NW 240 Nosework Challenges

Week 1:  

Stay at source behavior 

How strong is your stay at source?  

Testing odor obedience  first with the use of the games, then in searches, and then adding intentional distraction to it to build the dogs understanding of criteria for reward.

Homework:  Students show progression and strength of stay at source behavior.   Assessing strength of behavior, ways to make it stronger, and planning next session to increase dogs desire to meet criteria.

 Week 2:  

Fighting to get to source.

This is the week that we want to challenge the dogs in a thoughtful way about their commitment to get to that source.

Homework:  Scenarios to build drive and confidence

 Week 3:  

Covering your Interior/Exterior search area efficiently

The ability of the handler to make sure that search areas are covered is vitally important to a NW team, especially at the higher levels.

Homework:  Planning a search to work on covering interiors and exteriors efficiently and quickly.  Discussion on directing a search, watching for changes in dogs behavior as it searches and the ability to move the dog on to a productive area will be stressed.

 Week 4:  

Vehicles,  easy or not? 

As the team advances, the vheicles will contain multiple hides, and also inaccessible hides.  Time limits get smaller and searches get harder.  Making sure to show your dog all the possibilities on vehicle searches is very important.

Homework:  Teams will work multiple vehicle searches.  Planning out what they want to train in that session and what they expected the dog to learn and build on.   Multiple hides and handling trickly scenarios will be covered.

Week 5: 

 Containers!

Need I say more!  Distractions is the name of the game in this element!!  Thinking of planning your sessions to build confidence and not constantly stress the dog will be covered.

Homework:  Container searches that enhance your dogs skill at quickly and efficiently covering their containers.  Problems will false alerting will be addressed,  as well as the handler ability to make sure all the containers are covered by the dog.

Week 6:  

Weak and strong points.  

Every dog has them, and the better the handler is at seeing the strengths and weaknesses in a dogs behavior, the better the training can progress.

Homework:  Training plans!  Do you have one?  Does each session have a goal?  Do you carefully consider aid placement and how it will help you dog?  This week the handler can pick the element they want to work on, but thoughtful planning is stressed and objective assessment of the dog encouraged.