Ah, poopsicles, my current competition for Willie and Maggie’s attention. It’s too bad that their primary outdoor object of interest is, well, poop, because searching for something in knee deep snow is a great way to keep dogs entertained. (Luckily, we have a vast armory of treats that make it easy to reinforce our Recall or Leave It cue, and avoid being licked by dog whose breath smells like a sewer. We just have to watch them like hawks.)
But watching Maggie plunge her nose into the snow, a nose that could clear a 200 acre dog park of poop in an hour, no matter how deeply buried in snow, reminds me how important scent is to dogs. Not to mention how snowy winters give dogs less opportunity to use their noses. And this is an opportunity that feels especially important to me right now, because 1) It’s too slippery to work the dogs on sheep except for the simplest and most essential of chores, 2) It’s been too slippery to let the dogs play much outside at all, and 3) It’s too cold and icy and snowy to exist without wondering why you live in a freezer compartment that keeps getting defrosted, then refrozen, then defrosted, then refrozen. . .
Oh, wait, sorry. Got distracted.
I’ve written before about the importance of letting dogs use their noses in Take Your Dog on A Sniff, and I’m not alone in my belief that dogs need to use their sense of smell to be truly happy. Marc Bekoff just posted a good read on the topic in Psychology Today, and Companion Animal Psychology posted about the same study by Duranton and Horowitz that suggests dogs who use their noses are more optimistic than others. (I am not convinced of the author’s conclusion however, but my logic requires more space than I have here. Perhaps for another blog, or in the comment section for those who read the study?) Alexandra Horowitz wrote her fantastic book, Being a Dog, about scent as the center of a dog’s world view. Susannah Charleson and Cat Warren wrote two of my favorite dog book/memoirs, Scent of the Missing and What the Dog Knows — about dogs using their remarkable sense of smell to locate missing persons or their bodies.
But what are we nose-challenged primates to do about our dog’s need to use its nose to explore the world when it’s covered in a blanket of ice and snow? Here are but a few ideas to allow them to do that.
Check out some resources: Dogwise has an entire section on books related to Nose work for Dogs.
Play Find It: It’s easy to teach dogs to use their noses to search for something. Just start by putting something a few feet away that you know they love and saying Find It. Gradually put the object (dogs on stay of course) farther and farther away, eventually completely out of sight. Initially lots of dogs will use their eyes to find the toy, but most quickly learn to use their noses. It’s great fun to watch them do it, and a window into a world that most of us primates don’t get to enjoy. There are lots of variants to this game, including laying a scent trail (scented pieces of paper for example) leading to a tennis ball with the same scent. Basically you’re teaching your dog to learn to track, which is much of what they use their noses for on their own.
My favorite variant is in Suzanne Clothier’s great article on Scent Games for dogs. She calls it “What a Klutz!”. She suggests dropping something behind you while on a walk. Make it easy to find for you too, i.e., don’t lose your keys. Go a few feet, and then stop, and look concerned. Say Find It as you walk back searching for it. Give the dog some room as you get close, but don’t hesitate to bring it to your dog’s attention (an inadvertent kick of the object for example) without “finding” it yourself. Gush with exuberant praise when your dog sniffs the object, vary the objects and gradually make it harder and harder. (I liked this article by Suzanne so much that I printed out and am taking it home to remind me of fun games to play with the dogs.)
Play Find Me! Basically another variant of Find It!, except this time you are what’s hidden. Have someone distract your dog and go hide somewhere close by. Have a party when your dog comes to find you, starting easy and gradually making it harder. Of course, for some owners, this might be an opportunity to nap while your dog appears to care less where you are and snores on the couch. If that’s the case, do what we do–actively teach your dog to “Find _____”. I’ve taught Willie “Where’s Jim?” and he’ll immediately stop and look for Jim. It’s come in handy for more than just games, because I’ll use it as a distraction when I need to refocus Willie’s attention. I just used it a few days ago when Willie was herding the vacuum cleaner (quite effectively I might add). I just said “Find Jim” and he left me and said vacuum alone and went to find his favorite guy.
Discriminate between scents. The simplest version is a kind of Find Me game, in which you have food in one closed fist and nothing in the other. Present both to your dog (switch sides often), and open whichever one he sniffs first. Obviously he get the food if he sniffs the one with food, but if he chooses the empty fist, simply open it, close it back up and ask him to try again. Eventually you can graduate to real scent discrimination, which involves letting your dog sniff a scent, say a cotton ball with lavender on it. Ask them him then to choose between cotton balls of lavender and orange oil under upturned cups. This can get really tricky for scent-challenged primates, who do things like scenting the orange oil cotton ball with fingers that just touched lavender. But people in Obedience Competition do it all the time, so check this out if you’d like to learn more.
