Tootsie’s taken a back seat lately, given all the sheepdog work I’ve been doing with Maggie and Willie lately, so I decided it was high time that she and I did something extra fun together. I was inspired in part by a book and a DVD related to scent games. After all, Toots is a spaniel, and even seven years in a puppy mill couldn’t destroy her love of following her nose.
I first watched much of Jane Killion’s DVD Puppy Scent Games, after having been impressed with her Puppy Culture DVD, as I wrote about in a blog about Puppy Culture. This new DVD, Puppy Scent Games, includes Jane’s upbeat and thoughtful attitude, but it became clear early on that it was focused on starting a puppy on tracking. If I wanted to start a puppy tracking, this would be a great video to watch, but I was looking for something a bit more general.
I looked in my library and found Anne Lill Kvam’s The Canine Kingdom of Scent: Fun activities using your dog’s natural instincts. This Dogwise book gives step-by-step instructions in teaching a dog to search for treats, then objects, retrieving lost objects, tracking training and scent discrimination. That was more in line with my idea for scent games for Tootsie, so I started right away on the first exercise, “Search for Treats,” confident that if Tootsie ran the world, this what she’d do all day long. In between naps. I should say here that Tootsie already has learned to search for treats, because all the dogs play “Treasure Hunt” while Jim and I take a few minutes to lounge outside late in the evening. I toss a half a cup of kibble in a fenced area, close the gate and let the dogs search while Jim and I relax near by. It’s a win/win–we relax outside, and the dogs get rewarded for using their noses. Even kitty Nellie comes and joins the hunt.
However, I wanted to see what it was like to follow the steps in Kvam’s book, so Tootsie and I went outside this morning and got started. As instructed, I put Tootsie on leash and tossed 2-3 treats a few feet in front of her, ensuring that she saw them fall. I let go of the leash and let her run to find them. Because I used cat kibble and did this on a graveled driveway, I knew that Tootsie would have to use her nose to find them, because visually they faded into the driveway, and were hard even for me to see. She ran immediately toward the area where the treats fell and put her nose down. Of course, with Tootsie, this includes sweeping the driveway with her ears. But she found the treats and enthusiastically ran back to me, tail and hindquarters wagging back and forth joyfully.
Next, we repeated step one, but this time I threw the treats one at a time, being careful, as instructed, to stay silent. She didn’t find them all, but that’s apparently common, and so I repeated the exercise and threw treats into the same area again.
I then increased the number of treats tossed (4-5), and threw them a bit farther, repeating this step a couple of times. Tootsie often didn’t find all the treats, even when I could see one and her nose was within inches of it, but given that she found many and was clearly thrilled about it, I wasn’t concerned. (However, I had to struggle not to help her, which Kvam’s strongly advises against.) The next step is to begin putting the behavior on cue. Tootsie already knows “Treasure Hunt,” but I decided it’d be fun to teach her a new cue, and so said “Find It,” which is Willie’s cue for searching something out. (It was easy to teach Find It to Willie [here’s a video of Willie searching for his toy], I began saying the phrase when he was still sound enough to retrieve. If I threw a toy and he didn’t find it right away I’d just say “Find It” and he’d keep searching. Soon I expanded that to hiding a toy on purpose, as a way to exercise his mind and body without straining his injured shoulder.) But Tootsie is not a retriever–understatement–so I’ll do it by linking the cue with searching for treats. Works for Tootsie.
Kvam stressed the importance of giving a dog breaks, and at this point we’re told to let the dog rest (no other training at this time, just napping or free walking). Toots is complying, she’s sacked out on the couch as I write this, but soon we’ll go out again and continue onto the next step–tossing more treats a little farther away, gradually increasing the distance. My guess is that the distance is going to be the challenge for Tootsie, so I’ll go slowly on that aspect of training.
