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NW720: Find It! - Lost Item Recovery

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NW720: Find It! - Lost Item Recovery

Course Details

Want to learn about a new scent organization and play more scent games with your dog? Teaching scent detection is one of my specialties and an area I'm truly passionate about.

Lost Item Recovery is one of the trial classes offered by the North American Sport Dog Association (NASDA) organization. NASDA was formed to offer various games to utilize our dogs amazing olfactory abilities. In the first level of Lost Item Recovery, your dog is searching for YOUR scent - simulating locating a lost personal item. The next levels require your dog to locate a stranger's lost item - simulating how you would find a lost person using an article with their scent.

This first half of this course will cover the initial steps of training handler scent detection and expand the training to many of your other personal items like wallets and keys. The second half of the course will focus on the match to sample aspect of locating someone else's personal item. We can teach our dogs to sample (sniff) THIS article and track or find THAT scent!

Rules of the sport will also be covered so that we are training with knowledge!

Working on these skills will help in other human scent sports and exercises. The obvious one is AKC Handler Scent Discrimination class held at Scent Work trials. The initial training is also the basis for the obedience scent article exercise. There is also a HUGE benefit for tracking dogs since dogs have to follow a track with lost personal items laid by a stranger. It's not just crushed vegetation but also following a human scent trail as well.  Teaching our dogs how to perform a Match to Sample type search is one of the most truly amazing dog abilities!!

Come check out this popular game of lost item recovery, for sport and real life! I have been having more fun than should be allowed playing with these new parameters!

Teaching Approach

This class offers short written lectures and videos of varying length. Any video lectures that include verbal information/instructions are accompanied with written steps. Lectures are designed to be watched and follow the ideas presented in the lecture. Lecture videos may run from 1 to 3 minutes long. The lectures are designed to help a student understand the purpose of the exercise and how it might vary by dog. Lectures will be rolled out the night before each week starts. A 1 minute unlimited homework video option is available, along with the standard 6 minutes option per week. This class will work best for students who learn by reading text lectures, watching videos and who like having structured lesson plans. 

This class will have a Teaching Assistant (TA) available in the Facebook discussion group to help the bronze and silver students! Directions for joining will be in the classroom after you register.

Julie SymonsInstructor: Julie Symons

Julie Symons (she/her) has been involved in dog sports for over 30 years. Starting with her mix, Dreyfus, in flyball, she went on to train and compete in conformation, agility, obedience, herding and tracking with her first Belgian tervuren, Rival. Rival was the first CH OTCH MACH Belgian...(Click here for full bio and to view Julie's upcoming courses)

Syllabus

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**This is a new class; the syllabus is subject to change.**

Week 1:

  • Human scent considerations
  • What is Lost Item Recoery?
  • Selecting your Handler scented personal items
  • Building value for your scent on a glove/sock
  • Trouble shooting: Why dogs may struggle with learning handler scent
  • Adding hunt and discrimination games

Week 2:

  • Review Level 1 NASDA rules
  • Handling 101
  • Part 1 Match to Sample Handler Scent
  • Extending searches to exterior locations
  • Selecting a new personal item

Week 3:

  • Teaching concept and process of Match to Sample using your scent
  • Adding a new personal item: keys

Week 4:

  • Review Level 2 NASDA rules
  • Adding stranger scent into the hunt games
    • Using Match to Sample

Week 5:

  • Adding distractions (human scent and other typical food/toy distractors)
  • Adding a new stranger item 

Week 6:

  • Review Level 3 NASDA rules and beyond
  • Adding multiple hides - your scent
  • Adding multiple hides - stranger scent
  • Wrap up

Prerequisites & Supplies

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Prerequisites: Open to All. No prereqs required

MINIMUM EQUIPMENT NEEDED:

  1. Personal items (wallets, keys (3-5 keys on a ring), socks, glove, hat)
  2. 2nd half of class: Access to "Stranger" scented items - same as above and additionally: digital items, remotes, credit card, watch) (can store in baggy until use)
  3. Nitrile gloves
  4. Open containers for stranger sample

Sample Lecture

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Week 3-1: Introduction to Match to Sample

We can teach the concept of Match to Sample by using our scent first. When we teach our dogs to find our scent, it becomes another ‘target odor’ along with others you might have taught your dog (essential oils, shed(antlers), kong, Spotted Lanternfly larvae). It's a consistent scent that's always available to us for training and one they will have been conditioned to locate.

The beauty of this is that the process will be seamless when starting with the familiarity of our scent and then will be generalized when we transfer it to a stranger scent.

