# The alert/'tell' (scent work stuff)



## Laurelin (Nov 2, 2006)

No, I'm not obsessed. 

Ok, so I am not sure how it nosework compares to other scent related sports. But how did you guys go about developing your dog's alert? Did you train something specific or just watch the dog for its natural 'tells'? 

I had been trying to work on getting Mia to paw at the source, however my trainers have said they both do (and recommend) just learning your dog's 'tells' and observing for their natural alerts. It seems much more difficult that way. I want something very clear and absolute. It seems like when I see real working dogs doing any kind of detection work they have the dogs perform a behavior once they detect their odor.

I called 2 false alerts last night, so I want to try to work on this.


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## 3doglady (Jul 31, 2011)

I didn't see natural alerts forming in my dogs that would work for me either. I went back to basics, hiding the scent among boxes. When they found the scent, I gave them a high praise, then asked for a sit before treating. Over time, I waited for them to offer the sit, without instruction, after high praise and before treating. I think it was about a month from beginning to end, before they were back to their former search levels, and consistently offering a sit to alert the scent.


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## Keechak (Aug 10, 2008)

With Hawk training for tracking, when he came upon an article I would tell him to lay down and then reward him. He eventually got the jist that he should just lay down right away when he found something.


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## DJEtzel (Dec 28, 2009)

I've worked a little bit on Frag pawing at the source because I had some trouble judging his alerts as well. 

My instructor is all for training an alert, he just admits it is not nearly as easy as reading your dog or learning to. For pawing, he recommended we work on hiding a strong odor preferably WITH food or a high value reward just out of reach of the dog... between the fridge and a wall, etc. to where the dog would get frustrated and offer _something_ (I was hoping for a paw) like a bark, paw, down, etc. and you can reward at that point. I have only worked on it a few times and didn't really get there with Frag yet. We need to work on our nosework.


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## PatriciafromCO (Oct 7, 2012)

how are yall teaching the dog the oder(s) to identify? We used boxes and shuffled the boxes to get distance and length of search.. but also we taught response at the same time which was teaching them to respond right at the source as a first part of the training with the introduction to oder, that is how I always begin the dogs. Now they are using scent walls with pvc pipes which is really cool. I'll get a picture and post the scent wall my DH builds for his training.


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