#111 - Scent Work for Dogs: Enrichment That Supports the Whole Household

Simple, flexible scent games that help your dog thrive—and give you a well-earned breather.

If you’ve ever needed your dog to do something enriching without needing your full attention, or wanted to build your relationship through fun, sniffy games, this episode is your new best friend.

In this week’s episode of Enrichment for the Real World, Allie Bender and Emily Strong unpack the magic of scent work—and how it supports your dog’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being and makes your life easier too. We’re talking about games like “find it,” scatter feeding, and what we call the “anywhere but here” protocol, with tips for tailoring them to your specific household setup (no matter how chaotic it may be).

You’ll hear why scent work is more than just a fun activity—it can be used to teach your dog independence, encourage relaxation, and even build trust in tricky situations. Whether you need something that works behind a baby gate, away from food-stealing pets, or hands-free while you hop on a Zoom call, there’s something here for you.

TLDL (Too Long, Didn’t Listen): 3 Key Takeaways
Scent work is ridiculously adaptable.
Whether you need to keep dogs separated, avoid food on the floor, or work behind a barrier, there’s a nose game for that.

Teaching “set it and forget it” is a game-changer.
It takes effort up-front, but the payoff? A dog who can self-entertain while still engaging in healthy enrichment. Gold.

“Find it” is the duct tape of dog training.
This go-to cue can give you a pause button, channel your dog’s energy, and lay the foundation for more complex games.

Links & Resources from the Episode

📖 Canine Olfaction: Scent, Sign, and Situation – Book chapter by Simon Gadbois & Catherine Reeves
📚 Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell by Alexandra Horowitz
🔬 Study: Let me sniff! Nosework induces positive judgment bias in pet dogs
📓 Episode #109: Assessing Risk for the Safety Enrichment Category
🎲 July 2023 Enrichment Challenge: Try a New Active Foraging Option
💻 Check out the full show notes, including more resources at petharmonytraining.com/episode111

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: Instead of hiding just snuffle mats around the house, we can hide. Literally anything around the house, whatever things are going to achieve, the outcomes that you're hoping for are the things that you can hide around the house in an anywhere but here protocol. So if you're trying to get your dog more physical exercise, you could hide food puzzles that require them to do a lot of movement and banging things around.

So that, that's one option. If you're trying, conversely, to get your dog to relax, you can hide a little relaxation station with a long-term calming project on it that makes them get all melty and chilled out. So, so that's an option if you're trying to get them to get their chewing wigglys out there, their desire to munch on things out, you can hide something that requires a lot of chewing, 

[00:00:47] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:05] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:07] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Today we are talking about scent work for dogs enrichment that supports the whole household. In this episode, you're going to hear Emily and I talk about our favorite scent work activities for clients, set it and forget it activities, and the power of scent work for relationship building. Alright, let's get into it. 

[00:01:47] Emily: All right, so here we are at season 10. I cannot believe it's already season 10. I don't know how that happened, and quite frankly, it's rude. It is rude that time has, has gone by that quickly. But in our 10th season we were like, you know what would be cool? We should take a d descriptive approach to making this podcast instead of a prescriptive approach.

What a novel concept and we realized that we were taking a prescriptive approach because we wanted to model our podcast structure after one of our favorite podcasts. And only recently did we realize, you know what? That podcast, the host does this podcast full-time and she has an entire team of, of people whose full-time job is running of this podcast and that does not reflect our reality. And so, we were kind of working harder, not smarter on the podcast. So, we're gonna be making a lot of structural changes, only some of which will impact you. The people who listen to the podcast. But for the sake of predictability, we wanted to give you a heads up that things are gonna be changing starting in this episode.

One of the things is that our implementation episodes and our interview episodes aren't necessarily going to always be connected anymore, but we're also adding. Short how to episodes, like how to do a thing, step-by-step instructions for things that we, we frequently get asked about.

So, those are the big differences that you're going to see as we're, we're making a less rigid structure. We're not having so many contingencies across episodes and there's gonna be more variety and types of episodes that we'll be doing. So for our first. Episode of the season, we're doing an implementation episode that's weird and different.

All right, so today we're gonna be talking about scent games and how they don't just help your dog, but they can also help you, your household, your relationship with your dog, all of the things. And I think there's, there's a lot to this. Like, there's an almost infinite number of ways that you can do scent games with your dog.

