The Spaniel Annals

Training the utility scent discrimination exercise is a long process, starting in puppyhood and involving many moments of seemingly 1 step forward and 2 steps back. In the end, Brian must find my scented article of either wood or leather in a “pile” of 8 similar articles, several feet away from me in the obedience ring. I start the training of this by pairing food with my scent, usually using squeeze cheese on the practice article. The cheese is gradually reduced and then eliminated, while the size of the pile and the distance increase.

Despite Brian’s talents with scenting exercises, he lacked some confidence with this exercise at first. I think his then chronic lip fold dermatitis played a role as well. That was fixed last spring, and since then this exercise has improved much more rapidly.

So while the camera angle is not the greatest here, I wanted to show Brian working a large pile in a location away from home familiar to him, but still not his home environment. You can see that I’m not expecting the full exercise, which starts with a pivot to the pile, and ends with a front and finish. There are still times I will mark his choice immediately (not shown here) which was something I did more frequently to build his confidence in the early days. That tells him he’s right and he can drop the article to come to me. Now that his confidence is much higher around the central aspect of the exercise, we can take this on the road more. Good job, Brian!