Shyla's Incredible Nose

Shyla and I have continued our "nosework education" by taking another Fenzi course. I am absolutely amazed by Shyla's amazing drive to find the target scents.

I've also noticed that Shyla becomes more confident when she is doing nosework. Kids screaming nearby or things unexpectedly falling still scare her but her love of finding the hidden scent overrides her fear. She simply loves using her nose to search!

To give you an idea of how far she's come, I'm including a fun search that we did on a recent camping trip. I hid six scent sources (q-tips soaked in the scent and placed in a tube or a tin). They were all on one side of our LabMobile but not necessarily on the structure of the LabMobile itself.

In the short video, if you hear me say "alert", it means that Shyla has indicated that she found a scent source. I then give her a series of treats before saying "find another". When I say that, it means that she needs to find a *different* source of scent than the ones she already found. I am utterly amazed by how good she's become at remembering which sources she's already found, passing over them, and looking for new ones.

As you'll see in the video, Shyla found all six in under three minutes, and that includes the time that I was rewarding her for each found scent source. The barking is our crazy R. Ever since he restarted some nosework post-surgery, he wants to be involved in every search!

I hope that you enjoy the video either here or at Youtube!


It's fun to realize that Shyla learned to do this completely using positive training - being rewarded for finding the scent. I love training when it's positive!

Have a great Monday!

Nosework in the Desert

One of the things that I loved during our desert trip was being able to easily do outdoor nosework training with our dogs. Our home is presently surrounded by a deep layer of snow so it's not easy to do "exterior searches". The desert landscape was a wonderful place to play our nosework games.

All of the videos I show below were taken at K's Rock as seen in the photo below. It's such a secluded and beautiful campsite. It's like our own little private world while we're there!

I did a couple of "vehicle searches" where the scent (which is two birch-soaked q-tips in a tin) was hidden on the exterior of our LabMobile. We also did general exterior searches where I'd hide the scent somewhere within our campsite and then start the dogs searching in the right general direction. I hid the tin in holes on the rock a lot because it seemed like a unique opportunity for that kind of hiding place.

The searches were affected by some brisk winds, so the dogs had to begin to learn to search from the downwind side of an area to hone in on the scent more quickly.

I find it amazing to see how focused and independent Shyla is while she searches. She doesn't even seem to hear R who barks a lot during her searches because he wants to be searching!!! During normal non-nosework training, R's barking stresses her out and makes her lose focus.

I worked with both of them equally but I happened to get more good video of Shyla. The video below has a few searches by Shyla and one by R.

I hope that you enjoyed seeing them both at work that the wonderful game of nosework! I'm hoping that nosework will be sedate enough for R to do during his surgery recovery. He is truly a handful when he doesn't get exercise so we hope that mental exercise will help substitute for it.

 Thanks for all the great comments about his upcoming surgery. It is a relief to have a plan!