Scentwork
Program
Our program is designed by Melissa Sowa, a national level competitor and an AKC judge. With her expertise, our classes are truly set apart from other local options! Our goal is to provide teams with such a solid foundation that things like lack of independence, low search drive, false alerts, or poor handling, don’t become problems if a team decides to compete. All of our instructors are successful competitors or judges
Scentwork is a canine sport that is accessible to nearly every dog!
Older dogs or younger dogs, natural athletes or natural couch potatoes–all of these dogs can learn to love using their nose to hunt out the odors hidden in this game.
Much like narcotics detection or bomb detection, scentwork (sometimes called nosework) is a game of hide and seek. An odor source is hidden some place like in a container, on a vehicle, or in drawer and the dog has to find it and communicate to their handler that they found it!
Intro to Scentwork
♦ Introduction to Birch odor
♦ Build up a love of searching
♦ Begin odor obedience (stay at source)
♦ Learn about searching containers
♦ Start to develop an indication
♦ Humans start learning to read when their dog is on odor
♦ Humans learn how to appropriately handle odor, scent q-tips, and prevent cross contamination
Teams may stay in intro for more than one round if they are still building a joy of searching.
Intro to Elements
This class is the second in our series and is all about teaching dogs about the search elements they will encounter with scentwork! We build off the solid hunt drive for containers we created in Intro and expand that drive to the other types of searches offered with various venues/competitiosn. We will also introduce the 3 other most common odors used in scentwork.
♦ Introduction to Anise, Cypress, and Clove
♦ Learn foundation skills for interior, exterior, buried, vehicle, and more container searches.
♦ Continue to develop an indication for when they find the source of odor
♦ We’ll teach a ‘find another’ cue for multiple hide searches
♦ Owners learn how to expand beyond box searches and start more varied search games
Teams may spend more than one session in Intro To Elements to build more enthusiasm, but it’s not necessary.
Intermediate Scentwork
This class builds on the foundation learned in Intro to Elements. Now that dogs have been exposed to the different searching elements, and all common odors, Melissa will increase the difficulty of the searches and focus on a skill each week.
♦ Thoughtfully introduce distractions
♦ Continue to increase odor obedience
♦ Developing a clearer indication or resolving false indication challenges
♦ Working on common odor puzzles, pooling odor, converging odor, inaccessible hides, blank areas, etc
♦ Handlers continue to refine their understanding of what their dog looks like on odor and how odor moves
♦ Handlers improve their leash handling, body langauge, and how/when to support
♦ Experience vehicle, exterior, buried, submerged, and interior searches.
Teams can expect to stay in Intermediate for several class sessions as they master the skills.
Advanced Scentwork
This class is really designed for those competing or ready to compete. We introduce additional odor (clove and/or cypress) and but it’s about strengthening skills like odor obedience, indication, and independence when searching. We also trouble shoot problems like lingering odor, pooling odor, elevated hides, inaccessible hides, false alerts and more.
♦ Building on the skills from intermediate with more challenging hide set ups for both the handler and the dog to navigate.
Teams MUST be approved for this class by Melissa. Dogs must be training/trialing at an NW2/NW3 level, already have AKC Excellent titles, or similar.