Whatever happens, I’m happy to have a new game to play with Tootsie. As so many have argued eloquently, “nose work” is one of the best things you can do for a dog. It allows them to use a natural ability that we so often squelch (See “Take Your Dog on a Sniff”), it’s great mental exercise and it’s easy for us to teach. That’s perfect for me and Tootsie right now–between helping Maggie become more comfortable with dogs anywhere outside of a sheepdog clinic or trial, training Maggie to be competitive in sheepdog trials and continuing working Willie to keep him happy, I don’t have a lot of training time or energy left. Nose work is a win/win for all of us.
I highly recommend The Canine Kingdom of Scent. I love the author’s perspective (very positive, thoughtful about not pressuring dogs, step-by-step instructions with reminders not to push or go to fast), the instructions are clear and the book contains a good range of activities. One caveat: It does not include instructions on what to do when your cat begins playing with the dog’s leash. Basically, we ended up with a game that delighted all three of us–Tootsie got to find and eat treats, Nellie got a new play toy and I laughed so hard I could barely stay on task.
There’s another book that I’ve seen that teaches scent discrimination for utility obedience work, Simply Scenting, by Dawn Jecs. I’ve never done formal obedience competition work and I haven’t read the book. If you have, let us know what you thoughts. I loved another book, Fun Nosework for Dogs, by Roy Hunter, but lent it out and have never replaced it. Time for me to do that I think, if I remember correctly it’s a great book. Have you read it? Any other scent game-related books or DVDs you recommend? I’m all ears. Or should I say, nose.
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Maggie and I were in our second trial last Friday, another well-run and beautiful sheepdog trial at the Cedar Stone Farm in Cambridge, Wisconsin. (Thank you Merry!) My goal was for us to improve on our last runs, and we did. We still have a long way to go, but I was crazy proud of Maggie–she backed down an almost impossible ewe whose lamb was in a pen behind us, and who had no intention of moving around the course without serious resistance. It took Maggie some time to back her down, so we ran out of time again and lost all our drive points, but I still was truly proud of her. Maggie is brilliant at reading sheep, staying in contact with them, and moving them at a perfect pace, but her challenge is confidence when there is a lot of pressure, so I was very pleased with her even if the score wasn’t very good. The second run was our best yet, she got 46/50 points on her outrun/lift and fetch (fyi, that’s really good, especially since the sheep were hard to “lift” because they were being held in place with corn) and we finished the drive and were about to pen when we ran out of time. But it was her best run ever, and most importantly, she came off the course like she owned it. I, of course, don’t know what she was thinking or feeling, but I had such a strong sense that 1) she really likes trialing and 2) afterward she felt more confident, or proud, or some canine version of that. She seemed so relaxed and cuddly that night, it felt great to see her so happy. My goal for our next trials (none coming up soon) is simply to get better and better.
Willie even got to work at the trial, moving the sheep into a holding pen for another competitor who ran several different dogs in the same class. He needed to attend to them rather than stay to move the sheep from the run after his own into the holding pen, so I volunteered and Willie got to work some sheep without any pressure. The only problem came when I sent him to pick up the sheep 40 yards in front of us, and he, unbeknownst to me, had his eyes on another group of sheep, 250 yards away, awaiting the next run. Willie sprinted away, and in a few seconds it became clear he was going long. Eeeeps, messing up the sheep for the next run is not cool. Luckily, after I realized what was happening, he took his stop whistle and redirected onto the right sheep. Whew!
Closer to home, the peonies are all gone now as are all the flowering bushes. We’re in a bit of a flower lull, but the day lilies are budding and there will be lots of flowers in a week or so. Here’s a peony that cropped up by surprise after I cleared an area of honeysuckle. What a lovely discovery!
In honor of Maggie’s trial work, I went up the hill with her to get a shot of her working the sheep. Whoops, the memory card was still in my laptop. So much for that idea. So I worked Maggie for practice, and then went back up with Willie to get him some exercise. You can see that here I asked him to stop while the sheep darted toward the gate behind me. Look how big the lambs are!