Tonight I’m going to play the Klutz game (Jim might say I do that all the time), and drop my glove on our walk. Next job is to teach Willie and Maggie to pick it up, dust off the snow, and then find the matching glove that I actually lost track of sometime in November.
And you? Your favorite scent game? (We’re excluding the smell of Cinnabons in an airport. No fair to the dogs.)
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Here’s the weather recipe from south central Wisconsin–Start with a truckload of snow, then stir in large quantities of sleet/freezing rain. Put in the deep freeze so that everything is icy. Place 12 inches of snow on top of the ice, then sprinkle with sleet to taste. Put back in the freezer so that your mixture is icy on the top, then pour on rain and rain and rain and rain. Once everything is soaked sopping wet, dust with an inch of snow and refreeze again…I think you’re about caught up.
I’ll just add that avoiding a flooded house by shoveling, scrapping and hacking ice from 9 to 10 PM on a Saturday night is not my particular idea of a good time. But then, really, otherwise we would have been reading in bed, and think of the exercise we would have missed.
But here’s the good side, from a walk the BCs and I took after it had snowed enough on top of the ice to make it walkable. The wind was howling at about 40+ mph, so I can’t say it was blissful, but it sure was beautiful.
But no wonder then, that I’m posting more photos from our trip to Costa Rica, where the weather was, uh, a little different.
j says
Scent games are a staple in this household! My blind border collie loves nose work and tracking. He gets so excited when he comes off the porch and smells the “birch” odor. Only lately he’s expanded his skill set to counter surfing- using your nose and getting treats, really not much of a stretch, is it? Whoops! We’re still working on finding my keys…
Chris from Boise says
We call it “Oops, I lost it!” and Obi is fantastic at it. Last summer Mike and Obi were out hiking, and found a gentleman poking around the sagebrush looking for his hat. Mike asked Obi to “Find It”, and within 30 seconds he was back with the hat. And this was a hat that neither Mike nor I had ever touched. The man was amazed (as was Mike).
I thought about teaching Obi “Oops, where’s Habi?” last year, when she was quite deaf and showing the first signs of cognitive impairment and we were still doing (careful) off-leash walks. That didn’t happen (and fortunately was never needed), but now that you’ve reminded me, I’ll put “Oops, where’s Rowan?” on the Games to Train list. Rowan being a new-to-us one year old border collie, who came off a ranch and apparently had never been inside a house before entering foster care a month before she came to us. You have ice and sleet and snow and gales and more ice and more sleet and more snow – we have Rowan-the-Hooligan. A quick learner, she hasn’t made the same mistake twice (except for pooping in the house – a work in progress). But she does have to check out the boundaries. “OK, not supposed to stand on the dining room table. How about the kitchen counters?” The O’Brien household is very … lively … these days. 🙂
Our sympathies on your winter, though – be careful if you have to go up or down any of those hills! Are the sheep staying close to the barn in this weather?
LisaW says
Find it is played in our house at least twice a day. After breakfast, I hide treats for Phoebe in the house before I take Olive outside, and then vice versa. Phoebe will find scattered treats while Olive likes you to really hide them. I hide them in old bones, on chair rails, in cushions, etc., all over the first floor and Olive gets everyone. Outside I hide them in the yard, and it’s like Easter everyday! Find it is my best way to distract Olive from a trigger and also change her mind when she gets too reactive. Delivery people have been the hardest because it’s so random and quick, and she is reinforced each time they run to the door, drop something and run away! We just start to find it and it’s over.
I have also been working on find it in the snow. Olive is learning to spot the tiny hole, then sniff, and dig out a treat. I know she can probably smell it without seeing the hole, but she is not inclined to sniff it out unless the odds are good it will reap a reward.
When she was in lock down with her knee, I developed a game like the old shell game. I had three yogurt containers upside down on the floor. I would put a small treat in one and then shuffle them for quite a while. She would watch intently, and after a few false turn overs with her nose, she got so she picked the right one 90% of the time.
Hide and seek with Phoebe would be very long day(s) in hiding for the person 🙂
Our weather has been such a freeze and thaw that the layers of ice, snow, ice, snow look like a core sample from a glacier. It feels like we’ve been in this weather pattern for that long, too.
