Thanks everyone!

Rene- the odor was either birch or anise, both are used at level 2.  They don't tell us which it was and I don't really care- we train on all three odors so they all should be equally important to Elly.  Should be.... when we are training if she has trouble with one odor over the others I will sometimes spend more time on that odor to reinforce it.

And the leash- it's 11.5 feet long.  I don't want to be right up on her while she is searching, the length allows me some distance from her.  The interiors were the only element that had an on/off leash option, the majority of the searches are on leash.  If you look at the other three videos in her blog you will see why I need the length.  Also... I have trouble keeping up with her!

Karen

Thanks for the nice words about Elly!  She actually earned another title last weekend in an Element Trial, Level 1 Vehicles

As far as training in Nose Work, we are under the National Association of Canine Scent Work or NACSW.  The AKC also has their version of Scent Work. There are some differences but the concept is the same- you teach your dog to detect and alert on certain odors.  In both cases they are q-tips or swabs that have essential oil odor on them.  For NACSW we use birch, anise and clove, I think the AKC does more.

If you are going to play real Nose Work I suggest you take a class or two.  Even if you don't want to go to Trials it gives you some great skills to work on with your dog.  One of the foundations of Nose Work is showing your dog that 'containers pay'.  The first 6 week class I took we never used odor, we only taught our dogs to search containers (usually boxes) to find treats.  The next step (and our next 6 week class) was to introduce the first odor (birch) in conjunction with treats, it's called pairing.  Eventually the dog is just looking for the odor and you reward them when they find it.

Before I started Nose Work I played a game with Elly that I call 'search' and in fact we still play it sometimes.  In this game I have her sit and stay in one room while I hide treats in another room.  Then I call her and tell her to search. It can be made as hard or as easy as you like.  I also used it to help her overcome some of her fears- for example even though she is small she wouldn't go under a chair.  I think I started with her sitting in front of me with a couple of treats.  I would put a treat on the floor and tell her to search.  I slowly moved farther from her, then I would set the treat up out of her sight, say the other side of the couch, but every time the command was 'search'.  She associated the command 'search' with looking for treats pretty quickly and then I increased the number of treats and the difficulty of the hides.  Sometimes I hide on only one or two treats, sometimes 8 or 9 (it taxes my brain to remember where they are!), we even play outside.  I've even got 25 or 30 little cups out and spread them around the room and put treats under 3 or 4 so she has too look at them all.  There are tons of variations, only limited by your imagination!

Be sure to account for whatever extra calories you feed with food games.  Elly is only about 15.5 pounds so a handful of treats can really have an impact.  Although both my pups are about the same size and Elly is much more active than my 12.5 year old Pug boy, her meals are about half the amount he gets because we do so many games and so much training.

Hope this helps!

Karen and the Spirit Pug Girls