Tricia says
Dawn Jecs is one of my favorite people – thoughtful, respectful of the individual, creative, observant – all the things you want in a dog person. She is not doing as much with seminars and traveling, but I feel very fortunate to have spent time with her over the years.
Paul G. Jaqua says
I have seen canine sheep herders work and I have never,ever not been impressed with the bond between dog and handler/owner. Your descriptions are colorful and descriptive. I enjoyed reading about your exploits(?) with your dog. Where I was raised , in the Dakotas, there are a lot,or at least there was, of sheep country. The biggest memory of sheep was their stupidity. I suppose there may be dumber animals on God’s green earth but I am not privy or witness to them. A good sheep dog was worth ten times their weight in any form of currency. A pair was priceless and their owners took better care of them than of themselves. An excellent book I heartily recommend ” Shepherd Looks At Psalm 23″ by W. Phillip Keller. A beautiful, loving tale of a sheepherder’s life.
Nina Mazuz says
I’m so glad you said it was common for dogs not to find the treats! I just assumed my Georgie was…not a very talented nose. 😉 I play “Find it” with her now and then, and she so often can’t find a treat or piece of kibble just a few inches from her nose, if she didn’t see the direction I tossed or placed it. So I’ve never tried any further nosework training with her, figuring she wasn’t cut out for it. Which kind of baffled me, as she is a catahoula mix, so hound-y and therefore super nose-oriented on walks… But now I’m realizing: something like nosework–like any structured dog activity–is equal parts natural talent and having to actually learn the expected behavior. (And mostly what she’s learned so far is that if she gives up easily, I’ll just point the treat out to her… 🙂 I’ll have to give her another chance with this new perspective!
Antonia says
Really enjoyed reading about Tootsie’s scenting work. I have never read the scenting books but came up with a scenting game when raising two very energetic pups. It involved tying a piece of Feta cheese on a string and then pulling it around the yard, hiding it at the end of the trail and then giving the command “Find It”. This has to be the best-loved game of all times and it was hilarious to watch them track down the cheese. A win-win situation for both of us. 🙂
Diane says
Many of us inadvertently spend so much time training our pups not to use their nose! Heel at my side, leave it, that’s enough, let’s go (too much time at the tree watering post or hydrant!). Sometimes it takes retraining (or maybe redirection is a better word) to use their nose. If the treat is just inches away and not found, the transition just wasn’t made between seeing the treat and switching to the nose or scent. That’s why you don’t interfere even if they are not finding it….they need to learn to switch from sight to scent in the early stages of learning the scent finding game. They see the treats get tossed so they go and to find them, but up close they are visually impaired, and they cannot see…they need to learn to switch senses. I took a beginner’s nosework class (so feel free to correct the above), and didn’t finish due to many circumstances. But I use what I learned as scent games to play with my dog. He’s older so it’s a great way to get some physical and mental exercise.
LisaW says
Olive is a master (mistress) at “find it.” We learned it together early on and it has saved our butts more times than I can count. I use it for mental exercise, distractions when she is too worked up about something, and a fun game we both enjoy. She can find a tiny treat hidden anywhere outside. She is also really adept at finding treats hidden throughout the house. When she was in lock down with her torn CCL, we also learned the game of hiding a treat under a yogurt container and shuffling several dummies around like the old shell con, and she would have to rely on observation and scent. She picked the right one every time. I have a goal of taking a “real” nose work class with her to see how we’d do and how different it is from our rookie nose work. But, I can’t recommend find it enough to just change a mindset or provide a much-needed distraction.
