Anybody doing Nosework?

[wildo]

I just signed Pimg up from a beginner class in nosework. I'm pretty excited about it, as I've played "find it!" games with Pimg her whole life. She seems to have an excellent tracking nose (I say that now...). No matter where I hide a treat in my house (under blankets, buried in closets, behind the couch, etc, etc) she can always find the treat very quickly. I'm hoping she excels in this sport. It would be fun to trial her in it as well. Class starts one week from today!

[jocoyn]

No but I am doing cadaver detection and have nationally certified in that 4 years running and hoping to cert the puppy this Sept or January. (Sep may be too soon).

[Cassidy's Mom]

Willy, here's a previous thread: Anybody competing in Nosework?

We were doing it for awhile, but haven't in a couple of months, I've been focusing on flyball instead. Our trainer Andrew Ramsey was with the Military Working Dog Program at Lackland AFB, training detection dogs before moving to the Bay Area. He was doing classes at his house, he had a training area set up outside on his deck, but just started an intensive week-long class at the Michael Ellis School yesterday: The Michael Ellis School for Dog Trainers | Courses

He's also developing a series of DVDs with Leerburg - the first one in the series was released recently, and Halo and I are in it briefly: Leerburg On Demand | The Foundation of Nosework with Andrew Ramsey

Keefer was videoed too, but I don't think he ended up on the DVD. Andrew is supposed to be getting some free copies to give to those who participated, but I don't have one yet, so I haven't actually watched the DVD.

[wildo]

Neat!! My biggest fear is that nosework is nothing more than a slightly structured "find it" game. I know that they mix up the environments, and also search in cars and stuff- but I'm curious if you've found it to be fun, or just kind of repetitively boring.

[Cassidy's Mom]

I thought it was fun, but the way we were training is different than the way the K9 Nosework classes are done, as I explained in the other thread.

How fast you progress will determine how quickly you'll be able to do searches in more interesting and challenging environments, and that just depends on the dog. Here is a short video of Andrew doing an urban search with his Mal Fusel: Leerburg On Demand Video Player | Urban Nosework

Try it and see how she does and if it's something you enjoy and then go from there.

[wildo]

Thanks a ton! I just started reading through the other thread- looks like lots of good info in there.

[David Winners]

The new Andrew Ramsey DVD is a great way to get into nosework. I recommend it highly.

Detection work is anything but repetitive and boring. The only thing limiting the variety of work is your imagination.

[ponyfarm]

In the class Tim and I did..the instructor hid the treat in a box (there were many boxes scattered around) and let the dog "find it". The hiding progessed to different areas of the room.

If your dog gets excited when you say "find it! or get it" and knows to start looking around , then she will be great. Also helps if she is not afraid to climb in and around the boxes. Tim would actually jump into them to find the treat! The dog gets to work off leash and run around the room searching. Tim loved the entire concept.. It was a fun class.. a bit too much crate time for Tim. ( yea, I know..gotta watch that Crate Games DVD. ..

[wildo]

ponyfarm- were the scents introduced in the first class, or just food?

[ponyfarm]

We only made it thru three of the classes, and she was still using food at that point. I saw another student last night and she loved the entire session and is going on to advanced..but cant tell you when scents were actually used.