levels and feeling that four minutes is not enough time, I challenge you to consider whether it is in fact too much time!

If the dog is not yet equal to the task of solving the puzzle and finding all three hides, then that’s OK, your dog needs more exposure to the sort of puzzles presented in the trial. Rarely does the dog require more time being moved around the search area by the handler.

So what to do? Focus your training sessions on a variety of different setups. Note your dog’s average “time to first hide” – this is not to be competitive, there is no right or wrong, but if your dog is generally taking more than a minute to find the first hide in training, you may have to rethink your setups.

There are a variety of factors that go into setting up your training hides – note I said “training,” not “practice” – and the first one is ensuring that the dog has a lot of success, especially in the early days.

We want to set hides that are just challenging enough, but rewarding enough to keep the dog in the game. If hides are too hard, too early, then they can feel overwhelmed and become distracted. Sniffing the ground, checking out, looking at the handler for help – you know the drill.

And that’s not the point at which you should step in and help. Your “help” should be rethinking your hide placements. And please don’t show your dog the hide if they can’t find it for themselves!

For these motivational searches, you should be setting hides that your dog can find within 30 to 50 seconds, preferably on the lower end of that scale.

Once you’ve done a lot of motivational, highly rewarding searches, then you can start adding complexity. Make your search areas larger, start downwind of the hide, set hides that encourage the dog to cast out for odour, to really search, or add a second or third hide.

And don’t be afraid to abort a search! Sometimes you can let searches go on a bit longer, but on the whole you want your training setups to be doable in one to two minutes. We build endurance slowly and carefully.

We want to build motivated, confident, skilled scenting dogs.

Have you timed out in a search at a trial? What happened? Let us know about it in the comments section below, and feel free to ask any questions!

The post Trial Tips: Running Out of Time appeared first on K9 Scentwork NZ.

It’s pretty common for dogs to rush to the back of the search area when they are released at the start line. But we want our dogs working from before they even cross the start line.

How do we do this? Train thresholds! Teach the dog that the hide may indeed be just as they enter the search area.

Of course, there are a number of caveats to this type of training.

There is a difference between a dog blasting to the back of a search area and THEN starting to work, and a dog that needs to go to the back of the search area to pick up the odor of the threshold hide.

What does that mean?

Just because a hide is placed six feet into the search area, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s available from the start. Perhaps the odor is flowing towards the back of the search area or indeed from side to side. It may also be complicated by the presence of other hides.

With all that said, training with thresholds is worthwhile because it allows you as a handler to ensure that your start line protocol sets the dog up well for moving across the line and being in work mode straight away.

It’s very important when you are first starting threshold hides that you don’t handle your dog and hang back to keep him at or near the start line. The goal with all of these setups is to educate the dog, not to simply find the hide at all costs.

Let him or her blast to the back of the search area if they want to, and let the hide placement train the dog.

So how to set this up? Well it’s pretty easy. Assess your search area and note places where you can put a threshold hide as close as you like to the start line. Watch your dog. Think about how you are setting your dog up at the beginning of the search – is he actively looking forward to the search area and sniffing? Or is he distracted?

We’ll discuss some container drills in a separate guide.

Here’s an example of a two hide search with a threshold hide. He could – if he wanted – blast to the back and solve the second hide first, but as you can see he’s working from the time he’s released.

Keep threshold hides as a part of your general training setups to make them something the dog is used to encountering so they don’t come as a surprise.

Do you train thresholds with your dog? Let us know in the comments section below and ask any questions you may have!

Happy sniffing!

The post All About Threshold Hides appeared first on K9 Scentwork NZ.

But… do our dogs look at a line of containers and think “containers” and basically work on autopilot?

Well, let’s test that! We never want our dogs to lose sight (that should really be “smell”) that Odour is King!

This drill involves setting out a line of cold containers and placing the hide somewhere other than in a container. It can be a crack hide (as shown in this video example) or off to the side on some furniture, items, or plants in the search area.

In this example, I’m using two crack hides in a line of containers. Make sure your dog understands how to source crack hides before you try this!

Make your start line such that the dog will encounter the containers first.

What does your dog do? Does he diligently check each container or does he work the air? What do you do? Do you handle this search differently from how you would handle a search knowing that there is odour in one of the containers?

Setups like this also challenge us as handlers. Containers and vehicles are the elements where – without fail – I see the most overhandling taking place. If you could never be sure that a line of containers meant that there was odour in one of them, how would you change your handling?

I like to keep consistent handling across all four elements. Containers do provide context to the dog and since we start containers quite early on in our scentwork journey, our dogs often know to check them. But what we don’t want to promote is the dog simply being patterned to check containers without taking note of what the whole odour picture looks like.

After all, if a dog is absolutely committed to finding odour, does he really need to check all the containers before communicating? There are a lot of discussions regarding this and much confusion abounds, especially when comparing sports dogs to professional detection dogs.

As an example: a medical detection dog absolutely needs to check all samples because the handler requires a “positive-negative” – that is to say, a clear indication that the dog has checked the sample as dismissed it as negative. In sports, we only require the dog to find the odour. This is a subtle, but important difference.

What we don’t want to do is create dogs that as soon as they see containers assume that odour can only be within one of those containers. Worse still, that they know there is odour present and end up falsing on a container because it “can’t be anywhere else.”

Start this drill with something relatively simple, and then you can move on and make it a bit harder by setting up a fan so that the odour pools on the containers, or set up your hide as a threshold, before the dog even gets to the containers.

If you are working an inexperienced dog, ensure that the hide is not pooling on the containers and that it is far enough away (not miles away!) that the dog isn’t going to be confused. In the example shown above, this dog is very experienced and so the crack hides were deliberately placed near the containers.

