Thinking outside the box is so important in dog training. A few years ago I started doing box acclimation drills for my Into to NW classes. The container search element often has the lowest pass rate – not because dogs can’t find odor in a container, but because we spend a lot of time using containers to teach NW in the early months, making them very reinforcing.

I’ve never had dogs search for primary (food) in boxes, which is a common starting point in NW. Just like I’ve never advocated for 1001 things to do with a box! What dogs learn first, they learn best – if containers have a history of payment, with food and/or target odor in the container, they will hold more value for containers. (Just like if we reward stopped contacts in agility more often than other obstacles – dogs might be more likely to take an off course contact obstacle due to the history of reinforcement).

Conversely, if dogs develop antics early on with containers (pawing, digging, flipping, perching, etc) it becomes an early habit (default behavior) that gets baked into the behavior chain. Once those habits (mistakes) are formed early on, the harder they are to extinguish.

My goal is to make containers ho hum and not very interesting! I don’t want to draw extra attention to them by putting food IN them or starting too early with target odor in boxes. The steps are 2 fold:
📌 Scatter treats around boxes or place a treat next to each box in a row. Repeat this a few times, letting your dog hunt for the food around the containers.
📌 Acclimate the dog to odor in a sock and then place socks next to each box, with one of them hot (simply put a tin inside the sock and age it a little).

This accomplishes many things:
✅ Boxes aren’t overly valuable.
✅ Dogs are using their nose.
✅ Arousal levels are lowered.
✅ Handlers are in the picture, practicing their handling to match pace with their dog.
✅ When odor is added outside the containers (in a sock) the dogs are sourcing odor and not blaming a box / fringing.

I started playing around with this to fix issues with existing teams who had issues with antics, fringing, or falsing on cold containers/distractors. Now, after new teams have gone through this approach, their container skills are much stronger! Winning!

Here’s a video of a new team with a high energy dog about a month into learning Nosework: