NEW INTAKE Introduction to Scent Detection

Scent detection is a great mental stimulation for your dog!! Great for the winter season and beneficial to older dogs, helping to ensure cognitive function remains alert.

If your dog is already searching for food or toys around the house, this sport will help you learn how to make the hides more challenging for your dog.

The sport of Scent Detection is one of the fastest growing K9 sports and is based around the concept of the working K9 looking for narcotics, explosives and other substances. In the sport, the K9 must locate a given scent and indicate the find to the handler, (we won’t be using narcotics or explosives though!). As you progress through the sport the scent, the environment and the number of finds will vary, thus challenging the K9 and the handler. The aim of the workshop is to introduce you to the sport, to teach the handler how to recognize that your companion has found something interesting and to train this skill onto the substance you are looking for. Finally to guide you how to get an indication that is clear and unmissable.

This initial course will focus on imprinting the odours and alerts, introduce distarctors. As you and your dog progress through the courses you will learn how to carry out an interior searche and where possible (weather permitting) exterior searches. Once the foundation courses are completed you can join our drop-in and roaming classes, which will also cover SDDA games, Trial Prep and Skill building.

Dogs must be a minimum of 6months (or known to trainer) - we want to ensure that the dogs are able to focus and work when in the presence of another dog. Scent work has been proven to be hugely benefical to dogs, it can help build confidence, and calm anxious dogs. It is also a great sport for older dogs. Trials allow for reactive and older dogs.

You will also be able to take adavantage of our excluisve facebook group for TailWaggers - Scent Hounds , this is a place where you will get to meet other teams training with TailWaggers, where you can ask questions and share videos tips and advice.

New: Video/Audit - this is great if you have a dog that can not attend class for any reason eg uncomforatble in the presence of other dogs, unable to travel, illness etc. How does it work? The handler attends class with out the dog and submits a video prior to the next class for review.

Cost $125 per dog, Video&Audit $85 per dog (2nd dog $40), Audit Only $55

Subsequent courses will follow

Learn from experienced and trained instructors.

Instructor: Sharon Needham, Sharon has worked and trainied in various different canine nose work applications including Sporting Detection Dogs Association, SDDA (1 dog currently at Excellent Level, 1 pups at Advanced and another just starting), Canadian Kennel Club, CKC Scent Detection, K9 Ratting (Adv level), CKC Tracking (Tracking Dog title), some Human Remains Detection, HRD experience.