Find it (scent work)

Your dog searches a room or a garden and pinpoints hidden food or a scent with the nose alone — work that tires the brain more than an hour of running and suits every age.

🐾🐾🐾🐾 · ~14 days · 8 min/session

Learn first: Wait

Step-by-step

1. Teach the word with a scatter

   Scatter a handful of small, smelly treats into the grass or the carpet in front of your dog and say “Find it” once, as they start to sniff. Stand still and stay quiet while the nose works — that is the whole session. Repeat two or three times a day for a few days, until the word alone drops their head to the ground.

   💡 Say the word once and then be quiet. Every “go on, it’s over there” teaches your dog to read you instead of using their nose — and the nose is the entire trick.

2. Two boxes, one choice

   Put two identical upturned boxes a metre apart and hide a treat under one of them while your dog waits outside the room. Release them with “Find it” and help with nothing — not a glance, not a step that way. The moment the nose reaches the right box, mark with “Yes!” and pay right there, dropping a second treat next to the source.

3. Hide higher and out of sight

   Move the hides around: behind a chair leg, on a low shelf, in a fold of a blanket, behind an open door. Vary the heights, because scent sinks and your dog needs to learn to check upwards too. Vary the rooms as well, so they memorise the smell rather than the spot.

   💡 Remember every hide and count the treats you put out. One forgotten piece teaches your dog to search the room on their own account, when nobody is watching.

4. Search the whole room

   Hide three or four treats around the room while your dog waits behind the door, then release them on a single cue. Stay by the door and let them plan their own route — dogs search better when the human isn’t moving about. End every session with an easy hide, so it finishes on a success.

5. From food to scent

   Put a cotton pad with a single drop of a scented liquid — aniseed, clove, or simply a tea bag — into a small tin with holes and leave it next to the treats for a few sessions, so the smell gets linked with payment. Then hide the tin alone and pay on the spot from your hand the moment your dog holds their nose against it. Never demand barking or digging — a quiet nose held still is the clearest indication there is.

6. Searching outdoors, into the wind

   Take the game into the garden or a quiet corner of the park and release your dog into the wind — that way the scent reaches the nose instead of drifting away behind them. Search grass, tree lines and low walls, but stay well clear of roads and of places with rubbish or bait. Five to ten minutes is plenty: scent work is far more tiring than it looks.

   💡 One drop of scented liquid is more than enough and it never touches your dog’s skin or nose — the cotton stays shut inside the tin. With puppies and senior dogs halve the sessions, and in hot weather train early in the morning or late in the evening.

Common mistakes

• Pointing and hinting where the hide is — the dog starts reading your hand and your eyes and stops using their nose, which takes the whole point out of the game.
• Hides that are too hard at the start — high up, behind a closed door, in a strongly scented container. A run of failures and the dog simply stops searching.
• Paying only once the dog comes back to you — rewarding away from the source teaches them to abandon the find and return to your hand.
• Long sessions because “it isn’t physical” — twenty minutes of searching drains a dog more than an hour of running, and the mistakes pile up at the end.

Problems & solutions

My dog wanders around with their head up, watching me instead of sniffing.

It means you have been helping and they have decided you are the faster source of information. Go completely quiet, stand still by the door and drop back for a few days to nothing but scatters in grass or carpet. Once the nose goes down on its own, hide a single treat in an easy spot and say nothing beyond the cue.

My dog finds the treats but shows me nothing when I hide the tin.

The link between the smell and the payment is missing. Go back to the stage where the tin sits in the open beside the treats and feed your dog right next to it a dozen times a session. Then hide it somewhere very easy and mark with “Yes!” the first second the nose freezes at it — you always pay at the source, never in your hand.

My dog gives up after a minute or two and lies down.

Either the task is too hard or the payment isn’t worth the effort. Hide the treats almost in the open for a few sessions and switch to something strongly scented — cheese, liver, a piece of fish. Train before a meal rather than after, and end every search with a find, not with an empty room.

Reward ideas

Small, strongly scented treats delivered right at the find — cheese, dried liver, pieces of fish. For a longer session, set aside part of the daily ration so the calories don’t add up.