Talking Dogs Scentwork®

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I want to teach my dog to search for scent

"The expert in anything was once a beginner." - Helen Hayes

MY MOST POPULAR COURSE

Teach Your Dog to Sniff!

This course teaches you how to harness your dog’s natural ability to sniff and to use this skill to improve your life, and your dog’s life. By engaging with your dog in an activity that she already loves you can quickly help your dog to pay more attention to you, to be able to concentrate and in turn feel tired and relaxed. Calm dogs live longer (stress has been shown to be detrimental to the health of dogs and people), are happier and are more rewarding companions.

I know it can be scary to set a new goal. Would I be wrong to say that dog training isn’t as easy as it looks? I have taught so many dogs and coached so many people that this training method has been tested and honed to within an inch of it’s life. I know you can do it and I know that your dog will love it!

I’ve designed this course to allow all dogs to learn how to search for a specific scent for fun. This means that all advice is positive reward based, designed to help all dogs, whether food or toy oriented, no matter their age or breed type, and requires zero prior training or scentwork experience. Really – your dog doesn’t have to know anything before learning how to sniff for a specific scent.

Puppy Scentwork

Puppy scentwork is specifically designed to give you the skills to teach your puppy to sniff out a specific scent for fun. By getting the foundations correct right from the start of training, you will prevent problems and sessions will be clear and successful. Teaching your puppy to listen, pay attention, respond to you and most importantly have fun with you will lay the foundations for a great, lifelong relationship together. Scentwork helps your puppy overcome fears and cope in new environments. Having the confidence to know how to play the scentwork game can give you confidence which in turn gives your puppy confidence. Win-win!

Senior Scentwork

 

Scentwork is super for senior dogs. It is low impact, builds confidence, provides positive mental stimulation, is suitable for all abilities/disabilities, it helps seniors acquire new skills and most of all, it brings pleasure! This short course shares ideas and techniques for using scentwork to enhance the life your senior dog, just as I did with my old lady dog Megan who appears in the lectures.

 

GREAT DEAL: Save £80+

Super Sniffer Bundle

This bundle will take you and your dog from complete novices to seasoned scentworkers. Plus, by enrolling on our 5 core course bundle you will save over £80!

I will help you work through each course through lectures, videos, downloadable handouts and graded quizzes. And before you know it, you will have turned your pet dog into a detector dog.

  1. Teach your dog to sniff!
  2. Essential Scentwork Skills
  3. Increasing the Challenge
  4. Design the Perfect Course
  5. Baggage Searches

I want to improve our skills

The core skills that you will use in every search

Essential Scentwork Skills

Once you’re dog has learned the basics, it’s time for the essential scentwork skills that you will use in every search.

  • You’ve taught your dog how to find a specific scent, but what now?
  • You want to be able to search exciting places but still keep your dog safe from harm.
  • You want your dog to work in more detail but keep searching fun, but you’re not sure of how best to achieve that.
  • You want to be able to search for longer and be more efficient, but don’t know how to do that.

 

Never worry, I will walk you through all these stages, sharing my knowledge and experience, showing you the most effective techniques to help both you and your dog to turbo charge your searches.


Savvy Scentwork

Smart strategies for scentwork success. Whether you’re a pro trainer teaching clients or a keen scentworker teaching your own dog you’ll come up against challenges you’ve never encountered.

What happens if your dog works too fast? Does she need to be on a lead? How do you handle a long line without getting tangled up? How can you help a deaf dog enjoy scentwork? Or set up searches to accommodate wheelchairs? How can you boost the dog’s indication? Or increase engagement? What to do if your dog picks up random objects or doesn’t want to give up the scented article? I’ll give you strategies for all these situations and more.

Plus I’ve added multiple bonuses to this course. You get ‘Jackpot’ my best selling guide to using food in training. You also get ‘Handle with Care’ my guide on safe and defensive handling.  Plus I’m giving you bonus video lessons on topics including recall, positions and stay. 

The perfect resource to help solve your scentwork dilemmas.

Masterclass - SAS Handling Skills

“I don’t want to let my dog down.” I can’t tell you how often I hear handlers saying this.

Not knowing where to go or getting in your dog’s way, interrupting the dog when she’s working, or not knowing what to do when she asks for help are common handler concerns. And rightly so. Handlers can make or break a search and understanding how and why is the difference between just being your dog’s chauffeur and being her team mate.