We are not obviously going to be able to comprehensively cover every possibility, but what Allie and I will be talking about today is the scent games that we use most frequently and why we use them. The, the sort of pros and cons of each one and, and the if then contingencies for why we would choose one over the other, or why our clients frequently choose one over the other.

We're gonna start with the first and most basic game. I call it find it. I don't care what you call it. You can call it whatever you want. There is nothing about the game intrinsically that needs it to be called find it.

But let me explain what I mean when I say that. When I say find it, I mean tossing one to four treats in a small area for the dog to find. And and it has so much applicability. It's a foundation skill for so many other more complex scent work behaviors. You can use it in conjunction with so many other protocols.

A colleague, I wish I could remember who said this because I would love to cite them, and I keep forgetting who this is, and I feel so guilty about it. So if you are listening and you were the person who said this, please let me know so that I can actually remember your name and credit you. 'cause I feel like such a jerk. Somebody in our industry says that find it is the duct tape of dog training. And that is so real that I say that all the time, which is why I need to know who you are so I can accurately cite you. It is so real, like find it. It has so much applicability.

So, but for find it, I use that to start other scent work games with animals. And I usually just start it like, not even in a place where they have to use their nose. I start it like on a hard surface. So they just learn that. When I say find it, that means that food is gonna fall and they have to look for it. And then once they understand that, that cue means this game is happening, then I can start, making it more increasingly more difficult. But I start with, find it, and then I toss one to four treats, and then we, the sky is the limit from there. Like, that's the foundation for so many things, and broad applicability in so many different contexts. Allie, tell us, tell us the things, how you use it, where you use it. Pros and cons.

[00:06:22] Allie: I love that saying find it is the duct tape of dog training. I, if I have heard that before, I have forgotten it and it's, it's delighting me probably as much as it did the first time I heard it. That's the great thing about not having a good memory sometimes is you can be delighted equally, multiple times in your lifetime by the same thing. So pros and cons for Find it, you, you already alluded to this, Emily, but find it is such a, just a basic activity that can be transformed into so many different things. And for professionals listening, this is how I can often get away with doing things that have scary names, scary to the average pet parent names like counter conditioning when I just call it find it and I tell them to do it in a particular way, that just ends up happening to be counter conditioning. And we don't have to necessarily talk about that, and use that term and, and teach them behavior science, 'cause they don't need to know it unless that's also their job. In which case they already know it better than I do, most likely.

So anywho, so it can be transformed in just so many different activities. The other thing I really like about it is when we're talking about meeting the human's needs, I find that find it is a great pause button. And so, what I mean by this is. Something is happening in the environment. You're like, I don't know how to handle this, let me chuck food on the ground, tell my dog, find it so that they're preoccupied for just a couple of moments to give me time to think. So, I often will include a find it for clients when I specifically need just like a, a pause button, for lack of a better word. The times in which I am not likely to include this activity for my clients, or I'm going to do it in very particular ways is with our guarders.

So if they're guarding food on the floor, I. I'm not gonna chuck food on the floor for them to then guard. Let's not do that right off the bat. That sounds like a bad idea. The other times where I'll be careful with that is when we have multi pet households, especially if there are instances in intra aggression issues in that household.

[00:08:54] Emily: Yeah, so obviously every single thing that you can do for animals there's risk about it. We, we've. Had a whole episode on risk assessment in the past. You can refer back to that if you need to. So nothing is a panacea, nothing works for everybody. But yeah, so find it is a great, foundational skill.

And then also it has a lot of applicability for a lot of different reasons. For me, the biggest downside of find it is that it requires, constant human interaction. It's not a set it and forget it activity, and a lot of clients and need a set it and forget it activity. And also me, I, I need that too. We all need our dog to be able to do things independently of us so we can go live our lives. 

So find it is great, and also it's only one of many options. What I usually move to next the, for me the most often find it as a transition into scatter feeding. And again, there's nothing intrinsic to this activity that necessitates that you call it scatter feeding. You can call it whatever you want. There was a point in time that I called it Go Hunt, and then I stopped calling it that because, people used Go Hunt for other things, and so it was confusing to clients. So, I call it scatter feeding now, I don't care what you call it, but scatter feeding is a larger scale version of find it where the client can set it and forget it.

So what we do is we start with find it, and we gradually increase the amount of treats and the size of the field until the client can get to a point where you can take the entire, the animal's entire meal, and scattered across the yard like your scattering seeds, and it can take a dog 30 to 60 minutes to find every piece of food that has been scattered in the entire yard.

