Nosework Fun!

The girls and I have been working on nosework training for a while now.  Gracie started over the summer with a local search and rescue group.  Then in the fall, one of the top nosework trainers in the country started teaching at Cloud 9 so I signed Gidget up for level 1 and Gracie for the advanced class.  Both girls are doing really well and really seem to love searching for these new scents!

Nosework isn't big in MN yet.  It's hard to find any odor recognition tests (ORT, has to be passed before entering a trial), much less any trials.  The sport is growing, though, and those will be much easier to find soon!

Through a classmate's Facebook post I found a nosework fun day.  They called it a nose rush, or gold rush, or something like that, because you'd earn gold coins for all the hides you and your dog found!  I signed the girls up and we headed to the other side of the cities the afternoon of New Year's Day.

We waited in the car for our turns.  Gidget was up first.  There were two rooms to search each with 8 hides and you had 4 minutes to search in each room.  The hides were somewhat blind, as you didn't know where they were when you walked in, but you could see some of the tins and there was someone helping you a little too.

Gidget found the super obvious hide first (at least obvious to the people who could easily see it with no extra effort).  She then found 3 other hides in the first room, I could see them all fairly easily so it was easy to mark and reward her finds.  She found 4 in the second room as well, again most that I could at least see a little.  After our turn was over though, the coach pointed out a spot that Gidget had checked out and likely noted to herself that there was a hide there (I couldn't see it), she just forgot to tell me.  We're working on that part in class now.  So she earned 8 gold $1 coins.

Gracie, being more experienced, one upped Gidget in each room.  She even pointed out a couple I couldn't see.  Her communication wasn't perfectly obvious to me, but the coach helped me out a little.  My favorite find of hers was one that was up on the counter above a metal in-ground scale (this event was held at a vet clinic).  She did not want to step on the scale, so she got up on her hind legs and stretched her head around the bit of wall the hide was against so she could reach it.  Once I rewarded her she also tried to reach the jar of treats that was also on the counter.  She had several other good finds, and even a spot I had made a mental note to go back to but we ran out of time.  So the coach pointed that hide out to us so I could reward Gracie for it since she'd been so close.

Now just back to nosework classes and practicing at home some.  Someday we'll get to trial!  Happy sniffing!