She did it! Piper earned her Scent Work Novice title at the Portuguese Water Dog Club Scent Work Trial in Atascadero, CA on April 23, 2019. SWN is a multi-class title which required her to earn four previous novice scent work titles (each with three qualifying legs). Here’s how she finished those:

Pips actually earned fourth place in Novice A Interiors and Containers in Reno. She’s a methodical dog (meaning we work very very slowly to find the hide), so she usually only places when a limited number of dogs qualify. Since only four dogs qualified in each of these events, she placed :). In buried, she was the fifth of five qualifying dogs.

Now that she’s earned her novice title, we’re taking a break from traditional scent work before moving up to advanced. Our next scent work goal is Novice Handler Discrimination (HD) which we’ve tried at three trials without any luck. In this event, the goal is for her to find my dirty sock hidden in a box among other identical boxes. This proves that she recognizes my personal smell. So far, Pips has false alerted on the judge’s distraction sock (also hidden in a box) so it’s clear she knows to look for a smelly sock. Now we just need to practice with distractor socks at home to make sure she’s sniffing for MY smell.

Overall, the journey through novice scent work has been enjoyable. This is the most intense training I’ve ever done with a dog, and I’ve learned a lot about myself as a trainer, handler, and competitor. I can’t wait to see what new challenges await us in this dynamic sport!

January and February definitely gave us a run for our money this year. In early January, we learned our old gal Rylie (almost 14 y/o) had lung cancer. We opted for surgery to remove the primary tumor, then started her on chemotherapy. Chemo didn’t work out for her, but we know that the surgery bought us a bit more time with her.

In the middle of Ry’s recovery, I flew back to Arkansas to support my sister Dawn during and after her brain surgery. Yup, you read that right. My 34-year-old sister found out she had a brain tumor in the fall, and after months of battling insurance companies and the health care system’s red tape, she was finally scheduled for surgery at the end of January. Just like Ry, Dawn came through her surgery like a champ and is finally feeling like herself again.

Once the crises passed and life evened out at the beginning of March, our training goal for this spring became finishing Piper’s overarching novice nosework title. Pips has one qualifying leg in each of the events (interiors, exteriors, containers, and buried) so we signed her up for these four PLUS handler discrimination at the March 23 Northern California Golden Retriever Club’s Scentwork Trial. A fun bonus of the trial was that the main novice judge was Donna Soderstrom, Piper’s nosework and obedience trainer.

We worked hard on Handler Discrimination and Piper really seemed to have a handle on it at home and at class. However, she did another false alert at the trial. I’m not quite sure if she knows what I’m asking of her here:

Just like last time, we used that false alert to approach the rest of the events more tentatively. It worked for containers and buried (the events she seems to hate the most in training). Interiors was an NQ, partially because I didn’t recognize her interest close to the hide, and partially because she false alerted away from it. Looks like our teamwork broke down. We need to keep practicing so I get better at differentiating true interest from guesses. Also, Donna gave us the option of competing off-lead in interiors and I wish I would have taken her up on it. I think this would have let Pips move more independently and not get distracted by me. Lesson learned.

Donna gave some overarching advice to those who NQd in interiors about not crowding your dog, and I heard her loud and clear. You know when someone gives general advice to a crowd but you know it’s aimed at you? Yeah, me too :)! So, I gave Pips more room in exteriors and she performed beautifully:

Overall, it was a great day with friends, Piper set three PRs, and we made more progress towards her titles.

So here’s our current scentwork tally:

• Handler Discrimination: No qualifying runs
• Interiors: One qualifying run (needs two more for title)
• Exteriors: Two qualifying runs (needs one more for title)
• Containers: Two qualifying runs (needs one more for title)
• Buried: Two qualifying runs (needs one more for title)

We’re signed up for two more trials in April, so hopefully we can sew up the SWN title between the two. Stay tuned!

I’ll admit it: We slacked on Piper’s nosework/scentwork training while we focused on dock diving this summer. I could offer excuses about the scorching weather here in the summer making training difficult for a black dog, but I won’t. Well, I suppose I kind of did right there. Oops!

