“You’re hooked as soon as you see your dog’s face when he realizes that
he will be rewarded for using his nose.” –from “Your Dog Nose No Bounds,” Whole Dog Journal, August 2009

I spent last weekend at a K9 Nose Work Scenting Workshop, presented by the American Bouvier Rescue League, in Atlanta. The workshop featured nationally renowned K9 Nose Work co-founders and Certified Nose Work Instructors (CNWI) Ron Gaunt and Amy Herot. Over the past thirty years, Ron has trained hundreds of dogs for police work encompassing all aspects of K9 police work. Among Ron’s many accomplishments are multiple national certifications in detection, both explosives and narcotics. Amy is a professional detection dog trainer and handler. She has certified teams in Narcotics and Explosives and has also trained dogs for tracking, agility, sheepherding, and protection sports.

Dogs have an amazing sense of smell and a natural desire to hunt. The sport of K9 Nose Work is designed to develop a dog’s natural scenting abilities by using their desire to hunt and their love of toys, food and exercise. It’s a great way for dogs to have fun, build confidence, and burn lots of mental and physical energy.

A dog takes in the world through their nose the way we take in the world through our eyes -as a primary source of information. Because humans don’t have the same highly developed sense of smell we rarely honor, support, or encourage our dogs to use theirs. In fact we are generally very impatient with our dogs’ desire to smell things. What a joy it was to see so many dogs of all shapes and sizes, purebred and mixed, encouraged to use their nose. The fun they had was so obvious that I felt like an ogre for all the denial that the human world imposes on our dogs. One of the great things I learned at this seminar was how satisfying nose work is for our dogs and how Service Dogs of Virginia might use that along with exercise to tire our dogs’ minds as well as their bodies.

Nose Work, as taught by Ron and Amy, uses boxes as the objects to be searched. As the dogs develop confidence sniffing, searching, over turning, rooting through boxes and trusting their noses, they also sustain concentration through distractions. I plan to begin utilizing Nose Work with Gryphon, one of our Great Danes. Gryphon is afraid of traffic. By training him to find scent in busy, noisy environments, hopefully, he will develop enough mental stimulation and confidence to overcome the fear.

I also plan to teach Nose Work to our puppies. In addition to providing mental and physical stimulation, it will help us to help select the best dogs for diabetic alert work. We can also begin teaching our clients to use Nose Work for “find it” games. This is a wonderful way for our clients to provide recreation and relationship-building for their dog.

Find K9 Nose Work Classes near you.

Learn more about this new sport.