Dog Scent Training Kit: Three Things to Start
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Rain on a Saturday, a dog that has had ten minutes of walk instead of an hour, and a kitchen. A dog scent training kit is the cheapest way out of that afternoon, because searching tires a dog out in a way that a longer walk in the wet does not. This one is three things: a rubber toy with enough surface to hold a smell, a treat loud enough for a beginner to find, and an ordinary treat for the easy finds. Our guide to nose work games at home has the games; this is what you play them with. More kits sit in the bundle guides.
Starting a dog that has never searched for anything
Dogs are good at this and beginners at the game. The first few hides have to be almost insultingly easy, in plain sight, at nose height, so the dog learns what the game is before it learns to work for the answer.
That is why the treat choice matters more than the toy. A hide the dog cannot smell is not a puzzle, it is a dead end, and dogs quit dead ends fast.
The toy, the beacon, and the ordinary treat
The Corn on the Cob is the search object. SodaPup makes it in yellow rubber with a textured kernel surface, and the medium is 3.25 by 2 inches at 3.8 ounces, which SodaPup sizes for dogs 15 to 30 pounds. The texture is the useful part: kernels hold a treat in a way a smooth toy does not, so the scent stays put while the dog works out where it is coming from. SodaPup/True Dogs, LLC items are sold and shipped by SodaPup/True Dogs, LLC through Shopify Collective and arrive separately.
Our Freeze-Dried Anchovies are the beacon. One ingredient, anchovies, a 2 ounce bag, guaranteed analysis 67 percent crude protein. Our own sheet puts it plainly: these have a strong natural smell typical of whole fish, and that smell is exactly why dogs work for them. For a first hide you want the loudest thing in the cabinet, and this is it. Pieces can be fed whole or broken smaller, so one anchovy covers several hides.
Our Freeze-Dried Cheddar Cheese Bites are for everything after the dog has got the idea. Cheddar cheese and nothing else, freeze-dried in small batches in Malvern, Pennsylvania, sold as a single 8 ounce bag. Once a dog is searching confidently, dropping to a quieter treat is what makes the game harder, and that is a better way to increase difficulty than hiding things further away.
The scent kit we did not copy
Formal nose work uses birch, anise and clove oil on cotton swabs, and if you are heading for competition that is the right road. That is a different hobby with its own rulebook, and a dog that has never searched for food is nowhere near ready for a target odor. Start with food, and buy the oils when the dog is finding things you hid properly.
Three afternoons of hides
First session, let the dog watch. Put an anchovy piece in the cob while the dog is standing there, set it down two feet away, and release. That is the whole hide. Six repetitions of that, and then the toy goes away for the day.
Second session, hide it out of sight. Same toy and same filling, but behind a chair leg or under the edge of a rug, with the dog waiting in the hall. Most dogs are visibly pleased with themselves the first time they find one they did not see hidden.
Third session onward, switch the filling to cheddar and start using rooms rather than corners. Height helps too: a hide at knee level makes the dog work the air rather than the floor. Enrichment toys for a rainy day has other indoor games for the same afternoon.
Watch the dog while it works the toy, because a frustrated dog will chew at rubber trying to get at something it can smell but cannot reach.
One toy instead of a puzzle board
Plastic puzzle boards are the usual purchase here. They are fine, and most dogs solve the easy ones in a week and then need a harder one, which is how people end up with three. A single toy and a variable filling scales differently, because you change the difficulty by changing the treat and the hiding place rather than by buying the next model up. If the game gets easy, the Dinosaur Egg is there as an add with a different shape, and you can filter the rest of our freeze-dried treats by protein on Explore.
Questions about starting scent games
Three we get from people buying their first search toy.
How long should a session be?
Five or ten minutes. Searching is concentrated work and most dogs will tell you when they are done by wandering off mid hide.
My dog just chews the toy instead of searching. Now what?
Make the hide easier and the treat easier to extract. Chewing usually means the dog knows there is something in there and cannot get it out, which is a loading problem rather than a training one.
Can I hide the treats without the toy?
Yes, and scattering a few pieces in grass is a perfectly good version of the same game. The toy matters when you want the scent concentrated in one findable spot rather than spread across a lawn. Our freeze-dried dog treats all work for either.
Related guides
Three kits for other indoor and close range training problems. The set is on the training cluster page.
