Teddy just finished his second class in scent detection. Today in class we had a mock started trial with three searches, a container search, an interior room search and an exterior search. In our first class, Teddy did really well on the container search; his indication was easy for me to see but on his exterior and interior searches I wasn't able to read whether or not he had found the odour. Today, had it been a real trial, we would have gotten a qualifying score on all of our searches and Teddy would have his Started title.
While his indication is supposed to be a nose freeze, Teddy has a little foot stamp when he finds odour. He doesn't always do either the nose freeze or the foot stamp except on containers. If you click on the link below, you'll see what I mean.
It's fun watching Teddy search when we practice at home. I try not to use the same location but obviously we're often using the same rooms. Teddy has the memory of an elephant and if I let him do a distance search where he's off leash, he'll go to each place that I've hidden the odour before. There aren't any more classes for us to take at the moment, but we'll keep on practicing. Hopefully, we'll get to do some trials, so far, all the ones I've seen posted are quite a distance away and would likely mean staying in a hotel. Dog sports are not cheap, the entry fees I've seen for scent are even more expensive than agility.
Teddy has a good nose and if I learn to read his signals better, he could do well in scent. The nose knows!
