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Mogens Eliasen: "BrainWork for Smart Dogs"

Table of contents Part 1 Part 2 Part 3A Part 3B Part 3C Part 3D

Part 3D:

SIMPLENOSEWORK

EXERCISES

Contents of Part 3D:

TREAT-HUNT - indoorsTREAT-HUNT - outdoors TOY-HUNT - finding a hidden toyGIFT-HUNT - finding a treat box or a treat ballMY-KEYS- finding the keysFOLLOW-THIS scent trail

What you need to know about "scent"CONNECT - finding hidden people

Therapy for people-shy dogsGreeting exercise for rambunctious dogsFormal competition "searches"Just having fun...Serious Search & Rescue work

The nose is by far the dog’s most important sensory organ, and it is very important that you stimulate your dog to use it! Taking the dog out for a

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Mogens Eliasen: “BrainWork for Smart Dogs"Part 3D: Simple Nosework Exercises

walk and letting it sniff all the “peeing posts” on the way does give some stimulation to the nose, but your dog is capable of so much more that just passively inhaling the gossip of the neighborhood. It can actually tell which direction you went across the field an hour ago when it is given an opportunity to sniff your footprints for just a few yards! Please don’t waste such a talent by never giving it a chance to get used!

There are two main challenges for you with Nosework. The first one is communication. You have to be able to make your dog understand which of the present scents in an area you want it to focus on.

The second is going towards the limit for how little the dog needs in order to distinguish different scent pictures from each other. Both of these challenges demand some fundamental insight and careful preparation from your side, the last one in particular (that's why the exercises that call for your careful management of scent are among the Advanced Exercises).

Until you can actually get your dog to do something with its nose, there should be no way for you to push any limits. Just enjoy and feel the awe.

Right form the very beginning, Nosework training must be well planned and carried out in a meticulous way. It is very easy to screw up by sloppy planning!

As the training progresses, you have to learn from watching your dog! You must, at all times, be able to tell from the dog’s behavior how it is doing with its job. Otherwise, you cannot help the dog if it needs it, and you cannot plan the degree of difficulty the dog needs at the next session in order to learn the most. This is always a balance between progress for you and success for the dog.

Progress for you means challenges for the dog – and that is what we are looking for. But if you push too much, you will simply make the dog’s performance sloppy and dependant on your help, and that will, in the long-term, reduce your ability to challenge the dog with any particular exercise.

The Nosework exercises all have tremendous potential for very challenging, practical use. If this attracts you, please associate with other people who can guide you in the specific disciplines you want to develop to professional or semi-professional levels. It is not simple to do so alone! But it is even worse to get connected to some "wanna-be" experts that truly know very little, but pretend a lot... (You are welcome to contact me about it - I can certainly help you.)


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http://k9joy.com/BrainWorkForSmartDogs/ExtraExercises.html


Even with no particular ambitions on behalf of your dog, you should train at least two Nosework exercises – for your dog’s sake. You will enjoy seeing how much it loves it! And the exercises I include in this book are all simple enough for anybody to do. You are in full control over how far you want to go with them, but just the first few steps will make a huge difference for your dog.


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Mogens Eliasen: "BrainWork for Smart Dogs"Part 3D: Simple Nosework Exercises

TREAT-HUNT - indoors

Introduction

Your dog is a natural hunter, controlled by its instincts. Fortunately the instincts are many, and each one of them accounts for only a very small fraction of what will constitute effective hunting behavior for a carnivore.

The really good news is that these instincts work independently of each other, so you do not need to satisfy them all at the same time - and you do not need to do it in any predetermined sequence either.

This indoor hunting exercise takes no live prey, only a piece of food you would have added to the dog's dinner anyway. It takes no special hunting grounds, as you can do it in your kitchen or living room. It takes no kill, as the "prey" is already dead when found.

The Four Boxes

Your well-chosen substitute forTREAT-HUNT

Hand signal for direction + voice

The dog searches for a hidden treat

The dog finds the treat

Special features

There are no dogs that cannot learn this.

And there are no dogs that should not learn to do this.

Once taught, this exercise take no more than a few seconds to prepare - and it can provide 20-60 minutes intensive brainwork for your dog, even on a rainy day...


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TREAT-HUNT indoors

Overview:

Description: The dog will search a room for treats you have hidden there.

Ratings: Dog: Owner: Development: Limitations:

Moderately challenging to learn.

Easy, but it takes some careful perparation.

Very large potential when combined with other exercises.

None - all dogs can learn this.

Training method:

Command: Incitement: Reaction: Reward:

Your hand signals and vocal encouragement.

The dog uses its nose to locate the treat, performing a random search.

The found treat. You should add a lot of praise...

Obstacles and Challenges:

When the dog has learned to find simple treats, you can start to hide those treats by covering them with objects. You can simply combine this exercise with DESTROY, hiding the treat underneath a cup, for instance.If the dog has learned to unwrap a treat you put inside a box, you can substitute the treat in this exercise with a treat in a box and hide the box for the dog to find.Next, if the dog has learned to pull a string you can let it find the string as an access key to its treat - and you can have the treat inside a box.

Equipment: None for start. Later, you might want to use cardboard boxes, obstacles, household articles etc. to increase the challenge for the dog.

Location and Facilities: Your home.

Special Features:

This is a great indoor nosework exercise I think all dog owners should do with their dogs!One caution: do not just throw treats around you don't remember where went. If the dog does not find them all, such strewn treats will just lie there till someone cleans them up. This could be the dog, several days later - but it could also be another critter you do not want as a guest, so please don't leave such open invitations…


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TREAT-HUNT indoors

Step-by-step procedure

1. Connect the reward with the performance

For start, there will always be a treat right where you point. You need to build trust in your directions. To be specific: For start, you do not attempt to teach the dog to search. For start, you teach the dog to find what you want it to find. Please make a careful note of that difference.

You cannot teach the dog to look for something it does not know what is - and the dog will not understand your English word for that. You have to show it.

2. Identify your incitement

The movement of your hand right in front of the dog's nose so it can see it is a natural key stimulus for one of the dog's hunting instincts. All dogs have it. You can make it stronger by having some smell of treat on you fingers and let the dog smell your hand first.

If your dog does not respond to this it will always be because of one of the following reasons you then have to deal with:

The dog was distracted by something else and did not pay attention to you;

The dog is so full that it has no interest at all in any food;

The dog is sick and it needs to see a veterinarian;

The dog's hunting instinct has been bred out of the genes, and this dog and its possible future puppies will never chase anything - a responsible owner, you should exclude it from any possible breeding, as far as I am concerned....

The movement of your arm will often be enough to get the dog moving - it want to check what your arm threw, and you move your arm as if you were throwing your hand toward the object you want the do to move towards.. Some encouraging voice will support the dog's understanding that you are in a happy mood and do not want to restrict the dog from moving.


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TREAT-HUNT indoors

One serious warning here: if you try to use such direction giving hand signals just for your own purposes, with nothing in it for the dog, you will quickly teach the dog that you are not worth paying any attention to... You should only use this hand signal for direction what you seriously are helping the dog find what you know it wants to find or would like to find. Don't cheat on this!

3. Choose your command

You can use a simple verbal command that just means "You are allowed to search for your treat here" or you can combine a word and a hand signal for direction for the dog to start.

The value of the hand signal is (in principle) insignificant for this particular exercise, if you are exclusively concerned about creating brainwork for the dog in this particular exercise. However, you can later use it as an incitement to get the dog to continue a search it is about to give up without having found all treats - which certainly can be useful. The main reason for me suggesting that you do use a hand signal is that this can become a major tool for you in all kinds of other situations where you want to control the direction the dog moves in. Instigating a special swing of your hand to become a signal of direction for the dog is a very practical control tool you should not ignore. Besides, it gives you a lot of extra leadership credibility that you show the dog with your hand signal that you actually know where the treat is....

Your hand signal should be a body-arm-hand-finger signal, as I strongly suggest you use everything from your toes to your fingertips to assist you in transferring a perception of direction to the dog. Pointing with a single finger is not going to do it for a dog - it won't notice. Another dog would use its entire body to show a direction, such as the famous English Pointer shows the hunter where the bird is. The dog will notice movement more than a stationary picture, so make a complete ballet with a great swing of your arm, ending with a stand that uses your arm, hand and fingers as a substitute for the Pointer's neck, head and nose.

When you point, you should always point directly towards the objective, as seen from your position. Dogs understand this better than they understand any attempt to show which specific direction they are supposed to move their body - dogs will naturally figure that out when they understand where the objective is.

Here is an illustration of the principle for hand signal direction:


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TREAT-HUNT indoors

The main purpose of the command is to specify for the dog what it is supposed to search for. You have to tell it - otherwise you have no control over what is on its mind.

Dogs can easily handle combined signals. They use them all the time in communication with you and other dogs. So combining a verbal command that specifies the search object with a hand signal that indicates starting a search in the specified direction makes a whole bunch of sense to a dog that has learned the meaning of the verbal command in advance.