Usually what we see as an outcome of that is the dog comes in and they're tired, they're ready for a nap because they just did a whole lot of work. And I, I love that technique because it is so low effort. Once the dog has been taught to play the game, like obviously there's effort in teaching the game, expanding the dog stamina, expanding the, the size of the field. They can find food in expanding the amount of food they have to find. But once you've done that labor it takes no more time to do scatter feeding than it would to just dump that same food into a bowl. 

So love it as a go-to, I do scatter feeding with my own dogs. there have been periods of time where we have done scatter feeding out in the grass, and there have been other periods of time where we've done scatter feeding inside the house. And there have been periods of time where we do a little from column A and a little from column B. So it's just an incredibly flexible version of nose work that's also like very, very low effort on the part of the person, which, let's be real. We always need something that's low effort, big outcome. That's that's always a handy tool to have in our toolbox.

[00:12:01] Allie: Yeah. All, all the things, a note that I have to add for scatter feeding, and I guess this is true for find it too. We're not really, we weren't doing notes, but now I have to add a note. So one of the things that I see, one of the missteps that I see when people are working on find it or scatter feeding is wanting their pet to find every single piece of food. I don't care as much about that as a lot of my clients do. Now, granted, if you are doing this in your home and your home is is prone to getting ants, yes, you should care about your dog finding every single piece of food. In that case, you might wanna do something like an activity that we'll talk about in a little bit, or do a snuffle mat instead of scatter feeding.

But if your home is not prone to ants and you can just vacuum up all of those errand treats at the end of the week like I do, then I don't care that much about them finding every single piece of food. I find that a lot of clients get really stuck on their, their dog having to find everything where it's like if it meets the goals that you had set and, and why you were doing that activity, then it's okay if there's a piece or two that's left behind for the wildlife.

[00:13:22] Emily: Like you said, context matters. It's really about, what, what you need, what you're getting out of it, what your risk assessment. Is in your household and your environment with your pets only you get to decide what, what is important, what the, what the important criteria are for your version of this game.

You get to set that criteria based on your risk assessment, right? And that means that sometimes the risk is too high to do this game. Sometimes if you have a dog who can't handle cold weather and you live in a place where it's 20 below some parts of the year, then scatter feeding outside's not gonna be it.

Conversely, if you live in a really hot part of the world where four months out of the year, it's in the triple digits, definitely not bitter about growing up in Austin and spending 30 years in that weather. Then, yeah, not, not probably a great idea to make your dog go out and do scent work when it's 110 degrees outside.

If you have a dog who's immunocompromised and I you live in an area that has a lot of parasites living in the soil, then that may not be a, a good risk assessment for you, right? There's just a lot of different factors that play into whether or not scatter feeding outside is gonna be a good option for you.

And that's why we have other types of scent games that can achieve the same results. So the next one that we do, I mentioned I do indoor scatter feeding with my dogs. I do that in one of two ways. One is literally just scatter feeding exactly like we do in the yard, but inside the house on a rug where the treats kind of blend into the rug for the dogs. The dogs can't see them, so they have to use their nose. But the other way that we do it, when I have to compartmentalize my dogs, and so only one dog can have access to the, the treat hiding rug, we use snuffle mats as a way to do scent work.

Snuffle mats are great, there's a lot of different types of them, there's a lot of varieties, a lot of sizes, but one thing that I think people, miss, miss an opportunity, the missed opportunity that I often see with snuffle mats is people get stuck with just using one and you know what? You can emulate the same scatter feeding experience outside if you get multiple snuffle mats and hide them in the part of your house that your dog has access to. So just start with one snuffle mat, when the dog's really good at that, you can get two, split their meal across, two snuffle mats, hide them in different areas, and then when the dog's really good at that, you can get three and then you can get four.

You can get as many snuffle mats as you want and spread the food across. However many snuffle mats you have, hide them around the house in the parts of the house where you, your dog has access to, and then they're getting the same benefit as they would get from scatter feeding out in the yard because they have to find the snuffle mats, and then they have to find the food in the snuffle mats.

