Juliette Mylius | 31 July 2023
After all the research, it was finally time to get started in Scent Work. Part of that being the set up! In this post of the Scent Work Series, join me to talk about how I prepared my first scent for training with my dog!
Once all the equipment arrived in the post, I was very keen to get started. My aim was to get the birch scent and cotton buds ready for my first training session in 2 days. Here is all the equipment I used today:
- Sealable glass jars (1 per scent)
- Scent Work essential oil (I used Birch)
- Dropper (for the essential oil)
- Cotton Buds (Must be paper stem)
- Scissors
- Disposable gloves
- Paper
- Paper towel
To get started I set up in my bathroom, this area is a good choice because it is far away from where I would be training my dog. I first put down 2 sheets of paper and then 1 sheet of paper towel on top of that, this is to protect my surface (my bathroom floor) from getting any of the birch scent on. If this did happen, it could confuse my dog that there was also a scent there which I didn’t know about meaning I wouldn’t know to reward him…
On top of that paper towel, I put my Birch essential oil, the dropper for it, and my jar. Nearby, I also had cotton buds and scissors. I was wearing gloves and had a piece of paper nearby to wrap my gloves in once finished (and put straight into the bin outside).
Just a quick side note: I did do some prior prep of rinsing out the glass jar in hot water (I also did this with my scissors) …
Now to the actual preparing the scent part… Here’s what I did in an ‘instructional form’:
- Open your glass jar (this jar will be used to store your scented cotton buds)
- Use your scissors to cut a bunch of cotton buds in half into the jar.
- With gloves on, open your essential oil (scent) and put the dropper in
- Put exactly 2 drops of your oil into the jar.
- Close the essential oil.
- Take your gloves off and close your jar.
- Shake!
- Leave for 48 hours.
Once the process of preparing above was completed, it was time to pack up. You may think ‘yeh that’s a simple task’ and it is but I had to ensure I was being careful to not spread the birch scent everywhere.
My priority was the gloves, I wrapped them in my scrap paper and threw them into the bin outside. Then I rinsed the dropper and my hands in hot water and put that away. Finally, I just put the lid on the cotton buds and put the little bits from setting up away…
An extra thing I did was some labelling! Firstly, I put ‘Birch’ on the top of the birch jar to ensure I knew what scent it was. Then I also put todays date (29.07.23) on the side of the jar. This is so that I can know in about 3 or 4 months that it’s time to refresh the jar. I don’t think this is essential, but I thought it could be useful.
After doing all that set up, preparation and pack up, I was done for the day! I now am waiting 2 days (48 hours) until I use the cotton buds for training. I am also waiting for a bag to come (in the post) to make my Scent work kit and have it all much more organised (this will probably be featured in a post soon).
Please note, I did feature a list of equipment in this post however this isn’t the full list of what I got in total to get started in Scent Work. For example, things like tweezers and scent proof bags weren’t required in this set up so they weren’t mentioned in the post. If you are looking for a full list of the equipment I have used to get started, please see the post that will be coming very soon on the 18th of September!!
The next post will be out on Thursday (the 7th) where we get started in training and talk about my first Scent Work training session with my pooch! Then next Monday (the 11th) we will continue the training talk with Session 2 & 3!
Feel free to give us some feedback on how you’re finding this series so far on our Instagram @practice_paws we would love to hear your feedback and of course also any recommendations if you are already training in Scent Work!