When we think about cues, we could use a unique cue to find OUR scent and then another cue to find a stranger scent. To me, this can be a little unclear to our dogs and difficult to differentiate. What I find works better is to treat both OUR scent and a STRANGER scent as a Match to Sample type “cue” and use the same verbal search cue. I would pick something unique that you are not using for another scent activity.

We need to first look at how the rules apply for sampling a stranger scent in competition (Level II and above) before applying it to our process:

  • A sample item will be placed near the start line in a box/basket to be used as the sample. The sample is always the same type of item as the hidden one.
  • You have up to 20 seconds at the start line to familiarize your dog with the stranger scent.
  • You must not remove, touch, handle the sample item from the warm up box. Wearing a pair of gloves (nitrile preferred) you can move the warm up box up to 24” from its original location for the dog to target.

For Level 1 where we are finding our scented personal item, we are allowed to have our dog sample another item with our scent before stepping into the search area. Extra time is NOT allotted to perform this step so it must be done prior to the start of your run. The sample item must also stay on your person and not touch the ground.

Both of these start routines allow us to prompt and cue our dogs to find “this scent”.

Steps for teaching Match to Sample:

Pre-req: Your dog must be successfully searching for and finding an article with your scent.

Step 1: Have a 2nd scented item ready in an open box or basket for sampling. The item should match the type of personal item placed out in the search area. Ideally have a place to put the box after your dog samples the scent (on a nearby stool/chair).

Step 2: Perform a few reps with your dog finding your scented item per the previous steps in class. This will pattern them to what you will be asking them to do.

Now we will add the Match to Sample step! You may want to have your dog sit or assume a stationary position to sample the scent before cuing to search. Play around with what works best.

Step 3: Before you start another rep of finding your scented item, have your dog stop to sample your other scented item.

Step 4: Cue your dog to search.

Testimonials & Reviews

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A sampling of what prior students have said about this course ...

This course was a blast! My dog grew SO much over the course of the six weeks from struggling to associate handler odor with pay to nailing multiple stranger articles in distracting areas. He even found my glasses when I had a real lost item crisis! Julie was patient, kind, and encouraging every step of the way. With each submission, she noticed what my dog did well and when he was ready for the next step. I loved this course and definitely recommend it to anyone that is doing dog sports with scent articles!     


Simply the best class and instructor. It isn't often an instructor can get multiple students ready to trial and earning titles in a 6 week class. Julie did an amazing job and this was the first time she taught it, it will only get better.   


An amazing use of a dog's nose! I had no idea this sport existed. It is more appealing to me than finding "odors". We are beginners at bronze but now my dogs can find my items around the house, yard and even in the park!!        


I really enjoyed this class! It's such a fun concept to teach your dog to find the match to the sample you provide. I also really enjoyed the simple way handler scent is introduced my girl picked it up right away!     


This is one of the best classes I have taken in a while. Julie broke the skills down, making them accessible and fun for the dog. Julie is a fabulous instructor and can problem solve issues from multiple angles ensuring success by her teams. Seeker and I are Lost Item addicts :) 


As a tracking and nosework trainer, I love that this was presented by Julie Symons since she excels in those sports. She's also an exceptionally good listener and she addressed everyone's concerns about how this could augment and not detract from the other sports. I was impressed that she was excited to include new things continually, did a live call on FB, and such a depth of knowledge in all the gold and silver threads, too. Also bravo to a great TA, Tess Starr, in the FB group.     


Julie was clear and thoughtful. I especially loved her facebook live where we could all ask questions. I appreciated it as a one who could only afford to be a bronze student. Thanks so much!


This class was perfect not just for NASDA training and trialing, but it also helped my young dog with AKC Handler discrimination. And it provided a fun new activity for dog therapy with kids. Thank you!     


I didn't expect for my dog and myself to enjoy the material as much as we did. It was a nice break from the training we normally do. I really got to appreciate my dog's happy body language while we're working since she's taking the lead and I can be more relaxed in the present. 

Registration

Next session starts: October 1, 2025
Registration starts: September 22, 2025
Registration ends: October 15, 2025

Registration opens at 12:00noon Pacific Time.

NW720 Subscriptions


Gold

Silver

Bronze
Tuition $ 260.00 $ 130.00 $ 65.00
Enrollment Limits 12 25 Unlimited
Access all course lectures and materials ✔ ✔ ✔
Access to discussion and homework forums ✔ ✔ ✔
Read all posted questions and answers ✔ ✔ ✔
Watch all posted videos ✔ ✔ ✔
Post general questions to Discussion forum ✔ ✔ ✖
Submit written assignments ✔ ✖ ✖
Post dog specific questions ✔ With video only ✖
Post videos ✔ Up to 2 ✖
Receive instructor feedback on
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