Find It Games with Scent

This video demonstrates how I start to play Find It games with a dog who has never played before. Be sure to start with something easy such as dog treats your dog loves which allows them to get that rapid reward by eating what they find. The switch to a common household item that has a strong scent; empty spice containers, small containers that hold treats (Easter Eggs or small plastic box), one of your dog's favorite toys, a meds container, etc.

Play at this level where you are not using your medical scent at all until your dog understands your cues for searching and how to indicate when they found it. Since I do both nosework (essential oils scents) and medical alerts, I use a different alert behavior for "fun" searches then I do for medical alerts. For nosework, Belle puts her nose as close to the scent as she can and stares at me to point it out with her nose and she is learning to paw to indicate a scent that might be hidden out of reach such in a backpack or drawer while she uses a nose nudge to indicate a medical alert. The two are totally different so that I know for sure what she is indicating in that medical episode. It's totally possible that I need a medical alert while she is having fun in a nosework class and I need to be able to tell the difference.

The directions for Find It Games can be found on this Yooper Paws Blog.

And here is an advanced search for Easter Eggs for a dog that has been practicing for awhile.

You want to reach this level with fun items before you begin training with your medical scent. In the mean time you can still be tracking your medical episodes and collecting scent samples.

Make your mistakes in handling and figuring out your alert behaviors while your playing Find It with fun items that way you will have cleaner training with less mistakes when you switch to playing with your scent samples.