I believe that the role of the handler is too often under-estimated, to the detriment of the dog and the search. That feeling of euphoria when you come out from a search and you know you’ve done a great job is addictive. Knowing that you’ve truly worked with your dog, that you have searched the area together, team mates working in harmony with each other, that’s why I love scentwork. And that’s why you’ll love this course. 

Design the Perfect Search

Searches are about so much more than tiring your dog out or filling time. They are an opportunity to increase your dog’s concentration, improve her confidence and enhance the teamwork between you and your dog. 

You can meet challenges and solve problems simply by designing smart scentwork searches. Setting realistic and appropriate goals are the best way to achieve scentwork success. 

You don’t need to worry. I know that setting out a scentwork search isn’t as simple as it seems. Neither is hiding the scented articles. But now you don’t have to leave things to chance. Or rely on guesswork.

In this course I will help you make great choices that will help your scentwork team enjoy every single search. Packed with great resources and so many ideas for designing your searches, you’ll be able to make scentwork really work for you and your dog.

 

I want to increase the search challenge

Increasing the Challenge

Now that you and your dog are addicted to scentwork, how do you increase the challenge without decreasing the fun?

Your dog has learned to search for a specific scent, you have learned how to use the search plan and now you are ready to increase the challenge. But how?

Your dog finds the scented article before you’ve had a chance to participate, frustrating!

Never worry, I’m here to help keep you both on track, keep the teamwork strong, maintain the attention and response you’ve already fostered and open up searches so that you can do them anytime, anywhere.

Stay at Home Scentwork

  • Can’t leave home?
  • Worried about limiting your dog’s exercise?
  • Anxious about your dog becoming stressed?
  • Keen to avoid your dog becoming bored?
  • Bored dogs chews more, bark more, get under your feet more!

Scentwork to the rescue!

Scentwork provides positive mental stimulation. In other words it gives your dog something fun to think about and pleasurable to do. To have a happily tired and relaxed dog makes for a happier home life.

You can achieve this without having to leave your home.

"Have loved doing the scentwork courses. This one was excellent as you see Pam doing the searches with her own dogs. It gives you a great insight to handling skills and gave me lots of creative ideas."

I want to learn specialist searches

Vehicle Searches

Nowhere to train? No time to set up searches? Keep your dog busy and engaged with vehicle searches. Instant, compact but interesting search areas that travel with you!

Search specific skills are a great way to add to your scentwork skillset and have even more fun working with your dog. Vehicle searches provide a great first outdoor search for your dog. And help you learn how to read your dog. As the air movement around the vehicles changes the scent picture, so you will learn how best to respond to your dog.

An remember, the huge benefit in searching vehicles is that you can do it wherever you may be. You don’t need lots of equipment or space. You just need your car, your dog, some scented articles and off you go!

Baggage Searches

Does your dog do everything at top speed? Does she lack concentration and self control? How would it feel to be able to set up an activity where she learns these skills for herself? Baggage searches give your dog the opportunity to sniff for rewards (which you KNOW she loves to do!), and find out that if she is too fast, too distracted she simply won’t find what she wants.

As an added bonus, I’ve included a lecture on searching postal bags. These woven bags and their contents require a skill of their own. Learn how to pack the bags and how your content choice can affect the search. Bag layout and article choice can take the search from beginner to expert level in a jiffy!

Yet another search to add to your skillset.

Scentwork Water Searches

Just imagine if your dog could sniff the water and tell you that her target scent was underneath.

Stop imagining, start searching!

Really! Your dog, your companion, your couch potato can actually find scent hidden underwater thanks to this new course. As ever, no expensive or fancy equipment is required. And these searches are suitable for all dogs, all breed types, all ages, searching for any scent, e.g. catnip or cheese.

If your dog doesn’t like to get her paws wet, no worries. Water searches teach the dog to detect scent that has risen to the surface of the water. So there’s no need for her, or you for that matter, to get in the water at all.

But if your dog is a water lover, then you can take these searches out of the garden and into the wild! Trips to the beach can now include your dog’s favourite activity – sniffing! No longer will she be confined to the sand, now she can search the sea itself.

Lost Keys

Teach your dog to be your emergency back-up!

