THE NOSE KNOWS
By Betsy Metcalf
The August issue of “The Whole Dog Journal” featured a piece about a training seminar in Seattle on K9 Nose Work and it looked like great fun. So Maggie Susman and I took 2 dogs to the training, and great fun was had by all. Ron Gaunt is a professional detection dog trainer in CA, but he developed K9 Nose Work as the urban/everyone sport designed to use your dog’s natural scenting abilities and use their desire to hunt for food and toys. This gives dogs a "job" that activates their mind, and gives them fun exercise, while building bonds with the owner. Nose Work is air scenting, and the dog learns to find target oil scents, unlike like AKC tracking where the dog to follow a person's path by smelling food odors. In K9 Nose Work, these target oil scents (birch, clove, & anise) are hidden in increasingly difficult locations, giving the dog a greater challenge at his “job.”
There is now a "National Association of Canine Scent Work" which is offering titles for K9 Nose Work, 1,2 and 3 in California, and maybe soon in Washington. A class has started in our training center for Nose Work in November and we hope to have dogs ready for titles in the future. But right now, we have happy, working dogs, who are discovering that we are rewarding their Great Noses.