Nose Work

[Snow Dogz]

My boxer girl is always sniffing! When you get home, she has to stick her nose against your bag and take a BIG sniff in, when you go to the bathroom, she stands at the door and puts her nose against the crack and takes a BIG sniff in, haha. So I did a bit of research and am really wanting to start training nose work with her. Looks like there is a training class in the next town over that I may try and get her in, but for now I started out with some boxes in the living room and a container of hot dogs. Hid the container in one box and put a few pieces of hot dog on top for an instant reward, then turned her lose and said search. She was incredible and totally into it! Even having up to 10 boxes she always found the container. She was super interested and couldn't get enough! I can't wait to continue stimulating her mind by using her nose. Just wondered if anyone else has done any formal nose work training with their boxer, and if other's boxers are as nose oriented?

 

[johann]

I've done some with Johann. He has gotten to the point of pairing the scents with treats and searching. In theory (if I was more motivated), he would be at the point of just doing the scent with no treat by now....but I've been lazy and never bought my own containers of oil to use for scenting. We do a lot of room searches for treats at this point.

He does love it, and it is great to tire them out on cold or rainy days.

It sounds like you are doing well with starting your girl off right. Some of the best advice I got was to not rush to add scent (3 scents, can't remember them at this point) and not to rush to blind searches. You want to make sure you really reward after she finds the hot dogs (give her a few pieces extra from your hand) and praise profusely. This will help keep her motivated once she's searching for scent instead of food.

Once she is doing well with the boxes, you can start adding height (go very slowly with raising it) and put the boxes under things.

Have fun! I love nosework training. :D

 

[Sansal]

I did some nose work training with Happy and I am planning on doing it again this winter. It's so much fun! I tried it with Sky, too. She did fine but didn't enjoy it as much as Happy. Happy literally is crazy about it, she can not wait her turn!!

Have fun!!

 

[violetashlee]

Like your girl, my Violet has always sniff sniff sniffed everything. In winter, I hide her toys in the snow and she LOVES to find them. I did formal nose work classes with her and she did really well at first, but then she made a mockery of the whole thing once she figured it out. For example, we did the box exercise you are describing in your first post. And her first few times through, she did great. Then that was too easy so the next time through she would sniff the boxes and if there was nothing in it, she would pick it up and throw it across the room. She did it for all the empty boxes until she found the treat - you never could tell which way she was going to throw the box, so people had to be on guard to dodge any boxes being chucked at their faces. Brat. It took the other dogs much longer to pick it up so I think she may have been bored and entertaining herself, but still: Brat.

 

[larrygs]

Jack and Layla are both in a nose work class right now. It is suppose to calm them down, and help Layla's reactivity. We'll see. They really love it, and have picked it up pretty quickly. After all they are boxers! We have just begun to pair up with scents. Jack is pretty methodical about it, while Layla is quite urgent like everything she does.

The formal class did introduce some basics which you might find online. Otherwise I am sure we could start listing them here if it helps.

BTW, one thing occurs to me. For some reason the need to go do their business soon after a few searches. So our class rotation includes a potty timeout