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Continue reading →: Cold Weather and the Scent Cone
Sunday morning. I am awake early, but I lie in bed for quite a while, luxuriating in having the time for a good “lie in” and mulling over some thoughts, waiting until it gets fully light to get up and feed the creatures. After breakfast crunchies all around, the dogs…
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Continue reading →: The Bermuda Triangle in the Training Building (part two)
Last week I wrote about that peculiar area in the training building where no hides, no matter how carefully set, could be found by the dogs–a Bermuda Triangle for scent. I had finally pulled out the smoke machine, which shed some light on the mystery—here is the video of the…
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Continue reading →: Why Demo Dogs are Important
This week’s blog topic comes to you via the mysteries of scent work: the Bermuda triangle in the training facility. I hold my regular classes at a commercial training facility. Technically, I am supposed to use one of their training areas for running hides, but for variety I like to…
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Continue reading →: Returning to Found Hides
Sometimes it feels like I have been teaching scent work for a thousand years. In reality, it has only been ten years: four personal dogs and a few hundred students (probably…I really have not kept count), and judging thousands of teams. So I have a historical perspective on training practices.…
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Continue reading →: Questions on the New Buried Rules
On Saturday I dropped in to my friend’s class so that Astra and I could have some practice on working unknown buried hides. It’s a nice class with a very relaxed vibe, and The instructor was talking about the various factors that tend to complicate buried searches, and some questions…
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Continue reading →: How to Stop a Dog from Cataloging
Last month, I was teaching a seminar and during the open question period someone asked “how do you stop a dog from cataloging?” “Cataloging” in scent work, is used to describe a dog who gets into a search area, often goes directly to the odor, but doesn’t alert on it,…
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Continue reading →: The Middle Road of Handling: How and When to Help Your Dog
A while back, I wrote about Handling techniques in scent work (you can read it here: The Swinging Pendulum in Scent Work Handling). It may surprise some of you that “styles” of handling have come in and out in professional detection work: handlers have moved from a strictly controlled presenting…
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Continue reading →: A Quick Fix for Containers
So far, in this containers series, I have covered: how odor travels outside the containers, the learning stages of odor (part one), the different types of containers and the importance of training on each one (part two), how the arrangement of containers affects odor convergence and the difficulty of the…
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Continue reading →: Is Your Dog Struggling with Containers (Part Three)
In my last post (click here to read: Is Your Dog Struggling with Containers), I talked about watching a team run in a trial in the Advanced level of containers. Lulu (not her real name, by the way) the terrier was struggling, and her handler was frustrated. In this particular…
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Continue reading →: Is Your Dog Struggling with Containers? This might be why (Containers Part Two)
At a trial last spring, I watched a dog struggle in advanced containers. She was a young terrier who was an enthusiastic worker, but was clearly struggling in containers. The 15 containers were in two rows, and were the usual mix of plastic toolboxes, cardboard boxes, and some small backpacks.…
Hello,
I’m Ellen
A Scent Work trainer, instructor, competitor, student, and judge. Welcome to Sniffing Around Scent Work, a blog where I write about my experiences, thoughts and musings on my favorite past time.
Sniffing Around Scent Work 