And then when they're done with one, they have to repeat that process. So I am a big fan of snuffle mats, scatter feeding. And I'm currently having to do that with my own dogs because it turns out that Copper in his old age has developed food guarding, which he has never had in his entire life. This is a boy who historically has been self handicapping for insects, he is, has been the sweetest, most harmless, most peaceful man I have ever met. And then he got to be 16 years old and suddenly he cares a whole lot about food. And so, we have to compartmentalize Copper and Miley so that they can be safe when they, when they do their scent work. So, Miley either goes outside for scatter feeding or when I don't wanna monitor her because I don't feel like she's ready to be outside unattended yet, I'll just do snuffle mat scatter feeding in the part of the house that she has access to. So, you can, when you're, when outside scatter feeding is not an option, an inside scatter feeding is too easy for your dog, snuffle mat scatter feeding can be a good alternative. I.

[00:17:28] Allie: I do something sort of similar, sort of not in that, and I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, that Oso gets part of his breakfast in his bowl with his supplements, and the things that should not happen in a food puzzle or a snuffle mat. Fish oil in a snuffle mat sounds like the worst thing that could ever possibly happen,

that's only slight hyperbole there. But the rest of his meal goes into a food puzzle and we hide the food puzzle throughout the house and he has to search for that. And he's so cute when he finds it, he has this little like, jaunt in his gate where he's like, yeah, I did it. It's the cutest thing of my whole life.

I need to try and get a video of it. But yeah, so, so you can do that with. Multiple things. I've done this a similar thing with cats with, instead of snuffle mats, we have just little paper plates that have food on it, and we hide little paper plates around the house because what Food on surfaces also sounds like a terrible idea.

So you can really get creative on how do I get the same effect of my animal searching in a large space for food, but do it in a way that works for you and your household.

[00:18:42] Emily: Yeah, and then there's another version of the kind of snuffle mat scent work game that we do when we wanna get something more than just scent work out of the deal. If there's a reason that we want the dog to be snuffling around the house, that's more than just get some scent work in, in your day, then it do, you don't have to limit yourself to snuffle mats. 

So again, this is a made up name, you can call it whatever you want. At Pet Harmony, we call it the anywhere but here protocol. When we just need our dogs to go away from us and do things without us and, and let us live our lives and, and they can go do other activities.

Instead of hiding just snuffle mats around the house, we can hide literally anything around the house, whatever things are going to achieve, the outcomes that you're hoping for are the things that you can hide around the house in an anywhere but here protocol. So if you're trying to get your dog more physical exercise, you could hide food puzzles that require them to do a lot of movement and banging things around.

So that, that's one option. If you're trying, conversely, to get your dog to relax you can hide. A little relaxation station with a long-term calming project on it that makes them get all melty and chilled out. So, so that's an option if you're trying to get them to get their chewing wigglys out there, their desire to munch on things out, you can hide something that requires a lot of chewing, like a big old knuckle bone, or something like that. So whatever object your dog uses, that really helps them to get out those, those chewy, chewy feelings that they have. 

If you need your dog to do some more problem solving and wear their brain out, so they're, for example, not trying to problem solve, how to access the, the tea on your tea shelf so they can open a tea container and eat three ounces of high caffeine tea and then run around like a little maniac all day on Friday.

Definitely, definitely not a, a real world experience that I recently lived, then you wanna hide something, a game that requires a lot of problem solving a kind of mental exercise type of food puzzle or something similar that they have to really think and, and work at and, and try to figure out, right?

The beauty of the anywhere, but here protocol is, it is still scent work because they have to use their nose to find the objects. But then once they find the objects, those objects can serve all kinds of purposes and meet all kinds of needs. And I've had clients who really, really needed their dogs to be okay in life.

Hide enough stuff that it occupied their dogs for hours. And that is like, hashtag life goals sometimes is I just need my dog to be independently playing and doing their own thing for hours so I can live my life and finally finish writing this podcast episode, or book chapter, or whatever it is that I'm trying to work on while Miley's running around being a puppy, so, so that's the anywhere but here protocol. Allie, you got some thoughts for us?

[00:21:51] Allie: I love this game because we often get asked for activities that take a long time, and the hard thing is, is that take a long time is relative. And so, I think a lot of times when people are asking that question, they're asking for the result of something like the anywhere but here game, of I need my my pet to not bother me for a while and that is completely valid. There are so many times where I'm like, oh, so I need you to not be present. Like when I'm trying to plant trees, and he's trying to eat the tree fertilizer, and I would really rather that not happen. I'd rather him be elsewhere. So, maybe I do in anywhere but near my trees game for that. Sometimes scatter feeding works too. It depends on how, how much he wants the fertilizer. 

