Sniffing Around Scent Work

Of all the mysteries of scenting and scent work, this is my favorite: one of the most magical things in the world is watching a dog bracket on a scent cone, or work a hide from a distance.

Bracketing

I am going digress a bit here, to define some terms, because, frankly, those of us in scent sports do not stop enough and define terms. A scent “cone” refers to the cloud of odor emitted by the object giving off the odor. I assume that it is referred to as a “cone” because the way the dogs work the odor outlines the shape of an ice cream cone (the traditional waffle kind with a pointy end, that you can’t put down until you have finished eating the whole thing, not the inferior “cake” cone. And you can tell by this deviation from the subject that it is VERY HOT here in Texas and  my thoughts have been derailed by the icy cold delights of  ice cream. Ahem).

Particularly when the source of the odor is high, the dog will “bracket” the hide by going left and right under the hide and back and forth, marking where the odor cone stops, until she determines the approximate area of the hide. This cone is sometimes affected by the air moving because of wind or heating/AC systems/fans and becomes less of a regular triangle shape and more distorted, but the dog is still clearly moving out to the edges of the cloud of odor. I have seen very experienced dogs, under the right conditions bracket just twice and then go up to mark the position of the hide quite exactly, right underneath it.

Of course, although I have seen these wonderful brackets, I can never seem to catch them on video. Here is a bracket by Astra, working a hide on a wall, in somewhat windy conditions. The hide is under the second set of windows (from the left). Her bracketing is uneven, punctuated by her going up the wall, but you can still see the u-turns she does along the wall which define the edges of the cone. She gives her final alert slightly to the left of the hide, because the breeze has pushed the strongest concentration of odor in that direction, instead of it falling directly under the hide.

I admit, this is not the best video of a bracket. Does anyone out there have one? I would love to have one that I can show my classes that show a really good definitive bracket. Put something in the comments for this post, or email me!

Cones and Working a Hide from a Distance

What I mean by working a hide from a distance is the dog working out the location far away from the hide, instead of following an odor trail that goes directly to the hide.

Here is an example. This is Yeti working a Novice interior at a UKC trial. It’s a very small area, and the hide is in a corner, underneath a dustpan. Yeti misses it on the first round of the area, and then (at about second 24) he catches what I assume is the edge of the cone, right on the garbage can and gets some information that tells him where the hide is, because he heads directly for it, in the opposite corner of the room.

Here is another example of Yeti getting the info from the edge of the cone. This was at the ORT that I posted about last month, this version just shows the segment where he hits the edge of the cone by the table, and whatever information that he finds at that edge tells him that the hide is in one of the boxes directly behind him. He seems to say “ah!” turns sharply, and quickly rules out the first and second boxes in that row, and confidently alerts on the third one.

What is it that the dogs are sensing on that edge?
It is well established that dogs work their nostrils independently from each other, and thus can get directional information from the concentration of scent entering each nostril, but that doesn’t completely explain it. Before I saw dogs working hides from a distance, I assumed that when they are working a bracket, the process goes something like this:

“odor here, odor here, odor here, NOT ODOR–about turn–odor here, odor here, odor here, NOT ODOR, about turn…..”

until they find the strongest concentration, and then they give us the alert signal. But having seen dogs work the edge of a cone, now I wonder if something more isn’t going on. Sometimes I imagine the molecules are whispering to some part of the dog’s brain “over there, over there, over THERE!”

This working the edge of the cone thing is one of the reasons that I dislike directed searching and detailing, and that I generally (although not always) advise my students against it. If we are leading our dog around the search area, we don’t give him the chance to find that all important information at the edge of the cone, and work it back to source in his own way.
We are too busy focusing on our linear search of the area, our rushing need to save time and FIND that hide and often, we are walking too fast for the dog to process anything. Sometimes, our dogs are gathering clues, and that is a process which takes time and thought. Have you ever tried to solve a crossword puzzle while someone is leaning over your shoulder, saying “hurry up, hurry up, hurry up”? That is what I imagine it is like for our dogs in an on-leash, rushed directed search. And then we wonder, “why did he miss that hide? He went right over it…”