Sniffing Around Scent Work

Sept. 3, 2023

Once upon a time, I was running Astra in Masters level interiors.

In AKC Master Interiors, you have three searches, in three separate rooms. In each room, you have the potential of no hides (blank), one, two, or three hides. Except only one room can have zero hides, and the maximum number of hides in all three rooms is six. If you don’t get all the hides in room one, you don’t advance to room two. Many people, myself included, feel that Master Interiors is by far the most difficult class to pass. It requires three perfect judgement calls in a very short time period, under an intense amount of pressure.

We qualified in our first Masters run fairly easily, and then, we had a long dry spell. I don’t remember how many trials we went without qualifying, but it was far, far too many. Most of those NQs I don’t remember well, but a couple have really stuck in my head, because they were totally avoidable. It wasn’t because I didn’t read my dog correctly, or hadn’t practiced blank rooms, or didn’t cover the area before calling finish (which are some of the most common mistakes).

No, these particular NQs were due to  me not paying attention to how I was rewarding my dog. Astra is a “ball” dog. That is, she is crazy about retrieving balls, it is by far her favorite thing to do. And at one point, I started to reward her with the ball after we were finished with a search, if we had called all the hides correctly.  It is extraordinarily difficult to reward with a ball in competition because of the time it takes for the dog to retrieve it, and you risk contaminating the area if you throw it badly, etc.

{The exception to this was in Master Interiors, where we had three searches, I would usually reward with the ball after all three searches were completed.}

Except….there were a few instances where my brain suddenly got creative.  In one trial we had successfully completed room one and room two, and I suddenly and impulsively thought that maybe she needed extra motivation for room three. So I tossed the ball for her quickly, and then we went into room three, where she just bounced at looked at me  (which is usually what happens when she is finished searching), so I called finish and got the dreaded “no.”

The other time it happened was similar. We got through room one, and although it had been easy, I thought maybe I should reward her with her ball, so I tossed it, and she gave it back,  and we went into room 2, and she went around the room once, but wasn’t engaged and so I called finish and again, it was not blank. There were 2 easy hides in that room. And when I say easy, I mean EASY.

At the time, I was frustrated and discouraged and felt all the bad feelings (I was worthless, my dog was worthless, this game is stupid, the judge is worthless, etc.) and had no idea why things had gone wrong. It wasn’t until I got some perspective nearly a year later that I realized: in practice, I always rewarded with the ball WHEN WE WERE DONE SEARCHING. NOT when we were between rooms. Astra had interpreted my giving the ball as “we are all done searching now.” Yes, she was ignoring the whole start line routine and command stuff, blah blah blah, because, after all, some actions speak louder than others, and especially where THE PRECIOUS is involved.

My mistake was deviating from the reward routine I had established in training.

This is such an easy mistake to make. When we are at a trial, we are excited, and nervous, and often on an overload of adrenaline. We are hyper aware of the fact that people are WATCHING us, and our brains get squirrelly. Sometimes our brains get overly “helpful” and suggest that we can change something for the better…

I have known people who have decided to change treats on the day of a trial. Say you have been rewarding with small treats, that can be swallowed quickly. While packing for the trial, you decide to give extra special treats, so you pack some larger, chewy meaty treats. Maybe it will give your dog’s performance a boost!

And then, when your dog finds the first hide, and you give out the special tasty treat, your dog nearly chokes on it, and ends up spitting it out on the floor, resulting in a fault (for contaminating the search area). Oops. Your dog was expecting the regular dry crunchy treat, and was all ready to swallow it whole, and then got the big chunk of meat and couldn’t swallow it.

Also in this “oops” category are radically raising the value of the treats. Maybe you decide that the delicious barbecued pork you had for dinner last night would be just the thing to reward your dog with on trial day. And your dog (who NEVER gets BBQ pork) gets one taste of it and can think about nothing else…so he just watches your every movement, and all thoughts of searching for hides go out of his head….along with any chance of you qualifying that day. This has actually happened to more than one student of mine.

Scent work is a performance art. It is more of a freestyle dance than a strictly choreographed waltz, but within the rhythms of the search it is important to minimize the variations, in order to keep the communication between you and your partner clear, and the distractions minimized.