Sniffing Around Scent Work

On Saturday I dropped in to my friend’s class so that Astra and I could have some practice on working unknown buried hides. It’s a nice class with a very relaxed vibe, and The instructor was talking about the various factors that tend to complicate buried searches, and some questions came up about the recent changes in the way that the buried hides are set up.

For those of you who are unaware of the changes, you can find them on the AKC website (https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn-origin-etr.akc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/02173240/Buried-Searches-2025.pdf). Here is the summary: instead of 4 inches of sand, judges are now allowed to set two or three inches of sand (depending on the size of the mesh tea ball that the q tip is in) and in the water hides, the Q-tips are now just put into the tubs of water instead of being put into tubs and attached by suction cup to the bottom of the bin.

The world being what it is today, there were a lot of facebook posts about this change that went, well, sideways.

So I had some good discussion in the class, and thought I would share some of those thoughts here.

First of all, the changes were well thought out by AKC. I happen to know that there was a great deal of thought and experimentation that went into these changes. It’s not an easy thing to change rules, and everything was considered and tested by a group of people.

The changes were made to ease the burden of set up for everyone. Four inches of sand in a bin is very heavy.  By reducing the amount, AKC has reduced the weight we all have to lug around.

I have heard some people wondering about whether this will change the scent picture for the dogs we have already trained with four inches of sand. In my opinion, not significantly. Using less sand should, in theory, make the odor more accessible. Is it significantly stronger so that the dogs will have problems with it? As in all matters, this will vary from dog to dog, but I have not seen a difference in the classes that I teach, or in my own dogs. I spoke to one instructor who said that she saw a slight hesitation from the more experienced dogs, as if they noticed something was a little different, but they adjusted very quickly and had no problem alerting.

Why didn’t they also change the amount of water to two inches? AKC did have a group of people experiment with a smaller amount of water, but  it was found that a bin with two inches of water can be easily tipped over by many dogs. (Yes, in the ideal world we would all have perfectly trained dogs that would never paw bins or tip then over, but unfortunately, in the real world things happen).

What about the naked Q-tip in the water hides?

I don’t think that lack of tubing or suction cups changes the picture at all for our dogs. I generally don’t train in class with suction cups or tubing, and I have never seen it make a difference for any of the dogs. When you put the cotton swab with the essential oil on it in the water, the oil immediately spreads into the water, whether the swab is in a tube or not.

The elimination of the suction cups and tubing streamlines the hide setting for the judges and cuts down on the amount of stuff that the club has to buy, as well as eliminating a possible source of contamination. I have judged at one trial at least, where the tubing and suction cups had been stored improperly and were contaminated.

I have seen some people questioning whether the cotton swabs sink in all situations, and what should people do if it doesn’t sink, and this has made me really scratch my head….it doesn’t matter whether the Q-tip sinks or not, the oil is spread into the water regardless. And in my experience the q tip always sinks eventually.

In summary, the changes to the buried element are good things, and we can only hope that more good rule changes are on the horizon.