Starting a new dog in any sport is always a bit nerve-wracking! Katniss is just a year old, and aside from a few AKC Scent Work searches at a local trial, this felt like her first real test. We made the 1.5-hour drive to a fairground for a half-day of running three odor tests. Honestly, I felt giddy and nervous, just like I do at a big trial with my seasoned Nosework dog. It’s exciting, a little intimidating, and full of unknowns since you just don’t have the same mileage with a young dog to predict how they’ll perform.

I’ll admit, I could have used a couple more months of prep especially to get Kat more exposure to new environments and strangers. However, I felt she was ready enough. I’m not someone who rushes into competition, but I also didn’t want to wait too long like I did with my previous Nosework dogs.

Spoiler alert: She was amazing! Kat passed all three odor tests – Birch, Anise, and Clove – and earned her very first title: ORT!

ORT Test Prep

This is what happened the week before! Wanting to get her to new places as well as training at home, we did a little practice Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and then took three days off before the test. Three of those days were offsite in a novel location.

Our first stop was a local park, where we discovered an open indoor lodge and decided to set it up as a novel search environment. Partway through the session, we invited a random stranger to stand in the room during one of the searches. I was pleased to see that Kat handled the presence of the stranger very well! She walks a fine line between being overly friendly (perhaps as a form of appeasement) and showing some hesitation with unfamiliar people.

The first search went really well – no issues from either dog. However, during the second and third searches, both dogs gave false alerts. While it’s impossible to know exactly why, we were careful not to place cold boxes where hot ones had been. My suspicion is that there may have been some odor contamination. We’ll get more into that later.

In these three runs, the first one Birch was solid and confident. During the Anise search, the stranger was present in the room, and that’s when Kat began to give a few false indications. I chose to abort one of the false alerts. This isn’t something I’ve done before, but I’m testing out the idea of aborting when an unwanted behavior occurs. It’s a bit of a gamble as we can’t always be certain if the dog was truly wrong – maybe the box had some residual odor? On the final run, she improved, although she still showed interest in an incorrect box. It’s not uncommon for dogs to give a false alert on a container if there is drool on the box, odor nearby or they pick up on disturbance of another dog spending time at that box.

Blank Plus Odor Drill

After finishing in the indoor lodge, we moved to a nearby patio area for one final exercise. Before an ORT, I often like to run my students through a blank search followed by an odor search. The goal is to teach the dogs not to indicate on odor that isn’t there. I use a short line of boxes instead of a formal two rows of six boxes.

Before running this final setup, I brought out my seasoned dog, Drac, and noticed he was also false alerting on a few boxes. I pulled those boxes from the lineup and set them aside in the “hot” pile for future use. Once that was sorted out, our dogs did really well—no false alerts on the blank search and accurately hit the hot box. A solid win! Here’s Kat clearing the blank setup and then honing into odor quickly on the 2nd run with odor!

Final Novel Area Practice Before the Big Test!

The final new location I took her to was a dog training facility with turf. She initially struggled there – clearly distracted by all the dog smells on the turf. She wasn’t taking food or toys and needed extra time to settle in. This clip shows her third search – running it blind – after completing the first two searches as known hide placements. I was really proud of how she pushed through the distractions. Our final practice was Easy Peasy back in our regular training building, and then she had a few days off.

Test Day!

On test day, she seemed relaxed and happy in the parking lot. I took her to the warm-up boxes, which were placed on grass near a tree. I usually caution teams not to use the warm-up boxes, since the “hot” one is often squished, drool-covered, and can knock the handler’s confidence if the dog doesn’t show interest to search! Sure enough, the first two times we visited the warm-up area, she was much more interested in sniffing the ground and the tree than engaging with the boxes. To help re-engage her, I did a little game we play – pretending to hide something around the boxes by pointing at them randomly. That sparked her curiosity both times, and she quickly searched and correctly identified the target box. By the third visit (for Clove), she was more focused and searched right away without needing any prompting.

These are her three passing runs. You can see I delayed calling Alert – partly based on our training the week before – and also to give both of us time to be sure! I couldn’t be more proud of how focused and at ease she was in this unfamiliar environment. Sometimes, we really do need to train hard so we can trial easy!

I was asked a few times why I gave her food before each run. It’s a habit I started when she was a puppy to help her transition into task-focused work, and I simply stuck with it. Heading into the test, I didn’t want to change anything about her routine. While I plan to gradually phase it out, I found it provided a sense of familiarity for her and it also served as a quick check that she was willing to take food and was in the right mindset to work.

We will take some time before moving on to NW1 and continue building a strong foundation for a long and successful Nosework career!