When you take articles out to hide in a search square, how long does it take to transfer enough of your scent onto them? I take em out in my pockets next to my jumper but only for 15 minutes to half an hour before using them, and think they dont have enough scent on to counteract all the other game/dog/people smells we find on even the least used fields locally. I use plastic, metal and cloth.  Any ideas welcome,thanks.

In obedience The judge and decoy steward only get to hold them for possibly less than 5 minutes. The scent goes on just about immediately. It is far more likely that your dog is not sure what it's doing.

Teaching scent is so difficult because just about everything in your house smells of you. When I was working obedience I used to start when out for a walk. I would drop a glove on the path behind me then while it was still in sight send my dog back for it. The next step would be to toss it to one side of the path so that it is just out of site from the place where I am sending the dog from. Gradually extend the distance and the difficulty of the position where you drop it but never making it too hard to find. If your dog can't find it and looses interest then you are lost.

Always know the direction the wind is blowing. It makes so much difference to the severity of the test! Try in the early stages to always have the wind blowing from the article to your dog. Remember the harder the wind is blowing the smaller the cone of scent coming off of the article.

When your dog is really up to it leave him at home or in the car out of sight and go and put the articles out. Try not to enter the area yourself, toss the articles in from the outside.

For Obedience, where you are using clothes and need sterile ones in the pattern a friend and myself had a pack of cloths each. When they were all used I would wash and dry his and him mine. We would only handle the cloths with tongs and I believe it worked. At least, his dog became an OB CH so we must have got something right!!

Best wishes, John

"In obedience The judge and decoy steward only get to hold them for possibly less than 5 minutes.........."

LOL John it's a lot less than 5 minutes as If memory serves me right you are supposed to judge 8 dogs an hour in C & that gives less than 10 minutes per dog including the scent but not stays

If you want to put a "hot"scent on a cloth you need warm hands & the sweatier the better :D  I never do decoy steward as I know my cloths will be hot scented

Probably the reason when I judged A to C I rarely had scent failures

IMHO dogs don't need a lot of scent on articles :D I did WT with my first BC & simply trained her to find anything with a scent on it, it did result in me having a plle of articles after the track & square search rather than just the ones the steward had placed LOL I always had a good haul afterwards, even found a lost set of car keys once

Some judges have been known to ask "and which 4 are mine"

I had that once or twice & alawys asked the judge to get the track layer to give my dog their scent Only once did they go so far as to say ok & then I had the articles laid out & my girl did an "A" type scent & got the right articles I possibly helped that I picked up the articles with plastic bagged & kept them separate :D Well I did use to train with police dog handlers :D

In Working Trials Dogs are taught to indicate and retrieve anything "hot". 

Rules for search squares :D

Never use any article more than once (apart from metal which can be washed).  Otherwise the articles will be dual scented.
Plastic (all types) wood, metal, textiles, the list is endless
Always put at least 6 articles in the square.
Remember that in trials articles are "placed" not thrown.
When I lay squares for competition in trials the articles are taken out shortly before I put in the poles
If it is cold I keep the articles in my glove as I lay so that plenty of scent is put on and/or breathe on them!
Remember a dog is able to locate and retrieve a stick or a stone that you have thrown in a forest or a beach! :D

I'm very suprised at the "Placed not thrown" bit. I would have thought any self respecting dog would soon learn to follow the human scent to the object! Certainly I know Anna will if I place a blind retrieve. I have to walk right around the edge of the field and toss the dummy in from the back just to make sure it really is a blind. As a puppy she learned at a very early age to follow my scent to the point where it stopped then cast around in front at about the range she thought I could throw it. It took me a while to realise just how she was making a blind look so easy!!

Best wishes, John

How "fouled" the square is, is up to the judge; theoretically you could be asked to walk all over it before placing the articles.  That is why you need a dog that will track as well as air scent in trials :D

It is possible to over-scent articles - especially scent cloths as the smell spreads around and can appear to be on an adjoining cloth.

If you want to really scent an article try putting it in your shoe for a short time

Or under your armpit :D

Like a lot of WT enthusiasts  I find the whole question of scent infinitely interesting; sometimes you can go onto a field and think it is perfect tracking conditions and none of the dogs on that day get round the track.  Other days there can have been 3 hours of torrential rain and you wonder whether it is worth putting the harness on and they cruise round!  No one fully understands scent; there are so many factors involved; air temperature, ground temperature, wind direction and strength, rain, animal scents, hollows in the land, hedges, tree cover, etc etc etc. 

For squares removing motivation of the dog after completing a hard track from the equation, wind is definitely a pre-requisite.

Really only the dog understands scent fully ;) I remember being told by a WT handler that they had gone out with SAS to work on how to fool/escape dogs, tried and tried but dogs won every time ;)

I know what you mean. Last week I went tracking with Kester and after getting out of the car into rain and a what felt like a force ten gale (ok, maybe a bit exagerated!), I thought "there's NO way that he'll manage that!".  How wrong was I!  He charged round, nose on the floor.  Yet on Sunday,  with hardly any wind at all, I did a search square with nice big articles, been in my inside pockets for a good amount of time, and he just couldn't find them- I ended up taking a step backwards and practising 'seek-backs' instead. At the end of the day, with an organ as sensitive as the nose, I guess they all have their 'off' days.

Ali :)

I find the whole scent thing fascinating as well - both tracking and squares. I never fail to be thrilled watching a dog use its nose and working the wind (if there is any wind :D )

John, it's odd i know, but we really do "place" the articles in WTs ..... although i have also been told as a tip to "throw" the articles in when training if the dog is lacking in keeness or belief, as the dog can then of course see that there is something in there for definite :)

I sometimes spit a little on metal articles as i think it helps the dog a bit and saliva holds scent well. So ladylike :D ;)

Lindsay

A dogs sense of smell is so good but as you say Lindsay, the wind plays a big part. I have sent Anna for a very long retrieve and seen her turn and move across 20 to 30 yds and pick the dummy! I've also seen her standing on the upwind side of a dummy no more than a yard away and not even know it's there. I keep stressing to handlers in my class to always be aware of the wind direction.

It's been a long time since I've been decoy steward Moonmaiden. I think the last time was at Ryslip for the late Andy Anderson and he's been dead for around 15 years. I still go to see his wife from time to time, shes in her mid 80's now!!

Best wishes, John

Thanks for the replies, lots of helpful information in there. It is fascinating to think a dog has a "video" of who's passed when and so on as his/her nose whiffles over a piece of grass. John, glad to hear I got something right with the glove thing as this is how we started :) I will now look even weirder to my neighbours as I pull items out of my armpits and place them in a square! Good tip about washing stuff after using it once as well, and remembering the wind.  I dont have any "empty" fields nearby now so everywhere we go is covered in diverse scents, but from the sounds of it thats pretty normal. We're learning together so itll be slow, but its great fun which is the main thing, and I always make sure he gets success before stopping.