New Year’s Resolution: To Sniff Out a New Dog Sport

Casey practicing nosework with a can during a training session. photo: Dawn Kovell

Dog sports people tend to fall in one of two camps. The first group focuses primarily on one sport. Time, energy, and disposable income are all applied to this single sporting world, generally with a specific favored breed. Often, these folks develop strong social ties within their respective tribes. 

The second group avidly pursues multiple dog sport activities, juggling different  types of training and competitions. Dog breeds in this camp tend to be more varied, but usually include a combination of working Shepherds, Whippets, and some smaller sporting breed mixes.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each camp, and membership in either scene may be fluid depending upon one’s current life circumstances. When I was a full-time working mom, competitive flyball was all I could manage. Even then, it was an effort to load up kids alongside three or four competition dogs for weekend tournaments. Happily, my daughter wasn’t noticeably scarred for life. But it was only after she left for college that I became a total dog sports nerd.

My plan was to taste it all first and then sanely settle on one or two main activities. So I jumped feet first into dock diving, scenting, mondioring bite sport, lure racing, and agility, all while continuing to be active in flyball. Of course, this meant I had no money and no free time, but the dogs definitely got used to a certain standard of sporty living.

The good news is that you can dip your toe into one or more of these pursuits without committing to full dog sports nerd status like I did. In fact, any type of new training can be good for your dog’s body and soul - not to mention that lifelong learning as your pup’s trainer helps keep your human brain young. So why not add “Try a new dog sport” to your New Year’s resolution list? Click here to download a flyer for classes at Marin Humane.

Scent Sports: A Great Fit for Any Dog

The most accessible dog sports are generally the scenting sports, and there are good reasons for this. Scenting is an activity in which old, blind, deaf, or tripod dogs can all excel, plus it’s a low impact behavior that exercises a dog’s mind without the handler having to do much work. In fact, a scenting handler’s greatest gift to her dog is to stay the heck out of the way and trust the nose.

Scent work regulates a dog’s heart and respiratory rates, reduces blood pressure, increases focus, encourages elimination, and expends energy. From a neurological perspective, the activity fires the seeking mechanism in the brain, which produces dopamine, allowing the dog to feel satisfaction and motivation. When seeking is successful, this fires the pleasure center, which produces endorphins (a.k.a. the runner’s high). 

Scenting activities also provide information about a dog’s surroundings, which can help calm dogs with fear, anxiety, and/or stress because it allows them to thoroughly investigate and analyze any possible threats or opportunities in the environment. This creates a sense of agency, which is particularly important to dogs who have limited control over their own resources or options.

Getting Started at Home

You can start by teaching your dog scenting games in your own home. Begin by hiding treats around the house or in the yard and lavishly praising your dog when he finds them. This simple activity is both rewarding (getting food/praise) and stimulating (hunting is fun!) for your dog. Once he’s mastered this, you can progress to placing a safe essential oil scent in close proximity to the food treats so that the dog starts to associate a particular odor with the joy of hunting. Then, you gradually remove the treats so that your dog is only searching for the scent, using treats or toy play as a reward when your dog finds it.

Joining the Sporting World

Scenting is such a versatile activity that sporting opportunities abound. One of the most popular is the sport of Nosework, in which dogs hunt for specific essential oil scents. Developed by working detection dog handlers, Nosework is sanctioned by the National Association of Canine Scent Work. The American Kennel Club (AKC) has its own version of this sport called AKC Scent Work. https://www.akc.org/sports/akc-scent-work/A quick online search will let you know about scent activities in your area.

Scent training has lots of options. photo: Dawn Kovell

If hunting for essential oils sounds too staid for you, check out the wildly exciting world of “barn hunt.” The Barn Hunt Association focuses on the traditional roles of many breeds in ridding farms, barns, crop storage areas, and homes of destructive vermin. This sport is designed with the smaller dog in mind; any pup who can fit through an 18-inch wide tunnel in a hay bale can play. The rats are safely enclosed in aerated tubes, as their job is merely to provide scent, so no animals are harmed.  

If the rat factor makes you queasy or your dog is too big for the tunnels, try shed hunt instead.  In this sport, “shed” refers to strongly scented deer antlers, which have been shed by the deer and which the dogs compete to retrieve. It’s a relatively new dog sport that’s gaining fans fast. In fact, the popularity of shed antler dogs has gone “from zero to ludicrous in the last decade,” according to Tony Peterson in Outdoor Life magazine. 

Going Pro

If your pup becomes outrageously proficient with her sniffing, there are plenty of professional scenting jobs for smell-savvy canines. Dogs have been trained to sniff out invasive species, detect sewage leaks, track down poachers, and even locate endangered sea turtle eggs. Canine olfactory abilities are truly amazing, and humans are still learning new uses for this remarkable canine talent.

But for now, a simple game of backyard sniffing may satisfy your New Year’s Resolution of trying something new. You might get a new sport out of it, or you might not. Either way, your dog will reap some very satisfying rewards.