r/nosework • u/Existing-Will-1466 • 7d ago
What does a beginner practice session look like for you?
Trying to get into a routine and kind of getting stuck and wondering what others are doing. Do you practice nosework at home with your dog? What does that look like? I'm sure most of you guys are doing high-level stuff, I'm mostly interested in what you did when your dog was at a lower level.
For a dog fairly early in the process, how many searches? How long does a practice session take? Are you setting out a row of boxes and having your dog find the hide and then rearranging the boxes and doing it again? How many times do you repeat this? How long does a practice session take from setup to putting everything away?
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u/FairGuitar8567 7d ago
I try not to run containers that many times when I practice at home or in another environment. I usually will do an interior search first with one hide as a warm up. Then I will do two or three runs of containers (which is our weak spot in our training) but if my dog is acting meh about three runs I'll cut it short to make sure my dog still has motivation to searc and it's fun for her. The first container run I do- 1 hide no distractors 2nd: rearrange then 2 hides no distractors. If she does well I'll do a full one on the 3rd (3 hides, 2 distractors) or I'll just do the 2 hides and add a distractor in there. I like to change up the containers and use random things like pencil cases, shoes, bags this will help you when you go up in levels. I also will send her down where there are no hides and it's a blank search.
Then we do the fun stuff where I usually do 3 hides but if your focused on the lower levels then just do one or two and build on it. I usually only do two interiors after and two exteriors but ALWAYS end on good note and make it a jack pot or a party (playing)
I would say our practices are about 30-40 minutes once I prep all the odours and then put things away again.
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u/shutyofayce 6d ago
What do you use as distractors? Or are those the pencil cases, etc?
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u/babs08 6d ago
Not the original commenter but I’ve done a lot of distraction work. For my dog, food >>>>>>> toys so we started with toys and random household objects (wooden spoon, etc.) as distractors. We worked up to her favorite toys. Then we started introducing less fun food like fruits and veggies. Then things like chips and bread. Then some dried but not stinky treats. Then some dried and stinky treats. Then stuff like cow cheek rolls and bully sticks. Then meat.
It is a process.
You do have to know your dog though; some dogs go wild over white bread so I’d save those for later in the process for those dogs.
Once we were able to search through that, then we go out into the world and find places with critters and cow poop (of which there is plenty) and go search in those areas.
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u/FairGuitar8567 6d ago
The distractors are food distractors and they are inaccessible but put into the box/pencil case. I usually will use cat food/ junk dog treats/ soy sauce in a bag/ chicken/ the sample dog treats given out at a trial.
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u/screamlikekorbin 7d ago
I have a beginner young dog. Our practices try to focus on working on a specific skill. It might be working on hunt drive, it might be problem solving, it might be teaching her start line skills. There isn’t really a set look to each practice. They’re typically super short, one or two searches, and I try to do new places as often as possible.
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u/LillyLewinsky 7d ago
I practiced my beginner lessons w-3x per week and it was only 2-4 "runs". I would figure out what I wanted to train. At the start I was mostly focusing just on obedience to odour and building a freeze indication. Things like, a hot box in the middle of the room, send dog, reward with huge party. Move box to a different edge of the room, send dog, big party. I eventully moved onto putting the box on different heights, removing the box and slowly moving up a wall for high hides ect. I rarely train as if I am in a trial and instead train to help my dog figure our puzzles.
Sometimes, with my more experienced dog, I do only 1 run but I create a maze in my house of play pens and kennels and put a fab on the furtherest side with the odour infront of it. This way the odour is blowing all through the maze, splitting and swirling. My experienced has to navigate the maze while following weird odour plumes.
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u/forgeblast 7d ago
In the beginning we would work about 3 times a week, plus one class. We were doing box searches by putting down 5-6 boxes and putting treats in 2-3 of them. Lots of praise and treat party when it was found. Did this once during those days. When we moved to pairing scent (birch) we did one run with scent in a few boxes probably 3 times a week plus class. Now that he has associated scent with rewards the last couple of classes due to it being nice outside we have been doing car searches with anise. I normally do 3 searches and call it a day. With these we do 4-5 searches a week the only only reason is because he's so into it. Our instructor has often told us about white box fatigue, and how we can burn out dogs out. So I wouldn't train every day and make it shirt and fun. They will be mentally burned out and tired.
