Scent Detectives

Super Summer at last week's Skills workshop. 🤩 A training session working on individual needs for the teams, including; indication, environmental distractions, systematic searching and focus to search. Great work from all the teams and so nice to see the progression from the last session, definitely some homework training completed over the holidays 💪🏻 #scentdetection #skillstraining #scentwork #nosework #dogshavingfun #scentdetectives

Here's a short video of Lottie during day 1 of our people screening introduction workshop. Lottie lacks a lot of confidence with people and ordinarily this workshop is not aimed at dogs with this challenge. However Lottie has been attending regular training classes with us and during classes her confidence has started to improve, becoming more comfortable at having people in the same area. The focus for Lottie attending the people screening workshop was to build her confidence around and approaching people. It was wonderful to watch her progression throughout the day, from enjoying taking tasty treats from strangers to finishing the day choosing to approach people to search them. This was a massive step for Lottie and was quite emotional to watch. Really well done to her owner Dave for his patience to help Lottie progress on her own journey. #scentdetection #nosework #teamwork #dogshavingfun #scentdetectives

Thank you Helen Pye for hosting a great weekend, and looking after me, lovely homemade cakes, dinner and a goodie bag for me and the dogs for the evening. Also thanks to Nicola Cook for arranging a brilliant venue. I had the pleasure of working with some great teams of dogs and handlers, enjoying training and discussion time.

Super Jemima at last Sundays training day. 🥰 💪🏼 #nolimits #tripaw #gsd #scentdetectives

A great new venue for our second day of camp, we were lucky to visit a primary school that had lots of interesting areas to search, great fun for both the dogs and handlers and plenty of space to tailor the training to individual dogs needs. Here's a few photos from our day. #scentdetection #nosework #scentwork #labrador #bordercollie #germanshepard #scentdetectives #wirehairedvizsla

⭐ Coming Soon.... Date for a new training day ⭐ ' What is Your Dog Trying to Tell You...' This video is part of a search where Smartie is providing his handler with so many pieces of information about the location of the hide well before any final response is given. Very often the decision about the location of a hide is based solely on the final/conditioned response. However by making sure we are a part of the team and observing our dogs behaviour and the environment before this, we can gain so much more information. During this training day we will be increasing your power as a Detective when searching more complex hides with your dog. Also looking at when to step in and support and when to leave the dogs to do the job they are experts at.

Today we held the first Shooting Star Skills assessment, the 3rd Award in the Scent Detectives Awards series. One of the topics for this award is distraction odours, for the assessment the teams complete 3 'line ups' which include their target odour and multiple distraction odours. Todays distractions included, blue tak, a glove, cereal, scented candle, coffee, chewing gum. Here are Maggie and Evie doing a great job during their assessment. 👏

During yesterday's training day we worked on developing an independent, systematic search. The focus for the search style is to encourage the dog to be as efficient and effective as possible harnessing the dogs expertise to find and work an odour. Here's Rupert in the video 👇

Bear was determined he wasn't going to let the target get away at our recent people screening day. Bear has completed our two part introduction and is now attending the progression days. These training days are aimed towards dogs and their handlers that carry out scent detection as a hobby/sport. . . . #scentdetection #nosework #scentwork #detectiondog #bordercollie

During our Shining Star Award Workshop Maggie and Evie carried out one of the skills exercises perfectly 👌🤩 . . #scentdetection #scentwork #nosework #scentdetectives #scentdetectivesawards #solidfoundations #dogshavingfun

I love this feedback from Sundays training day at Solihull College, great points to take away. 👇👇 Thanks for a fab day at the workshop yesterday. I think I had two light bulb moments 😆. One that I shouldn't hold an image in my mind of what a "perfect" scentwork performance should look like for Drac, he has his own style. And two, I think I finally get that clearing a room is about my dog searching thoroughly and motivationally, and not me worrying about finding odours. Will be working on my starts and rewarding searching 😆 Seeing this team progress through the Scent Detectives Community trainings is fantastic. Super teamwork Yvonne and Drac 💪