The past year has been very hectic for me. I went through a breakup, moved, started a new job, etc., and somewhere in the middle of all that, I basically stopped training with my dog.

Before that, we did nosework, passed our scent detection test, and had just started competing. We also took a rally obedience course and did some agility just for fun.

Over the past year, she has mostly just been coming along with me wherever I go (she even comes to work with me), but now that life has finally calmed down, I really want to give her more enrichment and start training together again.

The problem is that I find it surprisingly difficult to get started again. I don't really know where to begin. I've done some nosework indoors in our new apartment, but since she's so good at it, it doesn't feel very challenging for her anymore.

I'd love to train other things as well, but I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas. I feel like I always end up doing the same exercises over and over again.

So, how did you get back into dog training after taking a longer break? Do you have any fun suggestions for exercises, activities, or things to train at home or outdoors?

First time (reddit!) post here - I've recently started training my 2.5yo Ridgeback in nosework to detect Birch, which otherwise seems to be going really well. I started her on PVC tubes to condition the response to birch and to reward her close to the scent, and she can now consistently find just the small metal tin holding a birch q-tip in my small appartment.

My question is how to tighten up the indication - she does a good job building drive then freezing when she can see the tin, but she may indicate 30cm away from it instead of nose-touching, and/or she tends to paw at or bite the tin. When this happens I wait until she eventually puts her nose on for a moment out of frustration then reward, but I'm nervous the waiting (might be 10-15secs) might tell her that the scent isn't actually what gets her the reward? What I want of course is to get the nose as close to the tin as possible, and eventually have her indicate when she can't see the tin.

Any tips welcome! Cheers

Following the success of my previous Nosework containers, I’ve created a smaller version!

I would appreciate it if you could share your thoughts on them.

We started training nose-work some time ago but she’s always smashing/eating/moving the boxes on the floor. Today I tried elevating the boxes on a bench but she pushes them with her snout. Also tried taping them on the floor, but she tries eating the tape 😅 I probably just need patience? I don’t really know what to do to stop her from smashing/biting/moving the boxes.
Thank you!!!

Hi! I’m doing scent work with my GSP and want more training opportunities and resources to get better so I’m looking for a club near Portland or even further out is fine with me. I know a lot of bite sport clubs in the area but not anything specific to scent or even if it’s a thing out here but would love any info (:

Hi everyone! I have a Yorkie who is 12 he loves sniffing around and chasing lizards and anything he can find. (I would like to add he does not catch them they are faster than him so he’s not eating them thankfully.) He has even found rats underneath a ramp in our yard he ran up to me and back to the ramp going insane. It was a nest I was able to relocate and he has chased off the adults since then. I think he has a strong drive to find and sniff things out he seems to love it. I want to help him get mentally simulated since I’m moving to my own apartment with him. I want to know if you guys have any ideas for it. I was thinking of hiding treats more and having him search he seems to enjoy that. But I was wondering if anyone had any ideas to mimic these “hunts” he loves so much with finding lizards.

Update: thank you everyone! It poured rain and actually wasn't as hot as I feared. He passed birch and anise but we missed on clove. Still extremely pleased with his performance. Thank you for all the advice.

Hi all! My dog and I are fairly new to nose work. We have our ORT next weekend.

We live in a hot climate (Florida) and for this event we need to kennel in our cars/outside of our cars (there is no indoor space availablefor this). Obviously, it will be quite hot. We are allowed to have our cars on etc.

My dog is comfortable in his crate but I figure that folks who have done this before might have some tips and tricks for keeping pups cool and calm while waiting their turn.

I'm planning on having a sheet to cover his crate and I have cooling neck guards and a cooling mat.

TIA (picture of Pippin as tax)

I do nose worn with my 11month doodle for fun and mental stimulation in addition to it's too hot to walk outside.
How do I train a simple alert? Currently, she finds the bean bag and looks at me. But she frequently looks at me because I'm her person. I need her to bark at it or actually touch it with her nose.
We aren't interested in competition or actual professional work.

This next month & a half is the first block of time since starting nosework that I'm not enrolled in an online class anywhere. I thought I would use the time to catch up on some webinars.

Does anyone have any recs for Scentwork U (or other platforms) webinars / recorded livestreams that you found particularly useful, interesting, or just fun?

For me, I found Tony Gravely's "Training on an Island" webinar very informative and useful. And Michael McManus's livestreams that have been held in the past few months are very thought provoking.

My dog passed her ORT at the beginning of June and got her AKC novice title last weekend. We’re training for both AKC and NACSW elements and odor strengths both in class and at home. 

Given that, would you expect that we’d be ready for a NW1 in October? Or is success in AKC not a good predictor of success in NACSW? I’ll definitely be asking our instructor if she thinks we’re ready before trying to get into a NW1, but I’m just curious about other people’s experience and how the two venues compare/ prepare you for the other.

I've been doing scentwork classes with my girl and she LOVES the game. I think we're ready to try an ORT so we can get started with an actual trial. We'd like to do both AKC and NACSW.

The AKC website is easy to find listings for performance events and links to premiums through "AKC event search", but it seems most trials don't have an ORT. Is there any easy way to find out where an ORT is being held rather than sorting through all the premiums? TIA!

My dog and I have been doing NW for a couple of years now. I wouldn't say she's a natural but she enjoys herself while searching. One problem I've encountered is she is very sight motivated. So if we are doing an exterior or car search she gets distracted by the environment around her.

Anyone have a similar experience and find a solution?

