Adventures with odor 2

Another fun day of K9 nosework class!  We are a combination of skill levels.  One dog is finding birch odor by itself.  Two of us are doing birch odor paired with food, and two are doing food only but are close to adding the birch odor.  We had all different hides today.

The instructor had old shoes scattered around the floor along with many other miscellaneous items.  I had never thought to use old shoes.  For a dog like Treasure who is very scent focused, it is a great way to introduce distraction odors.  She enjoys meeting and smelling new people, so I wondered what she would do.  But she was all business during her searches and wasn't distracted by them at all.  The first hide was actually hidden inside one of  the shoes. 

We did a hide hidden up on a post.  It would have worked well, except that the chicken I tried to stick onto the post fell off onto the floor.  Treasure found it on the floor instead of up on the post next to the odor.  I had to bring her back to find the rest of the food up on the post.  But I still praised her because she did find it, she just didn't find it where it had been left!  We did a hide under a flower pot and I was pleased that she found her way directly to the holes where the scent was coming out.  In fact, as I tried to tip the flower pot over for her to get the food, she kept her nose glued right to those holes on the top!  Our last hide was hidden up underneath a chair. 

Here are some pictures from our class today.  They are a bit blurry as I extracted them from video clips the instructor graciously shot for us.  Thanks Lynne!  But they let you get the idea.