Dog obedience training and competition training

Many canine careers require a dog to learn scentwork. These include tracking dogs, customs dogs, police dogs and even some types of therapy dogs.

Of course dogs don't really need to learn how to use  their sense of smell, dogs can do that all on their own. What they do need to learn is how to tell us about what they are smelling. Dogs are often taught to: 

• Match scents (i.e. offer the dog a scent and then ask them to find the matching scent from a collection of items).
• Indicate the presence of a certain scent (i.e. the dog indicate whenever they find their target scent/s in different settings).
• Follow a scent across terrain.

With the help of a suitably experienced dog trainer, these skills can easily be taught to pet dogs in a fun way. Scent work is then used in competition: at the higher levels of Obedience, at all levels of Tracking and in the soon to arrive to Australia competition of Scentwork. 

If you are hoping to compete in Scentwork at some point in your dog's life, be cautious of any training program that teach a dog to tear through cardboard boxes to find food or food scents. This type of training can be very difficult to undo and will prevent your dog from competing in the higher levels, where food is placed in a search area as a decoy and your dog must not "find" the food. Instead food should only ever be used as a reward, or in some cases in early tracking training as a trail. The exception to this rule applies to anxious dogs or dogs lacking in confidence. In these cases letting them start the process by sniffing out food can be useful in developing confidence (because they don't need to have the confidence to "indicate" to you). If you are using food for this type of confidence building, the food should be readily available (i.e. on a plate or loose on the floor, not inside a box or container). This allows the dog to instantly reward for simply sniffing out the food, without developing unwanted behaviours such as crashing through cardboard boxes (which you won't want him / her to do at a later stage). At some point the dog still needs to progress to odour where you will want the dog to "indicate" the scent to you, not smash through the containers to get to it.

If you would like to discuss teaching your dog scent skills for competition, or just as a fun activity for you and your dog, contact us.

In Australia we have recently seen the addition of a new dog sport called Trick Dog. This sport involves demonstrating how well you and your canine partner communicate. At the lower levels the list of tricks includes simple tasks like going around a cone, following a target stick and holding an object.  The higher levels include much more complex tasks, and there is even room for handlers and dogs to show off their own personal tricks that are not listed. This sport was originally designed to introduce more handlers and dogs to a sport called DWD (dancing with dogs).

There are also a range of organizations offering online trick titles such as "Do More With Your Dog". Go to www.domorewithyourdog.com to find more information. 

"Trick dog" as a sport, is a great starting point for lots of people new to dog sports. The individual tricks can be easily taught to any pet dog and you can reward your dog with treats in between exercises. Please contact us if you would like help teaching your dog a new trick, or perfecting an existing one.

 Coaching for tricks is also available via video. This is particularly useful if you would like to work on one or two specific tricks. Each time you submit a video you will receive feedback with specific information on how to improve the training, or a suggestion of a new method or technique you could could try in order to achieve a better outcome. Contact us for video training package options.