Scent Work in Fields, Forests, and Countryside: Discovering and Following Scents

Scent work in the wild often comes easily to our four-legged companions because the scent finds are innate triggers: for scavengers, they are scents of edible things, for hunters, scents of huntable things. These scents inherently have an attractive meaning, and attraction is a self-starter, as it fuels the motivation to search for and follow edible and huntable scents. Scent work as an outdoor activity can enrich a dog's daily life if it takes up the dog's inclinations and preferred search and movement patterns as focal points.

Anja Fiedler explains,
• what the dog's nose and sense of smell are all about,
• why we do hunting-motivated dogs a favor by searching for and following scents,
• how we give meaning to scents and build and maintain the motivation to search for and follow them,
• scent detection and tracking in the potpourri of scent work tasks,
• possible ways to indicate found scents,
• how the work whistle brings together canine needs and control of hunting behavior.

The speaker
Anja Fiedler is the head of the dog school "dogable – what (hunting) dogs want". With her diverse seminar program, she travels throughout Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
More about the author: http://www.dogable.de/node/5

Photo credit: Anna Auerbach/ Kosmos