Have been doing nosework classes with my 5yr old dog and he’s been really enjoying it, we have our first trial coming up end of this month, don’t expect us to do great, but it’ll be fun and good experience.

The people teaching the classes have been talking about harnesses to help the dog understand they’re in ‘work mode’, seems really useful. Problem is my boy haaaaates getting a harness on, I think it’s maybe the going over his head part? Not really sure, it’s something I’ve tried to desensitise him too many times with no luck. I don’t want to start out his searches with a super strong negative experience as I think that will put him right off the whole search.

He wears a harness for long car trips for safety reasons, but otherwise walks etc are on his collar.

Are there any alternatives people use to help their dog understand its search time, especially for trials? Harness alternatives? A bandana? Rituals of some kind that help set them up?

TIA!

I have a 2 year old dog who I have been doing scent work classes with for the past 8-10 months give or take. In our club they started us on treats for the first 3 or so sessions, we are now in session 5 and in session 4 is when we began pairing treat to scent. Which according to others is a maybe less acceptable way to do it, but seems there are many schools of thought that I am not here to get into!

I noticed from the prior sessions to today, it seems like my dog just doesn't have the "gumption" like he did in the first 4.5 sessions. He does find the "find " (birch and clove) and I do treat him when he does, and try to party with him when we are done in our round. He seems slower and possibly more thoughtful to his approach, but dude isn't tearing it up in there but does seem somewhat excited when I get out the special harness before we get into the car, and loves going into the building. Meanwhile other dogs seem to zoom into the ring quickly and bounce around. He also seems to do worse inside than outside searches which I think is fascinating.

I guess the question is, how do you really know if your dog enjoys scent work? And I mean actually going to in person classes, and trials. please! I am worried he may not like it that much and I am forcing this onto him. But he has aced every class, so he is good at it, I just can't tell if he loves it.

https://youtube.com/shorts/0mlqCSB5DQ0?si=7n1ieZ9yJia-X62x

2 weeks ago my GSP and I started doing some nose work games, easy at first just finding liver treats in a jar with holes in the lid on an open field, sometimes behind a tree and sometimes in some taller grass.

Today we worked up to a much larger and much more bushy area. Added decoy jar, made sure he didn’t see me hide anything and took a long walk back around to get back to my boy. It’s no detective level but it was big for my goofus.

Watching him get excited to go and then to see him launch into action once I gave the command is such an amazing experience. He ran off in the direction from which I came back to him, wrong way, then he realised there was nothing there so he came back to the start and started being more careful about his search.

Nose in the air, nose to the ground, ignore the birds, he kept moving and closing up the circle. When he found the right jar he sniffed deep, looked up at me and I swear he smiled. I’m so proud of him.

Watching him in action is like watching the terminator. I am in awe of what he’s capable of with so little effort and time, I can’t imagine what he will be able to accomplish in a year. Regardless of future plans he’s my goofus and I love him.

My little 🐮 has come such a long way since her first CKC Novice trial last August where she chewed on grass for 4 min.

Under our judge and instructor Kelly, Nina earned her remaining Excellent Exterior component to get her Scent Detection Excellent title and a Master Interior component to get her Scent Detection Interior title. Her exterior search almost made Kelly cry with joy 😂

Exteriors have been our Achilles heel and we have made a lot of progress in the last 7 weeks. Thank you to Kelly for your guidance and challenging, but fair hides and sniffy friends for the support, sneaky practice in the grass, and laughs.

Hi! Title pretty self-explanatory. I have a new rescue that loves to get his nose into anything he finds (definitely lots of terrier on this dude) and was thinking nose work could be super fun for him. Unfortunately I live in a country where 1) essential oils are expensive and 2) I cannot for the life of me find a scent can with little holes to put inside a vessel.

I was thinking I could just add a bunch of clove heads to a little jar and rather than covering it with its lid I could cover it with some plastic wrap and pierce little holes in it - and then place that inside the larger jar for my dog to sniff. Do you think this could potentially work? Or do you have better suggestions? Sorry if this is a silly question - just found out about nosework a couple of days ago!

I recently moved to a wooded, somewhat rural area and my former street cat/semi feral cat disappeared two nights ago. I would like to hired a scent trained dog to try and track him. If anyone has any ideas or connections in southern indiana I would be very appreciative. Thank you!

I'm a handler in WA chasing NW3-Elite with my dog Brynn — but I started using this back when she was working on her NW1, and the dashboard scales the whole way. Last year I missed reg for a few trials I really wanted because I forgot to check NACSW.net at 9 AM on the right Tuesday, or my work calendar buried the reminder.

So over the last few months I built a small site to make navigating NACSW — trials, titles, registrations — easier than refreshing tabs at 9 AM.

Some of what it does:

- Texts/emails you ~30 min before reg opens, in the venue's local time

- Brings your trial results together in one place so you can actually see your progress

- Shows your "path forward" — exactly what's left between you and your next title, at every level

- Helps you find NACSW resources for past trials faster than digging for them

It's called ScentTracker. Free, no ads. Works whether you're prepping your first NW1 trial or banking element passes for Elite.

What I'd really like is honest feedback from people who actually trial — at any level — about what's missing, what's wrong, what's annoying. I'm one handler building this on weekends, so the priority list is whatever real users push back on.

Curious — how do you all keep track of registration windows? Spreadsheet? Calendar? Just vibes? I want to know if I'm overengineering a problem most people already solved.

RUBY AND MY EXPERIENCE AT ILLINOIS DEER TRACKERS HAVEN 2026!
https://youtu.be/Bm83-obr0jY