Barbara says
Dogs’ noses are amazing! I had fenced off a small reseeded patch in my field. Two of my GSDs were with me one evening when I removed the chicken wire fence and the six steel posts. The next morning I walked down to the field with my one year old GSD who had not been with me the evening before. Casey did a huge double-take when he came around the corner and the fence was gone. He trotted over to the patch and sniffed around a bit. I watched him walk forty feet or so and suddenly lift his nose high. Then he trotted around the pump house and water tank to find where I had stacked the posts on top of a pile of similar posts. After sniffing them from end to end he put his nose to the ground and tracked about sixty feet to the (out of sight) place where I stored the rolled up chicken wire. This was twelve hours after I had removed the fence.
Dogs love to use their noses and it is even more fun if they can play a game with their human. Eight year old Mindy has a Nose Work title but I haven’t played that game in nearly a year. Recently I put her harness on her and sent her to find three “hides” in my yard. She remembered her job and found all three in a matter of seconds.
Several years ago I did some tracking with Miley, now five, and last week we tried playing that game again. Yes! She remembers. I have found a group to track with on a regular basis so we can have more fun again. Miley also does Barn Hunt.
Happy sniffing.
Frances says
Sophy loves this game, but I was most impressed to discover she could generalise the idea of Find to people and cats! We were visiting a very large garden and in wandering around I got separated from my sisters. Not very hopefully I asked Sophy to find them, she made a cast or two, put her nose to the ground, and wove through the maze of paths till we caught up with them. She has done it often since with people she knows well, following their steps rather than cutting corners to go straight to them, and will also find the cats by name. Anyone who has spent an hour hunting outside for a cat who is asleep under a bed will appreciate how useful her nose is – she will also lead me straight to whichever garage or shed a cat is trapped in this time, although I suspect that is a combination of excellent hearing and an excellent nose!
Andy says
Scentwork – especially tracking – really helped Cecil with his reactivity towards other dogs. When he’s working his critical distance shortens dramatically. I love when he’s waiting for the instructor to cut his trail – his head keeps alternating between me and the course, as if to say “Now? Now? Now?”
lynn says
Hooray for sniffing! We are in an intermediate-level Nose Work class, which my houndy/herdy/happy girl loves. I love it too, even though my main job is to try not to be like Nellie when it comes to leash-handling. I am discovering how to “see” how scent works by watching my dog figure out hides, and it is as fascinating to me as all the other time I spend watching her.
Class is fun because it’s interesting to watch different dogs figure out a game that was totally built just for them. The shy dogs get more confident, the “crazy” dogs (like mine!) learn to focus, the amiable dogs get a little more intense, and so on. I think it’s just tremendous fun for dogs to get to use a talent that comes so naturally, not to mention being encouraged — finally!! — to just go ahead and scavenge. That said, for the people wishing they could take a “real” nose work class, I can tell you first-hand that playing casual sniffing games at home is just as much fun, and often MORE fun. I am pretty sure that turning sniffing into a structured competition is just a way to making things more interesting for humans (sigh…primates). For most of us here, having any sort of mutually-enjoyable game to play with our dogs is probably just as good, if not better!
Monika & Sam says
Tootsie’s ear ‘Swiffering’ is beyond adorable. ღ No doubt the tag was wagging in unison with the Swiffering. 🙂
SandyV says
GET IT! is a great game to play with my Springer, Ernie, in the winter when it is too cold to play outside. Ernie is instructed to down/stay in the kitchen and I hide a knotted up towel scented with patchouli. I yell GET IT! and he tears around the house looking for the towel. Nosework is required because the hides are sometimes tricky. He overcame his bathtub phobia as many times the towel was hid in the bathtub and he needed to jump in to grab it. He is rewarded with a treat but many times is too excited to eat it; he just wants to play the game again. I may move the game outside for greater challenges!
Nic1 says
Dogs noses are amazing – I remember reading about a trainer who employs her dog to find and sniff out her tortoises in the gardens.
Dogs really seem to enjoy scent work and this has been a revelation for me in terms of activities to enjoy. Lily enjoys finding small pieces of cheese around the house and garden, finding her ball or toy and really enjoys scavenging so I often scatter her kibble in a patch of garden for her to snaffle.
