Sniffing Around Scent Work

Last week I wrote about that peculiar area in the training building where no hides, no matter how carefully set, could be found by the dogs–a Bermuda Triangle for scent.

I had finally pulled out the smoke machine, which shed some light on the mystery—here is the video of the smoke being pulled so dramatically back under the men’s room door that the dogs just couldn’t locate the ground hide.

One of the blog commenters (thank you Val!!) wondered what exactly was on the other side of that door, and this week I went back and checked It out. Right above that door is a AC intake vent which is apparently pulling that air up in a strong updraft (see below).

So I had previously set hides higher up on the wall, where there are some convenient pictures that are perfect spots to hide odor vessels, and those had also been a huge failure—and I wanted to see what the smoke machine would do with those.

The smoke showed what I suspected: the air rises directly up, which doesn’t give any small to medium size dog a chance to catch the odor plume. A very tall dog would probably be able to get enough odor around the picture frame to be able to source and alert.

Here is the video:

I think the reason for this is the fact that other than that hallway, the rest of the building has an extremely high warehouse type ceiling—probably 20 or 30 feet high. My experience with high ceilings has been that often the odor tends to rise up very quickly, sometime forming a narrow column so that the dogs don’t have much chance of finding it. You can see the the high ceiling in the picture below.

Of course, temperature and the placement of the HVAC vents a will also be factors that affect the airflow. My experience as a judge and a trainer is that you CANNOT accurately predict what the air is doing in any unfamiliar place. Only the dogs will tell you for sure what the odor is doing. My mantra is always: observe, test, explore, re-test!! It is part of what makes this sport so fascinating.

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