Meliora Drents

Scentwork is Iris and I’s favorite thing to do together. The same instincts and skills that make the Drent an excellent hunter in the field lend themselves well to any kind of detection work. While the effort is dog-driven, success rides heavily on the ability of the dog and handler to communicate effectively. And the stronger our bond, the better we can communicate, and the better we can communicate, the stronger our bond.

Scentwork is an incredibly fulfilling activity for many breeds, even without the competition aspect. Rather than a “tired dog is a happy dog”, I believe a fulfilled dog is a happy dog; the mental effort of scentwork will tire out a dog faster and more reliably than physical exercise. There are a million and one reasons why scentwork is the best gift you can give your dog – and I’m here to share how you can get started.

Get Started

I highly, highly recommend Nosework 101 from Fenzi Dog Sport Academy. It’s a six-week class that runs every two months – you can audit it, like we did, for $65 and do it at your own pace with access to all the class materials for a year (or more!). They also offer “gold” and “silver” options which provide direct access to the instructor for one on one feedback during the six weeks.

NW101 does an excellent job of breaking down the process of introducing your dog to a target odor and building up in small steps towards basic searching. It also touches on the basics of odor storage and handling, appropriate gear for the dog and handler, the basic structures of AKC SW and NACSW, how to best handle your dog to set them up for success, and more.

FDSA also offers a full series of scentwork/nosework classes for continued learning. I truly can not recommend this program enough as a way to get started with scentwork, particularly if you may compete. Solid foundations will take you far.

That said, if you want to play around with some scentwork-adjacent games at home, it’s much simpler to get started than you think.

Food & Toy Games

If your dog likes food, try simply hiding a couple treats or handfuls of their dinner around your house. Start easy, particularly if you have a dog who isn’t confident or strongly food motivated. Leave the goodies somewhere your dog can easily see them when they walk into the room. Then gradually make it harder – put treats behind, on, or under furniture or objects (that you don’t mind potentially getting knocked over!) when your dog isn’t looking, and send them in to find. Then take it outside, in your backyard, or on a hike. Use a consistent verbal cue – “find it!” perhaps – and your dog will soon recognize that your cue means there is something yummy for them to sniff out and find.

A similar process works for toy searches. A favorite toy or ball can be used in place of food, in the same process as above. To level it up, try having your dog sit, wait, and watch while a ball is being thrown into cover. Then release them to search, and when they find it, ask for a retrieve to hand. This is basically a mark and retrieve drill, which is useful for marking the location of and retrieving a downed bird. Check out this video on Instagram showing how Iris and I do ball searches.

All of these skills are transferrable to competition scentwork – while the source may be different, your dog will learn scent dynamics and how to problem solve to get to what they want.

Basics of AKC Scentwork

AKC offerred it’s first scentwork trial in 2017, and it has quickly become the fastest growing AKC sport. AKC Scentwork breaks up competition into 4 “elements” and currently offers 5 “levels” of difficulty.

The four AKC elements are Exterior, Interior, Container, and Buried. Exterior and Interior are self-explanatory – searches in outdoor areas and indoor areas, respectively. Container searches start with simple cardboard boxes but quickly turn into any kind of box, bag, or item wherein a target odor can be enclosed. Buried is based primarily on search and rescue dogs who may have to detect remains underground or underwater – it’s simulated by filling buckets with sand or water, and placing the target odor at the bottom (and placebos in water, to discourage searching by sight)

All four elements have four levels of difficulty in AKC – Novice, Advanced, Excellent, and Master. Difficulty is increased by the size of the search area, the different kinds of scents a dog needs to recognize, the number of hides placed (known or even unknown to the handler), and more. But through the Master level, teams run each element separately at whatever level they are qualified for. It takes 3 qualifying scores (find all hides within a time limit) to earn an element title at each level, and once all 4 element titles have been earned, an “overall level” title is earned.

At the top difficulty level – Detective class – a judge can choose to use any combination of the four elements, placing between 5 and 10 hides over a very large indoor-outdoor search area. The handler does not know how many hides there are or how they might be hidden, and must make a call at some point before the time limit is up that they believe their dog has found everything there is to be found. In order to earn the Scentwork Detective title, a dog-handler team must earn 10 separate qualifying scores.

Closing

Iris and I have a little ways to go before we are qualified to run Detective level searches, but I have observed many Detective runs, and the skill of dog-handler teams is jaw-dropping. Our goal is to be the first – but hopefully not the last! – Drentsche Patrijshond to earn a SWD.

Please feel free to reach out with questions – I would be delighted to support other Drents (or frankly, any breed of dog) interested in learning scentwork!