Nose Work

Click here to watch nosework video

Nose Work is a new detection-style dog sport, and is designed to develop dogs’ natural scenting abilities by using their curiosity, desire to hunt, and their love of toys, food and exercise. Your dog will have fun, build confidence, and burn lots of energy. There’re no restrictions, every dog born with a nose can do it!

Nose Work doesn’t require any obedience (it’s sometimes easier without), and because the dogs work one-at-a-time, even reactive dogs can be admitted. While other dogs are working, your dog can be safely kenneled. A puppy at 12-14wks of age could start this fun activity.

What will the dogs do exactly? During the first stage, the dogs will learn to find a piece of food, hidden in the environment. We start with boxes, to engage the dogs into scent-mode. They already know how to smell, they just need to learn what to look for, when to start, and how to be successful as fast as possible. We help them with that

This sport is different from tracking, and will use a different command. A good police dog knows to search two ways: He’ll first ‘hunt’ the subject, scenting the odor in the air and taking the shortest route to it, to stop the subject as fast as possible. Then he might have to go back and ‘track’ the route the subject was actually taking, to find anything the subject ‘lost’ on the way, like a gun or knife. So dogs can do both, tracking and scenting

We won’t teach the dogs how to follow a track on the ground. We want them to ‘hunt’ for the scent, and/or to ‘target’. When a dog enters an area, they can interchange ‘hunting’: nose in the air, following the odor; and ‘targeting’: going to specific items like boxes, cars, suitcases, … and deciding if that item contains the odor or not. In the beginning of training, the dogs will ‘target’ more. As they become more efficient, they’ll be able to ‘hunt’ the odor down. A detection dog at the airport will run down a line of suitcases, without stopping at each item to decide ‘yes’ or ‘no’. He’ll stop dead in his tracks if he passes an odor he’s trained for, then pinpoint down the item.

When your dog becomes a very efficient and confident ‘scent hunter’, then we’ll be able to change from finding food to finding just a specific odor. K9 Nose Work uses specific oils for that, usually starting with birch oil. The scent will be given to a Q-tip, and the dog has to find that Q-tip and let you know where exactly it is. Once your dog is confident in finding (and telling you) the odor, you might be ready for trialing!

The class will not teach the dog to find it (they probably already know where it is), but to find it important, where the odor is, and to tell us about it. We’ll learn how to read the body language of our dogs better, and the dogs learn to find the birch odor more important than any other good smells out there. Let them ‘hunt’, but our way!

Level 1: Nose Work with food
Level 2: Nose Work with odor
Level 3: Nose Work challenges

Nose Work Classes are full 60 minute classes.