Sniff walks too! Positively meditative. And as LisaW mentioned, I have found that’Find it!’ can be an extremely useful distraction at times.
Love the pics of Toots! ‘Trisha! DO something about this pesky cat!’ What an absolute sweetie pie she is.
Kat says
A few years back our orthopedic vet offered a nosework seminar. The focus was less on how to do nosework with your dog (although there was a nice introduction to some basics) and more on how much your dog benefits from a chance to do what they were designed to do. One of the things she showed us wast how the head down sniffing posture put thee least amount of stress on the dog’s skeletal system (joints and muscles). She also had several inspiring videos of dogs she had successfully treated by prescribing nosework. The video that sticks with me the most was the 14 year old dog that was brought in for a consultation about putting the dog down. The dog had severe arthritis and could barely stand but was otherwise in good health. She prescribed two weeks of regular daily nosework sessions and when the dog was brought back for the follow up the dog walked comfortably into the clinic. Powerful stuff.
We play lots of nosework games at my house. The one I find the most entertaining is hide and seek. Someone hides in the yard somewhere and the dogs are either brought out together or one at a time to find the person. We have lots of different surfaces, wood, metal, grass, dirt, pine needles, dried leaves, etc. so it requires a bit of skill. The part I find most fascinating is the different styles my two dogs have when playing hide and seek. Ranger puts his nose down and casts about until he finds the trail then follows it. Finna puts her nose up and checks the air for the direction the person is hiding then casts about in that direction until she strikes trail. If the wind is in the wrong direction Finna casts around with her nose up until she finds a direction. And when we let them out together to seek Finna bounces around waiting until Ranger strikes the trail then she puts her head down and barrels down the trail as fast as she can go. She often over runs a turn and has to go back to find it; Ranger is much more methodical and seldom misses. Finna always find the person first but Ranger doesn’t waste as much effort.
Find it is a favorite game, beloved by both dogs and a cat. If I see a treat that’s been missed I just repeat the find it cue and they all three know to look some more. I love Find It. Finna’s balls are supposed to be in a basket on the porch but are more often scattered all over the yard. I can tell Finna to find me a ball and she zooms around the yard until she locates a ball and brings it back. I can send Ranger to find the cat if necessary and know that he will. Finna will find keys and cell phones. I really need to get back to teaching Finna to find my current book, that’s the item I misplace the most often and being able to send her hunting through the house for wherever I’ve left it this time would save me a lot of aggravation. Finding my current read in a house filled with books is an extra challenge since it requires her to locate the book with the most current scent, in other words not just the book I touched most recently but the book I touched the most in recent time. It’s a fine distinction that her nose is quite capable of making.
Diane Kulak says
I just have to comment on the pic of Tootsie having “just about enough” of Nellie…..it’s great.
No pressure on the dog from the human…but I guess Nellie didn’t read the book! What fun!
Alice R. says
I bought the book, and can’t wait to try it out. My poodle mix loves to sniff and I’ve been thinking I should try this for a while. Perfect for now when I’m laid up for a bit. No one (including the dog walker) walks him as far as I do so this is just the ticket for mental exercise and stimulation. Thank you, Tricia!
Bruce says
Firstly, thanks for this belly laugh, which deserves repeating:
“I started right away on the first exercise, “Search for Treats,” confident that if Tootsie ran the world, this what she’d do all day long. In between naps.”
When we are done with CGC I would like to teach Red Dog how to track. Partly for fun, and partly for practical reasons: Red Dog is very visual, so when I am out of sight she has no idea where I am. One time she chased a critter into brambly woods, lost sight of me, and could not find her way back. Fortunately we were near the dog park so she went there, and kindly people recognized her and let her in the park, where she sat by the gate looking pathetic and waiting for my return.
