Nosework is for Everyone! Part 1 A New En Deavour

I am very excited to share our newest venture with you, Nosework! If you don't know what the heck Nosework is I encourage you to read all about it here http://k9nosework.com/ . The absolute coolest thing about Nosework is that any dog can do it. Does your dog have a nose? Then your dog can do Nosework. The other really great thing about it is that any human can easily learn how to be your dog's handler. Also it is good to know that your dog does not need to know any cues/commands whatsoever. Your dog can be the most shy, reactive, deaf, blind, old, young, active, sedentary, pick a label, that dog can do Nosework and will be accepted in a Nosework class. Perfect! So not that we like to use labels but just to bring the point home, we signed up Timken (our soft, fearful boy) and Skip (needs his space from new people, can be reactive) for a 6 week Nosework session with Erica Wells Certified Nosework Instructor.

We have almost finished our first 6 week course and I would love to encourage anyone reading this blog to consider a Nosework series with your dog/s, you won't be sorry.

We had played around with Nosework in our home quite a few times in the past. Birdie and Liza have taken a series of Nosework classes about a year ago. I have fellow New Rattitude foster parents and adopters who have been doing Nosework with their personal and foster dogs and I have been in awe of the progress the dogs have been making in confidence and in their work ethic (they all love to search). So we wanted to see how Nosework would help our two boys, Skip and Tim, each with his own personality that could use a little fine tuning. :)

To get Timken ready to begin Nosework I took the advice of a peer foster mom who suggested starting Tim out with treats on a flat piece of cardboard to begin. Tim can be afraid of novel things. And so boxes and especially boxes with flaps were a real hang up for him. In beginning Nosework the dogs are finding treats in boxes so we needed to make sure Tim could feel successful in class so we practiced at home for a few weeks before our first official class.

I worked with a few different sizes of flat cardboard and then combinations of boxes and cardboard. Tim was hesitant as you can see in the videos but he was able to work through it.

In this video I was just doing some simple cues with Tim that he knows, "sit" and touch" while we were near the cardboard. He is so sweet.

And in these two videos I had a couple of boxes in the mix and again he is hesitant but he did great!

Here is a glimpse of what happened next...