False Alert..Now What?!

You’re in the midst of a Scent Work training search with your dog and they offer a false alert. Now what?!

Brace yourself for the most loathed answer in all of Scent Work and dog training: it depends.

Our response will depend on a variety of factors and will change from team-to-team and search-to-search. Isn’t Scent Work grand?

The first step is to solidify if the dog truly did, in reality, false alert. Or, were they asking a question, checking in or offering a behavior to prompt feedback from you?

We must recognize how easy it is for us, as handlers, to elicit responses from our dogs which may “look” as though they are a false alert, but in actuality, are merely our dog responding to something we did. Better still, we often do these things inadvertently and without us even knowing…how fun!

What could this look like in practice?

Let’s say your dog is working an interior search. In this room, there is a set of tables and chairs in the center and a bay of cabinets in the back. Running off-leash, your dog confidently trots into the space with you dutifully following behind. Yet, as your dog is driving toward the back of the room, you suddenly stop once you reach the first table. Feeling the drastic disconnection, your dog stops, pivots and looks back toward you. This is not an alert behavior. This is your dog seemingly saying, “Hey, why did you stop?”

Yet in the moment, how many of us would have called “Alert?” Our dog was actively searching and then suddenly stopped on a dime and looked at us. This could easily be misconstrued as the dog telling us, “Hey, you with the thumbs, I found it!”

In this scenario, our dog is not at fault, we are. Trying to correct the dog, because they “made an error” is not going to be effective. Why? Because our dog did not err, we did!

There are a plethora of things we can do in training to address this: cleaning up our handling, gaining a better understanding of what our movements, or lack thereof, mean to our dog as well as implementing mindful handler proofing exercises, just to name a few.

Perhaps you have ruled out this possibility. You did not prompt your dog to false alert. We still have some evaluating to do.

Did the dog truly make a decision and give a confident false alert? Or were they still trying to work out the puzzle, asking questions along the way? “Is this it? How ‘bout this? What ‘bout this?”

In this case, we have three handling choices available to us: Wait, Help or Quit.

My personal preference is to start with Wait. Thus, I would breathe, smile and wait the dog out, no matter how long it takes. Remember: we are talking about training and training is all about LEARNING. The dog is actively learning at this moment and learning takes time. As long as they have gas in the tank and are focused on the task at-hand, I simply breathe, smile and wait. When they are successful, I will provide an ENORMOUS reward for a job well done and consider ways I can further break down this concept into smaller pieces in subsequent training. Why? The dog was lacking the clarity I was striving for initially. It is my job to clean up any confusion to ensure the dog can indeed be successful.

However, dog training is a fluid process. Thus if my dog had already been working for a bit, I may opt for the Help option. This may include positioning my body in the productive quadrant of the search area or holding my leash to prevent the dog from casting out to unproductive areas. The Help option, however, should not include motioning toward the hide itself! Rather this handling approach is limiting the dog’s options and highlighting where, in particular, they should focus their efforts. When using the Help option, what we do in subsequent training matters greatly. We want the DOG to solve the puzzles and not rely on us, either to cue off of or to use as a crutch. Thus, sessions where we chose the Help handling approach must be followed with training sessions where the dog doesn’t need the Help approach at all.

Yet there are still those times the best handling decision to make is to Quit. This is especially true if the dog demonstrated signs of tiring, wanting to self-reward on distractors or otherwise disengage from the search. To Quit would mean to smile and tell the dog, “NICE TRY!” in a kind tone of voice, give them one cookie, as opposed to our usual extravagant party sequence, and put them up in their crate or staging area. The dog needs a break and we handlers MUST determine what type of adjustment is warranted to ensure the next repetition will be successful.

The Quit option also applies if my dog offered a false alert in an attempt to end the search. Yes, this is a real possibility. Why does this happen? The environment could have become too stressful or overwhelming. Perhaps all the puzzles to solve were especially challenging and the dog has reached their limit, including frustration threshold, mental or physical endurance. Maybe, in preparation for trial, you inserted some additional pressures such as a short time limit and this increase in pressure caused the dog to tap out. Finding out the “why” is crucially important, but understanding that our dog may throw a false alert as a “get out of jail free card” is a real possibility. This should not be met with disdain or disappointment, rather understanding and striving to help the dog feel more confident, resilient and tenacious in the future.

“No, none of that is what is going on! My dog just lies and confidently false alerted!”

First things first, our dogs do not lie. They do what works. Therefore, we should be asking why did the dog false alert? Our training should have been designed to show the dog that getting as close to source as possible is what works. So why would they be false alerting?!

Experimentation is part of the learning process. Furthermore, the definition of the Scent Work game is constantly in flux. Hence why I belabor the point of offering clarity immediately before and after attending a trial. Underlining what we are looking for and fully grasping how this can become muddy and unclear with every search we tackle at trial is critically important.