Linlin Cao says
I have read Duranton and Horowitz paper. I was really excited to see the paper but I’m not convinced by the methodology they used. The nosework group has been trained to search for food in boxes for 2 weeks. The control group is doing heel work for 2 weeks. The cognitive bias test is to see if dogs will check empty bowels as being optimistic. So it’s not a good test to use in this study. It’s easy to understand that nosework group dogs will search every bowel as they have been trained for two weeks.
I’d love to hear your opinion on this. I compete in nosework with my reactive/fearful dog and I teach nosework classes. Most of my students have some behavioral issues and I have seen the transform in a lot of them. I just started the nosework in shelter dogs project in our local shelter and I’m trying to do it as a research project. So I’m in the process of coming up with a better method to show how the dogs get better emotionally and behaviorally.
Thank you!
E says
Thanks for this. I have been wondering if my young Aussie is scent challenged apart from poopsicles and pee mail! I will try something more specific to compensate for the frigid weather! Very similar to your here in Nova Scotia! Good to know that Willie and Maggie are surviving winter! You and Jim too!
Paula Franklin says
Scent Work saved both my rescue dogs! It gave the first one a place where she could succeed when it looked like all she would ever be good at was escaping and counter surfing. The second was so afraid of the world that she couldn’t even think until we started “nose” classes. She was soon entering strange places and meeting strangers like any other puppy. She still has a long way to go but armed with your books and something that she loves to do I really think she will live a happy life instead of always being afraid.
Trisha says
Linlin, you nailed my concerns. Why wouldn’t dogs who have been reinforced for sniffing boxes not be faster to sniff into, uh, boxes? This reminds me that I should read the study myself, perhaps the authors discuss this? So that’s one concern. I’m also not convinced that “time to search a box” is an indicator of optimism. That seems like a monumental stretch to me. We definitely need to go to the source here, but I share your skepticism in spades at the moment.
Paula says
That picture above could’ve been taken at my house….I have 2 westie’s and a cairn terrier. They LOVE poking their heads in the snowbanks of the field near us. I imagine there is a treasure trove of critters just begging to be found there. My Cairn is the youngest – a year next month – and he seems to have to best nose; or maybe he’s just more exuberant than the other two. Yes, Wisconsin weather is not for the feint-of-heart…I’m so ready for spring.
Shalea says
We used to play the “find me” game with my blind greyhound. He was always very motivated to be with his own people and he went blind gradually, so it sort of arose naturally. Initially, either my husband or I would hold his leash, the other would walk away, and we’d tell Gryphon to find the other person. Eventually we’d do it under circumstances where there wouldn’t be an immediate, obvious scent trail and Gryphon started air scenting (except at the beginning, the person being found wouldn’t say anything unless he needed a clue). He always seemed to really enjoy it!
Adrienne K says
I so enjoyed reading this post. Lately I have been so aware of my dog’s need to sniff. I always new that was a big part of a dog’s life but Zasu seems to take it to a new level. All our dogs loved to sniff. Our last dog, a French Bulldog made amazing snorting noises as she sniffed her way down our road during a walk. Zasu, however, seemed even more intense when sniffing. She is a moyen size poodle and at times acts like a hunting dog. She will dig through the snow and layers of ice over snow over ice to get to something she finds irresistible buried down deep. Unfortunately it can be anything from deer poop to a dead mouse. I respect her need to sniff and try not to hurry her along on days like today here in Maine when the wind was gusting over 40 mph. I recently read a novel called “Suspect” by Robert Crais. The main character is a wounded policeman and his dog is a wounded ex-military dog. The description of the nose work that the dog does was amazing and led me to appreciate even more the mighty power of the nose.
Tony Soll says
I discussed this with Izzy the BBC (Brooklyn Border Collie) and she said it’s much easier to read the pee mail when it’s on top of the snow . Also there are often goodies buried in the snow – she specializes in pizza and reverently visits a spot where she almost got a slice of pizza about four years ago . She added that there was nothing like the smell of rotting leaves exposed by melting snow, also a vital ” mail “drop.
Frances G Brock says
Hello from sunny England, where we are having the warmest February on record!
Searching for the but of cheese games are a godsend for my fear-aggressive border terrier -he is delighted to focus on scent-work rather than see another scary dog! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to experience the world our dogs do , just briefly? !
Thanks for all your encouragement and advice – wonderful!