Having said this, I should also mention that it does not make very much sense to a dog to get two consecutive signals. For the dog's mind to combine the meaning of two signals into a higher meaning, those signals must be given at the exact same time. If your give them in sequence, the last one will simply replace the first one.

So, if you first give a verbal command word like "Search" that is supposed to mean "start a search" and then another verbal command word like "Treat" that means "you are looking for a treat", this is an attempt to make the dog understand English by combining words in a semantic way. Dogs cannot do that with any reliability. The maximum you can achieve here is that the dog will understand the combination of the two command words correctly, which you could have achieved faster and more reliably with a single command word…

Besides, using two commands has no value to you at all when you want to change the search object. For that, you are back to square one with your training. Actually, you are worse off, because the dog will "jump the gun"


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You point this way

The dog moves this way in response to your signal

You

Treat


TREAT-HUNT indoors

and go for the first command word it can understand. This means that your "Treat" command will be ignored, and your "Search" command will be interpreted by the dog as "Start a search for a treat"! So if you want the dog to look for something different, you are seriously confusing the dog and may have some major setback in your training! Good leaders don't do those kinds of things to their loyal pack members…

Here are some possible choices for your inspiration:

WOOF-SHOP, DOG-MICE, YUM-F'-YOU, MUFFA, RECCE, PATROL, NOSE-VAC.

4. Put the exercise together

When you tested your tools and know they will work, you prepare for using your command also.

First thing to do is to set up the scene for a simple search. Very simple. In fact, is should not be a search at all. It should only be permission to the dog to go and grab a treat!

As you recall from presentation of The Four Boxes, you are supposed to start with your command, then you continue with your incitement (which is a repeated use of the hand signal alone, without the command word), let the dog perform and get its treat.

There are two major challenges for you here:

1. You must ensure that the dog will actually find the treat - otherwise you are training without reward, and your training will go belly up very quickly.

2. You cannot let the dog see that you throw the treat - because you cannot later use that sense impression as your command! You must get the dog to react on your command, so you must put the treat in place without the dog knowing or seeing it!

When you start, you should have only one treat in place at a time, at least in the room you are working in. The main reason for this is that you want the dog to develop trust in your hand signal for direction - this can become very useful for you later. You can teach this exercise without, though. All the dog really needs from you is a permission to start the search, so if you do not bother with this arm signal business, then just let it go, as I said earlier.


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TREAT-HUNT indoors

The goal is to have your dog trust your command so it will start searching for the treat and keep searching until it finds it.

5. Make it more challenging

Your second stage is to teach the dog to continue searching, even when it gives up.

There is only one sure way of accomplishing this - and that is by watching the dog and helping it with a hand signal directly to the treat when it gives up searching. This way, you prove to the dog that there was no legitimate reason for giving up - the treat was right there!

What you are doing here is simple: you replace your search command with the dog's own experience of giving up. Right after this, you give the dog an incitement to search - and immediately let the dog get a simple success by searching "just a little more". This way, you will eventually teach it that, every time it recognizes its own mood of giving up, it should continue "just a little bit more" - and the treat will be there.

There is one important caution here. You have to balance this with the dog at least doing some of the search itself. The dog must get the experience that it finds the treats through its own search. If it gets the experience that you literally show it where the treats are, you will teach it to ask you to point them out! Needless to say that this kind of defeats the whole purpose…

The conclusion is that you need to balance the amount of help you give after your command. You must give just enough to secure success, but not so much that the dog does not have to do any work itself. And seriously: if the dog isn't really interested in working for a treat, you need to consider what kind of treats you are offering and at what times you do so…

Did you notice that, in order for you to help the dog restart a search it has given up, you need to know where those treats are?

Third stage is to increase time and space for the search. There are several parameters you can work with to make the exercise more challenging for the dog:

Distance - or the amount of space you allow for the search The number of treats The size of the teats (big one are easy to find...)


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TREAT-HUNT indoors

The way the treats are hidden or covered

It should be quite obvious that the bigger the room, the more challenging the search. You can reduce this challenge a lot by guiding the dog in the right direction for start. And you can make it very difficult by giving "bad advice", so the dog will start searching in the wrong places first....

There is a price for leading the dog in the wrong direction. It will wear down the dog's trust in you if you do it too often, especially while the dog is still a bit uncertain about the whole exercise.

The number of treats works the opposite way of what most people immediately think: The more treats, the easier the search is! With many teats in the same space, the chances of the dog finding one by accident and pure chance is much greater than with only few treats. So, many treats will, in reality, make the average space per treat smaller - and thus make the search easier for the dog.

However, as you have the dog find some of the treats, the ones that are left are now significantly more challenging to find!

You need to take this into account when you prepare for starting searches for multiple treats. For start, you have only two treats. Let the dog find the first one. As reward for finding that one, you immediately give the dog another search command, leading it almost directly to the next treat.

This will soon bring you to the point where the dog will look to you for direction to the next treat, when it found the first one. At that point, you can add more treats. Do not exceed a number of treats you can be held accountable for yourself, though!

After the last treat, you give the dog a BREAK command and stop the game. Take the dog away from the area, so you can make it get other thoughts into its head.

You continue this until you do no need to guide the dog anymore - it will move from the find of one treat to "self-starting" a search for the next, until you give your BREAK command and stop the game.

Fourth stage is now to work on the consistency and perseverance. You do this by putting out several treats out, but you hide them, so they are difficult to find. And you make them smaller.


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TREAT-HUNT indoors

You now let the dog search and find as many treats as it can. You count them, so you know if the job is all done or not. If the dog gives up, you show it where to find another treat. (Yes, you better know where they are...!)It is important that the dog never gets a chance to give up, but instantly is given a simple and easy search for success when it does.

When you are sure that there are no more treats to find, you drop one extra - and put your foot on it...

Let the dog search till it is exhausted. Then step off the treat you had hidden under your foot - and let the dog find that one! Make that treat the finale of the search. Give a BREAK command and take the dog away from the area.

I hope you understand the idea here: you cannot let the dog give up - but you also want it to search far beyond the point of it systematically vacuuming all treats already.

Fifth stage is to increase the difficulties for the dog when it finds a treat. Although the treat might be easy to find, it might take more to get. You can hide it under something that is less-than-easy for the dog to remove. A classic is a cup (plastic, please...) that is put upside down over the treat. The dog then has to remove the cup (or tip it over) in order to get the treat.

Next move is to exchange the cup with a bowl. The final tricky one is to use a plate - on a slippery surface...

Regardless how exactly you hide the treat, you still need to keep in mind that you cannot have the dog give up. If, at this stage, the dog gives up and looks to you for help, you have pushed things too far, too fast.

Additional observations and comments

The treats you hide must be small and you have to count them as part of the dog's overall diet. Big pieces are too easy to find - and they add up to a whole meal before you are done training! Using small meat pieces for treats, for instance, is great, as long as you subtract the amount of meat you use for treats from the general fraction of the diet that should be raw meat.

The topic of feeding goes beyond what I will cover in detail in this book, but you can check http://k9joy.com/education/feedyourdog.php for more information about feeding your dog - the link will also lead you to my e-books and videos about feeding. The e-


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http://k9joy.com/education/feedyourdog.php


TREAT-HUNT indoors

book "Raw Food For Dogs - the Ultimate Reference for Dog Owners" has a chapter with specific instructions to making your own treats.

When the dog gets confident and continues its search for minutes in a row with no help from your side, you can start implementing other exercises also. Good candidates are hiding the treat in a box, or inside a treat ball. As pointed out earlier, you must start such combinations with the last part of the combined exercise, not the initial part. So, please teach the dog the exercises UNWRAP and TREAT-BALL before you start using those tools in searches - then check back and study GIFT-HUNT.

Let me explain. If you want to make the dog look for a treat ball, you must do it in this sequence:

1. You use the command TREAT-BALL to allow the dog to start pushing the ball around, as you give the ball to it.

2. You have the treat ball located at some distance and now start the dog searching for it by using the command TREAT-BALL together with a hand signal for search!

3. You hide the treat ball and make the dog search for it by still using your TREAT-BALL command together with the usual hand signal for search.

I don't want to provide bad teaching by telling you what you shouldn't do, but you will not do this in any other way! For the dog to find a treat wrapped in a box, you substitute TREAT-BALL with whatever UNWRAP command you have been teaching for getting a treat out of a box. I trust you will understand now how you also apply this to other objects you want the dog to find. There are no exceptions from this. You will never make the dog start searching for something it does not know what is, and you will never let it find something different from what you promised when you started the exercise.

Start of this exercise Overview of exercises in Part 3D


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TREAT-HUNT - outdoors

Introduction

For the dog, there is very little difference between "indoors" and "outdoors", expect for the presence of way more distractions outdoors...

