What’s That Smell? The Changing Face of Nosework

Velo perfecting his skills at nosework. photo: Dawn Kovell

Bob Dylan was right about many things, never more so than when he penned The Times They Are A-Changin’. Change has been a constant in dog sports over the past 20 years, and now canine scent work is taking that world by storm.

Historically, canine scent detection was predominantly in the purview of the police and military. The humans involved were police officers or military service members first and dog trainers second. Training was done a certain way and any change was often a chain-of-command decision rather than a reflection of scientific thought. Enter the sport of nosework.

Nosework was the brainchild of three detection dog handlers: Amy Herot, Ron Gaunt, and Jill Marie O’Brien, each of whom brought impressive credentials to the task.  A professional K9 handler with over 20 years’ experience in scent detection work, Ms. Herot has certified teams in narcotics and explosives and has over 1,500 instructional hours in detection dog training. Mr. Gaunt began his career in the Inglewood Police Department in Los Angeles, trained hundreds of police K9s in detection and apprehension, and holds multiple national certifications in explosives and narcotics detection. Ms. O’Brien came from the animal shelter world, joining the SPCALA in 1996 and developing the agency’s first Behavior and Training Department since its inception in 1877; she and her dog Beckett have been a nationally certified Narcotics Detection Team.

Their goal in creating the sport of nosework was to bring detection-dog style training to dog lovers and their companion dogs, making detection training accessible to the average dog owner. Now one of the fastest growing dog sports in the country, its mission is: “To create opportunities for dogs to develop their natural scenting abilities and to conduct competition design and trail sanctioning, official instructor certification, and education in an ethical, enriching canine-centered environment.” To say the sport has become wildly successful would be an understatement.

But what’s in it for the dogs? So many good things. Scent work regulates heart and respiratory rates, reduces blood pressure, increases focus, encourages elimination, and expends energy. From a neurological perspective, the activity fires the seeking mechanism in the brain, which produces dopamine, the “Can Do” neurotransmitter. When the seeking stops (e.g. when the dog finds its target scent) this fires the pleasure center, which produces endorphins, the same hormones responsible for the famous runner’s high. 

But wait, there’s more. Scent work also provides dogs with important information about their environment. This information can help calm dogs with fear, anxiety, and/or stress (FAS) because it allows them to thoroughly investigate and analyze any possible threats or opportunities in their surroundings. That knowledge creates a sense of agency, which is especially important to shelter dogs who have limited control over resources or options (we probably all know some humans who could benefit from this same therapy, but I digress).

Civilian adoption of nosework as a dog sport has also driven much-needed  change in the historically staid and outdated police and military training methodology. Food as a reward? Never, they said. Spaniels instead of dual purpose Malinois or German Shepherds? Impossible! But the real worth of something can only be determined by putting it to the test, and both of these changes and more are now widely accepted in police and military settings, thanks to their success in civilian nosework. By this metric alone, nosework has been an incredible catalyst for change in the world of professional scent detection.

I must confess that while I enjoyed nosework, it wasn’t always high on my list of dog sports. I initially thought it was more about handling than training, and training is where my passions lie. Turns out, I was asleep at the wheel! A couple of scent detection seminars later I found that, heck yes, scent detection does involve training and is an incredible sport for both dogs and handlers. Not only do you learn astounding things about a dog’s olfactory ability, but as Dr. Suess said, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go.” Bedbugs, sewage, electronic media, cancer, mushrooms, endangered animals; all of these things have an odor. And where there are odors, there are dogs to scent them.

Historically, and in the world of nosework and the NACSW (National Association of Canine Scent Work), a dog learned scent detection by pairing food or other reward with odor. As trainer Cameron Ford has observed, in that scenario “reward drives odor.” The drawback, as Pavlov stated in 1927, is something called overshadowing. If two cues are presented at the same time, the more obvious one will be paired with the outcome and the other will be harder to learn. In other words, the dog learns that food or another reward is the salient information. In fact, odor presented before the reward has now been scientifically proven to be a more efficient training methodology. That’s why the proper sequence is “odor drives reward.”

Nosework training generally begins by having the dog hunt for the scent of food (generally in a box), which also contains the odor the dog is being trained to find. The handler rewards the dog with treats delivered as close to the odor source as possible. The dog knows that the reward comes from the handler, so his default alert often becomes a “look back” to his handler: “Mom/Dad, I found the odor, now pony up that cookie.” The handler is reliant on the look back alert in blind searches to ascertain when to call “alert,” further reinforcing the process. 

Until fairly recently, nearly all nosework training involved teaching a dog to use a “look back” alert. But is there a better system?

Today, scent training has begun to evolve into a “specific shaped alert,” rather than a look back. In this scenario, the dog notices the odor, then a previously trained event marker cue (a click or verbal marker) marks the nose to odor behavior, which starts the process of training the alert. While the NACSW  has not yet adopted this methodology, use of a specific shaped alert is gaining ground in scent work circles.

Are specific, trained alerts that important? Consider the bomb detection dog - an extreme illustration, but it makes the point; when explosives are involved, you definitely want the clearest communication possible between dog and handler. Even for sports enthusiasts, a shaped alert like a freeze is much easier for the handler to read than a look back. Additionally, there is much less confusion about why a dog might be looking back.

Some handlers even get fancy and introduce multiple event marker cues with different meanings. One marker cue might mean, “You found the odor, earned a food reward, and I am going to deliver it to you at the source, so don’t move.” Once the search or drill is over, there may be a second marker cue that signifies, “You found the odor, earned a reward, and now you’ll get some toy play away from source.” Now, that is some clear communication.

Nosework may not be the sport for everyone, but we can all learn some valuable lessons from it. Whether your dog’s a trained scent pro or just your best pal around the house, good timing and clarity in communication are excellent training goals for you both.