Something that’s really important to me is ensuring my handlers understand the “whys” of scent detection and how they can play an active part of their dog’s progression.
My Monday Teams were set the challenge of placing their own hides out in their search areas - I LOVED it! It allowed us to discuss in a little more detail what we are hoping to achieve from the search, how we expect our dogs to work it and troubleshoot how this can be adapted to increase or decrease complexity.
There was some fabulous teamwork! 🤩
My Monday evening teams finished their January classes with a high! ✨
I am incredibly proud of the progression these guys have made over the past 4 weeks. Our goal was to continue to develop their searching, building confident, motivated scent dogs. I think we smashed it!
I am excited to see what we can do over the next 4 weeks 🤩
What a way to wrap up classes for Christmas - Our Sniffmas special! 🎄
18 teams joined me across two evenings, as always there was a little bit of chaos and a whole lot of fun! ♥️
A sneak peak of the search areas for our Halloween Spooktacular! 🦇
10 teams stepped up to the challenge this evening, 7 more are ready to go tomorrow! #halloweenspooktacular
Little Primrose never fails to put a smile on my face 🥰
It was great to have a catch up with this team, they are continuing to put in the work and there are some wonderful new habits forming. Prim used to find the garden really exciting (I don’t blame her, it’s a dream), she’d wildly zoom off without a single glance back.
Over the past few months we have worked hard to build that connection outside. Her human is a part of the picture now, and they get to enjoy this amazing space together ♥️
Look at Rosie go! She really does love that search.
Yesterday we had our final catch up of the beginners course. This team are all caught up and ready to come back to classes this week!
It’s been fantastic watching Rosie progress over the past 4 weeks, she’s really enjoying it! Scent detection has been a fantastic outlet for her - She is becoming a focused, motivated little search dog 😍
You may have spotted that this little one was missing from group classes this week - Her first season decided to make an untimely appearance! But that doesn’t mean the fun stops, I popped over yesterday to run through what they missed.
Rosie is loving her Scent Detection! She’s recognising her target odour well and is confidently searching a variety of areas. It’s proving to be the perfect outlet for her crazies! 👏🏻
How are these dogs only on their second week? Look at that searching! 😍
This week was all about capturing that odour recognition, this means that the dog is recognising the kong odour and we are starting to see a positive emotional response - The dogs are learning that when they smell Kong something good happens!
This afternoon I had a 1-2-1 Scentwork session with Team Merlin, an experienced scent detection team. Jess has recently imprinted Merlin onto a new target odour, Kong. It’s going well and it was time to check for and build on that odour recognition.
Merlin searched well, he definitely recognises the odour! The plan is to continue to build up a reward history in a variety of searches before we start to polish up that indication 👏🏻
