Juliette Mylius | 6 August 2023
As discussed last Thursday, we have just introduced Duke to Scent Work! He is a quick learner and now knows the basics of ‘Search’ and ‘Show me’. In this post, we will discuss how sessions 2 & 3 went and what we trained. These two we will be putting into one post just because I trained practically the same things (in the same way) for them.
Session 2
In this training session with Duke, I basically wanted to revise what he did last time but very slightly harder. In session 1 I taught him that sniffing the birch tin was what I wanted (and put this with the verbal cue ‘Search’), I also very briefly touched on giving him 2 tins: 1 hot (scented) and 1 cold. With this he had to find the hot tin which he got right most of the time.
So, for session 2 I wanted to focus on this 2-tin exercise…
To set up, I made my ‘yellow cone’ square which is an area that I want Duke to associate with Scent Work. I then prepared a birch tin and grabbed an empty tin. Finally, I got treats, my training gear and Duke’s collar (plus the collar for my other dog however this series is focused on my training with Duke).
The structure of training was basically what I do every time: Start with obedience, work on some new commands (Scent Work), end with obedience.
Getting into the training, I held out my Birch tin and my blank tin (these are identical). Then, when Duke sniffed the birch tin, I gave a ‘yes’ (mark) and a treat (‘reward’). I did notice that he would just try sniffing the one closest to him to get the reward. To deal with this, I held them both apart equally (one to the right of me and one to the left) so that neither tin was practically in front of his face. This encourages Duke to go up and sniff the tin instead of just sniffing whatever was closest and hoping for the best.
Occasionally, he would sniff the cold tin and just stare at me as if asking ‘Can I just get rewarded for this one?’. These would be the moments where he might get a bit frustrated and confused so I would subtly nudge him towards the correct tin.
So, plans for session 3? After watching the training session video back (Linked at the end!) I noticed he was often showing signs of being confused throughout the session. So, for next time, I wanted to not push him and just completely revise everything that we’ve been doing.
Session 3
We won’t really dive much into session 3 because I practically decided to do everything I did last session to get Duke more confident, frequent, and happy with his ‘search’ commands. Overall, I want to make sure training (and Scent Work) is a positive experience for him and so sometimes you just must repeat the same thing a couple of times before your dog is confident with it so that you are not pushing them and confusing them.
I saw a big improvement in this session. Duke went from the cold tin to the hot tin way more quickly if he was wrong and stayed at the hot tin if he knew he was right.
After repeating this a couple of times, I did also decide to try out one exercise with him:
I decided to see what he would do if I put the hot tin and the cold tin on the ground. Duke then didn’t pay much attention to them at all and was just offering me sits and paws so that is something I need to work on. I did try putting the tins up on a platform to see if he would take more interest with them if they were just below his height. This did absolutely help so from this I need to work on teaching him that it’s the same as his 2-tin exercise.
Next session (4!) I think we will be still working on the 2-tin exercise (1 hot, 1 cold). I also would like to try however having the tins on a surface, so he goes and sniffs them on the ground instead of hand. I do have a few set ups in mind for this.
This training session was also filmed so you can check out some footage of it on our YouTube @practicepaws or below:
The next post in this series will be out on Thursday (The 14th) where I share my Scent Work kit and everything in it! Then next Monday (The 18th) we will be posting a full list of ALL the links and resources I have been using in this Scent Work journey including web articles, videos, and products to buy!
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!