Category: how dogs smell

Teach Your Dog to do Scent Work

Want to have fun doing something with your dog that he will enjoy as much as you?  Then try some scent work.  It’s also known as nose work.

Rochester is going to start training right after Christmas so he can compete with other dogs and get another AKC title.  I think his friend Belle is going to join him so she can get another title too.

Here’s a little information on what scent work is all about..  You also can find a lot of good information at akc.org.

This is what the American Kennel Club says about scent work. “The sport of scent work celebrates the joy of sniffing, and asks a dog to sniff to their heart’s content; turning your dog’s favorite activity into a rewarding game. It is a terrific sport for all kinds of dogs, and is a wonderful way to build confidence in a shy dog.”

In most canine sports, the handler is the one who is in control (or at least is supposed to be).  It’s the other way around with scent work. ” In scent work, it is the canine who is the star of the show,” says AKC. “The handler has to rely on the dog, and follow the dog’s nose to success.”

Scent work is based on the work done by professional detection dogs, like drug dogs or those who detect explosives. In this sport, the dog searches for cotton swabs saturated with essential oils such as birch, anise, clove and cypress. The swabs are hidden in a pre-determined search area where the dog has to find them. 

The dog and handler work as a team with the dog locating the scent and communicating to the handler that he has found it and then the handler notifying the judge of the find.

All dogs, purebred and mixed breeds, are eligible to participate in scent work trials.  They have to be at least six months old, registered with the AKC  if he is purebred or have a Purebred Alternative Listing (PAL) number or have an AKC partners number.   You can find out more about these at AKC.org.

If you think you might want to get involved in scent work, be sure you know how the trials work before you get started.

There are two divisions of competition: the odor search division and the handler discrimination division.  In the odor search division, the dog searches for the odor of one of the essential oils.  In the handler discrimination division, the dog searches for the scent of his handler.  There are four levels of difficulty in each division.  In the beginning level, also called novice, the dog has to search for the birch scent only.  In the advanced level, he searches for birch and/or anise.  At the excellent level, the dog searches for birch and/or anise and/or clove. By the time he gets to the master level, the dog searches for birch and/or anise and/or clove and/or cypress.

When a dog competes, he earns either a qualifying or a non-qualifying score and three qualifying scores are required for a dog to earn a title.  You can check out all the titles at akc.org.

Training for scent work can be done in a class or by working on your own. Training can be done at home or in the community.

Searches in AKC Scent Work are completed in a variety of environments, known as “Elements.” The Elements in AKC Scent Work are:

  • Container: The target odor is concealed within a container (such as a cardboard box or briefcase), and the dog must indicate in which container the scent is hidden.
  • Interior: The target odor is concealed on or in an object in an indoor search area.
  • Exterior: The target odor is concealed on or in an object in an outdoor search area–this requires the dog to locate the scent despite changing airflow patterns, weather conditions, and natural distractions.
  • Buried: The target odor is concealed within a small container and then buried underneath the ground.

Each element in the Odor Search Division, and the Handler Discrimination Division, has four difficulty levels: Novice, Advanced, Excellent, and Master. Dogs will begin with the Novice level classes and move up as they earn titles, and may progress through the elements at different speeds (i.e., a dog may compete in the Novice Interior class and the Advanced Container class). Factors such as the size of the search area, the number of hides, whether the number of hides is known or unknown to the handler, and the maximum height of the hides will change with the difficulty level.

There are lots of titles that can be earned in scent work because a dog can earn novice, advanced, excellent and master titles in container, interior, exterior and buried elements.  Then there are other combinations that can be included.

Finally though, once the dog has reached the highest levels of scent work, he can compete to become a detective dog. The Detective Class is the highest level competition in AKC scent work. It offers an integrated search environment with an unknown number of hides in a variety of elements. The intent of the Detective Class is to emulate as closely as possible the work of a true detection dog. In the Detective Class, the dog is searching for one or more essential oil odors.

Rochester and Belle would like to keep you posted on their scent work training.  Stay tuned for exciting news next year!! (Belle probably will do better, but don’t tell Rochester that.)

 

Your Dog Is Nose -y

We see the world through our eyes.  Our dogs see the world through their noses.

It’s common knowledge that dog’s have a keen sense of smell, but did you know their brains process those smells that really makes the difference.

First off, a dog has more then 220 million smell receptors.  People have a measly 5o million.  In particular, a dachshund has 125 million, a fox terrier has 147 million and a bloodhound has 300 million.

Otherwise, however, their noses are very similar to ours.

Let’s talk a little about the anatomy of the nose.

A dog’s nose is divided into two parts.  The divider is a structure of bone and cartilage called a septum. The human nose is much the same.

Inside the nose, both dogs and humans have bony, scroll-shaped plates called turbinates. The front area of the nasal cavity is called the nares.  Air passes through these to be warmed and moistened. The turbinate bones are located farther back in the cavity. They are covered by olfactory mucosa, which is a thick, spongy membrane consisting of millions of thin, hair-like structures.  These trap scent molocules that are then processed by odor-detecting cells on the tips of the cilia, or hair-like structures.  All this is basically the same process we find in humans.

The difference starts with the Jacobson’s organ, scientifically known as the vomeronasal organ (VNO).  It is an especially sensitive part of a dog’s sense of smell and is an elongated structure that consists of two small cigar-shaped sacs filled with receptor cells.  These cells are sensitive to chemical messengers such as body scents.

Once these receptor cells pick up a scent molecule, a message is sent to the brain. The percentage of a dog’s brain devoted to analyzing smells is 40 times larger than the same area in a human. 

The brain processes the information sent to it, identifies it and determines its significance.  In other words, a dog uses its sense of smell to help it determine it’s view of the world.

One aspect of a dog’s nasal system that is different from ours is that he has two different air passages – one for inhaling/exhaling and another for smelling.  People use the same passage for both.  That means the scent molecules that are inhaled in our noses just get exhaled almost immediately. A dog, on the other hand, can store his while he exhales through a different passage.

Another unique characteristic is that a dog has the ability to smell independently with each nostril.  This is how he is able to determine from which direction a scent is coming.

The power of a dog’s sense of smell is unique and remarkable.  It can be trained to detect bombs, drugs and even disease.  It helps him detect sadness and know to be there when he is needed.

And, of course, the dog uses his sense of smell to determine friend and foe in both the animal and human species.  It helps him find a mate. Through his amazing sense of smell, he can learn a lot about his friends and neighbors – probably a lot more than we will ever learn about ours.

It truly is an amazing aspect of these wonderful animals

But the scent discriminating ability is not the only thing unique about your dog’s nose. Each nose has a pattern of ridges and dimples that, when combined with the outline of the nostril openings, make his nose print. These are believed by some to be as unique and individual as a person’s fingerprints.