Nose work odor, what is it? It never dawned on us that the average bear would not know what it is that we are searching for. How does it get in places for us to find? When our blog friend, Cecilia, asked the other day I decided I should do a short post about it. This yellow box is our odor kit. It contains all the odor and vessels we usually use when we practice our sniffing on our own. The container is air tight to keep the odor in and our noses clueless.
Out main sniffing organization is NACSW. They use three odors in their searches, birch, anise, and clove. These odors are essential oils. A “hide” may be made of one, two, or all three odors together. We buy them from a local company and they will last for many years.
For AKC Scent Work, there are four odors – birch, anise, and clove like NACSW but they also add cypress at the higher levels. There are other sniffing organizations that use other scents but we don’t participate in others.
How do we make hides from these little bottles of essential oils? It is a simple process. We have small glass jars where we put just two or three drops of the oil on the inside wall of the jar. Q-Tips are cut in half and added to the jar. Mom rolls and shakes the jar for a short time and then we let the Q-Tips “cook” for a day or two. Cook means sit in the jar to absorb the oil scent. Once they are cooked, we are ready to make some hides.
There is a huge array of vessels one can use to make a hide. Here we have a few of ours, from left to right, a small plastic hide, a 3D printer hide with a magnet in the bottom of it, a straw, a metal smiley tin, a plastic smiley tin, and a large metal tin. Each hide has three Q-Tips in it.
Hides can be placed anywhere since they can have magnets in them, we also use earthquake putty for sticking them on things, or they can be set places. With 3D printers, things are even more fun as one can create things like rocks which look just like a rock. There are two types of hide placements, accessible and inaccessible.
Accessible means we can get our nose right on the hide. Lower level trials are always accessible. Hides need to be secure so dogs don’t grab them. This hide under the old tractor is a great example of an accessible hide.
An inaccessible hide is one we can’t get to, no access. It can be under something large or up high. We need to communicate the rough location to our human and they need to have the courage to call it. This photo is a high hide in a small closet area.
Hopefully this gives you a bit of an insight into what a hide is and what exactly it is that we are looking for. This is another accessible hide in the corner of the wood porch. We dogs love to get right to the hide and handlers prefer it too as there is no guess work but there are a lot of inaccessible hides in trials. With practice humans learn to recognize our inaccessible hide behavior. We are just thankful we get to search and play so many great games with our noses.
We’re joining Brian’s Home Blog in the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!
Thank you, Olivia. That was very informative! Does birch smell like peppermint – kind of like birch beer?
Mom says it doesn’t smell like peppermint, it smells like some kind of candy she liked as a kid. She doesn’t drink beer, so not sure what birch beer smells like. Since we hounds are doing the smelling she never thinks much about what the scent is like.
wow thanks for showing how to make a hide… thats super thrilling how your nose knows what scent is the right one…. bravoooo
We train for it so we know what we are looking for. It is a lot of fun, as you know.
That is an awesome description of all the essentials! We haven’t used any of the 3D printed things…. yet.
We have seen some around here and they are amazing! They are more to hide things in plain sight from our human than to trick us.
What a great explanation, Olivia….We never knew there were so many ways to make a hide!!
xoxo,
Rosy & Sunny
There are so many ways to make a hide, we couldn’t begin to list them all. People are selling new and different vessels all the time.
Olivia, we really enjoyed this explanation. We have been wanting to try this sport, but mom was a bit overwhelmed. Maybe now we can talk her into it, ’cause we could practice that indoors in the cold or rainy weather. WHERE DO YO GET THE KITS?
https://www.thek9nose.com/ has everything you need and more to get started. You can practice any time, any place but you will need to practice all the elements, containers, vehicles, interiors and exteriors if you plan to compete. Fenzi offers online classes but we prefer in person. It is easier to get started if you have someone to help you at first. Mom is planning on doing a seminar at the GBGV thing next spring at the Peach Tree Cluster. If we lived closer, she would come by and help get you started.
I love this post. I learned so much. Thank you
We are happy when we can bring more understanding for our favorite sport 🙂 Actually, nose work would be amazing for Clover. Just for fun or for competition. It would really tire her our mentally and it would be something she was born to do.
Thanks so much for your fascinating post ~ Wonderful work using what is so natural for doggies ~ the Nose! ~ hugs,
an artist reflects
Especially us scent hounds!
Thank you, Olivia! That was a great intro! Many years ago – back when Angel Emma was a youngster – reading about her adventures in scent work got me inspired to do some nose work with Callie, Shadow, and Ducky. I continued it with Ducky once Callie and Shadow were gone; but dealing with Sam’s dementia and trying to raise Bogie made life crazy. And since Ducky passed, I’ve had a hard time getting my mojo back. I tried a little bit of scent work with Zoey last year while she was recuperating from her spay surgery – while Zen was staying with their “Grandpa Chuck” – and she seemed to enjoy it; but when Zen came home, I had a hard time keeping them separate so gave up. Now I want to get back to it but am still stuck in “no mojo” mode. I’ll get out of it eventually but it’s hard.
Mom puts us in our kennels when we do sniffing at home and lets us out only when it is our turn to sniff, just like at trials. Sometimes Nelson and I do competitive sniffing in the yard. Mom tosses a tin with odor off the deck and then lets us out side. Whoever finds it first gets a treat and then she tosses it again when we are not looking or sometimes she has a second tin with her. About ten minutes of that and we are woofed!
Olivia and Mom OMDs thank you x 100 for this most informative post and girl did I learn lots. Of course I have another question do you all have favorite scents? Just read above clove is a favorite it would be mine too if I were a talented scent hound. I like you yellow scent box too. OMDs was this fun!!thankyou
Apologies for being late
I twisted my ankle (really bad) last night. Spent the morning at my doc’s office getting it checked out and xrays
It is better today and she doesn’t think it is broken. Hope to hear from xrays tomorrow
Hugs cecilia
So sorry you twisted your ankle. Hopefully it will feel better fast. Mom’s dr said sprains and things like that are often worse than a simple break. You inspired us to explain the odor part of our sport. It never dawned on us that most people have no idea since it is so normal for us. Anise is probably the most missed odor for us but we don’t really have a favorite. We love the job of finding it so much we don’t really care which odor or combo of odors it is. Thank you for planting the seed for this and we sure hope your ankle feels better soon.
Well I must confess that my uncle Roy gave me the nickname of Nosy Rosy when I was a child. He told me I asked a lot of questions…he’d be proud I still do.
Thank you my doc said the same about the sprain…takes that a long time. We have vacation plans for next week…so I too hope it gets manageable.
Hugs Cecilia
What you do with the nose is so amazing, besides, you are so good at it! Thanks for joining Angel Brian’s Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!
Thank you. We were born to sniff and we love it.
While I knew it was something like this, odor on a cotton ball or q-tip or similar, and in a container, I appreciate more fully now knowing some details. Thanks!
It’s quite simple but not something people would just know and having done it for so long we forgot that we should explain it so people understand what exactly we are looking for.
Many thanks for sharing the magic of scnet work and hides. Must be exciting to find all those things with your nose!
We love finding the hides and Mom never tires of watching us work as it is always different depending on the conditions and venue.