Northwest Noseworks

06/27/2024

Thank you to Erica Boling.

05/21/2024

How can we ever deserve them, I often wonder?

For 6 years, a dog named Capitan slept in the grave of his owner every night.
His owner, Miguel Guzman died in 2006 and Capitan disappeared shortly after the family attended the funeral services.
They searched everywhere and put out flyers to try and find him. But no one had seen him.
A week later, some people who were at the cemetery late one evening spotted Capitan laying on the grave and they contacted the grounds keeper at the cemetery.
The cemetery notified the family who promptly came to pick him up and take him home.
But each night he would cry and scratch frantically at the door to go out and he wouldn't return home until morning.
It was later discovered that Capitan would walk the 3 miles back to the cemetery each night to guard his master's grave.
It happened for 7 years.
The cemetery did not close the gates until he arrived each night promptly at 6 pm.
He slept there all night guarding the grave until the ground keeper opened the gate in the morning.
This is a true picture of Capitan here.
P.S : If there is ever true love in this universe ❤️ this is it!!
Credit - respective owner

Also read this:https://deephearting.com/first-meeting-of-gigantic-husky-and-tiny-baby-boy/

05/13/2024

This informative webinar on scent is a great value and I recommend it to my Northwest Noseworks students and coaching clients.

S - Selected Odour M - Mortels and Mongrels E - Environmental Factors L - Landscape L - Lingering Odours

05/08/2024

Borrowed from Elaine Booker!

03/29/2024

Thank you Viet Nam veterans for your service.

03/05/2024

Coming when called is nothing short of THE life saving learned behavior for your dog.

Always, always make recall to you highly rewarding; not just with a toy or cookie, but add your delighted emotional response to your reward and watch your dog’s enthusiasm and speed coming to you soar.

ARE YOU WORTH COMING BACK TO?

I often cringe when I watch people trying to get their dogs to come back when they call.

They call and call and get increasingly angry and frustrated as their dog keeps ignoring them.

When their dog eventually does come back, or has been chased and "captured” by the now really angry person, they get screamed at, yanked about, smacked or punished in some way for taking so long and not listening.

Why on earth would a dog want to return to someone who does this to them!

Genetics may play a big part in this when an environment is far more stimulating and exciting.

Coming back to you is often the last thing a dog may want to do when genetic instinct is triggered.

An exciting scent or seeing something to chase can all override a response to recall.

Genetics aside, the most common reason that dogs don’t come back when called is because it’s not a positive experience.

Make coming back to you worth it by always making it a rewarding experience and keep practicing this throughout a dog’s life.

Have a little patience if it takes longer than you would like, let your dog finish what they’re doing before calling them, practice in different locations and environments and never reprimand or punish them for coming back.

There is never a guarantee of a perfect recall each and every time, but making it a rewarding experience will greatly improve the rate of success.

02/07/2024

The rescue dog helps sniff out whale s**t for researchers. She'll appear at the Seattle Boat Show this week.

02/06/2024

Vital information with helpful links regarding ESA dogs, therapy dogs, service dogs, and pet dogs.

It is against the law to misrepresent a dog as a service animal. Against.The.Law.

01/25/2024

From another Training Goddess of mine.

This time it’s from my Bestest Human Training Goddess, Brené Brown.

I thought it was a break but it was more of a breaking. Not necessarily breaking down, but NOT not down. Maybe open.

It's been a tough season, but an important one. I shared my thoughts in a post on the new website, where you'll also find our latest project — The ABK Edit. I think you're going to love the stories.

From my wild heart to yours. ❤️

https://brenebrown.com/articles/2024/01/24/hard-seasons-and-wild-hearts/

10/25/2023

A warm welcome to my newest followers, Sandra Scudder and Alison Jensen!

Please feel free to pose any questions about sport scent work or detection work for dogs. ☺️

10/24/2023

Shout out to my newest followers! I’m excited to have you onboard and encourage you to ask any questions you may have about scent sports or detection dog work.

