Helping your dog with active sniffing. By Life with Dogs Training and Behaviour. Dog Behaviour Training Shropshire
Dogs using their nose to explore the world around them is part of their natural behavioural repertoire. It is an innate behaviour, therefore, giving your dog opportunity to express their normal behaviour is vital in contributing to the good welfare of your dog. Good welfare as a science enables us to prevent abnormal or problematic behaviours within our dogs by ensuring that all of their needs are met.
Any dog can engage with scent work at most levels, your only restriction in the fun that you can have is with your own imagination. You can start off simply by teaching your dog to make use of a snuffle mat. These are easily obtained, or you could make your own from a rubber door mat and lots of colourful fleece material. It is important not to choose material that frays to avoid your dogs claws becoming caught.
If you would like to try a more exciting form of scent work you can take part in man trailing. This is best done as part of a club, but can be done with yourself, your dog and some willing family members (on a much smaller scale).
If you would like a fun form of scentwork to enjoy in the home, you can teach your dog "find it" games. This is a quick, easy, low resource game and can either be done with a "person" or an object to find.
The benefits of active sniffing or scentwork games extend to helping highly strung, or energetic dogs focus their energy. Because the games and training harnesses a natural innate behaviour your dog will be driven to take part, this has many benefits and applications in itself.
Active sniffing can also assist in building confidence in timid dogs; allowing them time to explore at a slower pace dictated by their nose. Scentwork has been shown to have a positive effect in reducing anxiety and building the relationship between you and your dog.
Active sniffing is for all dogs and not just for the hound group, though the hound group and gundog group of dog breeds are particularly driven to use their nose in more challenging tasks. It is a useful tool to have in the repetoire of all dog owners.