Some people do not like to throw food pieces n their floors. If you are one of them, you can do the same treat hunting outdoors. It is slightly more challenging, but the opportunities and possibilities are also much greater

The Four Boxes

Your well-chosen substitute forTREAT-HUNT


The dog searches for a hidden treat

The dog finds the treat

Special features

Be aware that this exercise will teach the dog that your TREAT-HUNT command will allow it to find and eat any food it will find during its search. If you make it perform a search in an area where other people have left garbage, you could have a problem you would not like to deal with... So, please be selective and responsible when you choose your search area.


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TREAT-HUNT outdoors

Overview:

Description: The dog will search the yard (or some other place) for treats you have hidden there.


Moderately challenging. Easy.

Very large potential when combined with other exercises.

None - all dogs can learn this.

Training method:


Your hand signal and vocal encouragement.

The dog uses the nose to locate the treats, performing a random search.

The found treats.


When the dog has learned to find simple treats, you can start to hide those treats by covering them with objects. If the dog has learned other exercises that results in it getting a treat, you can combine the search with those. It could be unwrapping a treat you put inside a box, it could be finding a string to pull the treat (or a treat box!) from a narrow space where the dog cannot access it, and it could be opening the lid to a big box that has the treat inside. In any case, you start the search exercise by telling the dog what it is supposed to look for, as explained for "Finding treats indoors".

Equipment: None for start. Later, you might want to use all kinds of articles and objects to cover the treats to increase the challenge for the dog.

Location and Facilities:

You can do this in your own yard, or you can find a good spot on your walk with the dog. You do not need much more space than what you have in a standard size living room.

Special Features:

This is a great outdoors nosework exercise that is so simple to do that no dog owner has any legitimate excuse for not training it; you can find places to do this almost anywhere you walk the dog.


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TREAT-HUNT outdoors



Same as for TREAT-HUNT indoors. But be careful with possible distractions. You should start with a simple lawn where you can be sure that there will be nothing else that possibly could be more interesting than your treats.

Also avoid doing it at a time when you normally would take the dog out for a walk - it is better to do it when you come home from the walk and the dog has satisfied some of its most pressing needs for checking out everything.


Same as for TREAT-HUNT indoors.


This is exactly as for TREAT-HUNT indoors. You may use the exact same commands and hand signals here.


Same as for TREAT-HUNT indoors - except that you now have to be more careful with distractions to not destroy your sequence of "The Four Boxes".

It can also be a little more challenging to lay the treat without the dog seeing it - you may have to do a little walking around the corner of the house. Or; lay out a series of teats while the dog is still indoors, and then train one session at a time, with each treat you laid out.

If you lay out multiple treats in preparation of multiple training sessions, you need to be careful about not having the teats too close to each other. You must avoid letting the dog find another treat than the one you pointed it to.

Also: do not exceed 5-6 treats.... My experience simply tells me that 6 is the maximum number a human can remember. If you go beyond that, you are prone to make screw-ups because you forgot where you put those treats, and you will not be able to help the dog find them either!


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TREAT-HUNT outdoors

It is no shame to make notes, maybe a little primitive drawing, so you have something to support your memory about where exactly those treats are... Just for yourself - you don't even have to show it to the dog.

When working outdoors, you should have the dog on leash for start, otherwise you might trigger more exercise than brainwork training, for both the dog and yourself.

When all preparations are done, you bring the dog to a distance of 2-3 meters (6-10 ft) from a treat - with no other treats being any closer than 10 metres away (30 ft).

It is a good idea to make the dog do a SIT for start. The, you get the dog's attention. In the moment you have it, you do your training:

Give the TREAT-HUNT command, using a hand signal for direction to the treat. Run with the dog to the treat. Point out the treat for the dog. Let the dog have the treat. Praise.

Have a little play with dog. Not too much, but enough to make it feel that you are happy for it finding its own food on your command...

Then do another session. If the treat is already laid out, you go ahead again, asking a SIT and some eye contact before you start the training session itself. If you need to lay out the next treat first, you tie the dog up and drop the treat in a place where the dog cannot see you do it. Then go back to the dog and start your session.

5-6 sessions in a row is enough for the dog, so there is no point in doing more, even if you could remember where you put the treats....

5. You make it more challenging

You go to terrain that offers many more possibilities of hiding the treats - and also obstacles for the dog to move freely. Forest, for instance, is a great place because it is very far from simple for the dog to "vacuum" it for treats.

You can also cover the treats with all kinds of objects, natural ones as well as artificial ones.



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TREAT-HUNT outdoors

You have some major advantages outdoors:

Your area for the search can be made significantly larger;

You can incorporate Body Balance exercises also;

You can bury your treats! (Not too deep - 5-10 cm (2-4") will do)

You do not need to worry about the dog finding all treats, so when the dog knows the TREAT-HUNT command well, you can toss out some 10-15 treats and then just let the dog work at finding them all.

The effect of the size of the search area is obvious. However, I caution you to let the dog search in fairly small areas at a time. Do not let it search a soccer field in just one operation! Small segments, one at a time, please - so you have some control. A reasonable size of a search area is 10 metres by 10 metres (30 feet by 30 feet) for an advanced dog. For a "newbie", such an area could be made into four good areas.

Incorporating Body Balance is fairly simple - you just place some treats at locations the dog can only access by passing an obstacle. The challenge for you is to find the spots where you can do this. If you have access to forested terrain it is generally easy, but otherwise, it may not be. Don't worry about it - but seize the opportunities when you get them.

Burying treats or hiding them under cover of small rocks is a great challenge for the dog. You can even leave them till next day, but only when the dog gets good at this!

The best way to go about burying treats might be to wrap the treat first in a simple treat box and then let the dog find and dig up the box as it releases the smell of the treat through its holes. You should not cover the treat completely - you need to make sure the smell of it comes out into the air, so the dog can find it.

Then you start the training by simply putting a piece of turf on top of a treat. Then you progress to digging a hole by taking one whole turf piece out, dropping a treat into the hole and putting the turf back crooked, so it does not fit in the hole, but lets the scent of the treat come out.

From there, you gradually close the hole and leave it for longer and longer time. Several hours will soon be OK, even a day or two, when the dog gets good at it. I know of examples where my dogs have found such a hidden


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TREAT-HUNT outdoors

treat 10 days later when one of my friends forgot where he buried one for his own dog....

You may not appreciate the dog digging in your yard, but covering the treats with soil for start, and later digging them down to a depth of 4-12 inches, is a very challenging way of making the search more difficult for the dog. You can also bury toys and other objects you have taught the dog to find.

You proceed by cutting a square piece of turf and lifting it up. Clean the hole for the loose dirt and scrape off any loose dirt from the turf. Put the treat in the hole and cover it with the turf, by turning it so it does not fit very well into the hole. This way, the scent from the treat ascents easily, up past the turf.

For the dog, this exercise will become very similar to the DESTROY exercise that allows it to do what it can to get the cover away from its objective. The cover is here the soil or the sand you used to bury the treat or the treat box.

You should notice that you must not cover the treat so completely that the dog cannot smell it. When you start it on the TREAT-HUNT command, it will look for a treat, and it will go buy the smell. If you want to do more sophisticated work around hiding treats inside boxes that do not get out much smell from the treat, you need to teach the dog what it is looking for first - then to find it. You can use the techniques described for GIFT-HUNT.


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TREAT-HUNT outdoors

Excuses for not doing nosework

This exercise is a killer of your excuses for not doing nosework with your dog...

The fact that you don't need to be overly worried about finding all treats gives you a great possibility for putting the dog to work for half an hour or more in just 5 seconds! Take a good book and a handful of treats. Go out and lie down in you hammock with your book. Throw all the treats up in the air and let the wind spread them - or simply toss them out on the lawn if there is too little wind. Ask the dog to find them… If they are small and many, you can see your half hour become an hour without much problem - provided, of course, that you have taught the dog persistency, as discussed for TREAT-HUNT indoors.

Remember: 10 minutes search like this will easily substitute 40 minutes walk…



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TOY-HUNT - finding hidden toy

Introduction

The search techniques the dog needs to develop for fining a toy are almost the same as for finding a treat. Finding a toy can actually be much more challenging, because it will, in most cases, provide a much less intensive smell than a treat, and will thus be more difficult for the dog to locate.

Also take into account that different dogs have different needs, at different times. There can be times where your dog might not be overly interested in a treat, but much rather get motivated by the chances of getting a good play-time with you. Or vice versa.

In general, you should always work with the dog's needs. Do not try to make the dog do something that will not satisfy any important needs.

The Four Boxes

Your well-chosen substitute for

TOY-HUNT


The dog searches for a hidden toy

The dog finds the toy and get a PLAY-TIME

command

Special features

This exercise can be trained indoors or outdoors - it makes much less difference than for TREAT-HUNT.


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TOY-HUNT

Overview:

Description: The dog will move in the direction of your hand signal to search for the toy. When it finds it, it will bring the toy to you for a good playtime.


Easy to learn. Fairly easy to teach.

Unlimited potential when learned well.

None - all dogs can do this.