Let’s say you set a hide on the underside of a bench and your dog confidently alerted on the opposite end of it. This is an accessible hide and they are offering a significant fringe alert. In training, I am going to breathe and wait the dog out to see if they will get closer to source and reward heavily when they do so. If the dog digs their heels in, seemingly convinced the fringe alert is what they should be rewarded for, I will give my “NICE TRY” cue, put them up and adjust the hide. This can include making it even more accessible or potentially moving the hide slightly and pairing it, to further underline source=cookie. Why? I want the DOG to understand the goal is to get-to-source. My physically walking the dog over to the hide is not going to help. Additionally, I will want to underline this objective in ALL of my subsequent searches for the next short while, videoing and reviewing to ensure the dog truly understands.

A dog offering a fringe alert to see if it is good enough is expected in training. We see this in all facets of dog training. Think back when you were training your dog to sit. You initially got some really good and clean repetitions, then suddenly the responses got slower, sloppier, with the butt hovering over the ground or back legs sticking out in weird angles. Your intelligent, inquisitive, opportunistic and problem-solving dog is trying to figure out what exactly works. If an approximation works, great! Takes less effort and they still get the cookie, win-win. The same applies to Scent Work. Hence why returning to foundational exercises, emphasizing the importance of source, showcasing what can indeed be productive and clarifying what they are hunting for are all essential lessons to revisit throughout the entirety of the dog’s sniffing journey. Avoid viewing foundations as a stage, they should be a way of life.

Where the discussion of false alerts gets complicated is when the dog was actually correct.

Odor availability is a key component. We may expect our dog to alert in a certain fashion, but if there is no odor available the dog will never be “correct”. A common example is a hide set on one end of a pipe yet the dog confidently alerts on the opposite end of the pipe. If the wind is blowing toward the end where the hide is set, there is no odor availability at the hide! Thus our dog would never alert there, they are correctly alerting on the opposite end of the pipe. Telling our dog they are wrong, walking them over to the end where the hide is set and rewarding them there is nonsensical and confusing.

Hence why it is so crucial for us to also evaluate our search area design and hide placement when determining what to do when our dog offers a false alert.

• What was the environment offering?
• What were the environmental factors?
• Was odor available to the dog? If so, from where?
• Where was the odor traveling and what would it interact with?
• How would the dog work the space to find this hide?

We can run into a similar issue at trial, where the dog was indeed correct but the Judge still said, “No”.

For instance, let’s say your dog was working an excessively elevated hide. You clearly see they are working odor. Suddenly they plant all four feet and look up, seemingly boring a hole with their eyes to where you believe the hide is. You confidently call “Alert”, yet the Judge responds with “No”. Two things can be true at the same time: your dog can be correct and the Judge may have desired a different response, such as the dog getting closer to the wall or even trying to scale it.

In this scenario, your dog is right. Your training is solid. There was merely a different expectation from THIS Judge on THIS day for THIS trial. Blowing up your training or otherwise adjusting your dog’s understanding of the game is not necessary or even warranted. Sometimes the Scent Work gods giveth and other times they taketh away.

“Fine, what do I do then?”

Why not tell your dog, “NICE TRY” and connect with them lovingly on the way back to the crate? There will be more searches, nothing terrible is happening right this second!

Instead of catastrophizing, plan to closely review your trial video and determine whether any training adjustments are necessary or if you, your dog and your training are just fine the way they are.

It is completely understandable that handlers want to know what to do after calling a false alert. This article set out to outline how the answer is not so clear cut.

False alerts are merely information, a tool we should use to evaluate our training to see what changes, if any, are necessary. Furthermore, we must recognize the solution may not involve drilling distractors, working 6’ hides or blind searches until the cows come home. Instead, it may mean your dog simply needs a break, especially from trialing. Taking the time instead to rebuild their confidence and love for the game can pay off in spades. Perhaps you are the one that needs a break! Every false alert we call chips away at our own confidence in ourselves, our ability to read and trust our dogs and our training. Are all the searches you are tackling blind, even when training? Why? There is no need to test yourself nonstop, doing so can be problematic to say the very least.

If you are struggling with false alerts in training or trialing, you may find the following webinar series helpful:

• Cause and Cure for False Alerts: Container Searches Webinar
• Cause and Cure for False Alerts: Exterior Searches Webinar
• Cause and Cure for False Alerts: Interior Searches Webinar
• Cause and Cure for False Alerts: Vehicle Searches Webinar
• Cause and Cure for False Alerts: Buried Hides Webinar
• Cause and Cure for False Alerts: Handler Discrimination Webinar

To learn more about the various handler choices of Wait, Help and Quit, check out these webinars:

• Wait, Quit or Help Webinar
• Wait: Why, When, How and the Aftermath Webinar
• Help: Why, When, How and the Aftermath Webinar
• Quit: Why, When, How and the Aftermath Webinar

Have a specific issue or problem you are coping with? Working with an instructor one-on-one is the best approach. Learn more about the video review services and Zoom consultations our instructors offer.

The most important thing is to ensure you and your dog are having fun! If you both look forward to playing the sniffing game and have a blast doing so, everything else will fall into place.

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