For owners who really want to take their relationship with their puppy to the next level, one of the best ways to do this is to focus on possibly the most underappreciated of our dogs’ senses, their incredible nose.
Scent training and games help your puppy’s development, improve your relationship and gives you a whole new fun way to enrich their lives.
Learn more about how to begin to incorporate scent into your puppy’s life with our easy guide and simple games.
Why Is Scent Work So Great for Puppies?
It’s probably because we don’t see the world in smell the same way that our dogs do, that we don’t understand how important the sense of smell is to our dogs. For that reason, we miss an entire way to interact with and stimulate them.
It’s thought that the part of the dog’s brain that analyses smells is 40 times larger than ours. And if you compare our measly 5 million scent receptors to a Bloodhound’s 300 million, you can see that our noses are pretty pathetic in comparison!
As such, scent is incredibly important to dogs – as much, if not more so, as sight and sound – and it tells them far more about their environment than we can ever begin to imagine.
While we experience and perceive the world through our eyes, our dogs use their nose. While a quick sniff they can identify those around them – and even tell their health and their mood. Dogs make a mental map of their area by smell and so identify changes to their usual environment by sniff – and of course sniffing and foraging for food has historically been key to a dog’s survival, and this natural instinct remains in our pups.
Plus, sniffing releases dopamine – a mood-boosting neurochemical that helps dogs feel happier, more relaxed.
If we can incorporate this into some of our games and puppy training, we can discover a whole new way to interact with our pups. For a deeper understanding of the general positive impact and why training your dog is so important, you might find our dedicated article insightful. By giving them an outlet for this need to sniff, we can make our dogs lives better, more fun, and even prevent behaviour issues.
The good news is that using scent for games and enrichment is easy and fun. Read on to find out how to introduce some of our favourite puppy scent training games.
Dog Scent Training: Hide and Seek
How To Play Hide and Seek With Your Dog
- Get someone to hold your puppy that they know and are happy with and then go and hide somewhere in the house. Don’t go too far at the beginning until your pup gets the hang of this fun new game. You can leave a trail of kibble or treats to start with to make it easier. When you are ready, your helper can let go of your puppy, and they can use their nose to follow the trail and discover where you are hiding.
- Once they have worked this out, you can start to get more adventurous with your hiding – but remember that the point is that your puppy succeeds in finding you and not that ‘you win’!
- When you go further, you can leave a trail of kibble or treats to start with to make it easier. Once you are ready, your friend can let go of your puppy, and they can use their nose to follow the trail and discover where you are hiding.
- When your puppy finds you, give them their favourite treat, and if they are toy-focused, have a great game. Then you can go somewhere else, where there is no fresh scent of you or the treats, and try again.
The hide and seek game is a combination of scent work and basic problem solving (and for some puppies, just trial and error!) but it is a fun starting point for nose work as they learn to use scent as part of finding you!
Advanced Hide and Seek
There are lots of variations of this simple nose work game that you can play outside in the garden and further afield once your pup is able to go outside (with your puppy on a long line until they have a reliable recall or unless the area is totally enclosed).
One of them is to take your puppy’s favourite toy and get them really excited about it, then get someone to hold your puppy while you walk a little way and put the toy down.
Remember not to go too far and put it down somewhere obvious. Retrace your exact steps back to your puppy so there is only one scent trail and then get your helper to let go of your puppy, to find the toy.
Obviously, this is easy as they saw where you just put it – but still reward them when they find it.
Next you can more somewhere else so there is no scent of you and repeat as above but ask your helper to hold your puppy so they can’t see where you are going. Come back to them and repeat, being as encouraging as you need to be. This time your puppy is going to have to follow your scent to try and find their toy.
When you start with puppy scent training, your dog may be using more than just his nose to find the toy, but as you begin to make it harder and go a little further (always in a new spot), you will see your pup starting to follow your scent with their nose – which is always awe-inspiring to watch and great fun to do!
How To Play: Find the Treats
- Once again you can start with obviously placed ones, but then you can begin to hide them under a sheet of newspaper, or a plastic plant pot, in an old cardboard kitchen roll inner, under a towel – the choices are endless as long as they are safe! Get creative but don't hide them on sofas or chairs unless you want your dog tunnelling around in your furniture – and it’s best kept purely at ground level altogether for chewy dogs or house-proud owners.
- You can also leave a trail of treats that lead to a tasty treat like a stuffed Kong toy, which can be hidden somewhere more challenging like in a handle-less bucket or in a cardboard box.
- The number one rule however is that you must always make sure everything you do is safe and that you are always there to supervise.
- Always offer encouragement to your puppy too, to make it a nose work game you do together but there is a fine line between encouraging and distracting!
- You can also do this in the garden using a snuffle mat, or if you are feeling really lazy, you can just scatter a handful of kibble in the grass and leave your puppy to sniff them out, as a fun and simple puppy enrichment game.
Different Scent-based Enrichment for Different Dogs
It’s amazing how many things you can find lying around the house that you can turn into a scent-training dog toy.
For some dogs – often terrier types – it’s as much fun ripping open cardboard tubes, wrapping paper or lightweight boxes to get treats, as it is to sniff them out – so always be on the look out for things that you can use to stimulate your puppy and make an interactive dog toy.
For some breeds and individuals, especially scent hounds and some gundogs, these nose work games can turn into the most fun you and your pup can have together and give you a whole new way to interact. Some of these enrichment games give you ways to have fun together indoors when the weather is awful – or you just need to use up some excess canine energy.
Once you have started working with your puppy on these simple dog games, you start to get much more appreciation for the wonder that is your dog’s nose.
Incorporating scent into your puppy’s play can open up a whole new world of interactive enrichment that will help keep your them mentally stimulated as well as physically exercised – a key part of keeping them healthy and happy.
If you own a breed that is known for their scentwork abilities, you can go on and find a local training class – or even a search and rescue team when your dog is an adult – where you can move on to more serious scent training and take those nose skills to a whole different level.
Even if you only do the fun enrichment scent games that you’ve discovered in this article, when you do get out into the great outdoors on your walks, remember just how incredible a dog’s nose is and what an important function it plays for them in understanding the world. Let them spend time sniffing, even if you don’t understand it!
FAQs
Can all dogs enjoy scent work?
Yes definitely. While some breeds are designed to be expert scent identifiers and followers, every dog has a far better sense of smell than we do and experience their world through scent as much as sight.
How often can I play scent games or use scent for enrichment?
You can incorporate scent games into your dog's routine as often as you wish, even daily! It's an incredibly natural and fun activity for dogs, leveraging their primary sense of smell. Unlike physical exercise, scent work is mentally stimulating and less taxing on their joints, making it suitable for dogs of all ages, energy levels, and physical conditions.
Where is the best place to start scent games?
Many scent work exercises work best outside, but most can be played indoors or in the garden so these are things all the family can do no matter what the weather! Often it is best to start indoors where they are fewer distractions – and if you are doing this before your puppy can go outside,
What if my puppy isn’t interested in scent games?
There are all kinds of reasons a puppy might not seem interested in scent games. Sometimes they might not have the confidence to move any distance away from you to follow a scent. This can be common in young puppies and sometimes toy breeds. If this is the case, make sure you stay beside them all the time – and don’t put the toy or the treat too far away. Start really small until their confidence grows. Others might get distracted by what is going on around them so make sure you do this at a time and in a place where there are no distractions – and have the smelliest tastiest treats possible.
Carolyn Menteith
Related articles