Training method:


Your hand signal and encouraging voice.

The dog will search for the specific toy and will bring it to you for play when found.

PLAY-TIME and play with the toy and you.


Increase the search area's size.Cover the toy with other items - cover it with loose sand!

Equipment: None - except the toy.


This can be done everywhere, and you should plan for varying the locations as much as you can, once you taught the dog the basics of the exercise.

Special Features:

You can only do this with a toy the dog does not have unlimited access to - a toy it only gets to play with on your invitation!


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TOY-HUNT



Use you PLAY-TIME command to make the dog come back top you for a good playtime with the toy. There is no point in training this exercise with any other reward.


The sight of the toy should do it... The rest is a matter of your being able to direct the dog's attention in the right direction. Use you standard directional hand signals for that.


You must have a very specific command for this - the dog needs to know what it is looking for!

This does not mean that you have to name your toys if you have more than one toy you want to use for this exercise. The dog knows the difference between one of your dog toys and a dog toy of its own (which you never touch...).

It does mean, though, that you cannot use a brand-new toy that the dog has never had any opportunity to play with together with you.

Here is some inspiration:

DAD'S-CLOTH, MOM'S-KONG, TUG-RING, SUP'R-STICK, TOYSURE, SIPFAL.


You start the teaching process the very same way you did with TREAT-HUNT:

First, you restrict the dog from moving. If you can use a SIT or a DOWN command to accomplish that, it is fine. If not, you use your leash. No shame in that!


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TOY-HUNT

Then you position the toy, preferably in such a way that the dog cannot see you doing it. Use another room, for instance.

That was the set-up. Now you make ready for The Four Boxes:

Release the dog from its "parking". Go to a spot a few metres (yards) from the toy, but preferably so that the dog cannot spot the toy yet. Get the dog's attention (eye contact). Then

1. Give the TOY-HUNT command, together with your usual arm signal for search direction.

2. Help the dog to find the toy - use you hands and your voice - any incitements you have found will work.

3. When you see that the dog has spotted the toy, you immediately4. Use your PLAY-TIME command as reward.

Let the dog enjoy the game together with you and the toy, but not for too long - you want some energy preserved for another search! When you believe the dog has enjoyed the toy well enough, you get the toy back and "park" the dog again, so it cannot see where you hide the toy this time either. You find a new location, go back to the dog, and start another training session.

You must watch the dog's interest in the rewarding play. As soon as you notice the enthusiasm drop just a smidgen, you have push the training one session too far... No big damage, though - but you achieve the optimal result when you conclude the training on a peak performance, not when it starts to drop!

Even if you feel you could easily do 6 times or more, stop at 5 and do something else. Then return to this exercise once more. That's also 6 in total - but with far less risk of being less effective. You might even make it 7 or 8...


Just as for the TREAT-HUNT exercise, you now increase the distance to the hidden toy - and you hide it more effectively.

One of the most exhausting parameters you can incorporate is the amount of space you let the dog search in. A rule of thumb is that doubling the space makes it 4 times more challenging. Tripling the space makes it 9 times as


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TOY-HUNT

challenging... I guess you don't need much math to figure out that space is not your limitation. The dog's motivation is.

In order to maintain and increase the dog's motivation, it is paramount that you lead it to an easy find as soon as it loses interest in the game. If you do not provide any serious help when it gives up, but instead gets a valueless demand to "continue working", it will quit - and you will have less motivation to work with next time. But, if you give it some solid hint with your hand signals and voice, it will instead learn that when it is about to give up, the reward is the closest. That experience will keep it going and going and going...

When you increase the search area, you might also send the dog to search in a space where it can find one of its own dog toys. If it is tired and/or confused, it might want to "just try" to see if you would play with this toy instead. You most definitely won't. You are looking for your toy.

Notice: your toy. Not just a toy. The toy. The very toy you always use for this exercise - and once in a while invite the dog to have fun with together with yourself, but never alone.... You, the potent pack leader, don't play with ordinary dog toys... Never!


This exercise is easy to arrange, almost anywhere you bring your dog. You can do the training indoors as well as outdoors. I strongly suggest you soon make the dog used to doing this almost anywhere.

There is a conflict in the training you need to be aware of - and decide how you want to deal with: You can let the dog search more or less on its own, with almost no interference from your side, or you can combine the exercise into a teamwork, for which you provide the guidance and the management, the dog provides the nosework and the legwork.

The approach I have explained here is the first one: the purpose is brainwork for the dog, not an effective search for you. Although an effective search generally provides a lot more brainwork (because of the significantly larger amount of training that goes into it), you can still provide more than enough brainwork to your dog by being a "sloppy" manager of the search, letting the dog make many decisions on its own.


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TOY-HUNT

Teaching the dog to do a systematic search in cooperation with you is very much an advanced activity that takes a lot of careful planning and discipline from your side. It goes far beyond my scope of this book, but is most definitely an activity I would love to help you with! I will cover more of this at Advanced level, but if you want to learn the nuts and bolts of getting the dog to do a systematic search, you might want to check out my courses. You are welcome to contact me about your desires, so we can discuss what I can do for you as your coach.



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mailto:[email protected]


GIFT-HUNT - finding a hidden treasure

Introduction

This exercise is, in a way, a combination of TREAT-HUNT and TOY-HUNT, considering that treat balls and treat boxes can be classified as dog toys.

It should not be raining until the dog has a good understanding of either TREAT-BALL or UNWRAP. But, as soon as that is the case, this exercise is a great way of adding more brainwork to either of those.

The Four Boxes

Your well-chosen substitute forGIFT-HUNT


The dog searches for a hidden gift

and finds it

The dog finds the gift and gets an UNWRAP or TREAT-BALL command

as its permission to enjoy the find

Special features

This is "the lazy man's brainwork exercise par excellence". It represents the biggest brainwork effect for the least amount of time of yours! No other exercise, to my knowledge, gives that much brainwork for that little time commitment.


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Overview:

Description: The dog will move in the direction of your hand signal to search for a hidden gift, such a treat box or a treat ball. When it finds the gift, it will start using it as it learned previously.


Fairly easy to learn.

Quite easy to teach.



Training method:



The dog will search for the gift. The gift.


Increase the search area's size.Cover thegift with other items - cover them with loose sand!

Equipment: None - except your keys.



Special Features: Is easy to generalize to also include other people's keys.


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You must have taught the dog UNWRAP and/or TREAT-BALL before you do this.

The reward for the search you want to instigate is simply the dog's enjoyment of that previously learned exercise. You simply use the UNWRAP or TREAT-BALL command (whichever is appropriate) as you would have use a TREAT-TIME or a PLAY-TIME command as reward for a command performance exercise.


This will most likely be the small of a teat from the gift - or simply the dog's recognizing the ball or the box. There should be nothing for you to do here... if there is, you are too early out teaching this exercise...


You may use the same command as you have taught the dog for the reward.

If you want the dog to look for a hidden treat ball, you use the TREAT-BALL command. If you want it to look for a treat box, you use the UNWRAP command.

You could also teach a third command, GIFT-HUNT, meaning, "Find either a treat ball or a treat box or another gift I am sure you will enjoy". That gives you some more flexibility, ultimately, so that would be what I will assume you do.


The procedure here is exactly the same as for TOY-HUNT. The only difference is that you do not hide a toy, but the gift, a treat box or a treat ball. And then you do not use PLAY-TIME as reward, but you simply let the dog enjoy its gift, possibly initially supported by your suing the TREAT-BALL


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or UNWRAP command to confirm that "we are back in the old game with this one".

Saving you the trouble of checking back, here is the procedure, once again:

Let the dog stay in another room while you hide the gift.

When you are done, you go back and release the dog. Take it along to a good start spot from where it cannot see the gift. Get its attention. Use the GIFT-HUNT command (or the appropriate TREAT-BALL or UNWRAP command if you prefer that). Use a hand signal for direction of the search, used in the very moment you speak your command. Help the dog to find the gift - which must take less than a 2 seconds. If the dog is hesitant starting to enjoy the gift, give it the appropriate command to start using it. Praise it for doing it, so it knows you approve of it.

Give yourself a pad on the shoulder for using brainwork to reward the dog for brainwork...! Smart pack leader.


As for any other search exercise, you increase the size of the area you allow the dog to search in.

You can also hide the gift more effectively. You can even bury it, if you want (see TREAT-HUNT outdoors for more details on that). You can certainly also cover it with all kinds of objects and obstacles (use some junk you are not concerned about preserving in any special condition or shape), and then give the dog the DESTROY command when it realizes that it cannot get to the gift directly.

You can also hide the gift so that a possible use of DETOUR would be warranted.

When you train outdoors, you should pay good attention to the wind... it can easily carry the small of a delicious treat through a hole in a gift over distances of 5-10 metres (yards), sometimes also much more!



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The GIFT-HUNT exercise is your amateur brainwork exercise par excellence. No other exercise I know of gives you this much brainwork for that little time invested as this one does. This is "automatic training with automatic reward".

