#scentwork

My prize winning hog!!!!

Vigil got his AKC scentwork novice title.

Also High In Trial.

Also High In Trail again.

And High Combined which I didn't even know was a thing.

Anyway this is just the rosettes we got so many flats its hard to get a pic of all of them.

And the journey continues on, the next step in Aayla's sport journey is scentwork.

Today she had her first run and she qualified! She did novice interiors and really did well. I worried that she maybe wouldn't know what we are doing or that she would keep checking in with me.

But she didn't, she went out and searched with confidence, found it and indicated! So proud of her.

It was immediately clear that Ollie still recognized the scent, locking in on it when it is applied directly to a piece of furniture, but then choosing to move on to search elsewhere without offering his alert. After a few searches, successful and not, I began to hypothesize that Ollie was following the scent and only alerting when he recieved a visual confirmation that the scent was there, such as a canister or q tip. I tested this, and my suspicions were confirmed.

I set 3 chairs in a line. On two chairs, I placed cat toys. On the third, I applied the scent to one of the legs.

When I brought Ollie in to search, he instantly found the scent, lingered for a while, then moved on to investigate the cat toys on the other chairs. He would return to the scent, acknowledge but not alert, and then wander back to the cat toy chairs.

So I backed up. The next time we started our search, I cued his sit alert when he locked in on the scented chair. We practiced it that way a few times, and then tried again, this time without me asking for the alert.

It took him a few seconds longer than it usually would, but he finally sat. We practiced that two more times to confirm that he had it and ended with a biiiiiiiig celebration.

"One study looked at the impact of nosework on cogntive bias in dogs (Duranton and Horowit 2019). Pet dogs practiced their nosework or heeling on a daily basis for two weeks. The dogs that engaged in nosework showed an increase in positive bias after the two-week training period. The heeling dogs, on the other hand, showed no change (they didn't become more positively or more negatively biased). This study is exciting because it's the first that I know of that looks at the impact of enrichment on pet dogs. It also demonstrates that engagement in a more species-typical foraging may be more beneficial than an activity that is cognitively challenging, but not evolutionarily relevant such as heeling."

and I just thought that was really interesting so I've dug the study up:

Let me sniff! Nosework induces positive judgment bias in pet dogs

Nosework reduced dogs' latencies to reach an ambiguous pot in a cognitive bias test.

Nosework increases dogs’ positive judgment bias or "optimism".

Practicing nosework allows dogs to express a natural behavior and be more autonomous.

Behaving naturally and making active choices are two key factors in animal welfare.

Olfaction-based activities contribute to dogs’ welfare.

"We predicted that the experimental group practicing nosework with food reward would show higher levels of optimism on a post-intervention cognitive bias test than a control group of dogs practicing a food-reward based activity with the same physical activity as in nosework, but with no olfactory search component (heelwork)."