As scentwork is becoming a more popular sport/hobby that people can do with their pet dogs, there are now a few types on offer, all of which use their incredible, natural superpower – their sense of smell. In this post, I’ll briefly explain the different types of scentwork. If you’d like to read about the benefits of scentwork, you can do so in this recent blog post.

Scent Detection (aka nosework, scentwork)
Scent detection is a dog sport in which we harness the dogs natural ability to search and find a scent. At its most basic, it is where we hide little pieces of food for a dog to find to encourage them to use their noses to thoroughly search an area, and more advanced is where we train a dog to target and search for a specific scent such as Kong, catnip or gun oil. In these classes, you’ll usually be searching areas, vehicles, and items such as bags, chairs or boxes. This type of scentwork can often be broken into two categories too; active and passive searching. An active search is where the dog must locate and retrieve the target item, and bring it back to the handler, and a passive search is where the dog simply locates the scented article, and uses trained body language to ‘indicate’ or show the handler where it is. An excellent example of ‘professional’ scent detection are police dogs who sniff out drugs or explosives. Whilst I don’t train your dogs to sniff out drugs or explosives, the techniques used in scent work classes are the same as those used by the police. I currently run 6 week beginners blocks based on the UK Sniffer Dogs Bronze Level, or a weekly scent club for all levels. All can be booked here.

Trailing (man-trailing, or pet-trailing)
Trailing is where we train dogs (and I use the word ‘train’ loosely here, as all dogs know how to do this, we just need to tap into this incredible ability) to find a ‘lost’ person or dog. Trailing is done outdoors in urban, rural or wild settings, and the dog uses its phenomenal nose to differentiate the scent of the ‘lost’ person or dog from all other scents in the environment. Trailing dogs have the freedom to choose how they reach the missing person or dog, as they can use a combination of sniffing on the ground and in the air. Trailing is a wonderful activity to do with your dog. It’s very inclusive, suitable for all dogs, whether they’re reactive, nervous, old, puppies, blind, deaf or three-legged. In the professional world, trailing dogs are those who search for missing people or pets, e.g. mountain rescue. We don’t care HOW they find the person or pet, as long as they find them.
I currently run trailing sessions in and around Glasgow and across central Scotland and will continue to release new dates and locations soon. You can find out about upcoming sessions here.
Tracking
Tracking is similar to trailing, where we ask our dogs to detect, recognise and follow a specific scent. The difference between tracking and trailing is that in tracking, dogs must use ground scent and disturbances and stick to the exact route that the missing person went on. Tracking dogs are used by the police, in pursuit of criminals or looking for evidence.
I run a number of different scentwork classes in Glasgow and will continue to add new scentwork classes in Scotland.
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