Set the Odor Problem You Mean to Train

Author: Judith Guthrie of Nose Dogs Detection Services

Every training setup asks the dog a question. Hide count gives one piece of information, and placement decides what kind of odor question the dog receives. Two hides may ask for clean sourcing, converging odor, found and unfound odor, confidence, odor obedience, or a sorting problem you never meant to create.

Before you place hides, choose your starting point. You may begin with a skill you want to train, then choose a space suited for the lesson. You may begin with the space available, then choose a goal the area can support. Both approaches work when the goal, environment, and hide placement line up.

You do not need to predict every odor movement perfectly. Start by asking whether your setup supports the skill you meant to train, then let your dog’s behavior give you more information.

A clean sourcing session needs clean routes to source. Each hide should give the dog a usable path into odor, a way to work from less information toward more specific information, and enough clarity to solve the source location without unnecessary plume interaction.

A convergence session asks for a different kind of setup. Overlapping plumes become part of the lesson. Productive areas may hold information from more than one source, and the dog may need time to sort odor before committing.

Found and unfound odor adds another layer. After one hide pays, the search area contains odor with reinforcement history. The dog still needs to hunt for odor still available to pay, and your setup should support that distinction with clarity.

Odor obedience asks the dog to stay committed to odor through the full problem. Movement, pressure, delay, handler motion, environmental change, and search history can all affect commitment. Hide placement should fit the skill level you want to strengthen.

Confidence work deserves deliberate design too. A confidence-building search can include thinking, persistence, and problem solving. Effort should lead somewhere useful, and the reinforcement plan should make the lesson clear.

After you choose the goal, read the space. Airflow, surfaces, barriers, elevation, objects, temperature, human movement, and access routes all affect odor availability. A simple-looking room can create a complex odor problem. An open field can still push odor into one productive area. A vehicle line can offer clean access from one side and a layered odor problem from another.

Use one practical question before you set the hides: will these hides work separately, or will they interact? Separate odor problems can support clean sourcing, early multiple-hide work, reward timing, confidence, and clarity. Interacting odor problems can help your dog practice converging odor, recovery, found and unfound odor, and sorting odor from more than one source.

Start by looking at whether your dog can get into odor from each hide. You do not need to see odor perfectly to make better training choices. Look at the space, watch where your dog first shows interest, and notice whether the search gives your dog a workable path toward source.

Then look at plume interaction. Odor from one source may move across, around, under, or over another source. Two plumes may share a productive area, and the dog may need to separate more information than the hide count suggests.

Look at edges next. Your dog uses changes in odor concentration to move from less information toward more specific information. One plume can blur or hide the edge of another plume, and your dog may need more time to sort before committing.

Pooling deserves attention before you run the search. Odor may collect away from source and create a productive area worth investigation. Furniture, walls, corners, elevation changes, and objects that hold or redirect air can all change where the dog first finds workable odor.

A simple two-hide example can show the difference between count and complexity. Imagine two hides roughly in line with airflow. The farther hide sits upwind. The closer hide sits downwind, nearer the start area. Air moves from behind the hides toward the dog and handler.

In one version of that setup, the farther hide can send odor forward through or near the closer hide area. Your dog may move past the closer hide toward the farther source while actively working odor. The dog may need to find an edge, sort the stronger plume, then return through the area with more clarity.

A high-low pairing can create a related challenge. Airflow can carry odor from a high hide down across a lower hide. On paper, you placed two hides. In the dog’s nose, one source may change how the other source presents.

Those choices can create good training when they match the goal. For clean sourcing, choose more separation, a different start point, simpler hide placement, or a less complicated space. For converging odor, the same general placement may create the puzzle you wanted.

Watch your dog while they work. Path, body language, commitment, time spent sorting, returns to productive areas, changes in intensity, and shifts in search rhythm can help you decide whether your hide placement created the intended lesson.

After the search, use your observations to plan the next repetition. Ask whether the dog solved the skill you planned, whether the space supported the goal, whether the hides created clean paths to source or interacting plumes, and whether reward timing supported the part of the search you wanted to build.

Good training design gives you information. You may keep the same goal and change the environment. You may keep the same environment and change the goal. You may keep both and adjust hide placement, start point, reward timing, or search area boundaries.
Set the odor problem you mean to train. Start with the goal or start with the environment, then balance the other half before you place hides. Watch the dog in front of you and use the search to answer the training question you meant to ask.

If you are not sure what your next step should be, The Mystery of Strings and Triangles webinar can help you build more clarity around how to set and understand advanced convergence puzzles. In that webinar, I go deeper into overlapping plumes, hidden edges, pooling, found and unfound odor, and how strings and triangles change the dog’s search problem.

Judith Guthrie is a detection dog trainer, handler, and instructor as well as a certified for The National Tactical Police Dog Association (NTPDA) and the International Bed Bug Resource Authority (IBBRA). Additionally, Judith is an approved AKC Scent Work Judge, NACSW Judge and USCSS CSD and Judge.

Raised around working dogs, mainly search and rescue dogs and retired police dogs, Judith has been part of the dog world her entire life. Dog training and canine behavior is a passion of hers. Judith strives to understand the why of a situation and how to mold the behaviors offered in the direction she needs them to go. In training, she enjoys it all from competition obedience and agility to every piece of police dog work and everything in between.

Judith has been involved in the training of detection and patrol dogs for police, government, and private agencies across the United States. She has trained detection canines for narcotics, explosives, bed bugs, and human remains to name a few. On the competition side she has multiple titles in Agility, Obedience, Rally, and K9 Nose Work. She also enjoys finding ways her dogs can help in everyday life from carrying snacks and water when hiking to pulling the feed cart to feed the livestock.

In Nose Work, Judith has competed up to the national level and has partnered with a variety of breeds from mixed breed dogs, to Labradors, Beagles and more. Professionally she handles several bed bug detection, narcotics detection, and explosive detection canines for private businesses and families in the western United States. Judith also loves developing young detection dogs and learns something from every dog.

Judith's business, Nose Dogs Detection Services, is a police and detection dog training facility. Through Nose Dogs, Judith offers trained and prospective police and detection dogs for sale, detection dog handling courses, workshops, certifications, personal protection dogs, companion dogs (trained, untrained, and/or titled), and a list of detection services for private individuals and businesses. When possible she also works with a variety of rescues.

Scent Work University has been incredibly fortunate to host Judith for a number of online courses, webinars and virtual events. Check out her entire library here.