Toka’s Odor Recognition Tests

I’ve been focusing on nose work with His Redness.  He’s been quite successful in his efforts.  While doing container searches, he’s false altered once – and on a container which held food (have to work on that!).

He ran his 3 NACSW Odor Recognition Tests (ORT’s) today. The first for birch, then anise, and the last for clove.  He was confident, focused, and clearly indicated all three of the correct boxes.  I could not be more proud of the ‘little’ guy.

In an odor recognition test, the dog must find the single box (out of 12) that has 2-3 scented q-tips in it.

A threshold search is when the box holding odor is right at the start line.  These can be challenging, because the handler wonders ‘is this it?’ Or sometimes the dog sprints past the first set of boxes, and it’s up to the handler to remember which boxes the dog has investigated, and which still need to be checked.

In Toka’s birch run, he indicated, I called alert, and he moved off the box.  Yikes! But he’d indicated the correct one.

For anise, he hit the first box & indicated.  I called it, and once again, he was right.  A fun (and nerve wracking) threshold search.  It happened so fast that his Auntie Amy barely got the iPad on – you can see this in the video.

Clove – he indicated the correct box.  I said ‘alert!’ but he was making so much noise with the box the judge didn’t hear me.  She did the second time I said it!

Here’s the video:  Toka’s ORT’s

Toka, you rock! What a good little worker!