Dogs have evolved to spend a lot of their day sniffing, exploring and observing, so teaching your dog to play this on cue helps to recreate this species normal behaviour.
Its doesn’t necessarily seem an obvious thing to teach – especially with a sight hound or collie which are bred to use their eyes to watch movement, but aside from it being fun for us, most dogs really enjoy it. It has the effect of creating a dog that is calmer after the game than before it.
Essentially it is teaching your dog that finding initially food, and then objects (toys) is really good fun, getting them to sniff and therefore become calm. It can be used as a fun game at home when it is hot or wet, to settle your dog in the evening or when you have visitors, or when something makes them feel tense or anxious.
This searching is a team game – think about drugs dogs searches… the handler supports the search, encouraging the dog to look and helping them – and keeping them safe when they jump on things.
Teaching steps
- Get some treats in one hand and with a sweeping motion, drop the treats on the floor with an open hand – repeat each side of your body (this will become your hand signal to search)
- Now add a verbal cue to use to prompt that you are going to search together – repeat step 1 so that when you give the verbal cue the dog looks excited
- Now either get someone else to hold the dog, or distract him with a few treats on the floor and then drop treats slightly behind chair legs, in boxes etc
Treats or toys?
Initially start with treats – these ensure that the dog orientates back to you for the game to start to again, whereas some dogs will run off with a toy! The best treats are smelly (tripe sticks cut up, tuna) and/or malleable (value mild cheddar) so you can squish them and stick them onto surfaces like chair legs, under the table etc
How you help?
- Move towards the area to search and use the height of your hand gesture to suggest where and how high to search
- Walk in front of the dog and gesture to search if they get stuck
- You don’t need to keep telling your dog to search with your verbal cue – if the dog is searching already, just let him sniff
- Don’t point at the treats – let him sniff them out
- You can tell him how well he is doing – you are his dance partner in this search
- Make sure you celebrate his finds with him!
- You can then move on to naming the game something like ‘find it’
Next steps
- Move on to putting out some objects for the dog to search around – boxes, containers etc. If your dog is noise sensitive then conduct the search on carpet so that if they sniff around the containers and knocks them, the noise wont scare them. This is a great way of helping your dog get used to sudden noises.
- Make sure the dog can search when you cue him to – when he doesn’t see you drop the treats or hide them.
- Start with a shallow box – or something like a roasting tin (on carpet) as this is shallow for most dogs to feel confident with.
- If your dog gets stuck and doesnt know what to do – you can say ‘where is it’ and support the dog to get started again – move towards the search area and use your hand gesture to get the dog going again
- As you notice changes in the dog’s behaviour as he picks up the scent trail – you can step back and ask him ‘what is it?’ (or something similar). You step back to let him search – avoid the urge to step forward and look as this can mean he thinks he has found it – and he may not. This can lead to frustration for the dog.
- Think about how the air movement influences scent trails – cold, still days keep the scent more contained than warm air (like above a radiator) or air movement (like when he wags his tail!).
- You want your dog to be excited about searching, enjoy the search and celebrate together.
- Practice the game indoors – slowly making it harder with different objects or hiding in different places. Practice outdoors too as this makes it a really useful game when the dog gets overwhelmed.
