19/11/2025
Hello fellow scent people, well worth a read !!!
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Cy9nXwkqX/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Is odour the cue for your indication/commitment to the find or is it odour + you?
Does your behaviour change hugely when your dog hits odour? Do you go quiet, stand still, hold your breath, move in to your dog, feet face where you predict the hide to be?
We all do it, it’s hard not to! We are observing, processing and readying ourselves to call the find and communicate to our dogs.
What happens over time though is the dogs rely on that cue. The cue to commit to the hide becomes you, in proximity, stillness + odour.
Us being such a big part of the picture can cause the dog issues with clarity, sometimes leading to false indications.
For the more experienced teams - if you have taught an indication but find that when you move, make a noise, speak, are not in sight of your dog that it pulls the dog away, it’s worth investing some time in to strengthening the dogs understanding of indication irrespective of what handler is doing.
It will mean that you don’t have to pull out your own game of musical statues to ensure your dog can commit.
Once we strengthen that in the dog, I’d try and encourage handlers to stay neutral while the dogs are sourcing. So we aren’t adding a cue we don’t want.
If you were mooching steadily through the search area prior to the dog hitting odour then continue that steadily.
I don’t mean stride away in to the distance,or throw in some random weird ‘I’m not standing still’ strut - we still need to be connected and give the dogs the time and respect to work. I’m also not saying that you can’t stand still. Just be at ease, keep that energy neutral. If we happened to be standing at a distance for part of the search don’t begin rushing towards your dog when it hits odour.
If you find yourself regularly saying ‘I pushed him in to a false indication’ it often means the handler thought the hide was there because they had seen a change of behaviour (let’s be honest, sometimes interest can look a lot like the dog has hit odour). Handler then switches to the musical statues, and the dogs association with those behaviors from you means they’re likely to feel you’re cuing the indication.
If we can give the dogs the tools in their toolkit to convince us there is odour there, it will help us work in a more relaxed fashion.
Let’s keep sharpening our skills for us and our dogs to help keep confidence, clarity and commitment.
Always work in progress ☺️
📷 Beth Harper