Zazie says
I love this post and the fantastic ideas for scent games. Thank you for the article (and for including a link to my blog). I hope the freezer defrosts soon… Spring has to be just round the corner.
Karl Hill says
Thanks for this. As a former search-and-rescue dog handler, I have been amazed at dogs’ abilities. Wanted to share this with others who are similarly enthralled:
https://www.kqed.org/science/1938255/how-your-dogs-nose-knows-so-much
Sydney says
I have a competition scent sports Rottie in various venues and sports, and her half sister who doesn’t compete but who is also adept at scent games. We play all kinds of games like this inside as well as outside. Find “mom” is a basic one I start with puppies, as well as easily found treats on the floor, working up to other things. My sports girl loves to look for *anything* and one of her favorite specifically is at home is articles. This dog is also environmentally and contextually-sensitive and does badly with men – we originally got started in scent games to build confidence, and took to competing because she really loves to work, and has since we brought her home at 8 weeks. She can be reactive but she is able to work through it with me. Her first Barnhunt trial she triggered on a gate steward just as we entered the ring and I thought that was the end – but we got ourselves back to focusing on our work and she Q’d. She can be in the Blind with the other dogs and handlers. Her first AKC Scentwork trial the entrance and the Containers were facing toward the spectators section as we came in and I thought – uh oh! But she was focused on her job. I just have to work harder to manage everything. But she has taught me so much and I just love watching any dog enjoy a good finding game!
Pat says
Hi Trisha,
Love the blog on scent games. I play the ‘find it’ game with Kona (toy poodle) every morning on our walk. As a poodle he is not at all food motivated (although he would run/swim till his paws fell off if there was a ball and a river involved!).That means any dry biscuits (I think that is kibble in American?) I give him for breakfast would sit in his food bowl for a week if I didn’t get creative. So each morning on our walk I toss the biscuits into the grass at the local park – one at a time – and tell him to find it. He loves this game and his little tail wags constantly (while he is usually quite reactive, he is completely focussed on this game) and best of all – he eats a full serve of healthy biscuits while playing!
Afternoon walks are usually poodle’s choice! There are no time constraints like on the morning walk so Kona can choose the direction and follow whatever scents he chooses. Sometimes we go for miles and other days I feel like we have just gone around and around in circles!
Thanks for another great motivational blog. It is certainly time to expand Kona’s scent game skills.
Pat
Jann Becker says
When my dogs have navigated through a knot of assorted-sized people in the park they get a minute sniffing a tree (pee mail, squirrels, etc.) to reward and regroup. Right now we have a post-op in a cone who can barely reach the ground with her nose…only 2 more days, thank heavens.
She had her spleen removed because there were, as it turns out, 3 tumors on it. We feared hemangiosarcoma but the pathology was negative, yaay!
Alexandra Horowitz says
My favorite topic: DOG NOSE!
Trisha, thanks for the absolutely lovely words about my book. And, too, thanks for all these links and ideas about encouraging/enabling/allowing our dogs to sniff. Sniffing dogs make me happy.
Charlotte Duranton and I did this study as I have been so impressed over the years in seeing the changes in dogs who do nosework — along the lines of the commenters here. So, I wanted to see if we could validate some of those impressions. While this one got published first, we are prepping results of another study for publication which looked at levels of reactivity and anxiety after two weeks of nosework classes and practice at home — I’ll be excited to share that when we can.
To Linlin’s concern: the cognitive bias test is well established as a test for what is considered optimistic or pessimistic tendencies in non-human animals. Although there are different versions of the test, the one we used asks how quickly the subjects approach an ambiguous bowl — one midway between what has been established as a “bowl that always has food” and “bowl that never has food.” We did not see that either nosework or heelwork group increased in speed to approach the bowls with food after the two weeks — if the nosework group was just being trained “anything might have food!” then we’d see faster approach there. Instead, it was in the delay to approach the ambiguous bowl that we saw a difference between the groups. (The heelwork group also got matching treats through their sessions, of course…)
I should say, for anyone who does nosework, that what we did was really an introduction to nosework — we never get past the “treats in boxes” stage. So it’s a find-it game with treats.
Anyone interested in reading the publication themselves, but without access to a library that has a subscription, I’d be happy to send you a pdf. You can email me at dogcognitionstudy@gmail.com. Put “nosework study” in the subject line so I can sniff it out.
Andy says
My favorite scent game with Cecil is just simple tracking with a double-scuffed, winding path to a treat of some kind. I love seeing him tear off running and the fact that I have to hang on to his long line for dear life makes it even more exhilarating for me. My dog is waaay too talented at it and I sometimes wonder what a true pro would be able to get out of him.
