Scentwork for Dogs
Teaching your dog to use their nose is an amazing way to give your dog a job that uses their natural talents for good instead of for chaos as well as promoting calmness, improving rest, better bonding with you, more optimism and confidence for your dog whilst physically and mentally tiring them out.
What is Scentwork?
Scentwork is a dog sport that is growing in popularity due to the huge benefits it offers. Sometimes also known as nose work, detection training or scent training, it involves your dog using their incredible sense of smell to identify and locate specific odours in a variety of environments and settings.
Benefits include:
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unrivalled mental stimulation
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tiring physical exercise
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confidence & optimism building
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relationship building & bonding
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promotes calming and better rest
Originally developed for professional detection dogs such as police 'drug dogs' and bomb detection dogs, variations have appeared in a range of dog sports including tracking for IGP/Schutzhund, mantrailing (based on search and rescue training) and scentwork.
Mantrailing
This is an outdoor sport where dogs follow human scent trails, where a person known as the 'misper' will leave behind an article of clothing with their scent and walk out to lay a trail to a hiding place. The dog will then sniff the scented article and follow the trail to find the misper, where a fabulous reward will be waiting. This is an excellent activity for nervous or reactive dogs as it is hugely confidence building when done correctly and only one dog works at a time
Scentwork
In scent detection, dogs are trained to recognise and locate a target odour, often cloves, gun oil or birch oil. Small articles scented with this target odour are then hidden and the dog will search them out and indicate to the handler where the article is. At beginner levels, dogs search small areas or a selection of containers to locate the odour, and at higher levels dogs will carry out full room searches for a tiny piece of cloth holding the correct scent whilst ignoring distraction odours.
Tracking
Whilst both mantrailing and tracking depend on human scent rather than a specific target odour, there are important differences to how each is taught and carried out. Similar to police dogs searching for suspects, a tracking dog is expected to closely follow the footfalls in the trail left by a person and at the same time identify any human-scented objects left along the trail. In tracking, these objects will be specifically chosen and placed articles such as pieces of wood, leather, carpet or fabric and the dog will immediately stop and indicate the presence and location of these articles to the handler before continuing. In police searches, the articles are evidence!
What Services Do You Offer?
We know how useful scent based games can be for physically and mentally stimulating dogs, so we offer a range of services to help you learn and practise. We hold regular mantrailing sessions, fun introduction classes for scentwork and one to one training.
Scentwork for Settling
A 3 week introduction to doing scentwork at home wtih your busy dog
3 weeks
50 mins
£55
Read MoreLearn how to teach your dog to follow a person's scent trail and track where they have gone.
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25 British pounds