Please notice, though, that you should not start training it before you have taught the dog the exercise you want to sue as reward. You cannot swap the sequence of teaching here, if you want to use your time effectively.



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MY-KEYS - finding the keys

Introduction

Having your dog find your keys when you lost them in the yard or somewhere else where they are not easy for you to find, can be of great practical value - and it does not take very much to train.

The worst restriction is the size of the search area. However, most of the time, you will be able to narrow it down to something that is quite reasonable for the dog to search.

The Four Boxes


MY-KEYS


The dog searches for your keys

The dog finds the keys and gets a treat or a

TREAT-TIME command

Special features

This exercise is great to use as a time-killer when you are waiting for something else, together with your dog. Even if you forgot to bring a toy, you probably brought your keys - so you can fill in the time with some meaningful nosework.



MY-KEYS

Overview:

Description: The dog will move in the direction of your hand signal to search for your keys. When it finds them, it will point to them and push them with its nose, so you can see where they are.


Quite challenging.

Quite challenging.



Training method:



The dog will search for the keys and will indicate its find by pushing the keys with its nose.

Treat and praise or TREAT-TIME command.


Increase the search area's size.Cover the keys with other items - cover them with loose sand!

Equipment: None - except your keys.



Special Features: Is easy to generalize to also include other people's keys.


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MY-KEYS



Your keys will smell strongly of the sweat from your hands, but they are also very unpleasant for the dog to touch with its teeth. Dogs have no natural attraction at all to metal, so getting the dog to want to find your keys must be developed in an artificial way.

You can do this by hiding a small treat under the keys, so the dog has to push the keys to the side in order to get the treat.

For start, the dog will just see the keys as an obstacle to getting its treat, but as you repeat this, it will soon find out that the keys are "advertising" for the treat.


This is the same as for "Finding treats indoors". Use your standard hand signal to help the dog start the search in the right direction.


You need to be a little careful with this, as the words "key", "keys", "my keys", "where are my keys" are quite likely to be used by you in many situations that have nothing to do with your asking your dog to search for them.

Here are some better choices that might inspire you:

NOYLA, SHLESSEL, SCRAP-CHAIN, DEERKER, DOOR-WIZ, TWINGA, TIRREL.


You do exactly as for "Finding a treat indoors", just covering the treat with your keys all the time and using your special command for this exercise.

The training then looks like this:


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MY-KEYS

You put your keys out, indoors on the floor or outdoors in the grass, as you prefer - you can do this both outdoors and indoors, and you can alternate the training sessions. At all times, you put a treat under the keys so the dog has to touch the keys in order to get the treat. You bring the dog to the scene, make sure you have its undivided attention, and send it in the direction of the keys with your MY-KEYS command and the usual hand signal for direction. You encourage the dog with your voice to get the treat. That's it!

Well, for start…

I know - you also need this performance when the keys are hidden and when there is no treat there…

You work on the first challenge first: hide the keys, but keep the treat with them. Continue to do this until the dog gets very confident about this exercise. When you can see on its behavior that it is certain to get a treat when you give the MY-KEYS command, you continue with another 10-12 training sessions to consolidate this result and then proceed with the next step.

Next step is to get the treat away from the keys without destroying the dog's performance. You want it to touch the keys with the nose and stay with them, pushing them to indicate to you where they are. You do this by once in a while "forgetting" to put the treat in place. When the dog expects to find the treat underneath the keys, it will search eagerly for the treats and push the keys around to uncover the treat. When you see this, you praise the dog lavishly and reward it with your TREAT-TIME command!

Next training session, the treat is with the keys again. And the next. Then, you "forget' the treat and reward the dog with your TREAT-TIME command when it has pushed the keys around a bit.

As you progress with the training, you now let the times you "forget" the treat become more frequent and eventually, you never "remember" the treat until the dog has pushed the keys around on the spot with its nose for a little while.

For this, it is important that you never use your TREAT-TIME command predictably. I mean: don't use it always after just 2 seconds. If you do, the dog will "cut the corners" of its own searching for the treat, and you get a less and less valuable indication out of it. You prevent this by always leaving the dog in doubt about the exact time you want it to push the keys around with its nose before you reward it. However, you have to always balance this in such a way that you do not push the time so far that the dog gives up!


35


MY-KEYS

And then, one time out of ten, the treat is under the keys - just to remind the dog that it still can happen...! As long as you can keep the dog believing that the teat could be there, it will perform the indication you need.


You progress with this as for any of the search exercises I have already discussed. Please find the details by checking "Finding treats indoors" and "Finding treats outdoors".

You may want to add also to this an extension of the search area so it will include all the places you possibly could lose your keys. You do this by simply training repeatedly at those locations, so they are well known to the dog. The dog will then, at the peak of its performance, automatically check those areas first, because they are the most likely ones, in accordance with its memory.

You can also let the dog find other people's keys. For this, you use the same command, but now use another person's keys. Start from the very beginning, but rest assured that the dog will make progress ten times faster than the first time. When you have done this with 4-5 different people, the dog will generalize the understanding it has of your command to be a search for any metal items that are covered with human sweat.

You might want to also encourage the dog to bring you the keys, but watch it: it could destroy its motivation for searching them, if you do this too early and the dog has too much apprehension against grabbing metal. My suggestion is that you only do this if the dog indicates that its wants to do it - don't try to force the dog into grabbing those keys if it shows no interest in doing it. After all, it found your keys and showed you with its nose-pushing where they were - be happy, not lazy! If you truly want the dog to learn to pick up the keys for you (for a handicapped person, this could have great practical value), then you should make sure first that you trained to dog well at retrieving such items. It is certainly possible - but not for a novice to train. (The BRING-ME exercise at Advanced level will give you all the details you need for training this.)


You should train this exercise in new locations, all the time. You never know where you might need it. One of my students from Vancouver, BC, in


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http://k9joy.com/BrainWorkForSmartDogs/ExtraExercises.html


MY-KEYS

Canada got to use it on the beach at San Diego, California when her keys got buried in the sand…

If you lost your keys out here, you better trust your dog – or you are doomed to go home without them!



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FOLLOW-THIS scent trail

Introduction

This exercise is "city tracking". Teaching the dog to follow a scent trail of human footprints in terrain is not for the inexperienced to do without supervision, but having the dog follow a scent trail you lay out yourself is fairly simple.

In principle, you can use any source of scent that can be recognized by the dog. However, you will have a much easier time when you choose a scent source that the dog has a natural attraction to. Food is a great example. All dogs will "go for" the smell of raw meat juice - and it is simple to provide for your training.

The Four Boxes

Your well-chosen substitute forFOLLOW-THIS

Your hand signals and voice

The dog puts the nose to the ground, locks on the scent,

and follows the scent trail.

The food reward you drop at the end of the

scent trail

Special features

Compared to what is the case for "real tracking" for human footprints in vegetated terrain, this exercise is so much easier to control, in terms of what exactly the scent picture is that you make available for the dog. Your risk of screw-ups is thus minimal.

The downside is that you will have to either overcome your embarrassment over being seen in public dragging a piece of meat in a string behind you or find a place for training where you can be alone with your dog!


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Overview:

Description: The dog will follow the special scent you lay out in a non-vegetated terrain to find a reward of any nature at the end.


Easy to learn, but very challenging to use.

Fairly easy, but it takes some careful preparation.

This exercise gives you an unlimited potential for brainwork, once the dog has understood the principles.

None - all dogs can do this - if the owner can teach them…

Training method:

Command: Incitement: Reaction: Reward:Your voice and occasional supporting hand signals to help the dog correct an error.

The dog follows the scent trail that you made by dragging a smelling object behind you.

Finding the reward at the end of the track.


You must know where the track goes! If you don't you cannot help the dog.You incorporate turns, curves, and crossings of streets and driveways at advanced levels.You increase the length of the track and let it go across terrain that provides lots of natural obstacles.

Equipment:

You need a long leash. For start some 3 metres (9 feet), for intermediate work, about twice this length, and for advanced levels about 10 meters (30 feet).You also need a note pad and a pencil that will allow you to make notes to support your memory of the exact location of the track at all points.

Facilities: You can do this on a parking lot in the city or on a street with negligible traffic.

Special Features:

You do not depend on having access to "virgin terrain" - you can also do this in locations where people are constantly walking all over the place.


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The goal is to have the dog follow the scent you laid out for it. You can, in principle, choose anything you like as the scent, provided you can make a continuous trail with it. I strongly suggest you use something related to food: A piece of raw meat or a juicy, meaty bone on a string you can pull behind you will do just great.

A passionate hunter might want to use a bag of blood with a little hole in, leaving a trail of small bloodstains. (This is actually a very effective way of teaching a hunting dog to locate an injured game animal...)

You can also use another strongly smelling liquid dogs are attracted to or at least can recognize very easily. The Swedish Army has a long tradition for using diluted anise oil to guide their messenger dogs over many km (miles) of rugged terrain to remote outposts.


