Nose Nerds – Freebies
You’ll Discover:
How you can use your dog’s nose to help with walking nicely on lead
Why scent might be behind certain behaviours
Why nose work is the best way to calm and tire your dog
Go through these FREEBIES to start your Nose Nerds Journey. Use the Rewards Audit below to help unlock your dog’s Superpower.
GAME #1 – Watch ’em Sniff
Your first task is to learn about your dog’s sniffing behaviour. Find somewhere safe for your dog to be off-lead and watch him sniff!
Find somewhere new (or not recently visited) where your dog can be off lead. (Tennis court? Garden? Woods? Park?)
Observe your dog to become familiar with his sniffing technique:
· head movements
· change in body posture
· tail position
· wag speed
· changes of pace
· signs of focus
· distance from object being sniffed
· changes in sniffing
Watch the following video to see Carol watching Gus just have fun sniffing.
GAME #2 – Make a Scent Box
Homemade toys are great fun. Encourage your dog to search for their food with a homemade scent box.
Make your own fun scent box. Here’s how:
- Get a shallow cardboard box (or cut a deeper one to suit), or use a large cat litter or heavy duty garden tray
- Fill it loosely with scrumpled up scrap paper.
- Let your dog watch you scatter a few bits of kibble into the box
- Allow your dog to dive in and find the wonderful treats
GAME #3 – Hide & Seek
Use your dog’s favourite toy and play hide and seek in the house and outdoors. Use a food toy like a clam if your dog doesn’t currently play with toys.
Make searching a 100% positive experience – so the reward must be something the dog really, really wants. Play helps learning.
Do our Reward audit if you haven’t done it already – and even if you have its worth re-doing! We need to know our dogs favourite foods, toys and other types of reward in order to be able to use rewards effectively.
Use your dog’s favourite toy and play hide and seek. Hide it around the house, drop it into long grass when out on walks, anywhere and everywhere.
Beware the temptation to show your dog – just guide them to the general area and tell them to “find it”. Then shut up and let their marvellous noses do the work.
When they succeed, have a party playing with the toy!
Start off by making sure a part of the toy is visible and hide it at ground level.
Once your dog becomes proficient at that, start to hide it in more difficult places, such as hiding it higher up or hiding it completely.
GAME #4 – Kong/Bag Hunt
Lay out 3 bags or towels on the floor. Hide a Kong (or other favourite toy) in or under the bags and let your dog hunt it out.
If like me you feed your dogs out of KONG’s they will love finding that. If you don’t you can start feeding them out of one and after a couple of days the dog will love the Kong and have the motivation to find it. We can also put a treat inside the Kong to help the dog out at the beginning or on more difficult searches.
But It can be any toy your dog likes or toy you can put a treat in.
How:
- Place out 5 – 10 Bags in a line up about 1-2 ft apart.
- Place the KONG or food toy (with or without treat) in one of the bags
- Bring in your Dog and start them at one end of your line up, cue them to search
- When the dog finds the Kong reward them with a nice tasty treat from you or from the Kong
GAME #5 – Chicken Tracking
Drag a piece of chicken across the garden as a track for your dog to follow and chomp his chicken reward at the end.
Chicken Tracking is your dog using its nose to follow a track being left by a piece of sausage along the ground, You can use anything – Ham, sausage, a meaty stick – anything your dog likes that you can tie a piece of string to and drag along the ground without it disintegrating!
How to play the game:
1) Decide and map out where you are going to lay the track. Your lawn is a good place to start.
2) Place a marker at your start point (for your reference) and leave a tiny piece of the chicken there.
3) Drag the chicken along the ground gently, for around 5-10 paces (you don’t need to smear bits everywhere). Lay it in more or less a straight line. (Gentle curves are OK but no sharp corners at this stage, please.) Leave the rest of the chicken at the end.
4) Take your dog on a long lead (or two leads linked together – but no extending leads please!) to the start of the track, point to the ground by the start point and ask your dog to “Track on”. Your dog will eat the first bit of food, then he’ll follow the track you laid. Let your dog follow his nose along the track. If they lose the scent at any point, help them by pointing to the ground, but try not to interfere with the dog scenting otherwise.
5) Celebrate with your dog when they reach the end and can chomp the chicken!
Enjoy these games and we hope to see you inside the NOSE NERDS Course.
Please remember that the Nose Nerds Course is only accessible to those taking up Nose Nerds Membership, or Devotee Membership.
| Level | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Free User | Free. | Select |