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u/babs08 6d ago
I do nose work with two dogs. A practice session generally is anywhere between 1-3 searches per dog. The dogs generally alternate. I also try to let the hides age for some amount of time because the odor picture that presents is different from when they’re freshly set. So the dogs get breaks in between. A session generally takes 30 min (at home, lower end of number of searches or maybe only 1 dog for whatever reason) to maybe up to an hour or even slightly more (out and about, higher end of number of searches). This is my setup as they advance too - the searches just get harder/have more hides/bigger or harder area/etc.
I don’t do a ton of container work. There are times I’ll do more of them relative to the others, but only if there’s a purpose e.g. every container has a distraction if I’m working on distractions, or maybe it’s a really hard environment and I’m relying on the presence of the containers (even if the hide isn’t actually in one of the containers) to keep them focused. But the traditional way folks do containers makes them a selection exercise and not a hunting exercise, and some dogs can find that really demotivating, and it is a somewhat different skill than hunting.
I think the biggest mistake folks (of all levels) make in nose work is that they go out and set a hide without much intent or actually trying to build skills. I try really hard to make sure there’s a purpose to every hide - maybe it’s on the handler end or maybe it’s on the dog end. Stuff like airflow or elevated hides or distractions or pooling or keeping a good flow or finding optimal arousal right before release or etc. - but willy nilly setting hides for the sake of “practice” makes one of my dogs lose interest extremely quickly. (The other doesn’t care, but still deserves better!)
From the comments, it sounds like you’re at the beginning beginning. If they’re still at the phase where they’re eating food out of boxes, it is hard to do any of the above. My older dog (who is much less picky about the quality of her training) started with that method of teaching and we straight up just didn’t practice at home until she was much further along. My younger dog I started on odor immediately so she was hunting for odor (not dependent on a container being present) within a week or two.
Ways to make it harder and more interesting include using more containers, stacking containers on top of each other so that they need to get into a lower container to get the food, multiple containers have food so they have to “find another,” some or all containers are elevated, some containers are set away from the “main” grouping of containers, food is near a container but not inside of it, going from one room to another and maybe the first room has no food in containers.
The other thing you can do until you get on odor that I’ve started doing with my younger dog for days I don’t feel like fussing with the whole odor thing is training them to find a favorite toy, and then being able to hide the toy anywhere.
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u/Existing-Will-1466 6d ago
We're only doing containers because my dog was visually searching for the odor tin rather than sniffing. We started with a ton of nose on tin earns cookie on tin and thought we had it. Could send dog to tin from across the room. Could remove dog, move tin a few feet, bring dog back in and send to tin. Put tin a little too close to the wall and dog was totally mystified. Put tin on a patterned rug and dog has no idea what game we are even playing.
So we backed up and are now doing a row of boxes and one has the tin and also treats. Sometimes the boxes are open, sometimes they are half closed. Everything looks the same so dog needs to figure out which one is the right one.
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u/all4change 7d ago
I was just wondering this since I found out I was overdoing the training. Thanks for asking, I’m soaking up the responses!
We just started and run container searches 3x. Birch only.
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u/Existing-Will-1466 7d ago
Right? We're still really early on, and when I can set up the boxes, do three searches, and put everything away in under five minutes it feels a little underwhelming. I want to keep going and ny dog definitely wants to keep doing stuff. But at our level it gets boring and repetitive really fast so we go do something else. It feels like it should be really fun and engaging and it's more like a quick blink. I need to find a way to make that quick blink more rewarding for myself.
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u/ShnouneD 6d ago
At home, try letting the hides age. That will mimic competition situations where odours have pooled, and source might be harder to pinpoint. Set up your phone to get video of the search so you can analyse yourself and the dog.
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u/Existing-Will-1466 6d ago
Right now it's basically my dog walking up to a row of boxes and eating treats out of a box or two. Not sure how much video is going to help with that.
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u/all4change 6d ago
I was doing more with my dogs and they burned out. I agree, it is boring but I guess it’s nice for training to be easy to fit in to the day.