So, I think that's actually what people are asking for, a lot of times when they're asking for a game, that takes a long time, because often when we're like, well, like we can do, like extended find it or, or something like that, they're like, hmm, no. so keep that in mind of you being present or not present in the activity, you being included in the activity can be one of your criteria because again, this is about meeting your needs as much as it is about meeting your pet's needs. 

And along with that, I really like those particular kinds of games like the anywhere but here game for shelter dogs specifically. Emily and I have been in shelters for a long time and one of the things that we routinely see is humans are too exciting for kiddos who are in shelters for a while because humans bring food. They bring attention, they bust boredom, they do all the things, everything exciting is related to humans. And then those kids go home and they're like, but these humans are not really exciting most of the time. And that transition can be really hard for those kids, and for the humans who are adopting those kids. So, I really like games like this for shelter dogs especially so that they can learn that humans are often very boring creatures who are going to be doing their own thing much of the time.

[00:24:17] Emily: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I know I already said this about scatter feeding. I'm gonna just reiterate all of these games I require a certain amount of shaping because animals are not going to have the skill and stamina to do the end goal of this game. They have to start simple and then you expand their skill over time. 

People come to us and they're like, I, I need my dog to leave me alone for four hours. I'm like, okay, cool, cool, cool. Your dog is not gonna be capable of leaving you alone for four hours right now.

So let's figure out what management strategies we can put in place while we're building this skill so that you can live your life in the meantime. But yeah, no, if, if you try to just do a four hour anywhere, but here protocol with a 15 week old puppy, that is going to set you up for disappointment and frustration because that dog does not have the skill and stamina to do that alone for four hours. 

But I will tell you something at the time of this recording, I have had Miley for two days, shy of three weeks, and when I started working with her, she had about an hour in her. I could give her some things to do around the office and I could get through a single Zoom session, and now we are up to about almost three hours that she can entertain herself in in less than three weeks, two days, shy of three weeks. So yes, the skills have to be shaped, no, it doesn't necessarily have to take forever. 

But also disclaimer, please remember that I have a physically, behaviorally, and emotionally healthy puppy that came from a great breeder who did an excellent job of socializing and had already started Miley on scent work skills before I adopted her. So, your mileage may vary and your outcomes are not gonna less necessarily look like mine. And that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing it wrong. It means that we have different dogs with different realities. But my point in bringing Miley up is that it does not necessarily have to take forever, but you still have to shape the behavior, you, you can't just skip to the end, and that is one of the downsides, to all of these, set it and forget it protocols is they, they don't come just prepackaged. You have to teach the dogs these skills. And also it doesn't necessarily take forever to do that. 

Up until now, I think almost all of the games have been like the end goal of the game is set it and forget it, although, as I just mentioned, you gotta shape the behaviors. The last one on my list is the least set it and forget it most labor intensive of all of the games, and I still love it. I still use it. I still recom regularly recommend it to clients, and clients still regularly opts to do it because it is an activity that you can do with your dog. So if you need a bonding opportunity, if you and your dog have been struggling with a lot of challenges and you need to be able to have fun with your dog and remember that you love your dog this can be a great game for you.

If you have a new dog and you don't know the dog and you wanna build a relationship with them, this can be a great way to do this. If you really, really want to do scent work and you watch videos of those Scent Work competitions, but you have no interest in doing competition nose work, or you don't have the ability, you don't have access to nose work competitions as a resource, this can be a good option for you.

And that is actual nose work games, like the competitions but just done at home. So, Allie and I learned how to do scent work because the sanctuary where we worked at had a, a actual scent work teacher and judge come out and teach us how to do, how to train dogs to do scent work.

So she taught us the rules of how you would teach a dog to be able to compete, and I'm really grateful to that woman. I don't think she knows how much of an impact she's had on my life, and career, and how many hundreds, if not thousands of other dogs and people she has impacted by coming to the sanctuary and teaching us that.

I wish I could remember her name because there have been so many times in the past decade. That I have wanted to just send her an email and be like, BT Dubs, you changed my life.

And so many other lives as a result. But so she taught us the rules and they were great, and then we did what we do and we immediately adopted those rules to make more sense for the sanctuary, including like one of the big no-nos in competition nose work is dogs who are resource guarders are kind of immediately disqualified. And at the sanctuary we had so many resource guarders that that would've eliminated that resource for so many of the dogs at the sanctuary. So, we modified the rules so that dogs with guarding could play the game. Now that doesn't mean that every dog was a candidate, there were some dogs who had a combination of like really severe guarding plus redirection that would have made it unsafe.

