COMMITTED CANINE

We have been training Riff the task to alert to a specific scent. A dog’s primary sense is scent. All dogs can be taught to detect and alert their handler/owner to a specific scent. It can be a very fun hobby for folks who like to work with their companion dogs.

Once a dog learns that his person wants him to alert to a specific scent, additional scents can be added to the dog’s “menu.” As an example, consider a drug detection dog that alerts to several illegal substances, or a dog that can detect many accelerants or explosive devices.

To develop Riff’s understanding that we want him to tell us that he detects a specific scent, we are working with the common, “nose work” scent of Birch Oil. This training helps us develop Riff’s motivation to alert to a scent. Once that understanding is firm, we can add other scents at any time in the future. Unique alert behaviors can be paired with specific scents when required – such as “put your paw on me” if you detect low blood sugar and “circle clockwise” if you detect high blood sugar.

Prior to the work shown in this video, Riff learned to perform a “Touch It” to a vessel containing Birch scent. It was presented to Riff from my hand. Next, the vessel was moved to a platform that I held, and a second (control) vessel was then added. Rewarding a touch/sniff only when Riff made contact with the scented vessel allowed him to think and learn to acknowledge the scent as meaningful to me. Dogs know that there’s a unique scent in one of the vessels, but they don’t acknowledge it until we help make the connection.

This video begins showing that preliminary step and then presents the next steps of moving the scent vessel to a remote, horizontal orientation of the scent vessels so that he learns to work away from me and removes any unplanned cue that is added by my proximity to the problem solving environment.

As a next step in the process, the vessels were placed inside of small containers which are quite close together. That encourages Riff to stick his nose into those spaces to find the hottest scent or the “source” of the scent. Because a dog’s nose is capable of detecting minuscule amounts of any scent, I’m quite certain Riff can tell there’s birch scent in the general area. that scent is more concentrated over the 6-container-long platform. Therefore, he needs to get close to the source to make a positive identification. This was the first day I asked Riff to move to a remote location to find the scent inside those little containers.

At one point, Riff began to present his paw when he found the scent, which isn’t odd since one of the very first behaviors that I taught him as a puppy was to “shake paw”for which he was rewarded. Since he did it quite naturally when located the scent, I thought it would be a good idea to cue the “shake paw” behavior and turn that into the “alert.” However, when I asked, he didn’t perform the “shake” and looked a bit confused. I quickly realized that it was more important to continue to reinforce the scenting first. Adding an alert behavior can be done later. Shortly after that, I asked Riff to “sit” when he found the scent, which he performed, so I repeated that request and he sat before getting his reward. I took that as an opportunity to assign the “sit” as his the alert since cuing that behavior didn’t hamper his drive to keep working. That’s called adjusting on the fly, which is important when teaching (dogs or humans!)

As a trainer / handler, it’s critical to remain calm, and stay patient to allow the dog to think. I feel it’s important to refrain from feeling a need to “fix” unwanted behaviors. I just ignore them and they usually go away. When we moved to higher challenges, I choose to reward quickly so that Riff was more likely to make the connection I wanted him to understand.

As he show increasing confidence in the work, I will permit a bit more time to elapse before offering the reward. That often encourages the dog to continue to “try” to communicate that he knows the task. You may be able to see that happen in the first clip, where Riff double and triple “touches” the correct vessel before I give him the treat. Then, when we move to the condition he’s never seen before that is also quite a bit more challenging, I offer the reward instantly.

It should be noted that every trainer has their own perspective on how to teach a dog to alert to scent. None is the “right” or “only” way. This upload isn’t intended as a training video, but rather an example of how I chose to move through teaching this specific dog.

As a comparison, We are also training Riff’s full litter brother, Rock. These two brothers tend to solve problems very differently. Riff is a bit more “do before I think” and Rock is very much a “think before I do” sort of dog. I’ve been training dogs since 1983. I’ve never met two dogs that are the same, which is why I continue to feel rewarded and excited about training dogs!

Riff 1/11/25

Scent Discrimination Training