Toni Anderson, Joy Wiseley

07/12/2023

🗣 This quote is one I say to a lot of my clients, but especially the ones who have dogs with stranger danger, anxiety around certain people, or with dogs who don’t like petting from unfamiliar people or petting in general.

🌎 As a society, I think we tend to “feel bad” telling people our dogs need space or that they can’t be pet or touched. Also, people sometimes tend to feel there’s something “wrong” with dogs who won’t just willingly allow complete strangers to come waltzing over to immediately talk to them, touch them, hug them, and gaze at them.

🐕 So if you have a dog who needs some space, I am here to tell you that there is nothing “wrong” with your dog! They just have feelings and boundaries that we need to respect, and help manage and train properly to improve their reactions over time.

🐾 We of course want to help them feel better in these situations that make them uncomfortable, and training can certainly assist with that. But some reactive dogs or dogs who don’t want to be handled by strangers, won’t all of a sudden become social butterflies, if ever. As pet parents, our job is to respect our dog’s boundaries and work with them to make better choices.

🐶 Dogs, like people, are allowed to say no, to not want to stop and hug a stranger, to not want to be gazed at by unfamiliar people or be touched by any random person on the street.

👍🏽 It’s totally ok for your dog to say no, although it should be our goal as their humans to not make them feel like they have to. Tell people no for them - be their advocate!

Here are some ways to say no for your dog:
- “We are training right now. ”
- “She needs space.”
- “We are working on ignoring people.”
- “Not today.”

🚨 Bottom line: speak up for your dog. Don’t be afraid to tell strangers no on behalf of your dog. Remember, your dog is your family and you’ll probably never see Bob from the hardware store ever again. So don’t appease a stranger at the cost of your family member’s feelings or well-being. 💕

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05/08/2023

Etienne, a talented and beautiful Northwest Noseworks student of mine, has been staying with me for a few days.

03/10/2023

It’s not easy to find the source of a swirling scent plume. Scientists are using experiments and simulations to uncover the varied strategies that animals employ.

03/06/2023

Wind......It causes some big issues with dogs.

You may not have even made a connection that wind is the issue behind many disastrous walks.
Weather affects all dogs.
Wind can cause hyperarousal, anxiety, fear and anxiousness as the flood of information that comes on the wind can bring with it a bombardment of information all at once.

Barometric changes can also affect dogs, a drop in pressure can see many dogs suddenly become anxious as they are well aware a storm is coming before you are. They may seek shelter and appear to run inside out of fright....but you haven't seen or heard anything that could cause this.

There wouldn't be many trainers out there that love training in the wind.....I think we all mutter under our breaths when the wind picks up.
So if your walk has turned to custard....and you have no idea why....wind can be a very real reason.

01/18/2023

Love this article about different types of dogs that work livestock!

What “Eye” Means to the Sheep?

Herding breed owners who work their dogs on flocks, stock or a brace, already know all about “eye.” It refers to the amount of staring a dog will do at the animals they are charged to control. Interestingly, in his book, The Farmer’s Dog, author, John Homes, describes “eye” as “more an attitude of approach than anything connected with the dog”s eyes.” That said, there are terms used to describe exactly what a dog is – or isn’t – doing with his eyes.

A “loose-eyed” dog doesn’t try to make constant eye contact with the stock. There is less intensity, and such a dog tends to survey the entire flock. Interestingly, dogs that are loose-eyed also tend to have a different body posture than a strong-eyed dog. They are more relaxed, and have a more upright body position. They might even turn away from the stock.

“Medium eyed” or “roving eyed” dogs are sometimes “lumped” under the umbrella term of “loose eyed,” but there are subtle differences. A medium eyed dog will make eye contact with, say, a ewe, but he won’t look at her constantly. Every so often, he may switch between looking at her and not looking at her, and this serves to let the ewe relax. If the situation calls for it, the dog may stare when precision work is required, but by and large, the dog’s eye is “used only as needed.”

