The Perks of NoseWork

Any dog lover who has watched a trained detection dog work knows the excitement of seeing a dog's incredible sense of smell help them pinpoint and alert to exactly what they are looking for. In an airport full of people and bags, smells from around the world, the dog can tune it all out to find the ONE.

What if I told you that you can have fun with your dog in a similar way?

Nosework, also called scent work, works with those same concepts to teach dogs to find and alert to a specific scent in different environments!

But instead of finding illicit substances: you're working with safe and simple essential oils.

Why nose work?

Nose work is a perfect activity for almost all dogs and owners!

• Confidence & trust building

  • In so many areas of life, humans are guiding the activities and saying what happens next. Dogs have the FAR superior sense of smell, and owners have to let their dog lead the searches in nose work - at least until our nose becomes as good as theirs!

    While it seems like a small thing, your dog having the ability to make independent choices and be rewarded allows confidence to build and blossom. Learning to understand your dog's body language significantly increases the bond between dog and owner since you are learning to speak the same language. Multiple searches and successful finds allows you to build significant trust in each other as you work towards the same goal.
    

• Low impact

  • As a majority of the work in nosework is mental, it is the ideal sport for dogs or owners that have limited mobility! If you are busy, nose work is a wonderful option to fit into your schedule. Set your hide before you make dinner or bathe the kids, then take your dog out for a quick search 30-90 minutes later! It is a low-time requirement for a BIG mental impact for your pup
    

• Non-invasive, body awareness, and impulse control

  • Nosework teaches dogs to carefully search an area and alert without disturbing any of the space. A passive alert (sit, down, freeze and stare, etc) teaches your dog how to alert you to the trained object without any damage - that takes a lot of control for them to not get excited and paw or dig at it! When searching, if the dogs rush through they will miss hides or disturb the search area therefore they need to learn to go slowly and methodically. It is also non-invasive, so you can train almost anywhere! Q-tips can fit into a wide variety of places and blend in with the environment, hidden so no one except your dog knows it is there. I have done training in many parking lots, strip malls, parks, schools, and countless other locations. To the random passerby, my trained explosives detection dog simply looks like a dog that really loves sniffing everywhere - until he alerts on our training aid!

  
  
  
  

Preserving the environment is a key part of nosework and should be a priority for all teams. Leave the area as you found it and respect the wonderful places we are given the opportunity to train in.

If you would like to start training your dog in nosework,

join the waitlist here.

If you have a location that you would allow us to train at,

please contact me at Fabletography@gmail.com