To keep him entertained I usually have a full lineup of frozen treat toys every night that I hide throughout the house. He is ten and a half and still totally ON POINT.
Trisha says
You are the best to jump in here! I was going to call you today but my Willie and I spent the entire day at the vet’s. (Details to come later, part of his lung is collapsed, no idea why yet…). I am about to email you for the study, but if life ever calms down would love to talk to you about the study more. So many wonderful questions to ask! I’d say more now but Willie and I are bushed.
Trisha says
I wanna go on a walk with you!
Lisa says
Thanks for this wonderful post!
I haven’t played scent games with our dogs in a while and it would be a get change of routing for them.
Alexandra Horowitz says
oh Willie! best wishes from us and our pups
Dorte Nielsen says
I’m not a scientist, I only have my own anecdotal knowledge to rely on, but I do find Benkoff’s and Horowitz’ conclusions highly plausible.
My favourite dog is a 7 1/2 years old mini schnauzer, and for the last 7 years I have walked him 3-5 km a day off leash in the countryside. He is the county champion in walking off leash, he has a pretty secure reall and a 100% secure jackpot recall, furthermore it’s his responsibility that I don’t get lost, not the other way round. Due to our success with off leash walking, his owners also walk him several km a day, off leash and sniffing as he pleases. He is en extremely calm and well balanced dog with an extremely good dog language.
March 18 2018 without any kind og warning he was attacked by a young male Grand Danois who seriously tried to shake him to death.
He was savaged, and had surgery with four drain tubes, and in his skin you could count not only the canine teeth of the Grand Danois (two bites) but also the incisors.
Never the less my buddy recovered much faster after the trauma, than I did, and now he is his own well balanced self again.
I am convinced that he has recovered mainly because of all the sniffing in calm nature.
About snow: My buddy, the mini schnauzer, is a distinctive nose dog, and watching him I get the impression that the smells in nature are even more distinct and durable in snow and frost, as they don’t sink into the ground.
If only he could speak 😊
Frances says
Sophy the papillon is a self taught cat and human tracker – very useful skills. I discovered it one day when visiting a huge garden with my sisters and losing them – I jokingly asked Sophy to Find them, and she sniffed, put her nose down, and did just that. Since then she has found cats in garages and sheds (and hidden under beds), and finds people she knows in quite challenging places (it can mean going the long way round in a large shop or market, though, if following the sister who loves to look at everything, several times…). Hunt the Treat is the favourite rainy day game here, and walks are mostly sniff walks, off leash and at a leisurely pace.
We have been having extraordinary weather here in the UK. A normal February would be bumping along a few degrees above freezing with rain and sleet; instead we have had a week of strong sunshine temperatures more like June. Everyone out in t-shirts, and during a long walk yesterday the dogs were looking for patches of shade to flop down in. It won’t last, but I did get the first of the vegetable beds prepped today, and have been washing all the bedding while it is possible to line dry it.
Diane says
I hope Willie is okay…and you as well!
Wow..almost afraid to comment with all the expert and admired company on this blog!
Thanks the refresher and reminder of ways of “working” the nose (or allowing the nose to work) during this most awful winter! I’m happily reinforced knowing I typically let my dog sniff to his heart’s content on our walks….unless my feet are freezing, or I need to get home sometime before midnight.
Dorte Nielsen says
I’m not a scientist, I only have my own anecdotal knowledge to rely on, but I do find Benkoff’s and Horowitz’ conclusions highly plausible.
Y favourite dog is a 7 1/2 years old mini schnauzer, and for the last 7 years I have walked him 3-5 km off leash in the countryside. He is the county champion in walking af leash, he has a pretty secure reall and a 100% secure jack pot recall, furthermore it’s his responsibility that I don’t get lost, not the other way round. Due to our success with off leash walking, his owners also walk him several km a day, off leash and sniffing as he pleases. He is en extremely well balanced dog with an extremely good dog language.
March 18 2018 without any kind og warning he was attacked by a young male Grand Danois who seriously tried to shake him to death.
He was savaged, and had surgery with four drain tubes, and in his skin you could count not only the four canine teeth of the Grand Danois but also the incisors.
Never the less he recovered much faster after the trauma, than I did, and now he is his own well balanced self again.
I am convinced that he has recovered mainly because of all the sniffing in calm nature.