Afterwards, remove the hide and place a hot container out and run it as a container search.

Be sure to start with one hide unless your dog is completely reliable about moving off one hide and sourcing the other one without your input.

Give it a try and feel free to post your video! Questions? Put ’em in the comments section below.

The post Odour, Context, or Pattern? appeared first on K9 Scentwork NZ.

Watching a vast number of scenting dogs at work – or even spending many hours watching your own dog working – will help to hone your observational skills. Even if you rely on a trained final indication when your dog sources odour, you’ll notice a variety of behaviour changes before the dog is at source.

But it’s no good telling you to “observe your dog” if you don’t know what you’re looking for, right? Sometimes we can only see things when they are pointed out to us, other times we have one of those “ah-ha” moments when we notice something that the dog does in response to odour.

Here’s a video of a 10-hide search done as a combination of indoors/outdoors.

Apart from the fact that the dog is a veritable ninja, there is a lot to see in this video.

The best thing about looking at search videos after the fact is that you notice details that you may not have seen while you were watching your dog work. I always say that the search is to train the dog and the video is what trains the handler!

Before we get into some of the aspects of this search (there are lots!) worth talking about, a few notes on how I work my dogs and how this dog in particular works.

I do not train a final response behavior. My expectation is a communication at source, but not right in the beginning, with a new dog. I also use verbal marker to mark when the dog is “correct” which predicts that reinforcement is incoming.

In the early stages of training, the marker is given as soon as the dog understands in his own mind that he has found the hide. I develop the “communication” aspect to it later on. I mark the moment the dog knows he’s found the source to ensure that the dog is perfectly clear why they are being rewarded – not for a specific behaviour, but for the very fact of finding the source.

This helps to develop the essential understanding of source aspect of the work.

I train independent search dogs. That’s not to say I don’t support them, and that I won’t, on occasion, make a suggestion, but the goal is to develop the dog’s natural talent and instill in him the confidence to take charge of the search himself.

I do not handle him like a metal detector, he decides in what order he sources the hides.

The training of “concepts” is always forefront of my mind when I’m setting puzzles. I try to stay mindful of elements of the search that the dog needs to understand before we move on.

The dog must understand and care about source, the dog must understand the concept of a hide being “done,” and how to manage the mix of odour and discern which plume leads to an already found hide and choose a different one.

Those are two fundamentals that have to be in place before moving on to the complexity of a search like the one in this video.

I don’t train for “odour obedience” I want them to care about odour, not search for it because they are somehow compelled to.

In this search there are a variety of different intentional puzzles set plus a variety of other odour “puzzles” that occurred simply due to the air movement and the set up.

There are high-to-low close hides (hallway), there is a same odour converging, there is high concentration (outdoors) to low concentration of the same odour (indoors near the bed), there is a lot of odour everywhere in the hallway that needs picking apart.

Those are just some of the puzzles the dog needs to figure out.

These hides were aged for about 45 minutes. Let’s have a look at the search and then make some observations.

Let’s look at some observations that we can make about this video. There are many things to see here, but here are some that stand out:

Note how the dog understands source.

Wait! Don’t all dogs understand source? Nope. We often see dogs who understand they are looking for odour, but the Concept of Source is a lot more than just “the highest concentration of odour” (which, hint: may not always be at source ).

See how the dog doesn’t “clear” each different room before moving on.

But wait! Shouldn’t we get them to clear areas? No, the skilled, experienced dog must work the odour puzzle as he sees fit. The greater the skill, the greater the efficiency.

Searching via odourr particles in the air is very different from searching with eyes: the information about the hide may not in fact be terribly close to the hide (or it might be).

Watch how the dog searches in different “layers.”

He searches high, low, and look at how he moves as he separates out the different threads of odour that lead to different hides.

Note, on this point, how he will go past a hide to source a different one. But why? Because just like when you are concentrating on one task, getting distracted by a different task simply interrupts the flow. So when he’s committed to following the threads of one source, he is not sidelined by another.

See how after the terminal marker, the reward comes, but the handler doesn’t encourage any unnecessary movement or change in arousal level.

Nor does the handler suggest where the dog should go next – this is VERY important. The dog makes his own decision about where to go next.

This also speaks to the recovery between hides: how quickly the dog can move from a place of “ooh yummy reward” to working what he was doing.

In a complex puzzle like this, the dog has to remember what hides he has already found. Not just so that he doesn’t re-indicate, but also so he doesn’t waste time on working the odour plume of an already found hide.

How does he know? Because he is magic, a creature of the wind, and because he has been progressively trained to discern the difference and to understand it as a concept.

In a search like this there is odour everywhere, there is no specific point where we can discern that the “dog encounters odour” because it’s simply all around like an “odour soup.”

But you can clearly see his change of behavior when he chooses which molecules to work, the almost-equivalent of “encounters odour.” I like to call it encountering workable odour.

And look! He’s not a robot!

He is distracted by a courier delivering something so he stops and stares intently. I clear my throat and say something, and he chooses to go back to work.

Note that this interruption didn’t affect his memory or his ability to immediately return to what he was working on. Additionally, note the handler memory error! Not paying for the 9th hide – for some odd reason I thought he had re-indicated. I was wrong.

These are just some of the observations we can see. I can see many, many more, which could be the topic for another day.

This is an excellent example of a dog with exceptionally good skills who understands the concepts required to perform a complex search with confidence, independence, and efficiency.

As a handler, it is my privilege to support him and enjoy the front row seat watching the beauty of the scenting dog at work.

Any questions? Thoughts? Put ’em in the comments below

The post Ten-Hide Search Analysis appeared first on K9 Scentwork NZ.

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!

The post Crack Hides appeared first on K9 Scentwork NZ.