We woke up early this morning to participate in an unusual activity: hunting rats! The Barn Hunt Association holds trials around the country where dogs test out their sniffing abilities by locating rats hidden in PVC tubes amidst a maze of straw bales. Timberidge Goldendoodles is proud to announce that Abria earned her RAT Instinct title (RATI) today!
As this brief Ted Talk explains, dogs have incredibly sensitive noses. Dogs around the world hold a variety of heroic occupations using their noses. Learning how to harness your English goldendoodle’s nose is quite simple. Through consistent practice of basic exercises, you can begin to unleash your goldendoodle’s powerful sniffer for your own purposes. Remember, you’re not teaching your goldendoodle how to use her nose – she’s already a pro at that! Your goal is to teach her to use her nose to tell you what you want to know. Here are a few basic scent discrimination exercises for you to practice with your goldendoodle:
Exercise #1: Which Hand
Start with your dog sitting in front of you. Have a bag of delicious special treats on hand. Put a treat in one closed fist, leaving the other empty. Present both closed fists to your goldendoodle and say, “Seek.” If she selects the empty hand, open it up and again say, “Seek.” As soon as she picks the fist containing the treat, open your hand and allow her to eat the treat, all the while saying, “Good seek, good seek!” Now start over and have your goldendoodle do it again. Practice this exercise for several days until you feel like your dog has mastered it.
Exercise #2: Cups
After your goldendoodle has mastered the “which hand” exercise and her sniffer starts going as soon as she hears the word “seek,” she’s ready to move onto the cups exercise. We suggest picking up a pack of colorful stacking baby bath cups. You can find a set for about $5, and they come with holes already in the bottoms.
Select 2 of the cups and sit them on the floor in front of your dog with a treat underneath one of them. Give the command, “Seek.” When your goldendoodle selects a cup, flip it over. If there’s a treat under, allow your goldendoodle to eat it, all the while praising her with “Good seek.” If she selects the incorrect one, flip it over and repeat the command “Seek.” Once your goldendoodle has mastered two cups, move onto three. Keep adding cups until you’re using the entire set of 10. Begin spreading the cups around the room, leaving them on the floor. If you find that your goldendoodle sometimes returns to the cup the recently held a treat, it may be helpful to remove a cup from the game for a few rounds after it’s had a treat underneath of it to allow the smell to dissipate. Once your goldendoodle has that game figured out, you can experiment with different versions. Try elevating some of the cups on a chair or try using cups without holes in the top. You can also try hiding a treat in a grouping of cardboard boxes and asking your dog to find it. If your goldendoodle is anything like our dogs, she’ll find this sniffing game incredibly fun!
Exercise #3: Find an Object
At this point you can take the nose exercises a step further by transferring “Seek” from food to an object. This may sound challenging but your goldendoodle will quickly understand that finding the object means she’ll receive a treat, which is quite motivating!