About snow: My friend, the mini schnauzer, is an distinctive nose dog, and watching him I get the impression that the smells in nature are even more distinct and
Amber says
We have about 50 acres of woods behind our home and I’ve been having a good time teaching my dog to (hopefully, someday) find shed deer and moose antlers… with a rubber antler dummy and a bottle of scent and now we’ve moved on to a real antler to “find”. The training system is fairly inexpensive online and it’s fun, you should do it. The dummy is helpful to train shape recognition while ensuring the dog doesn’t get a poke from a real, hard, heavy shed and make them shed-shy. If you spend any time walking in the woods with your dog you may as well train them to bring you these natural treasures. 🙂
Trisha says
What a great idea! Lots of deer around here. Where do you get the antler dummy and scent?
Peggy Bjarno says
We live on our boat with our almost-10-year-old rescue Beagle and Aussie cross. It’s not always possible to go ashore for walks, so we use the Find it game as a wonderful energy release. I place tiny treats around the boat for her to find, many of them “hidden in plain sight” because she’s not LOOKING for the treats. This is her favorite time of the day, and she’s willing to stay in a sit-stay for as long as necessary before the hunt begins. Loud and joyful praise for the finding adds to the fun for her. We all have a great time with it.
LK says
We do something a little different, that does require scent skills and not just visual in the really deep snow.
My girls adored eating hard packed snowballs (which are covered in scent with my bare hands.)
When thrown, she will stick her whole head under the snow, rooting around to find the actual snowball to eat, the returns for another.
We shake it up with tossing pieces of biscuits in deep burms, and even chicken nugget chunks between snowballs. Half her body is snuffling under the burm after I throw an item.
She is an extremely happy Golden playing this game, and races through the deep snow back to me without a word, so we can “re-set” for the next toss 🙂
I am watchful over how many snowballs she consumes.
Jana Rade says
We played “Find it” with Cookie when she was recovering from an injury. Otherwise, she prefers looking for things outside. Mice, moles … She can smell them, she can hear them. I do believe she has an additional secret sense to detect them, though. As sometimes she just knows where something is when I’d swear it’s impossible to either hear or smell them.
Deborah says
My 4-year-old German shepherd rescue lives for balls. Sully has hip dysplasia in both hips, so as much as I enjoy watching a dog’s athleticism, I don’t want him doing aerobatics to catch a ball. So we now play with four or five balls at a time. He races after a ball I’ve thrown with another in his mouth and then, like a cat, pounces on the thrown ball and plays “soccer” with it — batting it around our very large lawn area. Too cute for words.
Our lawn area is surrounded by woods and oftentimes a ball will find its way into deep piles of leaves, under fallen limbs, etc. As we get close to the end of each ball playing session, I make sure that each of the four or five (Chuckit) balls are out of sight — under a bush or low-hanging spruce limb — or buried in leaves. Then the new game starts: He has to find each ball and bring it up to the front door, drop it and then I tell him, “go find your other ball.” Rinse. Repeat.
As he’s gotten much better at this, although I usually have a rough idea of where each one is, I don’t give him any clues as to where the MIA balls might be. He’s amazing to watch. Sgt. Sully has never left a ball behind.
As we come up to our six-month anniversary together, the snow has started to fall. With six-plus inches of powder on the ground now, I figured our ball playing would be limited to his football. But no. Sully actually tracks and digs through the snow to find the balls I’ve thrown. This is especially amazing if he didn’t see where on the property the ball landed — and it’s now completely buried in the snow. Our lawn area is about 1 1/2 -2 acres, i.e. there’s a lot of ground he needs to/can cover in his search.
How does he find these balls? Other than his own saliva, what is he smelling — the rubber material? As I said, this is a fairly new game for him. Sometimes, if he’s already found a ball or two, he gives up searching very hard for another (I always have a fairly good idea of the general area where the ball might be — he’s never told to “find it” if there’s nothing to find).
Is his ability to find balls in six inches of snow — over a large area — unusual?
Sully is the most amazing dog I’ve ever known. Scary smart and so eager to please. He is still somewhat reactive to other dogs, which we’re working on. But until we’ve got that behind him, group classes aren’t an option. What can I do to challenge his brilliant nose (and mind) even more?
Trisha says
Deborarh, what a lucky boy Sully is! More to teach him? Landing a plane on the river? Sorry. But the number of tricks you could teach him are endless. Go to Dogwise.com and check out their books on teaching tricks. Have a great time with such a wonderful dog!