Scent Work

Scent work is an activity that involves using your dog’s nose to find things hidden in the environment. It can be as simple as finding treats hidden around the house to as complicated as searching for a specific scent in various environments (in the sport format).

Scent work is a great way to engage your dog’s natural instinct/behavior of sniffing. It is a mentally taxing activity while being low impact, which makes it appropriate for dogs of all ages and skill levels.

Scent work is one of the easiest activities to start with your dog. You can start off by teaching your dog to look for food - one way to teach this is to place multiple open containers (i.e. dog bowls) in an area, and putting food in one of them. When your dog finds the bowl with the food, let them eat it, mark, and then reward them for finding the food by throwing more food into the bowl. If you want to up the difficulty, you can move to placing food in the environment, outside of a container.

The next level would be to introduce a scent. This is usually done with a Q-tip scented with an essential oil, such as birch, and placed into a container specifically to hold the scented item. The container prevents the scent from sticking to and contaminating the environment. You can go back to the container game to teach the dog to identify the scent - but instead of just putting food inside the container, also place the hide in there as well. Once the dog finds the container with the food and the scent, reward extensively next to the hide article to teach them that where the scent is strongest is where they will get food.

Once the dog is familiar with a scent, you can start placing it in a variety of locations. The most common elements for competition are interiors (mostly any inside or “interior” area), exteriors (outdoor areas), vehicles (cars, tractors, buses, etc.), and containers (boxes of all different varieties).

There are many organizations that offer scent work trials. In the United States, such organizations include AKC, UKC, NACSW, USCSS, C-WAGS, and more! We personally have trialed in AKC, NACSW, and USCSS, primarily.

How to enter a trial will depend on the organization. NACSW first requires that all dogs who want to enter their regular scent work trials need to have passed the Odor Recognition Test for all three odors used in NACSW (birch, anise, and clove). The other organizations (AKC, USCSS, and UKC) do not require this.

USCSS, UKC, and most AKC trials are first-come-first-serve for sign up. It’s a very popular sport (at least here in Washington!), so openings tend to fill up quickly after the trial opens for entries. Some AKC trial, due to the popularity of the sport, are moving to a lottery system. NACSW also runs on a lottery system, where they have a time window for which you can submit an entry, and after the window closes, they will do a random draw to determine who gets in.

In all of these venues, your dog needs to be registered with the organization in order to sign up for trials. To sign up for an individual trial, in AKC and UKC, you will need to follow the instructions on the premium (which is the document released that contains all the details about the trial and entering it). Usually this involves filling out a paper or online form with your dog’ information, and submitting it along with payment for the trial. For USCSS, you sign up for a trial through the USCSS website once the trial is open. For NACSW, you sign up for the trial during the draw period from a link on the hosting club’s website, and a few days after the draw period closes, you will receive an email from the trial host if you have made it in.