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NW180: Developing Scent-sational Skills for Competition

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NW180: Developing Scent-sational Skills for Competition

Course Details

You’ve learned the basics, even dabbled in some advanced skills but are you ready for competition? With so many scent detection organizations out there now (up to 11 and counting!) teams are entering competition faster than ever and moving up even faster! This class will help you be prepared and even assess IF you should be trialing yet. As we all know, a rocky foundation will not support the higher levels of any sport! The challenges and skills required at the higher levels of scent detection sports are FUN and interesting. You want to soar when you get to those levels and have the foundation to support it. Learn now what you’ll need later!

This course will cover the importance of handling and observing our scenting dogs. We’ll learn how we can support them and also to allow them to be independent. We will spend more time on newly learned elements (vehicles, buried, exteriors) and continue to strengthen our container and interior skills. We will also cover trial time strategies - and what to do with the unexpected happens, or what you can expect and make a plan for! What do you do if your dog goes back to a found hide or is distracted? We’ll cover that here! Handler focused dogs? We’ll cover that too!

This is the perfect class to perfect your foundation and element skills before diving into more complex and advanced skills.

Prereq: Dogs should be on at least 2 odors, and have equivalent of skills covered in NW120 - Introduction to search elements.

Teaching Approach

This class offers written lectures, no verbal lectures, and videos of varying length. Lectures are designed to be watched and follow the ideas presented in the lecture. Lecture videos may run from 1 to 4 minutes long, with the average between 1-2 minutes. The lectures are designed to help a student understand the purpose of the exercise and how it might vary by dog. Each week, lectures are usually rolled out in 2 batches - the night before each week and a few days into each 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 Teacher's Assistant (TA) available in the Facebook study group to help the bronze and silver students! Directions for joining that Facebook group will be in the classroom after you register.

Julie SymonsInstructor: Julie Symons

Julie Symons (she/her) has been involved in dog sports for over 25 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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Week 1:

  • Handler Handling - managing your leash, your proximity to your dog and how to move around a search area

  • Handling the Handler focused dog.

  • Making Novel Normal! Generalizing your skills in new locations.

  • Comparing your dog’s behavior at home and on the road.

Week 2:

  • Crazy Container setups! Having fun with trial like and crazy setups for rock solid container searches.

  • What strategy to use for your dog, on that setup and the parameters of the search (number of hides, time limit, etc).

  • Trusting your threshold container finds.

  • Managing multiple hides.

Week 3:

  • Variation with Vehicles! You’ve done the basics, now let’s get to the real deal and determine best strategies for the different configurations.

  • Extending mileage with Exteriors. Dealing with distractions and building value for odor over the environment.

Week 4:

  • Setting up patterns to increase search time efficiencies.

  • Assessing your Interior element search skills.

  • Building stamina for multiple rooms and working in tight/closed spaces.

  • Adding additional odors.

Week 5:

  • You’re at a trial. What can go wrong??? How to manage the unexpected or better yet, learn what to expect so you have a plan!

  • Motivation with more hides!

  • Proofing for container distractions.

  • Respect odor and be an advocate for your dog!

Week 6:

  • Are you ready to trial?

  • How to find trials and enter (varies with organizations).

  • What to do the weeks before, week of and week after a trial.

  • Should you move up?

Prerequisites & Supplies

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Prereq: Dogs should be on at least 2 odors, and have equivalent of skills covered in NW120 - Introduction to search elements.

Sample Lecture

More

From week 2 Crazy Containers!

Containers can really be CRAZY! So many configurations and strategies to decide. Of course containers have that added complexity of housing distractors, but we won’t focus on that right now. Let’s toss that aside and focus on just the sheer complexity that there can be with containers.

Some organizations are not specific on the kind of setups, layout or number. AKC does a nice job clearly defining what you may have!

Now that you have practiced running 2 rows of containers for your ORT or novice runs, we need to set up other configurations and might as well start with the chart below! Circles, Us, and X rows of 5!

 container chart

Circles are fun! You can develop some nice methodical flow and the visual picture is not overwhelming and it’s easier for the dogs to move on to the next container and not ping pong around. Using any kind of containers - make as big of a circle as you can up to about 15 or so containers. Place 1 or 2 hides spread out - different odors if you can (Birch and Anise). If your dog misses one, you can turn back and go the other way. IF they come across a found one, go ahead and let them indicate again and reward.

When you start to get to higher levels, the setup can be more overwhelming to your dog - a sea of containers and odor in the air!

Let’s take a look at 3 rows of 5.

First, let’s run a blank container search! Yep, a blank. It’s not scary at all. It’s quick and allows us to rehearse methodical searching without odor in the picture. It won't demotivate your dog to not find odor in 15s. After you leave the search area, ask your dog for a quick trick and reward.

One strategy for running this setup is to take your dog around the outside boxes first (ideally with you working on the inside for a smooth transition to the next line). Once your dog has searched the outside, you only have 3 left in the middle to check! You can walk around the outside, but for larger dogs, distracted dogs or handler focused dogs they tend to turn INTO the handler and not drive away around the corner done the next line of containers. The handling is not as smooth and the flow is interrupted creating more distraction to the dog. We want smooth and continuous searching!

If I got to the end and didn't find odor, I'd reverse my directon. Turn into my dog to get them on my right, go down the center and then go counter clockwise around the outside boxes and end at the start line. If your dog still doesn't pick up odor - take a break, replace the hot box with a more vented container and/or with more odor.

At first it may not make sense on known number of hides to run with this strategy - a dog could go right to source - cross over all the containers and wham bam, you are done! Thinking ahead when you will have unknown number and many many more containers, it can be challenging remembering where you have been and can lead to over searching and increase chances of a false.

Now we will add odor! 

You'll noticed on this last search here, the dog did not check the last 2 containers on that first row. The handler in this case knew there was only one hide, but finished out searching the rest to practicing clearing the area. In NW3/Elite with unknown number of hides, you rarely end your search at a found hide.

Testimonials & Reviews

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

Awesome new class! Lectures were interesting and had lots of great exercises, and Julie's comments were super helpful. We had a lot of fun and learned a lot!       


Enjoyed this class very much. Julie gave thoughtful and useful feedback and the lessons will be helpful to fall back on when needed.   


Loved the course, learnt a lot and it was easy to understand and execute. Will definitely advise anyone that is interested in this sport to get on this course.   


Best instructor ever! Great problem solver.       


This was the perfect class to follow NW120! Kudos to Julie for putting together such a great class to help dogs and handlers strengthen fundamentals prior to trialing and prior to working on more advanced nosework skills.     


Julie is awesome!!! Did this class at gold, this is my third Nosework dog and it was the perfect class for the pup and I.       


Julie really stands out even among other FDSA instructors for how much she cares about the people in her class -- her empathy and caring for all parts of the human/dog team really shone through even in the online format.

Registration

 

Next session starts: April 1, 2023
Registration starts: March 22, 2023
Registration ends: April 15, 2023

Registration opens at 12:00noon Pacific Time.

NW180 Subscriptions


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Tuition $ 260.00 $ 130.00 $ 65.00
Enrollment Limits 12 25 Unlimited
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Submit written assignments ✔ ✖ ✖
Post dog specific questions ✔ With video only ✖
Post videos ✔ Up to 2 ✖
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