A dog with a roving eye not only looks over the entire flock, he looks for any sign, from an ear twitch to the quiver of the flank, that one critter is thinking of making a run for it. This dog will zero in on the individual as if to say, “Don’t ever think about it.”

As bad is it might sound to a novice, a dog with “no eye,” or “anti-eye” can be very useful, and should actually be admired. This dog will, as the term sounds, deliberately look away – or pretend to – from the animals in his charge to reduce the pressure on them. There are some animals, particularly those that are unaccustomed to dogs, that feel inspired to fight when stared at. It’s not that such a dog isn’t engaged, he is. He’s simply demonstrating a sophisticated instinct to “back off” because he senses that the stock will relax if he looks away. In fact, a real anti-eyed dog is always looking, but out of the corner of his eye. If need be, an anti-eye dog will set things right with a well timed glare.

“No eye” is not the same thing as “anti-eyed.” Dogs who demonstrate no eye at all, not loose, medium, roving or otherwise, are said to be non-eyed dogs.

At the other end of the style spectrum is the “strong-eyed” dog. These dogs have almost continuous eye contact with the stock, and some breeds, like the Border Collie, will actually have a fixed stare often accompanied by a crouching stance reminiscent of a predator stalking its prey: the dog lowers the complete height level of the body consistently while working, and belly close to the ground while moving. As an aside, dogs that move like this demonstrate an amazing amount of flexion in the front leg joints of their shoulder and elbow, and in the pastern and the rear leg joints of their hip, stifle, and hock. This allows the elbow and stifle joints to almost reach the level of the spine, and the topline appears level when moving. Strong-eye dogs usually work silently and are typically quite intense. When approached by a strong eyed dog, stock will move away to stay ahead of what looks like a predator to them. Needless to day, livestock tend not to relax under a strong-eye, though it works really well with light livestock (heavy livestock, not so much).

Too much eye can be problematic, and such dogs have what’s called “Sticky Eye.” They can be maddening to work with because they get stuck in one place for a while, then dart to a new position too quickly and unexpectedly for the startled sheep’s taste. Sometimes these dogs stop responding to commands to stop doing a hold and to start moving the #%$ # livestock. Mostly, they just want to stare down livestock and prefer to keep them from moving than to actually move them.

An example of a “strong-eyed” dog is, not surprisingly, the Border Collie. This style works quite effectively as evidenced by the dogs hired earlier this year to control a Canada Goose problem in Littleton, Colorado. The Border Collie’s staring mimic the natural predator of geese, and they pay attention!

Image: “All Eyes” by Molly A Poole
http://www.granitedog.com
http://fineartamerica.com
https://www.facebook.com/MollyPooleArtist?fref=ts

01/10/2023

What predicatable pattens do you provide for your dog in Nosework/Scentwork training?

PREDICTABLE PATTERNS AND WHY THEY MATTER
We can help our dogs to cope in our world by providing predictable patterns that they can follow, even when the unpredictable happens. This requires consistency, repetition and patience, but dogs quickly learn what to do when that behaviour creates a predictable, positive result.
Predictability lowers anxiety, allows the brain to conserve energy and creates a sense of trust and security. Like other animals, dogs are experts at finding patterns. They look for patterns in their world and in the behaviour of others and just like we do, feel so much better when they can make sense of a situation rather than feeling confused or anxious when they can’t find a pattern.
When we create predictable patterns, dogs begin to understand what happens and how they should respond when a specific situation occurs. The situation becomes the cue for the behaviour rather than the cue itself. We often get caught up in using cues instead of just showing our dogs that this is what they should do in this situation. Being consistent and following a pattern with our dogs, creates trust, stability and security in helping them to know what to expect.

01/08/2023

One of my (many) favorite breeds! I’ve had many fine Bouvies in my Nosework classes, including multiple generations from the same bloodlines. Wonderful dogs!

01/03/2023

Susan Garrett gives an in depth look at the benefits and hazards of tugging with your dog in training.

01/02/2023

Nothing like a great working dog!