Scent is the strongest of the five senses in dogs. Canines receive a lot of mental stimulation from the smells they encounter throughout your house, in your yard, and on walks. If you want a unique way to provide daily enrichment for your super-sniffing pup, consider training them to track.
Dogs’ noses are 100,000 times stronger than ours are, meaning they can infer a huge amount of information from just a few sniffs.
While to us, they may just look like they’re smelling the bottom of a mailbox post or an innocuous patch of grass, your dog is actually discovering what animals have been there, their approximate age, their emotions. Their extremely good noses can detect the same smell and follow it, which is why your dog might drag you from one spot to another a few feet away. You can hone this natural instinct and give your dog some fun tracking challenges as you train them to put their noses to work.
You’ll have to wake up early to begin training–about 6 or 7 am–and go with a friend to a grassy area like a field or big yard. You want to make sure that no one has walked on yet that day, otherwise their scents could distract your pup. Have your friend hold your dog on-leash to wait in one spot as you lay a trail.
To lay a trail, have “squishable” treats on hand, like pieces of a cooked hot dog. Drop a piece on the ground and step on it, grinding it into the ground and ensuring the scent gets onto your shoes. Walk forward a few steps before dropping another piece of treat; repeat this process 3 or 4 times, meandering as you go so that you’re not just walking in a straight line. At the end of your trail, drop a toy or other object to act as the “goal” of your pup’s search.
Once you’re done, return to your dog and give them a tracking command–this could be something like “track” or “find it”. Your pup will likely find the first treat quickly. Praise them quietly when they get to it, and continue to do so once they start following the trail. Don’t reward them with treats or pets though; you want them to maintain their concentration. Ideally, your dog will be able to follow the combined scents of the treats, crushed grass, and of yourself to the end of the trail. When they reach the object you’ve set at the end, then you can give them lots of verbal praise and extra treats!
You can create a couple more short trails during each training session, so long as your dog is still interested and engaged. As they become more proficient at following the trails you’ve set, you can incorporate more length and twists into them. For more complicated paths, you may want to set markers like flags or stakes so that you can tell whether Fido is following the scent correctly. It’s so exciting to watch your dog use their natural abilities to complete tasks like this, and they will love the enrichment they get out of it as well.
Teaching and training your dog is one of the joys of dog ownership. If you would like some help with the training basics, give Gulf Coast K9 Dog Training a call.