Don’t get stranded!
Don’t get locked out of your home or car!

You never plan to lose your keys, but now you can make a plan to find them. Teach your dog to find your lost keys! And your dropped phone, wallet, inhaler! With video footage, you can follow me step by step as I demonstrate how to teach your dog how to sniff out your lost keys, and more! Using my simple, logical and effective training, you can teach your dog something that’s not just fun, but super useful and practical.

A priceless skill that could save you time, money and worry.

This course is suitable for dogs who haven’t searched for anything before. If they have a good retrieve that would be a great bonus. But every dog can be taught this practical search, so click the button below to find out how. 

I want to teach scentwork

"Teaching is a great way to keep learning." - Matthea Harvey

How to Teach Scentwork

Teaching scentwork to pet dogs and their people requires a very specific skill set. Unlike Police or Forces handlers, your clients come with a variety of breed types, none of which have been specially selected to be scentwork dogs, but all of whom can give the professionals a run for their money given half a chance! Your job is to bring out the detector dog in every pet dog that walks into your training hall.

Never before have I shared the secrets that have made Talking Dogs Scentwork® trainers the best in the business. But I share your passion, I want every dog to be a detector dog and you want to train them. Together we can help each other reach our goals.

This course helps you learn how to give constructive, useful and empathic feedback that really helps your learners feel supported. Using video examples, this unique course will help you teach every scentwork team, not just experienced professionals.  

Scentwork Trainer Resources

We know how useful scentwork training can be. Not just a joyful activity that people and dogs can participate in together, but as a tool for building relationships, confidence and engagement. Supporting scentwork teams as they learn how to use their dogs’ innate scenting talent to best effect is one of the most important gifts you can offer. And with increasing numbers of clients wanting to learn about scentwork, this is a great time to take a deep dive into indications, handling skills, and coaching techniques in preparation for adding scentwork to your service portfolio.

And even better is knowing that you can be supported too. With my ever growing range of Scentwork Trainer Resources, you can provide your clients with top quality materials. These done for you printables mean you can spend more time training and less time typing.hands.

Masterclass - Indications

Learning to talk dog is crucial to scentwork, and to all aspects of our lives with dogs. Misunderstanding that ‘guilty’ look, or not recognising when you dog is scared has real life impacts on your relationship with your dog.

Scentwork is no different. All too often I hear handlers saying that they can’t see their dog’s indications. They can’t spot when the dog has found the target scent. This leaves the dogs unsupported and the handlers frustrated.

Whether your dog gives a passive or an active indication, not being able to respond appropriately to what your dog is telling you can result in the dog shutting down the conversation, shutting down the scentwork game and shutting you out. I will show you how to identify which signals are and are not indications, how to distinguish interest and investigation from indication and because every dog is an individual, understand how to tailor your behaviour to support different dogs.

Masterclass - SAS Handling Skills

“I don’t want to let my dog down.” I can’t tell you how often I hear handlers saying this.

Not knowing where to go or getting in your dog’s way, interrupting the dog when she’s working, or not knowing what to do when she asks for help are common handler concerns. And rightly so. Handlers can make or break a search and understanding how and why is the difference between just being your dog’s chauffeur and being her team mate.

I believe that the role of the handler is too often under-estimated, to the detriment of the dog and the search. That feeling of euphoria when you come out from a search and you know you’ve done a great job is addictive. Knowing that you’ve truly worked with your dog, that you have searched the area together, team mates working in harmony with each other, that’s why I love scentwork. And that’s why you’ll love this course. 

PRO DEAL: Save £184!

Pro-Trainer Bundle

Want to be the best scentwork trainer you can be? Of course you do!

Sign up for my Pro-Trainer bundle to get access all areas on my Pro-Track Courses now including Savvy Scentwork and save a huge £184!

This bundle will expand your knowledge, increase your understanding and enhance your training skills.

You can do these courses in any order you like, but I’ll promise you right now, you will go back to them all again and again. They are packed full of so much rich information, that one viewing will never be enough.

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Fabulous free resource

Get 30 Days of Hides -free!

Run out of ideas of where to hide your dog’s target scent? Looking for inspiration? Stop looking – I’ve got the solution. New hides every day for 30 days. Plus advice, tips and variations for all scentwork levels.

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