You need to get the dog to use its nose to sniff along the scent trail. With a strong and attractive scent from a delicious piece of food, this is a no-brainer! You may additionally support the dog with your hand signal, showing it where the scent trail goes when it gets too far away from it.

For start, you simply exaggerate the strength of the scent. Make sure you have enough - that will take care of everything. It takes no more than a few experiments of some 10-20 metre (30-60 ft) long trails for you to find out how you need to work with this.


Do not use the same command as you would for tracking human footprint in terrain. The scent you want the dog to follow is totally different, so don't mess those two exercises up, although the performances look alike.

Here are some suggestions to commands you could consider:

STINK-TRAIL, PREY-F'YOU, DRIP-JUICE, CODE-SAUCE, SQUIGGLE-LANE.


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Again, the technique described for Tracking applies here too. One important difference, though: you have to make sure your dog cannot see all the treats on the scent trail. If it can, it might not use the nose at all to find them, but exclusively go for the sight of them, and you will not be teaching any nosework at all…

For this reason, you have to exercise some extra care when you choose your location for starting this exercise, so you can locate your treats at spots where the dog is not very likely to spot them with the eye.


Once the dog has understood the purpose of the exercise, you can incorporate turns, curves, crossings over different surfaces, and crossing over obstacles, etc. The dog's use of its instincts and its brain capacity to pursue such a scent trail is phenomenal to watch.

You might see it as a possible additional challenge to replace the continuous trail with a series of small points, such as one single drop of scent producing juice for every 2-5 metres (6-15 ft). For start, you keep those points somewhat closer to each other - ultimately, you can separate them much more, maybe 3-5 times as much. This way, however, you do change the nature of the exercise from being a continuous tracking to become a random search for scent spots - which is far more demanding on the dog, but also far more risky of failure....

I recommend that you do not increase the distance between two adjacent scent spots beyond what the dog can easily handle. With this, I mean: there should be no location on the scent trail from where dog cannot identify at least one scent spot. If the scent of the scent spots do not overlap each other, you are putting "holes" in the scent trail - and the dog will be left to plain guessing in regards to where to find the next spot.



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This exercise can actually be trained indoors first. At least the initial steps where you don't need much space. Do it on the linoleum floor just before you need to wash it anyway. You simply draw a trail with scent, as you would draw with chalk on a blackboard. Your chalk is replaced here with a treat, which you leave at the end of the scent trail.

I have personally used this as a puppy test on 8 week old puppies in order to identify their potential for doing nosework and problem solving - which was extremely important to me as I trained my dogs for Search & Rescue and wanted any new puppy to do this too.

What you need to know about "scent"...

For the purpose of providing adequate brainwork for your dog, you do not need to push the extremes on this - and I suggest you don't. It takes a lot of education and experience to go to the limits of what dogs actually can detect with their noses, and it most definitely belongs to a very advanced level of dog training to experiment with this.For your purpose, however, you should understand at least the very basics of the way scent behaves under circumstances you are likely to encounter, so you do not create too many unpleasant surprises for yourself....The dog's nose is, in principle, a gas detector. It can identify small concentrations of diluted gases in air, and it can tell the concentration of those gases, although not with numbers.Gases are generated from evaporating substances. All organic material that has a smell to it has an evaporation taking place from its surfaces. That evaporation produces those gas molecules in the air that can be detected by the dog's nose. There are many different molecules evaporating from an organic source. Some of them are is larger concentrations than others. Some of them are easier for the dog to detect than others. Some might be present in concentrations that are too low for the dog to detect. Others might be almost overpowering the impression of smaller components.

"Scent" is the sum of all sense impressions received by the dog's nose from such a source. There are several factors that influence the dog's ability to actually detect scent. It varies with at least the following:

source, time,


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temperature, weather conditions, surface, genetics, training.

Let's first look at the source. As you know, dogs generally have a much stronger ability to detect small concentrations of gases than humans. Some people put numbers on this and say that dogs can smell 10,000 times or 1,000,000 times better than humans. Unfortunately, we cannot measure that with any valuable accuracy. And it depends on the source of the scent too! You need to understand that what is a strong smell to you is not necessarily a strong smell to the dog - and vice versa. Few humans can smell on a bitch that she is in estrus - but you know well that male dogs can! Other smells, like hydrogen sulfide (generated from rotting protein) do not trigger much response from a dog. Humans can actually detect hydrogen sulfide just as well as dogs can!On top of that, you have to take into account that a certain smell can be very well detected - but also completely ignored! We cannot know if or when that happens to the dog... So, we need to work with scents that do trigger an interest from the dog's side.

Then, the temperature. All substances will evaporate at a much higher rate when the temperature goes up. It is like a wet spot drying up. Just an increase of 10 degrees will generally double or triple the evaporation rate. At the same time, all chemical substances are more reactive when warmer. That effect increases even more dramatically with temperature.

The net effect of this is that the scent evaporating from your scent trail and being detected by the dog's nose will be extremely strong when you lay out the trail on a hot surface - but it won't last very long... On pavement or a rocky surface, during summer, you can expect it to be all gone in less than 2-4 hours, subject to how much you deposited in the first place. If you just drag a piece of bone, you might be down to less than hour. If you pull a juicy piece of meat, you could still have some useful scent left also beyond the 4 hours.Take into account that it is the temperature of the surface that counts. Not the temperature of the air... This means that you can have quiet hot conditions on surfaces that receive sunlight, even on a fairly cold day.


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Next, let's discuss water. When coming down as a mild rain that just wets the ground, water will cool the surface and will thus preserve the scent for a much longer time. But it will also reduce the intensity...When coming down in buckets so that the water literally flows on the surface, your scent also literally gets washed away.When coming as snow, a thin cover of an inch or two will have the same effect as a mild rain, just much stronger. Thicker layers simply encapsulate the scent.

Then wind is to be considered. Well, you know how smoke behaves in the wind. Scent is exactly the same. Except for one thing: A strong wind will tend to dry out the source faster, but allowing a much greater evaporation. Just as your clothes dry faster on a windy day when you let your laundry dry naturally.

Finally, you need to consider the surface. A porous surface will suck juice like a sponge and will thus have much more scent to release. On such surfaces, your scent will last longer. This includes soil and vegetated terrain. On gravel, this effect is dramatically reduced, and on smooth rock surfaces, it is non-existent. Pavement and concrete act like rock, although pavement generally has an uneven surface that tends to scrape off small tiny pieces of the food. It grinds the food down as you drag it. Those small pieces of food will constitute small reservoirs that can provide scent evaporation for quite some time. So, a rough surface is much easier to work on than a smooth surface.

A few comments also about the dog. Not all dogs are fabulous noseworkers. Some breeds are better than others, and some dogs have stronger needs for this than others. A lot of this is determined by genes you cannot alter. However, the vast majority of problems I have seen people struggle with in terms of getting their dogs to do nosework has had nothing to do with the dog's ability to use its nose, but everything to do with its desire to do so...


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When you run out of space indoors, there are other options than buying a bigger house! In most communities, you can find parking lots that are unused at certain times. Churches are a good bet, but also schools – at times when there are no kids around to disturb (and provided that dogs are not banned from entering the school grounds). Even shopping centers and commercial parking lots, at times when they are not busy.

You proceed as if it were indoors; attach a string to your smelly piece of meat or sausage and drag it behind you in a simple line across the parking lot. Make some curves and turns, all depending on the dog’s skill at the present moment and not exceeding your own ability to remember where you went! At the end, you drop the treat as a reward for the dog. Try to do it in a way so that the dog cannot spot the treat too early or find it by simply guessing, but has to follow the scent trail to find it.

If you are a hunter, you might relate this type of work to having the dog follow the blood trail of an escaping game animal that was hit but not killed instantly – for the dog, it is the same thing. But it is just much easier to have the dog train its fundamental skills on a parking lot with a piece of meat in a string….


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Yes, people might see you as a weirdo when you drag your piece of meat behind you across a church’s parking lot like this – but this close to a church, forgiveness is just close at hand…

On a parking lot like this one (or indoors) the dog has no chance of finding any useful remains of your scent – which most likely will be all over the place or mixed with all kinds of related scents that throw off the dog’s “scent picture” of human tracks in the area. But if you make the dog understand through your training that it is looking for the smell of a goodie and just has to follow the scent trail of the meat, you can avoid confusion.

In this situation, the exercise was started with the dog being told to find a treat at the corner of the parking lot, opposite to the corner where the reward was dragged to and dropped. The “starter” was the centerpiece that was cut out of the meat slice so the string could be attached to it. The start piece was a good appetizer, as you can see… and the reward at the end was wolfed down so quickly that no picture came out of that…



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CONNECT - finding hidden people

Introduction

This is "hide & seek" for dogs. It can be played with children of all ages, provided they are not afraid of the dog and can be trusted to reward the dog as you instruct.