Anyway, once the dock diving season wrapped up in October, we started focusing on nosework again. The fall semester and holiday season is a busy time for us, so we crammed for two trials (one in Pleasanton in October, one in Lodi in January) and we did pretty well overall. Here’s how they turned out:

Redwood Belgian Tervuren Fanciers AKC Scentwork Trial on Oct 19th, 2018 (Del Valle)

• Novice A Exteriors – Q (qualifying score)
• Novice A Containters – NQ (no qualifying score)

She was nice and methodical on exteriors and had a clear alert. So proud of her! She false alerted on the box next to the correct one in containers. Not bad for limited training 🙂

Northern California Golden Retriever Club AKC Scentwork Trial on Jan 5, 2019

• Novice A Handler Discrimination – NQ
• Novice A Containers – Q
• Novice A Buried – Q and 2nd place
• Novice A Interiors – Q

She started the trial by false alerting on the box next to the HD box. Very reminiscent of containers at Del Valle. Because of this, I changed my strategy for the next three events. Even when she alerted, I asked her to check the other locations just to be sure. The strategy worked for qualifying because we got the other three correct. Yay! However, it increased our time. On both buried and interiors, her first alerts were correct, so we could have won first place if I called those immediately. However, her first alert was not correct on containers, so we would have NQd if I called that one. Overall, I’m proud of the strategy but hopefully won’t need it with more consistent training. Unfortunately, she also developed a box destruction habit – yikes! The judge strongly recommended that I work on that with her. Wilco.

We signed up for a few more trails in January and February, but we’ve got some health stuff going on with our other dog and my sister, so we’ve put training on hold again and pulled her from those trials. Hopefully we can get back in the swing of things in March.

My baby is growing up!

On Saturday June 2nd, Ben and I loaded up Piper and headed to an ORT in Davis, CA. An ORT is an odor recognition test that dogs competing in nose work through the National Association of Canine Scent Work (NACSW) have to pass before competing in a trial.

Yikes, that last paragraph is still pretty technical; let me break is down.  K9 nose work (also called scent work) is a dog sport where dogs use their nose to find particular scents.  It’s a fun activity that uses a dog’s natural ability (sniffing) in a methodical way. It’s based on the type of training that narcotics- and bomb-sniffing dogs go through. However, instead of sniffing for drugs or explosives, scent work dogs search for essential oils.

You heard that right: essential oils.  The stuff you make homemade cleaners out of.  The stuff that you diffuse into the air to make your home smell good.  The stuff you rub on your chest to reduce congestion during a cold.  Good ol’ essential oils!  So, basically I’m teaching my dog to find a tiny Q-tip of essential oil (in birch, anise, or clove scent) hidden in a large area inside, outside, on a vehicle, underground, or in a closed container.  In competition, I won’t know where the scent is hidden so I have to trust Piper’s nose to lead us to it and tell me exactly where it is.

But we’re not ready for a trial yet, so let me get back to the ORT.  In this test, a Q-tip of the selected scent is hidden in one of twelve identical closed boxes and the dog has to tell it’s handler which box it’s in.  The handler then calls an alert (literally just says the word “alert”) to the judge in the room to indicate the correct box.  Was the handler right and within the 3 minute timeframe?  Great!  You passed the ORT for that scent.  Wrong?  Too bad, so sad, try again on another day.

Soooooooo…how did Piper do?  She did fan-friggin-tastic!  She found birch immediately, which was the scent she needed to find to begin competing at the novice level.  Yaaaaaaaay!  I was so proud of my girl.  Here’s a video of her birch test (side note: I definitely need to work on my handling posture):

Then, just for the hell of it, we signed her up to test for anise and clove too.  Even though she doesn’t need to recognize those until she’s ready for more advanced competition, we figured we were making the drive so we might as well try.  She did not find anise, which was a teeny tiny bummer. She looked pretty sleepy and unmotivated, and she false alerted on the box next to the correct one. Here’s the video of her anise run:

So based on our miss on anise (love that they call it a “miss” rather than a “fail”), I tried a few different things for clove.  Piper was still pretty sleepy, so I worked on jazzing her up.  There’s a Bloodhound in our nose work/scent work training class named Wanda who is super low energy, so her owner/handler Lisa has to talk in a high voice, jog with her, and generally convey a sense of excitement to get Wanda to want to work.  So, I imagined I was handling Wanda and turned the clove test into a paaaaaaaar-tay!  I also waited to call an alert until the second time Pips indicated the same box.  I know this is a controversial tactic (it indicates I don’t trust her), but honestly, I didn’t trust her after that anise run.  And…she did it!  We got clove, which you can see in this video:

So, all-in-all, this ORT was a great experience.  We met some nice people, Piper got used to a dog-event environment, and we accomplished our most important goal: passing birch.  I count that as a pretty successful day!

Pic: The Good Dog Dog Training contingent at the Davis ORT.  Donna wasn’t physically there, but we all heard her voice echoing advice and reminders in our heads 🙂