COMMITTED CANINE

Riff is a Service Dog In Training. We’re taking the time to teach him the basics of scent discrimination to add to his potential to partner with a person who requires Diabetic Alert or Allergen detection.

The activity of “teaching dogs to detect scent” is akin to the idea of “teaching a person to see colors.” Dogs don’t need to be taught to detect scent anymore than people need to be taught to see colors. However, if we want to take advantage of a dog’s ability to detect it, we can teach him to alert us that he perceives a specific scent that we find valuable.

Even if I just place the very end of a Q-tip swab into the scent (in this case Birch oil), to Riff that scent likely fills the room, and it certainly wafts over the adjoining containers that I have placed next to the single container which holds a vessel in which I’ve placed the scent swab. Therefore, teaching Riff to find the “hottest source” of scent in a world where his amazing sense of smell tells him, probably from yards away, that there’s Birch scent somewhere in the vicinity, is a good plan.

As the dog’s handler, it’s my job to watch Riff as he sniffs the various containers (all which have a vessel which only contains an unscented swab, except the one target vessel.) I look for that moment when he “knows” that that container holds the hottest scent. It’s then that I need to reward him so that he can pair the reward with that scent.

Every dog “tells you” that he’s found the source of the scent in a different way. With Riff, I started off giving him the “you are right” cue (“Yes!” or “Good!”) before he probably even paired the scent with what I was asking him to identify. To help him make the connection, I began with a “touch it” command. Riff had previously learned “if you put your nose on this object, I’ll give you a treat.” I added a new object which was a metal vessel with a perforated lid in which I had placed a scented swab. I asked him to “touch it.” He touched it because I had taught him that he’d get a treat if he touched an object I held out to him. Then, I just sat back and relied on the dog’s natural instinct to pair up the once meaningless scent with the times when he received a reward. I swapped in the cue word “sniff” for “touch it” which occurred quite seamlessly.

At this stage of his training, Riff “tells me” that he recognizes scented container by sticking his nose deep in the container and holding there a bit longer than he does when he’s checking out the unscented containers. He’s now confident enough that, even if I don’t reward him, he’ll repeat the deep sniffing to “show me” where he senses the scent. In this way, he has taught me how he behaves when he knows that the hottest scent is in that container. It’s quite remarkable how a dog can come to understand that we want him to find the “hottest” or “source of” the scent, because the scent of Birch oil surely floats across the entire training aid.

Now that I’m aware of Riff’s behavior when he detects the source of the scent, I’m requesting that he performs an alert behavior. I command Riff to Sit before delivering the treat. I tried doing that a couple of training session before, but he wasn’t ready to tolerate the delay. That’s probably because he wasn’t absolutely certain of my expectations. Now, he’s more confident and will perform the sit, then go back to work without falter.

Good boy, Riff!