Juliette Mylius | 26 July 2023
To start in my Scent Work training, the first thing I did was research. Lots and LOTS of it. I read articles, watched videos, and looked at different products people use. In this first post of The Scent Work Series, I will be explaining my first steps to begin in this sport!
So, I began by visiting numerous ‘dog themed’ sites (specifically scent work themed) and watching loads of YouTube Videos (also scent work themed). This would be my list of the main things I have learnt, equipment I have discovered and tips that seem useful:
- The main odours used for Scent Work are Birch, Clove and Anise, some clubs like the AKC and the ANKC also use Cypress as well as many other scents used around the world. – These are essential oils
- The scent molecules from the essential oils transfer onto cotton buds (also known as Q tips) which you use in training as the hide.
- The hide (probably also other words for this) is the odour inside a ventilated container hidden somewhere for your dog to find.
- To set up a hide, put a few cotton buds in a ventilated container e.g., a metal tin with holes poked in it.
- It is essential to not get any of the oils on yourself or on any other surfaces when setting up except for the cotton buds. Otherwise, this will confuse your dog. To prevent this, wear disposable gloves and use tweezers.
- When starting off with training, make sure you are rewarding your dog at the tin (hide) so that they learn that they are being rewarded for finding that scent.
- Some trainers call the tins with the odour in ‘hot’ and tins without the odour in (as a decoy) ‘cold’.
- Store your essential oils in a sealed amber glass jar; Glass so that plastic doesn’t mess with the scent and amber to prevent light from damaging the oil.
- You can get scent work tins that have magnets with them so that they can stick to surfaces when hiding (make sure your dog doesn’t eat the magnet)
- Scent work is also known as Nose work.
- You should get cotton buds where the stems are made of paper.
Those would be my main points and things that I have remembered from research…
Now the next thing I would consider is, ‘what do I need for Scent Work?’. Well obviously, there’s some main things like cotton buds, essential oils, and tins (ventilated remember!) but there are also some smaller things that are easy to forget. So, here’s the list of everything I got to start in scent work (You can also make a lot of scent work stuff at home):
- Scent work metal tins
- Essential Oils pack of 4: Birch, Clove, Anise, Cypress
- Cotton buds (Paper Stems!!)
- Tweezers
- Disposable Gloves
- Sealable glass jars (at least one for each scent – can’t be plastic)
Those products would be your essentials but here are some optional things for scent work and why I would buy them:
- Scent proof bags: useful if you plan to take your scent work equipment in the car with you and go somewhere…
- Droppers (for your essential oils if they don’t already come with them); makes creating your scented cotton buds a whole lot easier.
- A bag or box; to store your scent work equipment in, a tub would do just fine, but I have also read that makeup bags work well.
If you wanted to skip that whole list, you can also buy premade scent work kits (including cotton buds that have already been prepared) …
Goals/ Aims for Training
Stepping aside from the preparation and research, what are my actual goals for training? What do I want my dog to learn?
I have seen that there are a lot of different types of scent work training and people have trained scent work in many ways, so I want to make my goals clear for you so you can follow along and know what I want to achieve:
Basically, I have 3 goals in mind that are sort of ranked in levels of difficulty.
- I imagine this one will be the easiest to train… My first aim is for my dog to be able to recognise a scent. This will mean, if I put it in the middle of a room and ask him with my verbal cue (‘search’) he will go up to and sniff it (hopefully even signal to me that he has found it).
- Getting a little trickier: My second aim is for him to be able to recognise the scent amongst a bunch of decoys (tins with no odours). This will mean I will have a line of about 4 (maybe even more?) tins but only one of these will have the odour in. When I give him the verbal cue ‘search’ he will go up to them and signal to me once he has found the one with the odour in.
- The one I presume will be the hardest to accomplish: Number 3. I would aim for him to be able to find a scent hidden in the garden on cue. This means I will hide the tin somewhere in the garden, take him out there, give him the verbal cue ‘search’ and he will hopefully find it and signal to me.
And if you’re wondering how long this will take me, I am not completely sure. He is a very quick learner when it comes to training so my initial guess would be about 6 – 10 sessions to get it down but longer to master it. Of course, though, I don’t want to rush him so I will be keeping the sessions to my usual time of 15 mins and stopping if it seems he is getting bored.
That’s basically it for the first post of this series! The next post will be out on Monday (the 4th) where I share with you how I set up for my first scent work session. Then on Thursday (the 7th) we will dive into the first training session in this series!
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!
Thanks for checking out our new series!!