The idea of the exercise is to have the dog find a hidden person in the direction of your hand signal. The person will have the dog's reward, either a treat or a toy, and will give it to the dog when the dog arrives.

The exercise is great to combine with DETOUR, and with obstacles of all kinds, for extra challenges.

The Four Boxes


CONNECT

You run with the dog - or have the

person call it

The runs ahead of you to find a hidden person

The person gives the dog a reward

(treat or play)

Special features

This exercise is a great family game that can be developed into a serious wilderness search exercise for Search & Rescue dogs. However, to do this is not for someone who does not have the ability to commit some 20 hours per week for 2-3 years, just for training... The exercise is nevertheless great fun, at any stage of perfection, if trained right. It has been the favorite exercise for about 80% of all dogs in my classes.


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Mogens Eliasen: “BrainWork for Smart Dogs"Part 3D: Simple Nosework ExercisesCONNECT - finding hidden people

Overview:

Description: The dog runs out in the direction you point, in order to find a person that is hidden in that direction.


Easy for start, but can be made very demanding.

Easy for start, but the exercise gets quite demanding and challenging for the owners at intermediate and advanced levels

Unlimited potential, especially when fully developed in an Extensive Search for people (wildernis search) or Intensive Search in ruins (disaster search).

All dogs that can move can learn this, but it takes a dog in top shape to make it as a fully educated Search & Rescue dog.

Training method:


Hand signals and voice encouragement.

The dog follows the indicated hand signal to locate where to search.

The dog gets a treat or toy from the found person.


It takes some significant physical exercise capability from your side in order to develop this exercise into a systematic and reliable search for people in distress.The greatest challenge for you is working on greater distances to the dog - without losing control of where it searches.

Equipment: None - you should not even have a collar on your dog when doing this.


You need adequate terrain with reasonable possibilities for hiding a person, although you can train it also indoors, at least for start.

Special Features:

This exercise is also a great greeting exercise that can be used to give a people-shy dog confidence on strangers.


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For the CONNECT command, this is very simple, but also easy to screw up: when the dog approaches the hidden person for a greeting, this person hands the dog a treat, or throws a toy for it. But for start, the "hidden person" isn't hidden at all! You start at very short distances - close enough for the two of you to shake hands!

Treats are very simple to use as rewards, but you can also use a toy you let the other person hand to the dog or throw for it to chase. What matters is that the dog knows and trusts that this person will have its reward - so that is the motivation for it to search.

(I will in the following refer to this person as the "victim" - I have trained Search & Rescue dogs for more than 25 years, so please forgive the jargon.)


Your hand signal should do a lot - but if need be, you simply run all the way with the dog!

Alternatively, you can have your "victim" entice the dog to come and get its treat or toy.

At later stages, when the "victim" is fully hidden, you make him/her reveal the hiding position.


Your command is truly meant to mean, "Somebody is hiding out there with a treat/toy for you - go find that person and get your treat/toy!"

Some possible choices for your command could include:

RUN-OUT, UNKILL, B-SAINT, SEARCH-RUN, MAP-ALL, GO-SEE, BUSH-RUSH.


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At advanced levels, you will further need a recall command that will stop the search and have the dog come back to you for another search command, most likely in the opposite direction. This recall command cannot be your normal recall, as the dog is supposed to ignore it under certain circumstances! These circumstances include the dog having found a victim or being stuck with an obstacle it needs you help to overcome. This recall command must trigger barking in those cases!

You will also need a command to stop the dog's search and have it look back to you for new direction, without necessarily coming all the back to you. This, of course, only makes sense when the dog has learned to respond to hand signals from a distance.

Yes, this is fairly complicated, so ignore it for now - it will take you at least 6 months of solid training before you will need it, and you really only need it if you want to use this exercise for serious searches that go way beyond brainwork stimulation…


As always, you have your four boxes:

First, you give the command: hand signal for direction, with the verbal CONNECT command to tell the dog what it is looking for.

Then you start your incitement: your hand signal will do a lot, but the "victim" can add showing the treat to the dog.

The dog will move to the victim in order to get its treat.

You round off by letting the victim give the dog the treat - and you praise the dog for a great performance.

My suggestion is that you always let the "victim" sit or kneel or lie down. The reason is simply that I am infected with my past in the Search & Rescue Service: people who can stand or walk are not victims of circumstances that need a dog to find them. They are most probably rescue crewmembers, and they will be all over the place all the time and really should be ignored when the dog is working… When training this exercise also "just for fun" along trails in public parks, a similar rule applies: you can never know when you will meet other people, particularly if they are walking on the trail. It is simpler for everybody if you teach the dog to understand that walking and standing people don't count for "victims".

As the dog gains confidence in the exercise, you can start at greater distances from the "victim".


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When you are at distances of about 10 meters (30 feet), you start to let the "victim" hide partially, so the dog can see only part of his/her body, later only the head, and eventually not at all.

Small, comfortable distances for start. Let the person in front of you sit down or kneel, so the dog does not see anything threatening from him/her. Kneel yourself, so you can easily make your hand signal visible to the dog. And have the "victim" help you entice the dog to come, as shown on the picture where the person to the left just shows the dog the treat - and you see the dog's response!


The biggest mistake most people make here is proceeding to distances that are too great, too soon. You must make sure that your control over the dog is in place at all times. Your control gets reduced very quickly with distance, as your possibilities of influencing the dog's choice of behavior gets dramatically reduced.


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For this reason, you choose all other kinds of challenges before you push the distance. Let the dog search on forested terrain, in rocky terrain, in outdoor storage areas, like for a building supply store, and whatever else you can find. When you master just about any kinds of circumstances, you start increasing the distance.

Another reason for not pushing distance is that you do not want to teach the dog to run away from you... The best result for you is that the dog will run out to the maximum distance of about 30-50 metres (100-150 ft), and, if it cannot find anything at that distance, it will look back to you o or come back to you for additional directions. Even a well-trained Search & Rescue dog will not be required to work at any greater distance from its handler, except in very special situations.

If you get a situation developed where the dog it too far away from the victim to have any reasonable chance of a successful find, you might want to use your TREAT-TIME or PLAY-TIME to get the dog back to you. However, be very careful that you don't get those commands destroyed too! If the dog is sincerely looking for the "victim" and obsessed with getting the reward from this person, its might be "deaf and blind" to your "disturbing" command. So, the time to use your TREAT-TIME or PLAY-TIME is when the dog obviously has given up searching - not before. And you use those commands only in emergencies - because you teaching the dog to give up its search when you use them...


From time to time, you will experience that the dog will not find the hidden person. This happens when you exaggerated the distance, when something distracted the dog, or when the dog just did not get your direction from the hand signal well enough.

When you and I discuss this, you do realize that all of this is under your control - so "shit" like this should not happen...

However, when it happens, you should blame it on the dog...

What I mean is this: do not try to apologize to the dog. It makes no sense for a dog to listen to your feeling bad or sorry - it only contributes to it thinking that it might be better off with another pack leader. No hunters are


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constantly successful, so when you miss, you miss - and you move on to the next opportunity.

With the dog misses its find, you apply the same principle. One way or the other, you have to get it redirected, so it can have its success.

At advanced level, you will use a RECALL command and then send the dog out in another direction. This can then be used in a repetitive zigzag pattern that guides the dog to a systematic search over the entire area you are working in. I warn you: training this is very far from easy - and I have yet to see anybody do it in less than a year of intensive training at least 2 times a week...

The RECALL command you need here has to be given a special meaning: The dog is not supposed to obey it if it has found something! If you can call the dog away from a "victim" whose position you don't know, you will never find that "victim"....

For this reason, an effective search exercise must include that the dog understand that some commands have priority over others - and indication of a find is more important than a RECALL that will result in a new search instruction.

However, if the dog is stuck in a error or with a find you have to get it away from again (for reasons the dog will have no way of understanding), then you need another RECALL that will have higher priority than indication! (Yes - training this is not simple.... so leave it for now.)

For your purposes here, you can do with less. Without a solid RECALL, as soon as you realize that the dog is confused and just about ready to give up, you call it back with your TREAT-TIME or PLAY-TIME command. Then you start over, maybe from a closer start, so you can ensure success this time.

This does call for your TREAT-TIME/PLAY-TIME being pretty good. In fact, if you try to use a mediocre command, you could simply destroy it by using it here...

You must understand that you are putting up a conflict in the dog's brain by calling it back in the middle of a CONNECT that isn't yet finished. It is not smart dog training... But it can be your best way out of a situation that just did not work out as you had hoped.

There are a few things you can do to reduce the damage. First: make sure your TREAT-TIME/PLAY-TIME works. Next: Do not use it if you can give the dog another signal for direction to the "victim" - you are best off by finishing the exercise you started. Finally: If you cannot redirect the dog, then wait with your TREAT-TIME/PLAY-TIME command till the dog has given up its search and preferably looks back to you.


