Nosework Training May – November 2025
My friend, Denise, and I usually spend the summer training every weekend at our favorite place, the storage yard at Craftco Metalworks. They are always moving completed work out and bringing in supplies, so new places to hide scents are everywhere.
Denise brings her three dogs (2 Shelties and a Cockapoo who are all competing), and I bring three of mine. When we’re getting ready for our nosework trials in late May and early October, I only bring dogs that are competing. After the trial, I generally bring an experienced competitor (Spirit, Mercy or Lovely), a younger dog with whom I’m competing (Hopeful or Justice) and one of the beginner dogs (Varoom!, Pascha, Zest, Zeal or Dakuya) who won’t start competing until at least next year.
In the summer, we start training at 8 a.m. so that we finish before it becomes unbearably hot. We usually finish about 11 a.m. We get lots of shadows in the photos of the earliest runs, and glare in the later runs, so some photos are much better quality than others.
Another reason to train early is to finish before the hornets get too active. They, unfortunately, target us for our training treats. I swear they know our vehicles and when we arrive.
We set two separate searches so that each of us gets to run “blind” (not knowing where the hides are). Each search contains all 5 UKC scents and 1 or 2 distractions (balls or treats). You can often see some of the hides in the photos, when they’re in little silver tins or copper-colored “bullets” that reflect the light. The treat distractions are in little bottles. They and the balls are always in plain sight.
All the dogs do both searches. I have organized the photos by dates, so you can see how the competition dogs handle a search area if you don’t quite understand what the “baby” search dogs are doing. Denise sometimes gets a whole series of photos of a search, while other times she just gets one or two photos, but by looking at the photos of both the other dogs on that day you get a good sense of each search.
I am always surprised, as I edit the photos, at how many show the dogs’ tongues out as they leave the indication to receive their treat. Some of those photos are extremely cute. I never notice that when I’m working my dog. I guess I’m too busy reaching for a treat and, in Hopeful’s case, preparing for her enthusiastic body slam.
I’m still editing last fall’s training photos, so I only have photos of two 2025 training sessions:
7/6/25: Spirit, Hopeful and Zeal
I forgot my camera. Denise took a few photos of Spirit, Hopeful and Zeal with her cell phone. There were only a few, so I put all of them on one page.
All the previous nosework training photos have been taken when my friend, Denise, and I trained together. Denise went to visit her siblings in mid-July, only to have her sister become seriously ill. As of November, Denise is still in Minnesota caring for her sister. I continued training a day a week, though it’s sure not much fun by myself.
One of our young club members, Sera, told me at our October trial that she continued to train her dog but was intimidated. I invited her to come train with me and I’d help her practice how she would handle her dog in competition and develop a routine that would give her confidence to enter next year’s trials. I took photos of her and her dog working at one session. The next weekend, she took photos of my dogs working, with her cell phone.
10/25/25: Spirit, Hopeful and Justice
Sera got some fun photos, a bunch of which captured some fascinating light as the sun broke through heavy clouds.
2025 Training Sessions (photos to be edited):
5/4/25: Mercy, Hopeful and Justice.
5/10/25: Spirit, Lovely and Hopeful
5/11/25: Mercy, Hopeful & Justice
6/15/25: Mercy, Lovely and Dakuya
6/21/25: Lovely, Justice and Zeal
6/22/25: Spirit, Hopeful and Zest
6/29/25: Mercy, Varoom! & Dakuya
7/4/25: Lovely, Justice and Pascha
7/13/25: Mercy, Varoom! and Zest
11/1/25: Lovely, Pascha & Zeal
Sera took photos again today.