Scent Articles: What is Your Dog Really Looking For?

Let's discuss some scenarios that force the dog to look for the handler's odor, not the most heavily scented article in the pile.

When performing Scent Articles, you want your dog looking for the article with your scent. However, for a dog sharing your home, your scent is ubiquitous which makes it very difficult for the dog to understand that your odor is important on this exercise.

To identify your odor as the target, carefully clean and handle the articles so all of the articles do not have your scent on them. In Scent Discrimination, articles in the pile with residual odor force the dog to look for the most odor, not the handler's odor. This can cause problems because it requires the dog to check every article several times before he can confidently make a decision.

Can you imagine a detection trainer having 9 containers, and putting the explosive odor in one container on day one, and then not washing that container, but putting the explosive odor in a different container the next day? We know dogs have incredible noses, and a good detection dog would alert on the container from day one because of residual odor. We would be impressed at his "nose," and ability to find a "trace" amount.

It is certainly possible to teach a dog to look for the most odor, or the "hot scent." I do not choose to teach the exercise that way because it leads to more problems than necessary.

Watch the video for some scenarios that force the dog to look for the handler's odor, not the most heavily scented article in the pile.