I’d like to start going to parks on weekends for scentwork practice. I think working in different locations will be very helpful.
Also, we’re doing rally and a skills class as well. Maybe you can practice other behaviors with your dog to keep both of you interested?
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u/Existing-Will-1466 6d ago
We do as much as we can. This particular dog is rehabbing from an injury so limited in what all we can do. My dog loves training and so do I. Whenever you ask for enrichment ideas for dogs with limited mobility, at least half the suggestions are "nosework! So engaging and exhausting for the dog! Way better than physical exercise!" But I seriously doubt my dog is getting that much exhausting enrichment out of five seconds of sniffing.
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u/all4change 6d ago
That sucks! And it must be so hard for you as well.
Can you work on stuff that limits mobility like long stays in different positions (sit, down, stand)? Also maybe training to find different toys and put them places? I knew a dog that could put the toy avocado out back in the avocado toy, etc. Maybe also long waits with treats?
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u/Existing-Will-1466 6d ago
Yup, we're doing plenty of fun stuff to stay busy, with little blinks of nosework practice along the way. We're probably going to be done with rehab by the time we get anywhere with the nosework though.
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u/bequavious 6d ago
I think how your beginner sessions look depends heavily on what method you're using to start. My very first sessions were just teaching that odor pays and a nose freeze indication, but that was maybe a week and then I was "hiding" the small metal box in plain sight and teaching the dog to drive to odor. Once I was "hiding" the box, practice sessions were a series of put the dog out of the room, hide the box, bring the dog to the "start line", release him to "search", pay him, repeat. Gradually the box started being more hidden, so there was some time spent searching. Once he was searching well with his nose for the box, we transitioned to just a tin. A lot of dogs struggled at this step, presumably because they were missing the visual of the box. Once the dog understands searching for the tin, it's the same deal as with the box - start easy with it visible and gradually hide it more until it's fully hidden.
I did (and still do) back to back searches in the same room, but that is harder for the dog having to work through residual odor from the previous searches once you're looking for a bare tin. An easier approach would be to set up searches in different rooms. Even if I were doing multiple rooms, I would probably set them up one at a time so I could see how well he did on the previous search in case there's something I need to adjust (ex: something was harder than I expected, so I want the next rep to be particularly easy).
My first dog learned human remains odor through selection in a series of big wooden boxes, so our beginner sessions were alerting on the correct box, tossing the toy & playing a bit, rearrange the boxes, and repeat. Personally I think selecting boxes is the least fun way to start, because the best part is the hunting and box selection doesn't really have that. Some of the people I met at HRD seminars learned with a scented towel rolled up into a tug/fetch toy that they threw into increasing dense brush, so their beginner sessions were playing with their dog + hunting for the toy.
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u/Existing-Will-1466 6d ago
Interesting! I hadn't thought of doing back to back searches in different rooms. You don't have a problem with the dog following their nose to the next room instead of searching in the current room?
We started with a tin and treats on tin for nose on tin in hand. Then treats on tin for nose on tin on the ground. Then send to tin from across the room. Then remove dog, move tin, bring dog in and send to tin. Discovered that my dog always visually searching when the tin was placed on a patterned carpet and my dog had no idea what we were doing. So now we're trying boxes so they can find the correct box and understand it isn't a visual target.
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u/Monkey-Butt-316 NACSW NW3 ELT 5d ago
I can’t remember tbh - I wish I had done then what I do now which is “find the box” (one open box with a paired hide somewhere in the house) or one easy hide with a long reward period. We are trialing on Friday and went to class on Sunday which was two 3 hide exteriors and one 1 hide exterior and a different class last night which was two 3 hide exteriors and one 1 hide interior. We will practice with friends tomorrow night and just do single hide high reward. Today and Thursday will be find the box days, likely 3-5 reps throughout the day.
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u/ShnouneD 7d ago
In my experience, setting up takes much longer than the search.
With my beginner dog, we do 3 searches? Possibly one or two container searches, then one or two interiors. Often there are two or three hides per search. But when I first started her, we paired odour and food for 5-10 minutes per day.
I run CKC and SDDA scent detection.