more nosework!

Indi and I have been practicing nosework off and on this winter and are having lots of fun! It's such a good way to use up doggy energy when the roads are icy or the trails are muddy.
I'm hoping we'll get to enter an Odor Recognition Test in the next few months. It would be the first of its kind in Boise. The ORT is the pre test to show that your dog can find each of the three odors before being allowed to move on to competitions.
Just last night I broke down and ordered this:

I was tired of my little lip balm tins that you can't open and my baby food jars whose lids don't shut. Also, my anise oil smells suspiciously different than my friend and training partner's anise oil...Super excited!
For the ORT Indi will have to identify which of 12 boxes contains the scent of birch oil, clove and anise oil, in three separate tests. We will have 3 minutes. Eek!
Indi does very well finding the scent most of the time. There are a few times that she hasn't found it right away or hasn't found it at all. She definitely doesn't lack enthusiasm for the search but we find that boxes are hard!

Here is the first training session of the day using boxes. She seemed to hit on the incorrect box the first time and I think I should have stopped to open the box and show her it wasn't that one, but I didn't.

This is the next session after moving the boxes around. She got it right away this time.

The scent (clove oil for this one) was on q tips stuffed into a piece of plastic straw about an inch and a half long, then placed in the box. I open the lid to let her smell the scent better so she knows she was right and the scent was in there and then reward her close to the scent with cheese!

And some pictures to finish this post. Here is Indigo doing a vehicle search on our car. She found it!