But we were actually shocked by how many dogs with pretty significant guarding behaviors were not just able to do nose work, but were actually helped by doing nose work. So, that was one of the things that we modified. 

Another thing that we modified is we don't, didn't really care if the dogs ever developed an alert because we're not actually ever gonna compete with these dogs. So, they don't need to alert us. If they offer an alert, we'll reinforce it and then that's cute. We've got a dog who alerts when they find a scent. But that was something that wasn't necessarily a part of the, the shaping process that we would intentionally teach alerts to these dogs.

So we have a modified version of the nose work rules that work really, really well for us if we're just doing it as a way to do scent work, while doing relationship building. And I love it. It is so fun. I, I don't even know how many dogs I have run through those rules, but it is not hyperbole to say it's in the hundreds, because we ran the nose work program at the sanctuary, and had the hundreds of dogs at the sanctuary, and then I have taught these rules to so many clients. I did nose work group classes for a few years when I lived in Salt Lake, hundreds and hundreds of dogs starting at all different levels. 

I've had some dogs that we had to start with, like a four by four foot square that we made out of painter's tape, and literally we just had piles of food in different parts of that painter's tape square because the dog was so afraid to eat food off the floor that we couldn't start with containers. So, we've had to modify those rules to meet the needs of the individual dogs in front of us. 

But I have never, ever in the hundreds of dogs that I've worked with, had a dog go through nose work that didn't benefit from it in some way. I am such a big believer in doing those nose work games where you just set containers in a field, hide the food in the containers, let the dog find it, reinforce the dog for finding it, and the have an end cue. Obviously this is not a how to episode, so I'm not going to give you the step-by-step instructions, but I, I just think it is such a great game and I've had so many clients who started doing with this, this, with their dogs and just fell in love.

Not just with the game, but with their dog. So it is, it is a powerful tool to have in our toolbox. So obviously I have a bias towards the nose work game, but it, it is, it is labor intensive because you have to do it with your dog. It's not a set it and forget it activity. You go into it knowing that you are doing a shared activity with your dog when you play the, the nose work game.

[00:31:57] Allie: I like you, love this game because I've seen it work for. Are so many different things I've seen it be beneficial for, like you said, everybody, I think that I, I have done this with, one of the things that I really love about this game is that you can do it in a very hands-off, safe, protected contact way. And that was how we did a lot of it at the sanctuary where there were, there were kiddos who were under protected contact, who we were not able to physically interact with, and how do you help somebody be friends with you in that way. And we found that this game was so helpful for them and they were so cute.

originally they'd be like, why are you standing outside of my run? And then they'd be like, oh, but boxes have food. And that's cool. And then eventually they'd get to the point where, you opened up their guillotine door and they would run out and say hi to you and then go and, and search in their boxes. They're like, oh, you're the person who, who hangs out when I do the fun thing. This is awesome. So, since moving to private clients, I actually do this game a lot when I need an activity that is relationship building, and we have a lot of safety parameters in place. So a lot of times I'll do this with households that have kids, and the, the great thing about that is the kids can do the hides, they can hide the treats in the boxes, and the kids love that. They get to be involved and then they can safely stand behind a baby gate, and watch the dog interact and, and feel like they're getting to play a game together. And so I've done many variations of, of that activity for situations like that where we need relationship building, and it needs to be done in a very hands-off way with barriers involved.

I also like that game for people who don't want food on their floor. And that's totally valid. As I said, if you are prone to ants, yeah, don't have food on your floor. And so, for a lot of people, especially like I live in an area that, has very nice houses and aesthetics are important and all of the things.

And yeah, if that's a thing that's important to you, awesome. Instead of doing find it or scatter feeding, let's do a more formal nose work structure where everything can be in containers, nothing is on the floor. You don't have to clean up afterwards. And for, for some people that's ultimately what they care about is they're like, I don't want to have to vacuum more than I already vacuum valid. I agree, so I also like it for, for those clients who want less cleanup with that, with scent work activities.

