Sniffing Around Scent Work

Yeti working away from the buried bin

Last week I wrote about judging a buried element class and watching dogs fail because their handlers wouldn’t let them search away from the bins. (Thank you all for the comments and shares, you are very kind).

I thought I would write this week about an easier, less vision-centric approach to running the buried bins, and how the dogs will naturally work them if you let them.

I had the opportunity to watch a few of my students run in a competition this week and I was super proud of them. Even if they didn’t pass the search, they all let their dogs work.

Here is a video of one of my students with her dachshund in advanced buried (8 bins with water, 2 hides). The hides are in the first bin on the right, and the third bin on the right.

I am going to narrate his search, so you might want to watch this video, then read the narration, then watch it again. But my main points are: 1. The dog has to work away from the bins and 2. The dog needs go back and forth and compare the bins in order to work out source.

Q-tip on buried hides

You can  see that the Q-tip is bouncing around, actively comparing bins. In the first 30 seconds, he has formulated an opinion about which bin is hot (the first one on the right—you can see that he sniffs all around the edge of that one) BUT he doesn’t alert on it until he is sure that he has source, and in order to do that he has to: 1. Go out a little ways beyond the bin to try and get information from the edge of the odor cone and 2. compare that bin with the rest of the bins.

Once he has compared them all, he concludes that yes, the first one IS source, so he alerts and gets his reward.

 In this case, Q-tip alerted on the source he first encountered. Some dogs use other methodologies. I have seen Astra sometimes alert on the easiest, most available hide first, but sometimes she will acknowledge the easier hide, and go and work out a more difficult one, and then come back to the easier one. She has her preferences and her reasons, according to a secret calculus known only to her.

Now Q-tip has to figure out where the second source is, which will be harder.

In order to work out the second source, Q-tip goes wide again to gather information, first to the left, and then to the back wall. (FYI: dogs will often find valuable clues along the walls, because that is where the HVAC systems push the air and odor will accumulate).

Then he works the bins again. He finds the OTHER hot one (third one on the right) but again, has to confirm that it contains SOURCE and not just odor that has accumulated on the bin, blowing over from some other bin.

So he compares it to the next one down, almost alerts on it (looks at the handler) but then in order to be REALLY SURE, goes back to the container he already alerted on, looks at handler, (handler confirms that yes, that one is hot and we already found it) and then says, ok, yes, I am now SURE that bin number three is hot and that I should alert.

Dogs will sometimes go back to a previously found hide so that they can “anchor” on it, and it helps them untangle the convergence of the odors and figure out where all the sources are. I know some handlers are frustrated by this and consider it a waste of precious seconds, but it is an important part of their process.

I will post more in the future to discuss how the odor is moving around the bins, which will explain why the dogs search the way they do.

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