Zealand started Nosework tonight!

[Teal]

Got my lil guy into his first class tonight - Nosework!

He absolutely, entirely ROCKED IT. This is SO his sport!

The instructor was impressed not only with his incredible work drive, but his loving personality.

It was really awesome to get to stand back and watch my dog work and interact with another person without any instruction/interruption from me for the first time (normally his interactions are on leash in public, so I'm telling him not to jump, to be polite, etc.)... It really gave me even MORE appreciation for what a wonderful little dog he is!

No pictures or video this time... But there should be some soon!

[MicksMom]

Oh, you're both going to have so much fun! Caleb gets so into it that he's started making a little chirping sound right before I give him his search command.

[Freehold]

That's great! Now for a noob question... what exactly is nosework? (Coming from a sighthound person )

[AdrianneIsabel]

We've been the guinea pigs for an in-training nosework instructor at my work on tuesdays for two weeks now and I'm really impressed with the sport. I genuinely thought I wouldn't like it but it is really cool and fun so far. We used about 6 of my client dogs and then both of my mals and given this range it was so neat seeing how the dogs took to it. The dogs were out maybe 3 minutes, closer to 1 minute each, and each walked away panting the first day as if they'd just run. Then the next week I had to *drag* the dogs off from the boxes when they were done. LOL

The cool part, imo, is we brought out several "low food drive" dogs and they sure figured it out quickly. We had a bit of trouble with two of our labs who just wanted to socialize with the instructor the first week but the second (we only had one lab back) he was right on track.

Sloan whipped through things and was an extremely fast seeker, she gave the instructor a run for her money while she tried to trick Sloan into checking non-food boxes so she could re-hide the food box. LOL

I would love to try the sport out if I didn't already have my time and money being eaten by Agility, obed, and IPO. Someday maybe but until then keep us updated!

Freehold, it's K9Nosework, they have a website and the basis of it is tracking in an urban setting. It's for all breeds, not scent hounds.

[Freehold]

Cool! I will have to check it out. Thanks.

[Teal]

Adrienne - Ze was the same way as your Sloan! She couldn't get him distracted to try to trick him lol He was also really fast... He immediately got what he was supposed to do, and he almost pulled me over at first because I was NOT expecting the force he put into wanting to go search! LOL She had us taking breaks to pee/water/let him rest... except he'd go outside, pee real quick, drink a little water, then try to drag me back inside haha He REALLY loved it!

Freehold - You could do it with sighthounds, too.. If they're food motivated! I'm going to try starting my Saluki at home to see if he has any interest in it!

[MicksMom]

Originally Posted by AdrianneIsabel

...Freehold, it's K9Nosework, they have a website and the basis of it is tracking in an urban setting...

Actually, the roots of Nosework comes from training detection dogs (drug,bomb, etc).

Link to the NACSW http://www.funnosework.com/

[Dakotakins12]

Is nosework when the dog targets thing with their nose? If so I taught my vizsla to do that with post-it notes! If not then I would love to learn what it is!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSNDNgfrmps <-- Here's a video of a few things I taught my vizsla to do with her post-it note targetting!

[MicksMom]

Originally Posted by Dakotakins12

Is nosework when the dog targets thing with their nose? If so I taught my vizsla to do that with post-it notes! If not then I would love to learn what it is!..

Nosework is finding a hidden scent. In the beginning it's a piece of food. Eventually the dogs are transitioned to finding a piece of qtip with an essential oil on it. It's the fun/sport version of how the military and police train dection dogs.