[00:34:47] Emily: And that's so important, not just for people who have aesthetic concerns, but also like, parents of young little children who they don't want their kids like eating their dog's food that gets left behind. Or if you have dogs who guard food from each other and you don't want any mistakes of a scatter feeding accident where, oops, you missed a piece of kibble, and then the dogs find it and get into a fight over it later. There are so many different reasons that we wouldn't want to do an activity where food is just left directly on the floor. 

And I will say, Allie, I have to double down on what you said about like using nose work as like a protected contact game, or a relationship building game because we sort of accidentally discovered that nose work is an incredible way to build relationships because after Allie was hired to be our team lead and I took over running the Nose Work program at the Sanctuary. 

I have to do a little backstory to explain, at the sanctuary there were over 400 dogs and we had four people on the behavior team, and each of us were responsible for overseeing the behavioral care of about a hundred dogs each, give or take a hundred ish, right? Which means that at any given time there were 300 ish dogs that we had no relationship with and no contact with, and many of the dogs at the sanctuary experienced pretty severe aggression. And so, I started running this nose work program. We'd have a lot of dogs come in that were from other trainers areas, I didn't know the dogs. I had no relationship with them. My only relationship with them was that I would be in the field giving their handler instructions while their handler was doing nose work. 

And what we started seeing after just a couple of weeks is these dogs would be out on the property with a, a staff member, or volunteer, and they would see me across a parking lot and they would just start running towards me, like dragging people across the parking lot and being like, friend, hi. Oh my God, I love you so much. And coming up and like kissing me. 

And I'm like, oh my God, this is a dog with a multiple bite history running at me. The first couple times it happened, I was like, the body language says safe, but my, his known history of this dog makes me scared, and it took me a few times to realize that these dogs loved me even though I had never directly interacted with them because I was associated with nose work for them. And so, that's how we started doing introductions for a lot of like new staff, and volunteers, with these dogs who were afraid of new people. We would just have them stand in the nose work field, while the dogs did nose work, obviously the dogs were on leash, obviously the people were standing outside of the radius of that leash. But we discovered that this was such a powerful and efficient way to build relationships with dogs who had feelings about strange people. That, that Allie and I took that into our private client practice, and like when we have a family where one member of the family is really scary to a dog, nose work is one of the options that we'll give them as a way to build that relationship. 

And yes, obviously we start with protected contact. We're never going to do free contact between a person and a dog who has potential to bite, but that it, it, it has been such a powerful game and I do feel the need to do disclaimer like kids don't try this at home, if you don't know what you're doing, if you don't have experience working with severe aggression cases, please don't try this. 

But my point in bringing it up is that this is, it is such a powerful way, not just to get dogs to use their nose, but to also build relationships, which is half the battle a lot of the time with these dogs who experience behavior challenges.

So those are, that's really a summary of the nose work games that we do most often, and the reasons that we choose each of those games. We'll give clients a handout with like a list of these games. We'll go over the pros and cons of each one with them, and we let clients choose which activities they wanna do so we can give clients agency, what, what games they choose. But over and over and over again, all of the research that has is out there about the benefit of nose work in dogs is in strong alignment with our lived experience of using nose work to help hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, I'm gonna say thousands of dogs after a decade.

And overseeing all of our cli our consultants cases. I feel comfortable saying thousands of dogs without hyperbole. That we see everything that the research has stated for the benefits of dogs, and in addition to those benefits, we also see the benefit of making life easier for clients so that they can have some alone time while their dog has independent play of building relationships between dogs and people in the household, or people who come visit the household. Of helping clients have a low effort way of reaching their goals with huge impact for the dog, so small step, big win activities. There are just so many different things that we have seen these scent work games do for not just the dogs, but the people in the household. And, and like I said, these are not all of the scent work games that are available, these are just the ones that we utilize most often.

But yeah, I, I think it's safe to say I am an unqualified, radical fan of nose work. And I, and I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna just say this, not just for dogs. I love doing scent work with cats. I love doing scent work with rabbits. I love doing scent work with ferrets. I, I've done scent work with so many different species. I just think it's, it's awesome.

[00:40:13] Allie: So today we talked about some different scent work activities, like find it, scatter feeding, anywhere but here and informal canine nose work. And the benefits to not only dogs and other species, but you, the human as well. And here's a little bonus, enrichment tip to thank you for listening to this episode. Getting to this point in this episode.

If you have a pet who is new to searching for food on the floor, make sure the food they're searching for is a different color than the ground. It doesn't help them to search for a beige thing on a beige carpet if they are just learning how to do that. Contrast helps.   

I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony.