NW720 Find It! - Lost Item Recovery

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.

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.

Syllabus

**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

Prerequisites: Open to All. No prereqs required

MINIMUM EQUIPMENT NEEDED:

Personal items (wallets, keys (3-5 keys on a ring), socks, glove, hat)
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)
Nitrile gloves
Open containers for stranger sample

Sample Lecture

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.

Instructors

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...

Registration

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