More Nose Work fun!

Last fall Catty and I had lots of fun training and then earning our Nose Work 1 title. Here's the link talking a lot about how Nose Work impacts the dogs in our care  A couple of months ago we earned our Nose Work 1 title in the element of containers

Last month we competed at a NW 2 a trial.  It was a hot day but, that didn't slow us down from having lots of un and we titled!

Here are some great photo's from the trial and how fun that the photographer was able to capture 3 of the 4 elements.  The elements in a Nose Work trial include: Interiors, Containers, Exteriors and Vehicles. 

For those of you new to Nose Work - it's a competition to locate different essential oil odor, you have a set amount of time to find the odor and the hander has no idea where the odors are hidden. So, this sport requires a good deal of team work while the human has to trust their dog in locating the odors.  As you progress in levels (1,2 and 3) the difficulty increases for the team. 

Off we go in our container search:

Catty being good at this game immediately found the container with the odor. However, I wasn't 100% sure so I had her search more containers...

"I'll check these for you mom since I know it makes you feel better"

"Guess what mom - it's right here, where I told you when we first came in the room"

"Patiently waiting to be rewarded for her work"

We head out to vehicles and it was warm. 

The heat and wind moves the odor around so, the dog has to work out the problem of locating the source of the odor.

This was a tough search for us. There were three cars, two odor hides and the wind was doing goofy stuff in moving the odor around.

On the move after we found the first odor hide

Catty says "Here's odor hide number 2 so give me my reward!"

After a break it was time for our exterior search

Catty loves this game and there were a lot of people watching us search. Catty is environmentally sensitive and she's made huge progress when put in new environments thanks to Nose Work.

She's picked up the odor and is heading right to it

"It's here mom!"

"Did you hear me? It's right here!!"

I want to give a big thank you to Shelly Navarre of Black Dog Photo Studio for volunteering all day and capturing some fantastic pictures of lots of amazing teams! 

Here's Catty and her title ribbon

We are now training for Nose Work 3 which is a whole other ball of wax so stay tuned.