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Every time the dog goes past a "victim" without finding the person, you follow after the dog, preparing yourself for a possible redirection - or a TREAT-TIME/PLAY-TIME from a fairly short distance where your chances of success are better. You not stand on your laurels and just watch your dog disappear! Instead, you should move along so you position yourself for a good redirection, with yourself, the dog, and the hidden person in a triangle set-up, just as you did for finding treats, just over bigger distances.

Every time you have "cheated" the dog by sending it out in a direction where it could not find anybody hidden, you need to reconfirm "straight hits" many times in order to make sure that you do not destroy the dog's confidence in your directions.

Remember, the dog does not know why it could not find someone in the direction it searched.... It cannot tell the difference between your direction being incorrect or misleading - and its own lack of understanding of your directions! It just experiences failure. And that will eat away the confidence in your command next time, so, the more you expose the dog to this, the more it will lose trust in you and your directions.

This is a tedious balance act many dog owners do not have the patience for. The result of impatience is inevitably that you lose control over the exercise - and once this happens, you can spend years on getting it back. In fact I have never seen anybody truly be successful at that. The true trick is that you constantly keep yourself close enough to the dog that you can provide an effective triangle set-up for a redirection, so the dog will learn that you have the key to success when it gets lost. You can reinforce this by starting to run towards the "victim" as soon as you have shown the direction, so you can meet the dog there!

It really is a matter of teamwork. But you have to take part in this on the dog's terms - and remain in control.

Oh yeah - you get a lot of exercise too…


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Here you see the start of the search for Mom. She went hiding a few minutes ago behind the remains of the wall ahead of the dog. The dog did not see where she went – but he misses her! The owner sends the dog ahead with a sweeping body movement to indicate the direction for the dog, but from the start point, the dog probably cannot catch the scent of her. But, as you see in the second picture, as soon as he gets that scent, things perk up, and he is alert – the head comes up!

Let’s check if she really is there… Yes, she was – and what a great treat she has!


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Therapy for people-shy dogs

The CONNECT exercise can also be great tool also for teaching a shy dog confidence in other people. I have used it a lot for such therapeutic purposes. Just the initial stages - mind you, there is no real purpose in hiding people for this, but it is a great confirmation of a successful treatment that a previous people-shy dog now will actively run into the woods to find a hidden stranger!

An alternative is to sue the VISIT exercise, but make the modification then of having the helper squat down, so he/she does not pose a threat to the dog.

Greeting exercise for rambunctious dogs

Another variant I have used with great success is to make this exercise a bit more formal and then use it as a greeting exercise, particularly with strangers that are not really comfortable with dogs. When your dog masters this exercise, you can use it as plain courtesy to people who would like to "say hi" to your dog, but they really don't want to dog to jump up at them or be rambunctious in any way... (Please check the VISIT exercise for details.)

You accomplish the same (and more) by training the dog do a SIT in front of the person it approaches on your CONNECT command. The person then rewards the dog with the treat or toy as usual.

The main thing is that the dog experiences the approach of a person it wants to greet (and maybe jump up on with muddy paws...), but it learns instead to sit down in front of this person and get a great reward. Great way of eliminating annoying jumping up at strangers!

The benefit you get from making the dog sit in front of you "victim" is that you get much more brainwork out of CONNECT than you do out of VISIT - and, for a very active dog, that could be a very important factor.

Formal competition "searches"

In many associations and dog clubs that like to train dogs for competitive purposes, you will find something that looks like a formal search exercise. The purpose appears to be that the handler directs the dog to search an area in a systematic way, demonstrating good control over the dog. The exercise is concluded by the dog "finding" the person, in whatever way is called for (in


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police dog programs it is often an "escaped convict", dressed up in protection gear for some additional bitework.)

Unfortunately, there is conflict between "natural terrain with many possible hiding spots for a person" and a terrain that allows a judge to easy see how the dog responds to the handler's commands... Too often, I have seen this conflict result in "search areas" being nothing more than a completely open field with absolutely no hiding spots at all, except for one single bush or manmade object at one of the end corners!

In some formal obedience programs for competition purposes, you might find an exercise that in principle is supposed to be a search for a person. In reality, it often becomes a boring obedience exercise with no purpose for the dog when there are no places to hide anybody – as on this field. Sure, there is a huge challenge in making the dog obey your commands to run in zigzag across such a terrain – but it is not problem solving for the dog, and many dogs do not enjoy it at all (they are not that stupid that they cannot figure out this is not really a search...), unless they are desperate for an opportunity to simply run…

Those exercises, where style is more important than efficiency, can be extremely tough to teach - because they simply contradict the dog's intelligence and natural instincts for hunting. Dogs are not stupid. They do not thrive by being treated as robots. If they are to search for a hidden person, then let them search. Running in zigzag over an open field that obviously has no way of hiding a person makes no sense for the dog, other than being a plain command performance exercise. It especially makes no sense if the dog already has the smell of the person in the nose and still is forced to continue its stupid "search" for no other purpose than making the


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handler obtain a better score by demonstrating that "the entire area was searched".

I am sorry about being sarcastic about this, but I have seen too many great dogs break down mentally because they were forced to things like these that are almost the opposite of nosework.

Just having fun...

With my Search & Rescue team in Denmark, we often participated in shows of all kinds where we could advocate our existence - and maybe solicit some support. Showing what a Search & Rescue dog really can do is a sincere challenge when you are given a soccer field at a stadium as you arena to perform! It gets even worse when you want to involve the audience, especially the kids.

We found a simple way that still was a nice training for the dogs: We brought along a bunch of big cardboard boxes that could cover a kid. We then used those boxes as possible hiding spots for "victims" and let the dogs search for the hidden kids, one dog at a time.

The dogs were taught to bark for indication, so it was easy to tell, also for the audience, when the dog had discovered a box that was occupied by a kid. When the dog was lead to a box that was empty, it would just move on, looking for a box that contained a "victim".

For our show, we put up a dozen such cardboard boxes on our arena. Then we put all the dogs behind a barrier so they could not see what was going on. They knew, though... Then we asked for volunteers from the audience. This was the tough part - we always got way more kids wanting to hide than we had boxes, so we often did more than one round of searches... Each kid got treats for the dog, and got instructions about how to give a treat to the dog (open flat palm) when we lifted the box away so the kid could touch the dog.

With 4-6 kids in 10-12 boxes, all was set, and we let the dogs find the kids, one dog at a time. Great fun for everybody - and good training for the dogs!


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When teaching the dog to find people, a simple set-up like this can do a lot for start: a few cardboard boxes, each big enough to hide a person, distributed over a reasonably sized terrain of any kind – and you have a great “search course”! Now, only one (or a few) of them do have a person inside, and that makes it a great thrill for the dog to use its natural hunting instincts.


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Serious Search & Rescue work

As I already mentioned, the CONNECT exercise can be the beginning of some serious Search & Rescue work (SAR).

I often meet people who want to have a serious purpose with their dog training. To me, having great fun and enjoying life is a very serious purpose. But I also like to go beyond that, so I can understand such people - heck, I have spent thousands of hours training my dogs for SAR and developing training programs for others doing the same!

But SAR work is not just an alternative to fly-ball. It is a commitment to a lifestyle that leaves you no room for TV or family. It takes two years, minimum, to train a good dog to be good at this - if you are an excellent dog trainer.

Don't even for one second think you can do it in less time, unless you can spend 20 hours per week or more on the training. You do need other people to help you with this, so joining an association of some kind is a good idea. (If you want more specific coaching from me, we can find ways of making that happen - please check my web site at http://k9joy.com/dogtraining for details.)

But here is my sincere promise: "Searching for hidden people" is the ultimate hunting experience where the dog and you work together as a pack. The feeling of the connection coming from doing such teamwork with your dog is incredible. For you, as well as for the dog.

You do not need to be a professional SAR trainer in order to enjoy (and have your dog enjoy) searches. Al it takes is that you accept the dog's genetics as they are and then work along with its instincts.


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The “search for people” exercise can be used as the foundation for the work as Search & Rescue dog does in ruins for buried people. This type of training was used first time in Europe during the war, and was responsible for thousands of people surviving having their homes bombed into crap piles like this one – while they were still inside! Dogs can – under reasonable circumstances – detect a living human being 10-30 feet below the surface – and they can tell the difference between someone who is alive and someone who isn’t – a feature that is extremely important for the rescue crew working on the site.

The dog in the picture has learned to bark to indicate its find. The dog has been trained to expect its reward from the person down there (who is located several yards underneath the surface in a specially built cavity that provides a safe shelter but also allows the scent to ascent to the surface). This means, that when the dog realizes that the person down there is too deaf or dumb to come out and deliver that treat (or toy), the dog gets even more frustrated - and barks more! Exactly what you need in order to get a rescue crew in there and help the dog dig the person out – from the spot where the scent has the easiest way up – which most often also is the same way the rescue crew can establish the easiest and fastest access to the victim.

Do you think somebody dug out of such ruins would have any trouble giving the dog a reward? It they don’t have one, there will probably be someone around there who could help with that…



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