One of the most common Nosework questions I get from students is how to build more duration at source. Stronger duration and intensity make it much clearer when your dog has truly found the hide. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by using markers intentionally to clarify expectations.

Many dogs struggle to stay at source not because they lack understanding of odor, but because they haven’t been taught how to hold position through a consistent marker system. A well-timed marker helps your dog understand exactly when and where reinforcement will happen, which builds confidence and commitment at source.

A common misconception is that we must feed our dogs at source. Most of us do reward at source – it’s what we were taught, and it’s something instructors (myself included) often emphasize. What’s more important, however, is having a clear way to communicate to your dog whether you will come in to reward or whether they can release from the hide and come to you for their reinforcement.

What isn’t ideal is rewarding away from source while using your “stay at source” reward marker – often the marker used early on when conditioning odor. When cues like “Alert” or “Yes” sometimes mean stay at source and other times mean come back to me, dogs are left guessing. Given the choice, most dogs prefer to move off the hide and return to their handler for reinforcement as that’s the behavior they’ll naturally gravitate toward.

Building Stronger Cue Discrimination

Adding clear discrimination between different cues can significantly enhance your dog’s focus and cognitive processing. This is often the missing link in Nosework training – cue discrimination isn’t commonly emphasized in many curriculums.

Teaching your dog to clearly differentiate between marker cues – specifically your “room service” versus “take-out” cues – builds clarity, confidence, and stronger duration at source. That’s the beauty of reward markers: they strengthen your dog’s understanding of the job and their trust in the information you provide. Personally, I find this type of training to be really fun!!

How do I train this?

Below are some fun training drills and setups to teach these new cues.

• Suggestions for Room Service cues are: Yes, Yip, Good, Mark, Nice, Freeze – can be any word you will use consistently, and different from your Take-Out cue.
• Suggestions for Take-Out cues are: Break, Bam, Pop, Treat – can be any word you will use consistently and different from your Room Service cue.

The mechanics for both of the cues is: Cue -> P A U S E -> Deliver reward in the placement denoted by the cue. The key is that you are not saying the cue and delivering the reward at the same time. Your dog will not learn the verbal cue and will continue to watch you for information.

Here are the 5 steps:

1. Away from odor, teach your dog a Room Service cue by putting them in a stay position of your choice (stand, sit or a down). Cue -> P A U S E -> Deliver the treat while your dog remains in the stay position. Add distance to solidify the cue meaning.
2. Away from odor, teach your dog a Take-Out cue using a simple method of sending your dog away from you for a treat toss, then cue them with your new cue before they turn around, causing them to come back to you. Alternately, or in addition to, you can teach it similarly to a release cue: put your dog in a stay, move away, give the new cue, PAUSE, and then offer your hand for them to come get the treat. Cue -> PAUSE -> Deliver the treat from your hand when your dog gets to you.
3. Discriminate between the two cues to test their understanding.
4. Apply your take-out cue using a clean-loop drill with target odor.
5. Maintain the cues with routine training.

Example of Steps 1 and 2 – Teaching the cues away from odor:

Example of Step 3 – Discriminating cues away from odor:

Example of Step 4 – Apply your Take-Out Marker Cue with Target Odor

Using the It’s Your Choice (IYC) exercise, we can create clean, repeatable loops that build understanding and duration at source. Hold the odor tin in one hand and food in the other. Cue your dog to search. When your dog finds the hide, mark quickly, initially, using your take-out marker cue (mine is “Break”). After your dog retrieves the treat from your hand, cue search again and continue the loop. Hold enough treats in your hand to run several repetitions so you can reward each rep without reloading, as reloading can distract your dog and break the loop.

As your dog becomes more confident, begin to build duration at source by varying when you deliver the marker. Avoid making the exercise progressively harder, varying your timing between one and five seconds.

This approach builds anticipation for coming to the treat hand while strengthening stimulus control and duration. Rushing in to feed at source often pulls dogs off the hide, as they start watching our body movement rather than listening for the reward cue.

Troubleshooting: If your dog is not leaving your food hand, be patient. Make sure not to pull your food hand away as the exercise is about choice. Your hand should be in a fist so that the food is not available. Eventually your dog will leave the food hand to offer another behavior. If your dog continues to be stuck on the food, only offer the odor hand and cue your take-out marker cue and then offer a treat away from the hide.  Slowly bring your treat hand back out.

Example using a toy with at chair hide:

Here’s an example of using a toy reward with a chair hide. If needed, you can initially present the It’s Your Choice (IYC) game with holding the tin in your hand against the chair. After success, place the tin on the chair. When using a toy, you’ll hold it out as a clear “choice,” just as you would with food in your hand. Begin with no duration at source, then gradually build duration and vary when you deliver your take-out reward marker cue. This has an added bonus of improving my dog’s toy release. Using the Premack Principle, a less-preferred behavior becomes more likely when it’s followed by something the dog really wants – her toy!!

At the end of this clip, I have a helper rotate the chair so the hide is in a new location. This can help minimize reinforcing a return to a previously found hide, if that’s a concern for your team. In my experience, dogs clearly understand the difference between concept learning through drills and a formal search, where a found hide is not rewarded again

Thanks to Michele Ellertson for encouraging me to use more toy rewards in Nosework and for applying this concept within a clear, well-structured training loop.

Example of Step 5 – Maintaining your cues in routine training:

Lastly, here’s a simple training setup where I rotate my reward marker cues. You can see how clearly Katniss understands each marker and the specific behavior it communicates.

Note: This blog builds on the same topic I shared through the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy blog program, with new content and examples. To view the previous blog, go to: https://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.com/blog/reward-cue-discrimination-in-nosework