Oh, and thank you for recommending the Barbara Handelman book. It is a fantastic reference that would be worth the purchase price for the pictures alone. Also read Culture Clash, which was another excellent recommendation. My only quibble with Culture Clash was a propensity towards using straw man arguments against positive punishment. I think that weak arguments undermine the strong case that can be made for using positive rewards-based training.
FWIW, I fall into the “as positive as practicable” camp (and, as I learn more tricks, I find more situations where it is practicable to solve the problem using reward-based methods).
Finally, that is a gorgeous peony picture!
Kathy says
When my dog Mico tore open a big wound in his chest bounding through the woods, I was really worried that we would have a bored and destructive dog in the house, because he is normally so active and he was on restricted movement and had to wear a big bandage and a t-shirt to keep the bandage in place for 6 weeks! We took a beginner’s nose games class. . .and then an intermediate one. He could not have been happier. Or more exhausted at the end of each hour-long class. For a dog who was used to daily 2-hour off-leash walks in the woods to be so tired at the end of a single class session really brought home to me the intense focus needed for scent work–even at a beginner level. Now we do “find it” on treats or scented objects in the basement on rainy days and in the yard on sunny days when we haven’t had time for a long walk, and I have a very happy dog. Plus I taught him to do a play bow when he finds an object, and that’s just really cute. Nose games: the best game for old dogs, injured dogs, bored dogs, and owners who need a break while their dogs need fun!
Holly says
This could be a partial explanation of why a dog might not find a treat that is several inches from their nose: in Nosework we learned to recognize that, when there is any air movement in the area, the odor emanates from a scented object in the shape of a ‘scent cone’. The cone is narrowest and the scent is strongest right at the source of the odor. The breeze carries the scent cone downwind; the odor doesn’t ‘glow’ on all sides of the object like light from a lightbulb. So dogs learn to search for the scent cone and then follow it back to the source. If the dog is up-wind of the source, they will not detect the odor.
Robin says
A few years ago, I took several early-stage nosework classes with my rat terrier, Poco, who sadly passed away two months ago. He had always been a visual “hunter” but was losing his eyesight. And I was looking for something new he and I could do together, just the two of us (i.e., without my other dog). The training started with hunting for food hidden in boxes, and it was amazing to watch him realize what he could do with his nose and to gain confidence so quickly. He would use a particular breathing pattern when he was searching the room for the treat – it sounded like “sniff, sniff, chuff.” His interest in walking in the park returned, too, when he realized he could still hunt . . . with his nose instead of his eyes. When we reached the level where they began introducing the official scents used in competitions, rather than food, Poco lost interest. So we stopped the classes, but I kept a nosework box course set up in my basement and it was his favorite game to play.
Margaret McLaughlin says
@ Holly, you are so right! I’ve done quite a bit of Nosework with both Lia & Nina, & one of the things I’ve enjoyed most is figuring out how scent travels in different environments. Once the dog has learned the game it’s pretty easy to figure out where it goes by watching the dogs backtrack.
Lia, BTW, taught herself to apply this technique to Utility scent articles–she would run towards the pile with her head high, lowering it as she got closer, & was usually able to snatch up the article & run directly back without needing to check the other articles. If we were outside, or someone had just opened a door she would have to do “fine-tuning” when she got to the pile, but was almost always close enough that she only needed to check 2 or 3.
I miss that girl.
Alison says
My favourite one is ‘Talking Dogs Scentwork’ by Pam Mackinnon. You can teach your dog to be a ‘detection dog’, looking for a scented toy or food, depending on what floats their boat. There’s so much great information in it and encourages a very interactive game too. There are also videos available on Vimeo.
Jen says
Thanks for the book titles! My mostly blind, partly deaf border collie Keji has come a long way in the last few months since I posted asking for help, and we are now enrolled in an online nose work class in part because I did not know about these other resources. I’ll be glad to add variety to the sorts of nose games we can play. Now that he is clicker trained (that was an enormous breakthrough), we are ready for all sorts of games!