#nosework

I've been doing scent puzzles with Rory since she was a baby so she understands the concept of sniffing hard for a little puece of food. This is one of our near-daily enrichments, although I don't do complex puzzles very often!

For these games, I start by prepping some kind of smelly treat - I've used soft dog treats, meat, various cheeses, anything pungent. I ask Rory to go elsewhere (sometimes on the balcony, sometimes in her closet crate) and hide a small piece somewhere in the apartment. I call her to heel and release her to her sniffs.

Here are ways to mess with the dog (which I find funny), from easiest to hardest. With your dog out of sight...:

Hide the treat and then keep walking around. If she's listening, she won't be able to track your movement by sound.

Hide the treat and then squeak some toys, or scatter toys around the space as decoys.

Hide the treat high up or down low so the scent plume might not peak at nose level. Some examples: on picture frames above the couch and under the corner of the carpet.

Hide the treat somewhere the dog doesn't spend a lot of time. Some examples: the edge of the bathtub and the threshold of my main door.

Walk around waving the treat for a bit before hiding it. Waft that scent throughout your home, yum.

Touch things with the treat before hiding it. I've seen reels of people hiding dental chews for their basset (?) and running it on all the furniture before hiding it! I don't do this because of the nature of the treats I use.

Turn on fans, or open windows or doors. Get the air flowing while the dog is out of the room so she comes back to a totally different scent profile.

Before the video, I walked around the apartment with my cheese for a while, placed the cheese on the door lever (above Rory's head), walked around the bathroom waving my cheesy hands to spread that scent in a very close enclosed space, fanned the balcony door open and closed a handful of times to stir up the rest of the air, and then released her to solve the puzzle. It took 3 minutes and 42 seconds!