NW445: Rising to the Nosework Challenge: 6 weeks of Setups

What Makes a Search Challenging?

What makes a search challenging is a combination of the search environment (the things in the search) and the scenting conditions relative to hide placement.  What can be easy one moment can actually become rather challenging the next, simply by a change in air movement.  In this lecture, we will talk about a few of the factors that drive challenge level.  You will want to use this information in order to dial up or down the setups to make them perfect for your individual dog.  In the next lecture, we will talk about what our dog is telling us and how we know if the search is too difficult.

Air Flow Considerations

No two searches are ever the same.  What that means is that our dogs benefit from working a variety of scenting conditions throughout their training.  You should strive to give them as much variety as you can....  just because scenting conditions might be challenging doesn't mean you should shy away from setting hides...  what it DOES mean is that you might want to simply your search a little.

When people think of challenging air flow, they usually think about wind.  Wind CAN make things challenging but we expect that it would.  When wind is twisted around and deflected by objects, we can get swirling.  Air moving in eddies is far more complicated than straight line wind, regardless of wind speed.  If you have wind, your challenge is greatest when you are near walls, buildings, alcoves, large objects...  anything that can bend or deflect wind.

The sun is a bit more devious in its impact on air currents.  The sun's impact on air currents is more subtle.  We can't feel it.  The warmth from the sun will cause a scent cone to expand and lift.  The important thing to know though is that because the sun's impact is subtle, the impact of wind can overpower the impact of the sun.  So instead of a scent cone lofting and expanding, a solid breeze will blow the scent cone more dramatically.  Indoors however, warmth from heat sources such as sunny windows (and even off of lightbulbs) can be a primary driver of air flow and can make a seemingly easy hide turn into a very challenging hide.  In general, odor will move towards the heat source.  This is a good thing to keep in mind when you set your hides.

Weather and climate can play a role in challenge level.  In high altitudes, odor generally lifts more easily.  If the climate is also dry and the hide is in direct sun, the odor may not be easily caught by the dog's nose.  Cooler weather and humid conditions can encourage more pooling of odor.  This can also happen on warmer days in the humidity when there are shady areas in the search area.  Odor will readily pool in the shady areas.

Search Area Considerations

When you think about challenge level with your search area, consider where the odor will go...  will it get trapped anywhere or will it dump into a cluttered area?  Clutter can be a sourcing challenge.  Wide open search areas can also be a challenge unless the dog understands how to seek out scent cones.

In general, larger areas without odor will be more challenging that smaller areas with prevalent odor.  Working larger unproductive or blank areas is a skill that you will want to work on.  You can always add that aspect into a setup in order to practice moving through blank portions of a search area (that would increase the challenge level).

Areas that are tighter will be more challenging for certain dogs.  Some dogs are more easily impacted by pressure applied by the environment and it can affect how effectively the dog sources.  The tightness of the area can also mean that the dog may not be able to find an "edge" to the scent cone.  So if you have a dog that prefers to work to the outer edge of a scent cone in order to work back in towards the hide, a tighter space may be more challenging.

Certainly, some areas are naturally more distracting than others.  The more distracting the search area is to YOUR dog, the more challenging the search will be.  What distracts your personal dog may not distract another dog.  For instance, some dogs can search on grass quite easily while others may find that grass is very distracting.  Humidity can increase the distraction level.  Novel odors will be more prevalent in humid conditions.

Hide Number and Proximity

In general, more hide is more challenging.  However, I can tell you that I can easily set a very challenging single hide and a very easy multiple hide search.  Hide number plays a role in difficulty but only when you also consider the scenting conditions and the search area.

If you have a challenging hide and an easier hide nearby, the easier hide will actually make the more difficult hide even more difficult.  The easier hide becomes much more enticing to a dog when a challenging hide is nearby.  There is really very little incentive for a dog to find the challenging hide at all unless the dog has learned that the easy hide is out of play once it's been found.

Proximity of hides CAN be a predictor of challenge.  Converging odor occurs when scent cones touch and co-mingle to a certain degree.  When the scent cones are heavily overlapped, the search is much more challenging, regardless if the scent cones are the same scent.  Keep in mind though that heavy overlap can occur at a distance if air currents are strong.

Overlap of scent cones can be made more challenging if the hides are set at the same height.  Conversely, they can also be very challenging if one hide is excessively higher than the other because the dog may not explore both layer of air.  Hides at moderate but different heights are a little less challenging.

As you work through this course

This course has a large degree of experimentation in it.  I encourage all of you to experiment A LOT...  think of odor as something to play with...  experiment with air currents and hide placements.  Your dog will tell you if you made something too difficult to find.  (Be okay with stopping the search). I promise you though that you will learn more through experimentation than you will from replicating searches verbatim.  I encourage you to find inspiration in these setups but still make them your own!

In the next lecture, we will talk about what to do if the search is too difficult....  and how to know that it is!

Setup2: Obvious...  Not Obvious

Search Description

In this search, we will present an obvious object to the dog that will be set in a way to collect odor.  Ideally, the object is recognizable in a way that stimulates contextual thinking, such as a chair. (Hides are always on chairs, right?). We will put the hide near the object but not on the object.  A really good way of doing this is to utilize the sun.  Remember that sun/warmth will cause odor to lift....  if you place the hide in a way that odor lifts and collects on the contextual object (like a chair), this becomes a challenging sourcing puzzle.

In this search, make sure to allow your dog to work the area.  If your hide expands with thermal influence, you will see your dog paint a larger picture.

Some Potential Variations

In order to make this more challenging, you can add a second hide so that the scent cones converge.  Remember though that the scent cones will expand with warmth.  This means that converging odor might be more challenging than normal.  Allow your dog to work either hide first.  If you decide to converge the hides, you can also play around with varying the heights of the hides.  Setting the hides at two different heights will help the scent cones to remain distinct.

If you are preparing for Elite or Summit, you could set this as a pair of hides in a large search area and work this as a part of a larger search.  Will your dog solve both before moving on?  I would not add a third hide to the set it would dilute the educational impact of the first hide being in a non-obvious location.  However, you could set a third hide well away but blowing towards the set of two hides as an added temptation.

For dogs without extensive converging odor experience or without an understanding of leaving one hide to work the other, I would only set this as a single hide.

Sample Videos

In this video, Ana and Axel work this as a converged set.  Initially, Axel gets a little distracted by what looks to be dog pee.  You can see his focus shift off of searching.  Once Ana refocuses him, he does an incredible job of working this set of hides.  Pay attention to how he seems to work both hides together and then he teases them apart.

In this example, the sun is coming off of the roof on the side of the camera.  Although this casts a shadow on the hide itself, there is sun above the shade.  This causes the odor to lift and collect under the chair.  Once the scent cone hits the far wall, it's in the sun and odor plume expands.  For this set of hides, I would absolutely expect the dog to work it partially off of the far wall.

This particular hide is set on a metal bracket and the location also means that there is odor seeping under the wall of the structure and coming out the front towards the start line.  This is a challenging hide.